One

There was once a man -- for the sake of the story let's call him Juan -- who was very dissatisfied with his life, and blamed it on the fact that his parents brought him to church when he was a child. He left that behind him long ago and instead believed that the universe was a closed system with no God outside it. He wasn't an atheist, however, since he assigned divinity to the universe. "God" (always in quotes) simply is the universe, and the universe is God. The point of life is to become one with the universe. So he thought.

Yet his deep dissatisfaction with life raged unabated. Since this was the fault of the naive monotheism he was raised in, clearly he had not yet fully accepted his more enlightened views. He tried to think of a way to ask the universe to help him become one with it, but the only thing that came to mind was itself a theistic throwback. He couldn't think of anything else, though, so he eventually succumbed to it and prayed (sorry: "prayed") to the universe.

"Universe, I know you're all that is and I apologize for coming to you in this format of 'prayer', but I don't know what else to do. I want to be one with you. I want to be united with you and not think of myself as something that stands apart from you. Please help me. Please show me how to be one with you. Thank you."

Of course he wasn't expecting to hear a response. He wasn't really sure what to expect at all, but he kept himself open.

It didn't take long. Within a week he started intermittently hearing a sound, a high-pitched squealing that was almost unbearable. And after a few days he realized that he heard it whenever he was smoking. A few more days and he understood what it was.

The cigarettes were screaming.

They screeched as he took them out of the packet, cried out when he lit them, and then just screamed when he inhaled through them. It was incredibly disturbing for him to cause anything distress, but it was even more disturbing to hear. So he quit smoking. Of course, other people around him did not, and soon he realized that he could hear their cigarettes screaming in torment as well.

He started staying at home more often, but the problem just got worse: it wasn't only the cigarettes. The couch choked off a tortured cry, the rug wailed as he walked across it, the door screamed in agony. Actually at that point, it started getting a little weird. The door, as a unit, screamed, but so did the top half of the door. And the middle third. Any potential division he could imagine was a separate entity that was constantly experiencing unbearable anguish. He knew he could divide it indefinitely -- half the door, half of that half, half of that half, etc. -- and he would never reach the bottom. Each division he could think of was an actually existing entity that was experiencing constant, unendurable suffering. It was infinite and it was horrific.

He committed suicide. Whereupon he went to hell and experienced excruciating, unbearable agony. Forever. And thus he became one with the universe.