Jesus in Hell: Day 1, Part 13: Brother and Sister

 

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Previous Chapter: Day 1, Part 12

Your eyes open. 

You see flies and a small, glowing bug buzzing around.  ...up on the wall, the glimmer of something!

You are a girl in a cage.  There's a somewhat older boy with a shaved head, kneeling in a cage next to yours.  

"Hey!" you whisper to him, but he sits there, impassively, staring forward.

"Hey!" say, still whispering but more loudly and insistently.  You're just staring at the smooth back of his head, in gradually rising frustration.

"I can hear you perfectly well," he intones, speaking clearly in a normal tone of voice.

The room rocks to the side, and you tumble backwards.  The boy seems poised, utterly unperturbed.  As you regain your balance, up on a nail, sticking into the wall, you see it: a golden key, surrounded by the flies. As the entire room lurches at a nauseating slant, the golden key sways out from the wall, as if stretching towards you, invitingly.

You stumble back to the front of the cage.

"Hey, I think if you reach through the bars and give me a boost, I can reach that!" you whisper to the boy.

"Why would I do that?" he says, not at all trying to be quiet.

"Because!" you whisper back, in growing anger and exasperation.  "If I get that key I can get us out of here!"

"I don't see any purpose in that," he replies evenly, roboticly, almost cheerfully.  "At best they'd just catch you and throw you back in here.  And probably beat you in the process, or maybe kill you.  There's nothing to be done." 

The room suddenly wobbles in the opposite direction, causing you to smoosh your face up against the bars.

"I don't care what you think.  Just give me a hand."

For the first time, the boy turns to look at you.  Then he shrugs, crawls over and sticks his hands through the bars.

"Okay, lift me up," you bark. 

You gingerly try to step on his hands, and they instantly collapse under your weight.  

"What's the matter?  Why won't you hold me up?"

"Oh, I'm extremely weak," he says, in a blasé tone.

You look at him, and you can see he is indeed terribly scrawny - almost horrifyingly so.  Is he starving to death?

"Well, can you just... try?  Please?" you say.

He raises his eyebrows in a somewhat defeated look, as if to say, "Here we go again," and offers his hands once more.

You step onto his hands.  This time, they don't fall.  But they do begin to shake.

"Yes, that's it..." you say, encouragingly.  "Just a little higher."  Your hands reach through the top of your cage, stretching towards the dangling key.  "You can do it.  We're almost there...."  His hands are shaking wildly now, and your whole body is vibrating with them.

Suddenly the room tips again, more violently than before.  You and the shaved-headed boy topple over.  Your head bangs painfully against the bars.  You slide across the floor.  You look up.  His wrist was caught between the bars of your cages and seems to be painfully broken, at a horrifying angle.  Strangely, no pain registers in his face.  He seems more bemused than anything.  

You look up at the key.  It's swinging out... further... further...

There's a crack of thunder. 

Suddenly the key pops off of its nails and slides across the floor.  You run and grab it just before the room lurches again in the opposite direction.  The room is moving so wildly now that the heavy cages themselves are starting to slide across the floor.

Quickly, you scramble at the lock and open your door.  You're free!

Immediately, you run to the boys cage, and open his door.  Another clap of thunder.

"Come on, let's go!" you say to the boy.

"No, thank you," he says.

"What are you doing?  I'm letting you out!  Don't you want to get out of here?" you say, with increasing panic.

"No, I have no desires at all," he says simply.

You give him a look of disgust and confusion.  "Alright, whatever."

And with that, you're off.  You start making your way down the hull of the ship.  There are many heavy crates here.  As the ship sways back and forth, the crates slide back and forth across the floor.  You have to run carefully to avoid the sliding crates.  Eventually you get to more cages, which are also sliding across the floor.  You try to open them, but this key doesn't fit these cages.  "I'm so sorry," you whisper to the people inside.

You mutter to yourself: "Wait. That's... not... thunder."

You see a stairway.  You start heading towards it, when suddenly, boom!  With a crack of "thunder," a cannonball smashes through the hull of the ship, blasting a hole in it, flying just in front of your face and landing with a thud against an interior wall.  

You run to the stairs.  You make it up, with the ship swaying wildly this way and that.  The others follow behind you.  

You're on a higher level of the decks.  Now you have to run the length of the ship the other direction, not only avoiding sliding crates, and sliding cages, but now also flying cannonballs, which are ripping the hull to shreds, leaving huge holes.  As the floor tips, several times you are pulled to the side and almost fall out of these holes to your doom. 

To make matters worse, now you are starting to see your captors walking around.  You have to keep out of their eyesight.  This, however, is not too difficult, because they are otherwise occupied.  You hear yelling voices above you, sounds of fighting, officers barking orders: "It's the Sea Peoples!  Action stations!  Every man to his post."

Finally you get to another staircase and climb your way up to the upper deck.  You are immediately in a war zone.

There's another ship that has pulled up next to this ship, and scary-looking men are boarding.  You look up at the mast of the invading ship, and see it: the Jolly Roger.  Pirates!

And there, amidst the other pirates who are storming your ship, you see a man who must be the captain of the pirates.  He has an eyepatch and a sinister snarl.  

One of his underlings is rapidly speaking to him: "It's a Midianite slave ship, Sire!  On route to the City of Dis."

