Souls - XL

“You ever wonder why I can kill people?”

Jesus is sitting cross-legged at the front of the sideways bus, Emily is at his side doing the same. He has Mary and me sitting about ten feet away. 

“I figured you’d be more astute about those little things, considering. A little disappointed really. I can kill people for the same reason you can blow my head to bits with a rifle, I’m half human. He gave his only begotten son and all that bullshit.” He looks over to Emily, “Can you rummage around at the back of the bus and see if you can find me some fruit or something? My supper was interrupted.”

Emily pops up and skips past us, digging in the pile where the food had been before the bus repositioned itself to the side. I’m reaching deep inside of me, searching desperately for that heat. I want to blow up Jesus.

Jesus smirks at me, “Don’t bother, I shut down your little pyro-thing. Don't worry I’ll give it back. I just think it’s high-fuckin’-time we had a real conversation. If my dad wasn’t so looney tunes he’d have taken care of all of this by now. Who knows, maybe he doesn’t even know anymore. He went a bit schizo a few millennia ago.”

Emily skips back to Jesus, a questionable orange in her hand. She proudly offers it to him.

“Thank you sweetheart,” He begins to peel it. I cheat a glance to Mary, I can tell she’s heard some of this before.

“Here’s the thing, if you wanna fix all of this you have one of two options. One, you can give me my soul and everything goes away. We all go back to nothingness. Story over. That’s the option I prefer because I’m fuckin’ tired. Ya see, this whole tenant is based on balance, the holy trinity on one side, the devil and his legion on the other. The source of good, the source of evil, all tied up like a bow. Trouble is, none of it comes from us, it comes from you fuckin’ people. So, for instance, when your species goes through a particularly evil period you need a purge, a sacrifice. Such as God’s only son. You’re welcome. When things are particularly benevolent and good, well that just won’t do. Humans get all itchy and start a crusade, a war, a holocaust. Balance. A fucked up version of balance, but balance.” He motions to the skyless sky, “As you can see, things are pretty fuckin’ unbalanced at the moment.”

“Why would giving you your soul erase everything?”

“Good old fashioned rapture. That soul makes me whole again, makes me Jesus fuckin' Christ. But the thing is, the rapture isn’t Heaven, it’s nothing. Which I guess in it’s own way is eternal paradise. There is no Heaven, and we’re already in Hell.”

Mary has her head down now, I can’t tell if she’s crying or meditating, or both.

“I know, it’s all very confusing. I’m omnipotent and I don’t really get it. That’s the symptom of all of this being created by your fucked up minds. Reality is that the Universe is chaos, it is ruled by entropy. Look it up. You people fuck it all up by trying to create order.”

Silence takes over the bus as Jesus chews on his aged orange, he looks around at the surroundings, smiles and sighs. Emily cuddles up under his right arm.

“There are parts I’ll miss, but I gotta say being nothing sounds pretty fuckin’ glorious right now. So, if you could be so kind as to hand me my soul.”

“You said there was another option?”

Jesus sighs, “You don’t notice that I can kill people, but you remember one sentence from my pretty fuckin’ dense diatribe. Typical. Yeah, there’s one other solution here.”

“What is it?”

“Your daughter has to die.”