Welcome to a mini series brought to you by Christopher J. Perger. If you are first time reading this blog segment, I highly suggest that you start with "The Book : Part 1". After all, the only climax you'll get is from the proper illustrated placement.
Cheers!
* * *
“You’re almost there, Mary,” Janice, the maid, screamed as she assisted Mary’s birth. The baby’s head was crowning, and Janice was about to collapse, for it was the third time that night.
John shuffled his way over from the other two infants to stand aside his wife.
“Honey, you’re almost there. You’ve got this. You’re a champ!” His face was pale and hands shaking as he clasped Mary’s right hand, mind trapped in a pandora’s box awaiting a time and place far from then.
“Gaaaaaaaaa-gnaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!” Mary squealed. She saw the light that night, for not only was she a virgin to begin with, she was unaware about the circumstances.
There was only suppose to be one! She thought to herself just before passing ou-
“Jesus?” Jesus distantly heard as his eyelids fluttered.
I stopped pulling him by his shoulders and began scanning the area in a frantic manner. The backside of the church becoming very popular as a couple more bullets whizzed their way out the back entrance, clipping the doorsill.
I quickly reloaded one of the 9mm’s as I stood up straight and made my way back towards the back entrance of the church. I took aim upon the first human I saw and planted his brains far behind him. With my offhand I twisted his soul back to life and had him come down to the back entrance and stand guard.
“Jesus!!!!” I yelled, keeping an eye on my newest soul-struck companion.
“But, Momma!” Jesus yelled as he shot awake. His eyelashes were riddled with dust and face smeared with all sorts of dirt from the time I dragged him out of the church just a minute ago. He hacked and coughed for a moment or four.
“Momma’s long gone, brother,” I replied as I stretched my fingers out, leading my captured soul of a friend to begin strangling the next gun-wielding man through the back entrance. His face of confusion and sheer disapproval left me with a chuckle and after he had been strangled to death, I grabbed his soul and began my second army of the night.
Jesus rolled over and slowly got to his feet as he mumbled this and that, unsure of which was what.
“So what’s our plan, brother?” he asked as he rubbed at his clenched shut eyes, eyebrows sharply hooding under his rubbed-away eyes.
“Well, we’re getting out of here. How, is another factor to the-"
Jesus pulled out another cell phone and dialed only one number before putting it to his ear.
“You apparently have been in this time for a while, haven’t you, brother?” I asked, a smile teetering at the edge of my lips.
“You have no idea,” he replied before turning the phone back to his mouth and said, ”Yes, Peter? The most of dire, my disciple.” Jesus’ words were slick, almost as if he had been awaiting such a day as this.
“So how long?” I asked with my eyes venturing to the sides decisively.
“Thank you, my son,” Jesus said as he slapped his clam cell phone closed. “Four seconds,” he answered nonchalantly.
“Four?” I asked as a cab zoomed down the alley next to us and slammed on the brakes to slide right alongside us.
“Brother, I never knew you had the power of punctuality,” I joked.
“Then apparently you haven’t read the book I’ve put together,” Jesus said as he slid into the back seat of the cab.
I jumped into the seat next to him, throwing my hand downward and releasing the souls I had captured at the backside of the church, leaving them hunched over in remorse for a place to confide. For a moment I felt their remorse, for I usually leave the souls I capture heading in the right direction. This time though, was exactly that: time of essence.
“What book,” I asked Jesus as I slammed the cab door behind me.
“A bible, Julius. Finally, the bible,” Jesus replied with delight smeared on his face as he pulled a pile of wrinkled and torn paper from his left pocket.
* * *
“The bible?” Sharice asked before taking a long pull from her cigarette.
“Ya know, that smoking is gonna’ be the end of you, sister,” I said while rubbing the right side of my hip. The bullet’s that had struck me just outside the backside of the club had long ago disintegrated and there was now only a couple craters left that were rapidly healing.
Sharice smashed her smoke out in an ashtray brimming with a mountain of cigarette butts. Seeing how much she had smoked over the last half hour, I assumed that she had last emptied the tray just this morning. Maybe around 9 a.m., I pondered.
“We’ll all die eventually, Lucifer,” she replied in disgust as she pulled out another cancer stick and lit away.
“Surely, you’re right on both accounts. Yes, the bible. Sharice, he had started everything! Jesus was on the right track!” I got up from the wooden, kitchen table chair with a grunt and eyes of excitement.
“Was on the right track?” Sharice asked from across the table, her eyes bullets of analysis.
“Yes, was,” I crossed my arms before my chest and leaned against her fridge, knocking away a few magnets from it. There was a plethora of multi-lettered magnets upon it; a magnetic alphabet, each colored and large, capturing Roy G. Biv in his finest. For a moment I wondered if there was a child in the house, and then remembered that there was, and she was sitting at the kitchen table chain smoking. Sharice had always had the heart of a child. At least, through my eyes she had.
“So where is he?” Sharice asked as she got up to pick up the fallen magnets.
I turned away from her and sighed before saying, “Well, that’s where things get complica-"
“He’s about to die, brother,” Sharice whispered from behind me.
I whipped around in alarm to find Sharice fiddling with the magnets that had fallen from the fridge.
“What? How?”
Sharice stood up and backed away from the magnets that held her eyes in a state of engrossing panic.
Some of the letters were upside down and a ‘zero’ was substituting for an ‘o’, although they had still fallen in just the right order for the rainbowed phrase to be clear: 3 soon 2 then 1
“Fucking Christ,” I muttered.
“Don’t use your brother’s name in vane!” Sharice hissed at me.
“Sorry, it’s an inside joke,” I muttered with blank eyes. “I think I know when and where he is."
“C’mon, then. We have to go,” she said, turning for the front door.
“Hold on. We’ll need togas.”
Sharice halted and turned to me, “Togas, brother?”
“Togas,” I assured her.
