Jesus' Revenge
By Triptych
The Gods should be above the passions of mere men.
-Euripides, The Bacchae
It was the night after the third day in the old city. A number of drunken revelers could be heard in the street below, laughing and making obscene remarks about the people that passed them by as they spilled their wine along the dusty, stone-cobbled road. Their taunts and endless gibbering seemed nearly unbearable but they eventually moved on, plunging the street into quietness once more. Neighbors would murmur about the events the day before as wives would break out their unleavened bread and conjure up a simple dinner with olives, goat cheese and fish.
The oil lamp in the bedroom burned fiercely, casting faint, yellowish shadows along the cloth curtains that lined the large balcony of the bedroom. It seemed nearly romantic to him but he was not in the mood. A number of dark thoughts clouded his mind until it nearly became unbearable. He wanted to cry but he could not find the tears. It was as if a huge abyss swept over him and threatened to engulf his very soul.
He was tempted the use the dagger on the table beside the bed but he had neither the passion nor the heart to use it. All he did ever since he returned from the Temple was to just sit on the bed, staring back out into the night. A creeping lethargy seemed to form a pall over his entire body as his mind refused to think about anything at all.
As his thoughts wavered to and fro across the gulfs of perdition, his daughter came into the bedroom, her eyes bright with concern.
"Father, what is wrong?" His daughter Aranna said as she knelt down beside him and stroked his wrist. "You did not have dinner with me."
"I'm sorry, my daughter." Her father Aslepius said wearily. "I haven't been feeling too well today."
"Shall I ask the servants to go to the apothecary for some medicine, Father?" The sixteen-year old asked.
"No, no," Aslepius tried to smile, "it has nothing to do with my body; I was just feeling a hint of sadness is all."
"What is it, Father?" Aranna asked softly. "You can tell me."
"There was an incident three days ago." Aslepius said. "We all conspired to put a man to death."
"The man they called Jesus?" His daughter asked.
"Yes," Aslepius answered as he stared out into the direction of the window, "we had to do it. He was a dangerous seer who claimed that he was the Messiah over all men."
"Could you not have just let him stay free? We have many who claim such titles."
"But he was different," Aslepius explained, "Jesus was a man who had a large following and he was getting bolder by the day. A few days before his execution, he overturned tables in the Temple that belonged to the moneychangers."
"I never liked those moneychangers." Aranna frowned.
"Oh my daughter," Aslepius cradled her head in his arms, "the moneychangers are an important part of the Temple, without them, we would not be able to afford the costs of maintaining it; our holy place would fall into ruin."
"But would overturning a few tables be enough to warrant his execution?"
"It was a minor provocation but the social consequences were profound." Aslepius said. "He even presented himself at the Temple during Passover and declared himself a Messiah. He even called our priestly order 'a nest of vipers' and branded us all 'hypocrites'. He was beginning to agitate the people."
"Oh Father, I understand you are a member of the Pharisees and you must do your duty, but could you not forgive?"
"He was beginning to be a real threat not just to us but to the Romans as well."
His daughter looked up at him. "So what happened then?" she asked.
"Alas, we felt that the time had come; Jesus refused to be reasonable; he did not want to negotiate at all. That night, we all held a council to what we must do and we all cast our votes to condemn him and beseech the Romans for help."
"You asked the Romans to arrest him." Aranna stated.
"Yes. Our High Priest Caiaphas and myself requested a meeting with Governor Pontius Pilate and told him of our worries over this prophet. Jesus was arrested that very night and we condemned him. I was so struck with rage by his aloofness and refusal to back down on our accusations that I ran forward and struck him in the face with my hand." Aslepius said.
"And so they killed him the next day." Aranna said as a matter of fact.
"Yes. It is all over now," Aslepius looked down, "but still I can seem to sleep well since that night. It is as if something horrible is about to happen and there is nothing I could do about it."
"Please do not worry, Father." His daughter got up and stroked the old man's gray beard. "Go to sleep and I am sure that everything will be fine in the morning."
