Jesus in Hell: Day 1, Part 5: Flashback: Nazareth, 33 AD
Previous Chapter: Day 1 Part 4
Nazareth, 33 AD
“Joanna!”
Joanna is awake. For a moment she isn’t sure where
she is. She looks around at the earthen walls. She’s in her hiding
spot. She had been dreaming. She can’t remember the dream - scattered
images dissolve as soon as she brings them to mind. All that remains is
that... what was it? A song? Or just a voice, speaking, calling to
her? And what was it saying? Something about “Deeper down, deeper
down” and something about “Passing through fire.”
Hands are reaching down in.
A dark, gravelly voice: “What! ...have you... done?” Big furrowed
brows and squinting, piercing eyes from a face hardened by the desert
wind, framed by long, black hair.
Joanna looks down at herself. The scroll is open. One
of the wooden rollers is still sitting atop her belly; the other has fallen off of her lap and rolled across the dirt floor of her little
cave. The papyrus is horribly crumpled and twisted.
“Whoops,” says Joanna.
“‘Whoops?’ Is that all you can say?”
“I - I’m sorry, Dismas...” begins Joanna.
“You stole a scroll? How did you get it? Do you have any idea how
much these things cost? What were you doing with it, anyway?” says
Dismas, desperately gathering the scroll together and rolling it back
up. After he rewraps it tightly, it almost looks okay. Maybe no one
would notice when he returned it. Then he lets go, and it unravels into
a lumpy mess.
“I was... reading it,” says Joanna.
At that, despite how angry he was, Dismas has to laugh.
“I was reading it!” cries Joanna, her little hands balling up into fists.
“Girls can’t read,” says Dismas, matter-of-factly.
“I can too!” Joanna retorts. “And I found another one!”
“Oh no. Not this again. Unicorns? Hediste is filling your head with nonsense.”
“It’s true! Hediste didn’t tell me! She taught me how to read, and I
looked it up myself. I did!” She jumps and reaches up to grab the
scroll from him but he yanks it just out of her reach at the last
second. So she pokes him in the side and tickled him and when his guard is off, she grabs the scroll from his fingers. “I’ve found four of
them now," she says, opening it and slowly scanning, right-to-left, with her finger. "There are two in Numbers and this one in Deuteronomy. See?
‘His horns are the horns of a unicorn.’”
“That word means ‘wild
ox’. If it were a unicorn, why would it be ‘horns’ anyway? A unicorn
has only one horn. That’s the whole point.”
“Well maybe he got a
bunch of horns from a bunch of different unicorns. Lots of unicorns! Why would he have taken the unicorns, anyway? What are unicorn horns for? Oh! And there’s a psalm that
talks about -”
“Excuse me, Sir. Are you Dismas?”
“Who’s asking?” He doesn't bother to disguise the irritation in his voice as he re-wraps the scroll.
A young boy. “I’m here to deliver a message. You’re to meet Gestas, as soon as possible.”
At the sound of the name “Gestas,” Dismas’s face immediately assumes a
complex expression, of dread, annoyance, and perhaps a bit of shame or
guilt, but he’s clearly trying to act natural. “Gestas!” he squawks,
half-under his breath. And then, more loudly: “What does he want?”
“He didn’t say, Sir. But he said that he had to see you immediately.
A matter of life and death. And also... a lot of money.”
* * *
Dismas
pulls Joanna the rest of the way out of the large clay pot she has
been hiding in. She blinks in the bright sunlight of a busy bazaar.
Tradesmen from lands throughout the Roman Empire, the Parthian Empire,
and even more distant lands noisily sell their wares, hawking and
bartering. Here and there, a would-be prophet or prophetess shouts
woeful declamations against the evils of the decadent Judean government
and the High Priest of the Temple, Caiaphas. A large crowd is milling
about - women carrying jugs on their heads, people bumping into each
other.
In the light Joanna sees Dismas: big, muscular, gruff,
slightly unshaven, jet black hair, lantern jaw, dark skin, flinty eyes
full of menace. Handsome but a little scary. A scowl set so deep, it
looks like he’s never worn another expression.
Dismas points down into little Sapphira’s face: “Go straight home.” She nods and takes off running.
Push arrow keys to move left and right.
Push spacebar to jump.
Push enter to talk with people.
A
man bumps into a woman. As he runs she feels for the bag that was
attached to the strap on her shoulder and she realizes it’s gone. He
disappears into the crowd, and the woman, panicking, suddenly sees
Dismas. “It’s him! The thief! Guards!”
Instantly, two Roman soldiers appear. “What seems to be the trouble?”
Immediately, you, Dismas, are running. No time to plead innocence. They’ll never believe you. Not with your record.
Jump to the tops of the shopkeepers’ awnings. Jump from rooftop to rooftop. Run through the agora before the guards catch up.
Jump over desert scorpions and snakes.
For bonus points, grab bags of gold on the way.
At
the end of this stage, Dismas comes to a very large crowd of people -
perhaps 1000. He can’t get past them, and he can’t tell what’s
happening. But after solving a small puzzle, rolling barrels off of a
table to land on one side of a board, which is positioned like a lever,
then jumping to the other side of lever, like the stone in a catapult, he launches himself to a high branch in a treetop, from which he can see
beyond the crowd, and see what they are all looking at:
A rabbi, seated, addressing the crowd. They hang on his every word.
