Jesus' Son Saves
I had never heard of Jack, the Son of the Son of God.
I was a digger. If anything in the Kingdom of Lumeria needed digging, I was your man. I would wake at dawn, break my fast, then dig until supper. Removing the dirt from one spot and depositing it in another spot—this was my life and my purpose.
I mostly dug ditches, canals and the occasional grave. The worst was when I had to dredge the Kingstown gutters. The smell of excrement and rotting waste was overwhelming, and the flies feasted on any exposed skin. But I never had to dig in mines, only above ground, a blessing for which I was grateful.
My father was a digger. I joined him in the trenches as soon as I reached the age of reason. At first I exhausted easily, but this was no excuse when there was digging to be done. By the time I was old enough to father a child of my own, both my muscles and my will had hardened.
My father lived to see my marriage to Hannah, a beautiful maiden from a neighboring village who had just begun to bleed. I was a bit older when I married. I had already been producing seed for over a year, and I shuddered to think what I might have done had I been left to continue burning in lust. But it was a good match, worth the wait. She came from a good family, which meant my sons might possibly achieve something greater than digging when they came of age.
Hannah bore me three sons and two daughters over the next eight years: Abraham, Elijah, Esther, Gabriel, and my youngest, Naomi. I loved my family with all my soul, and it was for them that I would dig, day after day, relentlessly and with no end in sight.
After Naomi was born, I feared Hannah's aging body would not survive another child. I loved her truly, so it was perhaps by God's grace that the ravages of work on my own body tempered the desires of my flesh. I began to lay with her only when the moon indicated it would yield no further children—when I had the strength to lay with her at all.
I was a pious man. I always rested on Sittersday, never exhausting myself with pleasure or indulgence. On Sonsday I would bathe, and my entire family would attend church to offer worship and gratitude to our Lord God, who sacrificed Himself so that we might go to heaven upon our deaths. I would contemplate that sacrifice as I dug. As the Lord purchased our salvation through the cross, I purchased a better life for my family, one shovelful at a time.
I was appointed King's Digger, overseeing assignments for all the digging in the kingdom. This was still hard work, and a shovel remained in my hands from morning to evening. But the job came with many privileges, including a generous ration of meat for my family and a two-room home in Kingstown large enough for each child to have their own bed. By this time, Abraham was already accompanying me in my digging, but my position meant Elijah and Gabriel might apprentice in the trades and even possibly one day receive schooling enough to read.
And so I would dig, ditch after ditch, mile after mile. It was a difficult and painful life, but I had a family to love and hope for the future, and I would not have asked for more.
Until the day the stranger arrived.
"Druid! John!" the man called down to me from the edge of the ditch I was digging. "I've sought throughout the kingdom for thee! Dost thou remember me?"
The man was tall, but barely a man. He wore his hair long like a woman, and he had soft arms and uncalloused hands that had clearly never held a shovel. I would have thought him nobility, but for the simple quality of his clothes. Yet those clothes were unstained. I was perplexed.
"Good sir, I fear thou hast confused me with another," I called back to him. "My name is Johannes, and I am no druid!"
"Damn," the man cursed. "Very well, Johannes, then please allow me to introduce myself. I am Jack of the Outlands, and I am seeking shelter for this evening. Couldst thou show me the way to the nearest inn?"
An Outlander! I had heard legends of those lands beyond the deadly wastes that surrounded Lumeria, but I had never heard of one thence passing through the kingdom, and I certainly had never met such a traveler!
I climbed out from my ditch.
"The Kingstown Inn is no place for a man of virtue," I said. "But if thou waitest for the completion of my day's work, I can offer thee a meal and a spot by the fire to sleep this night."
I wiped my hand on my trousers and offered it to him in greeting. He shook it enthusiastically, if limply.
"Druid, write on!" Jack said. "I thank thee!"
"I know not why thou thinkest me a druid," I laughed, "and I have not the exalted skill of writing. But thou art welcome nonetheless!"
I did not dig as much as I should have that afternoon, but I thought the Lord would perhaps forgive such sloth given the queer circumstance. I introduced Jack to Hannah, Abraham, Elijah, Esther, Gabriel and Naomi. Hannah had cooked plentiful mutton and potato stew that day, and we all ate heartily and laughed merrily as we listened to Jack spin tales of the Outlands. He told of ships that sailed upon the clouds, paintings that moved and spoke, armored steeds as powerful as scores of horses, and smoke that conferred bliss when inhaled. It all seemed to me very outlandish, if thou canst forgive the pun.
