i wrote this earlier in the year for english class. i was in a pretty strange mood at the time so watch out.
Jesus and the Wine Fire
Jesus had always hated short stories. That was why he had fought so passionately when God had suggested spreading His word through a series of short stories.
“Dad, come on,” he complained, “There just isn’t enough closure in a short story. There isn’t enough room to work. And we both know how few people are really willing to take a short story seriously.”
At long last, the two of them had settled on a compromise: The Bible. God felt that people would be more willing to accept Him in bite-sized chunks, and therefore had remained adamant about the format of using several different books through which to spread His word. However, Jesus had managed to convince him to compile the collection of stories into one larger book, which he felt would add more weight and severity to the laws of God than a bunch of little anecdotes ever could.
So why is it, Jesus wondered as he lay on his back in his cot and stared at the ceiling, a pad of paper resting on his stomach and a pencil wedged between his index and middle fingers, that I’m lying here trying to write a short story? He shoved the paper to the floor and rolled onto his stomach with a sigh.
“Man, prison really sucks,” he mumbled aloud. He pondered the fact that being locked away never seemed to get any easier, despite the frequency which with he had been arrested and persecuted over the past couple millennia. Then he blew a spit bubble with his saliva, scratched vigorously at his grease-patterned hair, and closed his eyes in an attempt to sleep. The rough pillow scratched at his bare cheek and he shifted uncomfortably atop the uneven metal springs. Before they had forced him to shave his beard, the pillow hadn’t been a problem; he hadn’t even been able to feel it through the soft cushion of hair. He tried not to place any blame for the incident, for he knew it was only prison policy, but at the memory of the way the guards had pinned his flailing limbs and scraped the razor blade across his skin his eyes moistened with tears. He blinked rapidly to clear them away as he heard the steady thunk thunk thunk of a guard’s feet smacking the concrete corridor’s floor, approaching his cell.
With a scrape and a rattle, a key was inserted into the metal lock on the metal-barred door of his chamber. The door swung open and the surrealistically large shadow of the guard’s body erased the light from the cell’s interior.
“On your feet,” he growled at Jesus. “You got a visitor.”
Jesus stood and allowed himself to be handcuffed.
“Is it St. Peter?” Jesus asked the guard, recalling the many adventures the two of them had taken together. The guard snickered.
“Unless St. Peter was reincarnated as a lawyer, I guess you’re out of luck,” he laughed.
Hollow buzzer after hollow buzzer opened solid door after solid door. Jesus was completely lost; had the guard released his hold on Jesus’s elbow and told him to beat it back to his cell, Jesus would not have known which way to go. He walked through the prison docilely until the guard opened one final door, pushed him into a room where a stranger in a cheap suit sat at a cheap metal table, and then left, locking the door. The stranger stood quickly and extended a smooth pink hand toward Jesus.
“Hey buddy, nice to meet ya. I’m J. Richard Forrester, public defender extraordinaire,” the man spouted jubilantly. “Now I’m here to tell ya that you’ve got the number one public defender in Spencer City working on your behalf. How about that, now?” Without waiting for an answer, the lawyer plowed forward. “Now I’ve studied some on your case file, and here’s the deal: ya screwed up pretty big. But I hear you believe in miracles, so let’s just get the party started and see where we wind up. First things coming first, I’m gonna need a legal name from you.”
“Jesus,” Jesus said. “Son of Mary, child of God.”
“They told me ya might say that,” the lawyer nodded mysteriously. “But that don’t sound too hot in court, so how about we just call ya Mr. X? Ya know, spelled e-x-x: Mr. Exx.”
Jesus traced an “x” in the dust on the tabletop with his pinky finger. The insults to his name had been so numerous during his lifetime that he had almost grown immune to them, but the idea of going by the name Mr. Exx stung his pride.
“My name is Jesus, and I want to be called Jesus.” Forrester held up his hands in a gesture of innocence, palms facing Jesus.
“All right, buddy; all right. I got no problem with your name, anyhow. It’s the court that’s got the problem. But we’ll just let the court deal with that.” He reached underneath the table and dragged a ratty-looking briefcase to the surface. With a clunk he dropped it onto the table top and flipped it open, extracting a legal pad and a pen.
“Now how about you just tell me exactly what happened, all right?” Forrester suggested. He leaned forward across the tabletop, resting his weight on his elbows, his pen poised above the yellow lined paper expectantly. Slowly, Jesus raised his eyes to meet the lawyers’. What he saw did not particularly impress him, but neither did it particularly repel him. He began to speak.
“It gets cold in this city. The weather is cold and the people are cold. You lay down in a doorway for the night and the most you can hope for is that you don’t get stomped on or sent away or stabbed. And you stand on the sidewalk in the morning while people walk past, all these egos covered in overcoats running past in every direction. They swerve out of their way just so they don’t have to touch you. Just so they don’t have to breathe the same air as the air you’re standing in. That’s what this city is like. No one meets your eyes, and no one listens to God, and no one gives you anything when you’re hungry and in your time of need.
“But I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten in a long time. And my stomach was empty and growling and it was so cold I could see my breath freezing in the air when I exhaled. So I walked into this little dive (it didn’t look too crowded) and I slipped a menu off the counter and started looking through it. It was warmer in there than I could have hoped for, so I just sat for a while and looked at that menu. But the descriptions of the food were more than I could take. So I picked out a dish that looked good, and I went back up to the counter where this girl was standing in her little black apron and her little black shoes, and I asked her to give it to me.”
“For free?” the lawyer interrupted.
“For free,” Jesus said. “She said, ‘We can’t just give away our food like that.’ She said, ‘That’s an expensive item. We would lose too much money if we just gave it away.’ So I picked a cheaper dish. She said the same thing. I asked for anything, even just a piece of bread or a cup of coffee. But the dietary dictators running that joint wouldn’t give me a thing.
“Well, everyone ought to know by now that greed pays. I happened to have a little bit of wine in the inside pocket of my jacket. I’ve got a thing for wine. So I popped that open and soaked the place. And then I set it on fire. A couple of guys jumped on me as I went out, and they kept me there on the sidewalk. Everyone was running out of the place, and people stopped to watch as they were going past. The big window in the front wall exploded. The glass cut my forehead.”
He rubbed the scab on his forehead with the tip of one finger and sighed. The lawyer had stopped writing and was sitting with his elbows on the table and his head propped in the curves of his hands, hair streaming through his spread fingers.
“Let me get this straight,” Forrester said. “They wouldn’t give away their food, so you burned their place down. Is that what I’m hearing?”
Jesus nodded. In his mind, the world was clear and his actions were even clearer. A sense of calm settled over him as the weight of the previously untold story lifted. Forrester shook his head.
“Well, I knew we didn’t have a chance in hell anyway,” he said. “Good news is you’re plumb crazy. I’ll file some motions about that straight off.”
“While we’re at it,” said Jesus, ignoring Forrester’s comment, “There’s another sinner awaiting his punishment. An officer by the name of Bender was the one who arrested me. Handcuff Hitler would be a better name. This guy pushed me around like a shepherd on shearing day. Stuck his foot out when he pushed me into the cell so I tripped. Put his elephant knee on my back and pressed down so I couldn’t breathe. He used me for his personal entertainment. It was greed of an undeniable form. I want him sued. I want him to pay. God will help us win.”
The lawyer stared at him. He shook his head slowly.
“Officer Bender is dead, buddy. He got shot up on a drug bust. I can’t believe you didn’t know it.”
Jesus smiled contentedly.
“Perfect,” he said. “I knew it would be something like that.” He closed his eyes and thought, God, you rock.
He smiled all the way back to his cell.