Dismas asks one of the people in the crowd, “Who is this who is speaking?”
The person replies, “It is Jesus!”
Jesus is saying, “He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
“I
tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified
before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and
those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Dismas has clearly
only caught the end of this but it was enough. He is deeply moved,
though in ways he does not fully comprehend. He thinks to himself: What
a strange teaching this man teaches. He talks about wicked sinners
being saved and good men losing salvation. Could there be hope for me?
“There
is hope for you.” Jesus seems to be staring straight at him as he
speaks. “And it begins now. This is the beginning of your adventure.”
Dismas
is shaken. He feels shivers running down his spine. Tears well up but
do not fall. He thinks: It almost seemed like he was reading my mind.
But no - that’s what they do. A good orator knows how to make it seem
as though he is addressing every member of the audience personally.
He’s probably a con artist.
...And yet, he doesn’t seem it. He seems
honest. He seems... good. Maybe he really is a holy man. Well, there’s
no way that a holy man would be interested in a poor thief like me.
He’s talking to the good people out there.
“Why do you call me good? No one is good - except God alone.”
What?
Suddenly he sees the man who stole the woman’s purse.
He jumps from the tree to pursue the thief. He chases him into an inn.
* * *
Inside,
it’s a dark, seedy scene. Some musicians are playing salacious, almost
jazzy music in the corner. A bawdy woman is serving drinks;
adventurers are loudly slamming their cups down onto the table. The
candlelight casts silhouettes of its hardened, jaded, grizzled,
dangerous-looking denizens everywhere on the walls, overlapping each
other in strange, dancing patterns.
The thief he’s pursuing is nowhere to be seen.
But
this doesn’t faze him. He’s been here before, and knows the score. He
reaches behind the bar and operates a little crank. As he turns it, a
panel in the wall opens to reveal a secret passage. He jumps under the
panel just in time before it falls and slams back shut. Behind the
secret panel is a stairway going down into the depths of the
building....
After walking down a tunnel, killing or jumping over
large menacing rats along the way, he finally catches up to the
pickpocket from the agora. But something's off. The thief seems too relaxed. It seems as if the scoundrel was waiting for
him. It's a trap! He turns his head and there, in the darkness behind him, is that old pudgy, stubbly, smirking face.
“Alright. You’ve managed to get me down here,” says Dismas, coldly. “Now what do you want... Gestas?”
* * *
Gestas turns fully to face Dismas. He’s a big fat bald lout with rotting teeth, twisted into a sneering grin.
“Well, if it isn’t our old friend, Dismas. Come on out and say hello, boys.”
A dozen candleflames come out to reveal a dozen grimacing faces, some
with scars, one with an eyepatch. In the damp darkness, Dismas can make
out daggers and swords glinting.
“Now Dismas, is that any way to
say hello to your friends? Dismas, Dismas... you don’t visit us
anymore.” Gestas leers, grinning at Dismas. “We get lonely here without
you. Isn’t that right, boys? Don’t you miss Dismas?”
“What do you want.” Dismas pronounces the words angrily, not as a question but as a statement.
“Very well. We’ll skip the pleasantries. I’ve got a job for you.”
“I told you before, Gestas. I’m done.”
“It doesn’t work like that. You owe me a lot of money, Dismas. And
besides, once you’re in the Kingdom of Thieves, you’re in for life.”
“I’ve changed, Gestas. I’m in school. I’m going to be a Rabbi.”
At this, the entire group burst into laughter.
“It’s t-true....” stammered Dismas, but it seemed he didn’t believe it himself.
“You? A Rabbi? What, you think the Kohanim and the Sadducees are
going to let you serve in the Temple? Or are you going to run off and
join the Essenes? A Rabbi.... Dismas, you’re the greatest thief in the
Brotherhood.”
“Not anymore.”
“Well, you’re not the only
one who’s changed. We’re different now, too. We’re under new
management. Ain’t that right, boys?”
“What do you mean? Not you - don’t tell me you’re in charge now.”
“No, not me, but don’t act like that would be such a bad thing. No -
we're not the Kingdom of Thieves anymore. Now we're the Brotherhood of Justice. We're a political outfit now. That’s where the real money is, anyway.
We’re Zealots! You’re looking at the most disciplined revolutionary
cell in all of Judea.”
“You don’t say. You’re calling yourselves freedom fighters now?”
“Not just calling ourselves. We are. We’re making it happen. We
have a plan. A long plan. Rome will be defeated in exactly 30 years.
In the meantime, we’ll make ourselves rich.”
“And who’s in charge of your little uprising?”
“You know I can’t tell you that, Dismas.”
“I know you can’t resist telling me.”
“Ah, he knows me too well! Alright, alright. The new King of Thieves is a man named... Jesus.”
“Jesus?!”
“You know him?”
Dismas pauses and scratches his chin. He gets up, as if he’s going to
storm out of the room. Then with a flourish he turns back to Gestas.
“You know what, Gestas? I’ll tell you what. I’ll take your job.”
“You’re the only one who can do it. This thing we’re gonna get...
it’s out of this world. Something on a whole other level.”
“I
wasn’t finished. I’ll take your job on two conditions. Number 1: this
is the last job I do for you, ever. And number 2: I get to meet Jesus.”
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