Aslepius kissed his daughter on the cheek. "Ever since your mother died, you have been the one great hope in my life. Goodnight."
As his daughter left him, Aslepius tried to recline back onto his feather bed but he could not seem to close his eyes. A great sadness hung over him, something that he had not felt since the death of his beloved wife. He had worked hard at the Temple and his wisdom and patience eventually elevated him to be accepted as one of the senior priests of the Temple. Aslepius had worked so hard to achieve what he had. But that dangerous prophet nearly brought down his lifelong dreams and he felt that he had to do whatever he could do stop that threat. But now that Jesus was dead, he felt that he had done an unknowingly evil deed. The question was that whether he could live with it.
Countless hours passed and the flicker of the oil lamp began to weaken as the noises in the street below began to recede into silence. Just as sleep began to overtake him, Aslepius was instantly awakened by a strange smell that began to permeate across the entire room.
At first he was curious for the odor smelt of rotting food and sweat. Did his daughter leave some food for him while he dozed? As Aslepius swung his feet onto the marble floor he began to look around.
The sides of the room were in darkness because the oil lamp had nearly extinguished. The marble columns and cloth tapestries cast long shadows along the dust colored walls as the old man tried to find the source of that strange, putrid smell.
As he groped around in the half darkness, Aslepius began to realize that the odor could not have come from food. His past experiences had made him realize that the stench could only come from that of a corpse. The reek seemed to be a combination of rotting flesh, dried blood, olive oil and some loathsome, pungent scent he could not determine, like that of rancid milk.
When his mind began to at last realize the true horror of it all, Aslepius began to tremble with fright. It was at that moment that he heard the sound of shuffling somewhere within the room.
"Who is there?" the old man said meekly.
A low moan came from behind and startled him so much that he fell forward as he tried to turn and face the source. The next thing Aslepius knew his face and body was flat on the stone floor. As he tilted his head up, he came to see a most horrid sight.
Due to the fact that his face was just a few inches above the floor he noticed that its ankles had been pierced through its sides by a sharp metal nail. The toes were blackened while dark veins could be seen on the base of the stiff white feet. As his eyes unconsciously panned upwards the old man noticed that the withered thing's body was deathly pale and covered by a multitude of deep cuts yet no blood seemed to ooze out of them. One massive puncture just below the blackened left nipple seemed to reveal a shriveled heart underneath it.
But it was the face that terrified Aslepius the most, it seemed that the muscles had atrophied, leaving only skin and bones. The effect seemed to give the face of the loathsome thing a skull-like contour as it stared back at the hapless old man with blackened eyes. The gums in the mouth seemed to have receded to the point that the exposed teeth resembled a jackal's fangs as dark, rotting blood oozed out around the blackened lips.
Aslepius let out an ear-piercing scream as the putrid thing lifted him off the ground with tremendous strength. As the old man writhed helplessly while the horrid creature held him aloft, Aslepius noticed that there were long puncture marks on the thing's wrists.
"No!" Aslepius wailed. "It cannot be you! You are dead!"
A soft moan, as if a curse from a thousand desecrated tombs, emanated from the withered creature's dead throat. As the old man watched in horror, several fat maggots wriggled out from the undead creature's maw and dropped down onto the floor.
Aslepius screamed as the creature's jaws began to tear at his throat.
Screams and the sound of thrashing awoke Aranna from her cot on the ground floor of the house. Thinking her father had a nightmare, Aranna quickly took an oil lamp hanging on a silver chain from her room and proceeded upstairs. As the teenager walked up she noticed that there was a sign of commotion. Quickly hurrying, she made it to the top landing just as an eerie silence swept over the house once more.
Aranna opened the hand-craved wooden door and peered inside. "Father, I heard you shout-"
The teenage daughter dropped the lamp and began to scream.
Sitting on the top of the bed was her beloved father's severed head. The mouth was open in a silent shriek as flies darted in and out so that they could satisfy their hunger for all things decayed. The eyes had rolled up so that only the white pupils could be seen.