The captain grimaces, thinking.  "Slaves, eh?  Just take the treasure in the crates.  As for the slaves - kill them."

"But Sire!" the Boatswain continues, "These slaves could be valuable!  We could sell them to the Egyptians."

"Hmm."

A cannon on the pirate ship lights up with strange, magic-looking, green fire and a cannonball arcs up and over, landing on your ship right next to you and smashing through the floor, scattering planks and sending you flying.  

The pirate captain screams at his crew, who are shooting the cannons.  "Cease fire!  We're boarding!  What are you fools doing?"  But the cannon crew either can't hear him or ignore him and load more cannonballs, giggling.  They seem to be drunk. 

You get up, your ears ringing, and someone grabs your shoulder. "Just where are you going, young lassie?" says a Midianite, his grip on you tightening.

Just then, one of the pirates runs up and stabs him in the back.  He whips around and, with his own sword, cuts the pirate's hand off.  It rolls towards you, still grasping the blade.  Disgusted, you nonetheless force yourself to pry its fingers apart and pick up the pirate sword yourself.

Now you're running.  You're not sure where.  Everywhere, pirates and Midianites are fighting each other.  You're not sure whose side to take - you feel like you hate them both.  But there's something compelling about the pirates....

You dodge between them, scurrying this way and that.  

There's a Midianite slaver in front of you, blocking your path.  He doesn't see you yet - instead, he's about to sneak up behind a pirate and cut his throat.  

Before you even think of what you're doing, you warn the pirate: "Watch out!"

The pirate whips around and runs the Midianite through.  "Thanks, kid," grins the ruffian. 

Another cannonball is whizzing through the air, about to hit you in the head.  The pirate shoves you out of its path.  

"Now we're even," he sneers.

The cannonball hits the central mast, which topples over and crashes through the side of the ship, which turns over steeply, knocking everyone, yourself included, off of their feet, scattering everywhere.  The gangplanks by which the pirates were boarding fall off and the pirates who were crossing over tumble into Davey Jones' locker. 

The ship begins to sway forward, and at the same time, to keel over.  A horrible moaning sound emanates from metal struts along the hull.  The whole deck is at a sickening angle now, and most of the people and objects on it slide off and go spinning into the drink.  The pirate, who has hooked his foot into the rigging, grabs your wrist before you fly off as well.  You're dangling in his grasp over hundreds of feet of nothing.  The ship rights itself briefly, and the sails fill with wind.  It lurches forward with terrible speed.  You're now tipping the other direction, bringing your face into the pirate's chest. He instinctively holds you in a protective hug.  

Cut to the captain of ship, trying in vain to steer the wheel.  He shouts, "We've lost control!  We're going to crash!  Abandon ship!"  The wheel spins out of his hands.

Cut to the prow, smashing against rocks jutting up from the water.  The entire ship crumples like a piece of paper, sailors diving off the sides.  Fade to black.

*     *     * 

You wake up.  You're on a beach.  The pirate is next to you, unconscious, his arms still around you.  There's a cut on his forehead and he's bleeding profusely.  There's a small child pushing on your shoulder.

"Wake up!" he says.  

For a moment you are discombobulated.  Then you pull the pirate's arms off of you, and get up.  

"Come with me!" says the young boy.  "I'll bring you somewhere safe."

"But - " you start to say, pointing at the pirate.  

"Leave him!" says the boy.  "There's no time!"  He points down the shore, where you can see Midianite sailors patrolling, apparently looking for lost slaves.

Reluctantly, you get up.  The boy runs away into the trees.  You start walking after him.

"Wait!" you say, and turn back.  You walk back to the unconscious pirate, grab his cutlass, and then run into the trees.

 *     *     *

"More Girgashites," mutters Gestas.  

You're Dismas again.  There are indeed Girgashites in front of you - perhaps 50 of them.  They screech at you threateningly.  Battle time.  You fight with your Dugong tusk, Gestas with his brass knuckles.  One by one, you take them all out. 

After defeating the Girgashites, you level up.  You feel yourself becoming stronger.  Gestas levels up, as well.

You make your way into the encampment.  You open the cages, and the children emerge, freed.

Now there's a block puzzle: you must move cages around to access the central, larger cage. 

Finally you make it to the central cage.  You open the cage door.  Children come rushing out.

"Thank you, mister!" they cry, happily.  They start to run away, in the same direction all the other freed children are running.  

"Wait!" you cry out to them.  "Where are you going?"

"Umm..." says one, unsure whether to tell you.  Another, younger one, jumps in: "Kid City!"

"Shh!" says an older one.

"We can trust him!  He just saved us!" says the young one.  "He seems nice!"

"No grown-ups are supposed to know about Kid Ci- about You Know What," says the older boy.

"Tell me," you say, "Have you seen a girl with a birthmark over her eye?"

"The pirate girl!" says the young one.

"Who's asking?" says another older boy.

"I'm her brother," you say.

"C'mon!" says the young one to the other kids.  He turns to you.  "We'll take you to her."  Then, back to his friends, "We need protection on our way back to Kid City anyway!"

"He can come with us part way," says the first older boy.  "But we can't let him know exactly where Kid City is.  Come on, follow us."

And with that, you're off. 

Stay tuned for the next chapter: Day 1, Part 14