Oscar Kingston Is God!

Chapter 6: First Act of God

Oscar had just sat down again when he heard the sound of his door being unlocked.

His eyes immediately narrowed.

For the past few weeks, nobody had visited him except when the government sent someone to deliver supplies. But those deliveries had stopped long ago. Now, whenever people came knocking, it usually meant they wanted something from the people who were already struggling to survive.

Oscar clenched his fists under the table as the door opened.

Two men walked inside.

They were both wearing government uniforms, and unlike Oscar, who had become thin and lanky from weeks of eating less than he should, the two men were still big and well-built. Their faces showed no concern for the miserable state of the apartment.

One of them looked at Oscar and said, “You’re Oscar Kingston?”

“Yes.”

The man nodded. “I'm Marcus. This is Ethan. Charlotte and Gideon reported that you owe them ten liters of water and two kilograms of rice.”

Oscar stared at him.

For a moment, he wondered if he had heard correctly. Two what of rice? That's 10 cups of rice?

He slowly stood up and went to the corner of the room. He picked up the small one-kilogram bag of half filled rice he had prepared earlier and brought it over. Then he picked up three long nylon bags filled with water.

“There,” Oscar said. “These are the things. Five litres of water and three cups of rice. That's all I can give.”

Marcus took the rice bag from him and pressed his hand against it. A smile appeared on his face as he looked at Ethan.

“I do feel rice under here.”

Ethan chuckled.

Marcus threw the bag onto the table and said, “That means this guy is loaded.”

Oscar's expression changed. Loaded? This was everything he had prepared to give them.

Before he could say anything, Marcus pushed him aside and walked farther into the apartment, with Ethan following behind him.

Oscar watched them enter his tiny home without permission.

Marcus looked around and noticed the twenty-five-liter bucket sitting near the wall.

“How much water is in there?”

Oscar's heart tightened. “About five liters.”

Marcus pointed at it. “Ethan, take it.”

Oscar immediately stepped forward. “Wait. You already have five liters. If you take that too, what am I supposed to do?”

Marcus turned around. “What did you say?”

“I said I need some water too.”

A tight slap landed on Oscar's face before he could react. His head turned to the side, and his cheek burned.

Marcus who slapped him looked at him coldly. “I don't care what you need.”

Oscar slowly turned his face back.

Marcus pointed around the apartment. “Where is the remaining rice?”

“I don't have any more.”

“You don't?”

“That is all I have.”

Marcus stared at him for a few seconds before walking toward the small sleeping area.

Oscar clenched his fists.

He was only twenty-three years old, but the famine had already made him look older. He had spent weeks eating little by little to survive a day longer while rogue officials like Marcus and Ethan continued receiving government benefits.

And now they had come into his home to take what little he had left too.

“There is no rice for you,” Oscar said through his teeth. “No rice!”

Marcus stopped and slowly looked back.

“Then I'll search for it myself.”

He grabbed Oscar's mat and dragged it across the floor.

Oscar's heart jumped.

Underneath the mat were four small bags. Marcus bent down and picked one up. He squeezed it.

“So you hid it?”

Oscar lowered his head.

Marcus shook the bag again. “This doesn't feel like rice. Flour?"

Oscar sighed. “I told you. I don't have rice. All I have is flour.”

Marcus picked up the 1kg bags each.

"Then we'll take all of it.”

Ethan suddenly stepped forward, “At least leave one. What's the point of taking everything? He doesn't have rice, and if we take all his water too, he'll probably die here anyway.”

Oscar looked at Ethan in surprise. For the first time since they entered, one of them sounded almost human.

Ethan continued, “We carried eleven dead bodies out of their apartments today already. There will probably be more than five hundred dead hungry brokies reported on the news tonight,” Ethan added. “Just in this area alone, we carried out eleven.”

Oscar's stomach tightened.

Marcus finally threw one bag back onto the floor. “Fine. We'll leave one.”

He picked up the other three bags and handed them to Ethan, then he looked at Oscar's empty apartment. “When we come back, we'll probably be carrying your dead body out too by then.”

Oscar didn't answer.

The two men walked out and locked the door behind them. For several seconds, Oscar remained completely still, then he raised his hand and wiped the blood from the corner of his lip.

His eyes became cold.

Every night around 10 - 11pm, UNC Dog News reported the number of people who had died among the eighty-one percent of the population who had been locked inside designated areas. The numbers kept rising.

The government had stopped properly providing food and basic supplies three weeks ago, and already around ten percent of those locked away were dead from hunger and starvation.

The streets were no longer normal. Government patrols moved through the districts and estates every day. Whenever they smelled something terrible coming from an apartment, they would force the door open and remove the body.

Just yesterday, the news had shown a family of six. A father, a mother, and their four children had been found inside their home who killed themselves because of the guilt of eating their newborn from hunger.

Oscar had watched the report in silence. He couldn't forget it.

But then, as he stood in his empty apartment, a small smile slowly appeared on his face. Marcus and Ethan didn't know something.

Oscar had expected them to come so he had hidden fifty liters of water by putting them in smaller nylon bags. He also hid the remaining rice. All hidden in the same ground where he had dug the box from.

He also hid the box too. The box was far too strange and shiny to leave sitting around where government officials could see it.

He had also hidden his binoculars.

As for the flour, he wasn't exactly a flour lover, and with no proper way to turn it into something useful, he had simply buried the bags beneath his sleeping area where the officials could find it.

Oscar chuckled. “Fortunately, I expected you.”

He quickly moved to the floor and began digging. It didn't take long before his fingers touched the containers.

He pulled out the hidden water first, then the rice, then, carefully, he uncovered the wooden box. Oscar looked at it for several seconds before wiping the dirt from its surface.

His stomach growled. He looked at the rice.

“I'm hungry.”

He had enough to boil, but before that, there was something else he wanted to do. Revenge.

Oscar opened the box and adjusted the binoculars.

UNC had twenty-eight cities, with the capital counted separately as the twenty-ninth. At the moment, he could clearly see nineteen cities and the capital. The remaining ten cities or states were still hidden behind the strange mist.

Oscar's eyes moved across the miniature world.

He remembered the people locked inside their homes, he remembered Marcus slapping him and he remembered the dead families on the news.

Then his eyes landed on the tiny locked doors of every household.

Oscar reached toward the table and picked up a small wooden stick. It was nothing special in his hand. Inside the miniature world, however, it looked enormous.

Oscar slowly lowered it toward one of the tiny buildings and tapped the door with the stick.

The moment the stick touched the locked door—CRACK!—the tiny door broke open.

Oscar smiled. “It really works.”

He moved to another building and tapped the door with the stick.

Oscar continued moving the wooden stick across the miniature city, breaking the locks and opening the doors that had been keeping people trapped inside.

He wasn't destroying the buildings, just breaking the locked doors. And one by one, people began rushing out into the streets.

Oscar stared through the binoculars.

“This is my first act as God,” he muttered. His smile became wider, “Let's see how far I can go.”

Oscar put down the wooden stick and reached for a small rolled sachet beside him. He opened it and took out a needle, the tiny metal tip catching the light.

“Today,” Oscar said quietly, “the government took food from me but today, I'm taking their control away from them.”

He lowered the needle into the box, into his country, into his city.