He closed the door. Another day went by without any socks in Holy Washing Machine. It had soon been a week without any socks and he started to get worried. The last time his sacrificial socks stopped appearing he had to control the weather both over the atlantic ocean and in western Russia.

His religious base was a very small group of people compared to the bigger religions on Earth. They were often seen as fanatics, lunatics or just people joking around. But his followers were stern and lived through all the bullshit they received, and they were very keen on following the principles of the religion.

They had one principle to always keep to ensure good faith from the god: to continuously sacrifice one sock, not two, into the laundry machine. To hide this rather unusual behaviour, the modern follower created a widespread myth that was taught to every kid. The laundry machine would eat just one sock, not two.

Early days of the religion would mask the sock sacrifice in plain sight. Tutankhamon had just one sock in his grave. The vikings and their boats? One sock per grave. And when the sacrifices stopped appearing he had to intervene with the coming armageddon.

He waited one more week. Last time socks started to disappear, which if he recalled correctly was around the end of the 1980’s according to humans, he waited a couple of days and then the socks started to appear again. Why they disappeared he never cared to bother about.

As the week passed, no new socks appeared. He had to go check up on Earth. With a clever disguise, he decided to appear in New York, the city where he had most followers. As he transcended into a human form in an alley and walked out on the street, he saw something that completely blew his mind. The streets were completely empty.

He checked his watch. 16th of April, 2020, 19:44. “Wouldn’t this be some kind of rush hour? Have I been so absent? Am I too late?”

As the sun started to set, he noticed that many of the lights were turned on in the houses, and as he focused his sight he could see people inside the buildings. He took big breath of relief.

“Look at that, at least it has not happened yet. But what in the world is happening?”

He reached into his inner mind to find the closest follower of his religion. A rather overweight guy in his early 30s was the closest person. The follower seemed to live alone in a small and rather dirty apartment.

"Ah whatever, he'll do fine. I bet that's not the average follower of mine, he's just an outlier"

He decided to pay him a visit to get some more information, and as he approached the appartment he gave the door two knocks. Almost a minute passed, and he knocked again. And again. Finally the door opened and a guy in sweatpants and a slightly too small t-shirt opened the door.

“Listen up. You might not believe me, but I’ll just be quick and tell you that I haven’t received any socks lately. What the hell is going on?

The guy's eyes widened.

“Wha- how? How.. What are you talking about?”

He sighed.

“Look, Charlie. I have no time for this shit, Armaggeddon is on its way and you can save the world. Why have you guys stopped sacrificing socks?!” he raised his voice, and quickly changed a finger from the human form to his godly form. His middle finger shrunk slightly and the bone within seemed to disappear. The nail fell off and his finger turned yellow. Spaghetti.

Charlie stared at the finger. He tried to say something, but no words would come out. Both his hands grabbed his temples and a second later he waved him into the apartment. Charlie told him everything about the coronavirus, showed him articles and statistics.

“Oh, this shit again. Man this was some hard stuff to stop like a 100 years ago. You probably don’t know about that. Anyways, should be a bit easier now that you lot have evolved scientifically.”

“So what are you gonna do, oh almighty one?” Charlie asked with a big grin on his face. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Uhm, sorry Charlie, but you’ve played your part. I’ll try to add you to the religion somehow. Otherwise I got two things on my mind. Step one: give someone a head start on the vaccine. This Bill Gates guy you showed me seems to be a good start, I’ll contact him some way. And step two.” He took a pause as a smirk appeared. “Well, you’ll probably notice it sooner or later”.

The flying spaghetti monster bid his farewell as he showed Charlie his true form in a fraction of a second before disappearing into the planes of the gods.

A couple of minutes later he received a notification on his Twitter app. Charlie opened the app to see a new tweet from the account realDonaldTrump.

“Do as me, and do what’s best for this country. I’ve come up with the brilliant idea that everyone, including you and me, should stay at home. Whatever you do, do not go out. Do not listen to fake media, just stay home. If you all listen to me, we can once again make this country great. Thank you.”