Tonight you invent a god

Look around for the dumbest object within reach. The microwave. The router blinking in the hall like it has something to confess. The lamp with the bad shade.

Nobody has ever taken it seriously, so nobody has claimed it. It will work for the first person who shows up with a straight face.

I am bored shitless by any working that leaves the room the way it found it. The tidy candle people keep their magick in a drawer next to the good napkins. This one rearranges the room.

Stand in front of the thing. Decide four things, out loud, where it can hear you.

A name you can bellow. A title, with three more stacked behind it. A domain cut to fit your want: if you're after money, your god governs small bills going into narrow slots, and if you're after nerve, it governs the one lit sign on a dead street at two in the morning. And an offering it would honestly like.

Mine was a vending machine that ate four of my dollars and never apologized. Gorrnak, Lord of the Slot, Warden of Exact Change, Eater of Dollars So That Others May Be Fed. Rent was due, and money moving toward me was his department.

Offerings that work: a coin, a slice of bread, the last of the good chips eaten in front of it, because gods eat through the mouths of the faithful. A compliment, out loud, meant. A god can smell a rehearsed one from the next county.

Invoke it with your whole chest, no apology, no brakes. Gorrnak got this, and yours gets the same with its own names on it:

GORRNAK LORD OF THE SLOT WARDEN OF EXACT CHANGE EATER OF DOLLARS I COME TO YOUR LIGHT WITH A COIN AND A WANT AND NO SHAME AT ALL, TAKE THE COIN, TAKE THE HOUR, TAKE THE WHOLE ROOM FOR YOUR TEMPLE.

Then stop. Dead. Mouth shut. Let the room ring.

The ask has to be checkable: a number, a name, a yes. Mine was three hundred dollars from a person I could name, by this date next month. Ask for abundance and the god can never lose, which makes the ask worthless. Say it plain. Thank the god by name. Eat or pocket the offering.

Then laugh. Fake it first. Ha. Ha. Ha. Keep going until your body gets embarrassed and the laugh turns real, usually inside a minute. Skip it and the god trails you around the house all week.

Safety. Read it.

Shout it once. A throat that burns or tastes like pennies means you're done, and so does a head that spins. Sit down and breathe slow. Hearing doesn't grow back, so don't shout into a car, a closet or any small sealed box. If somebody is asleep in the building, half volume, same spine.

No flame. The offering is a coin or a snack, never a match.

If your god lives outside, it lives on public ground. Nothing behind a fence, nothing on a roof, nothing out back of a closed store. Whoever works the counter isn't part of your working, so buy something like a person and shout away from their window. If a cop rolls up, you are a person talking to a vending machine. Say good evening and go home. Never invoke from behind a wheel, engine on or off.

Put the ask in the Log tonight with the date and the god's name. Check it a month out. Once.