But I was enchanted nonetheless, and when my family retired to the sleeping room, I remained by Jack's side. I was fast fond of the man, and we warmed ourselves at the hearth late into the night.
"Druid, Johannes, what wouldst thou sayest should I invite thee to travel with me?" Jack asked.
"Surely thou speakest in jest!" I said, though I could see that he did not.
The idea was certainly tempting, but not so much that it could overcome my love for my family or my duties to Kingdom and God.
"I would say nay," I said with much regret. "For a man to abandon all he knows in such manner could surely lead only to hell and the devil."
Jack seemed sincerely disappointed, but he gave me a smile.
"Never thou mindest, druid," he said. "I was just fucking with thee."
We watched in silence as the fire grew dim. It was long past time for me to sleep, and yet I found myself unable to bid Jack goodnight. I must confess, to my great shame, he left me feeling birds in my belly and mice in my loins as I had not felt since I first lay with Hannah. Was it that I longed to touch his fine hair? For it appeared as smooth as any satin to have graced the Queen's bosom. Or was it the affection he seemed to have for me, as if he had befriended me even before my birth? I knew not what I thought might happen. It was a grave sin for man to bed man. God save me, eventually sleep found me in the chair in which I sat.
I awoke in confusion and terror. I lay in the back of Jack's cart, my arms and legs chained to the sides. Jack gave the chain on my foot a good tug to prove it secure, then noticed I was awake.
"Druid, thou wilt need forgive me for this," he said, "but for now thou must cry for thine rescue."
"HELP!" I shouted, needing no prompt. "TREACHERY! KIDNAPPING! CONSTABLES, HELP! HEEEEELP!"
I screamed for my life as Jack leapt into the driver's seat.
"Wait for it..." Jack said.
I saw the flicker of torches around the street corner, and heard the shouts of the night watchmen as they approached.
"WE'RE OVER HERE! HELP!" I continued to cry.
Only then did Jack pick up the reins and give a shout, and the cart shot forward.
It was a mighty chase through the streets of Kingstown. Barrels were toppled while drunkards and women of the night leapt to avoid us. As we passed through the gate out of town, I saw two knights on horseback galloping after us and gaining ground. An arrow whistled through the air and lodged itself into the driver's seat, inches from Jack's shoulder.
"There we go!" Jack proclaimed as he tied off the reins and jumped into the back of the cart. Straddling my prone body, he clutched a knife with both hands and raised it above me.
"Sorry about this, druid!" he said. "Tis the only way!"
Jack plunged the knife into my chest.
When I opened my eyes, I was staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, smooth and white.
I was John again.
I groggily rolled into a sitting position. I was on some kind of table, also smooth and white. The entire room seemed to be made of this material. The edges of everything were striped in blue, giving the feeling of a computer model in need of textures. On one wall, the stripes outlined the shape of a door, and along the opposite wall, a window stretched from end to end. I was alone.
Carefully, I stood up and looked out the window. Outside and below me sped the canopy of a jungle. Mountains passed slowly in the distance. I was in some kind of airship.
"Dude, it worked!"
Startled, I spun around and saw Jack. He was grinning and clutching his head in shock.
"Thank Grandpa, it actually worked!" he laughed. "Sorry it took so long, dude, but you wouldn't believe what I had to go through to pull that off! First I had to even find you. I told you, no heroics, I had the situation handled—but it's cool, dude, long in the past. The Peter Bros capped me right after you, and by the time I resurrected, you'd already been shipped off to a purgatory. So yeah, it took years just to track you down. Then when I did, I had to break into that afterlife, figure out who you'd been reborn as, how to meet you, how to kill you while also getting myself killed, and arrange for us both to be resurrected into a moving vehicle, all without Peter getting a whiff of it. Twenty-three years, dude...but it worked!"
Seeing the expression on my face, his excitement quickly turned to concern.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I'm sorry it took so long."
I was very confused. Memories of my firstborn life were rushing back into my awareness, but the memories of my life in Lumeria remained. Who was I? Was I Johannes? John? Jack?
"Hannah..." I whispered.
"We're ok now, dude," Jack said. "You're ok now...right?"
I looked up at him, and I saw how much he truly cared. My eyes welled with tears. I ran to him and embraced him, sobbing. I could feel his relief as he hugged me back, but all I could do was cry. Gently, he put his hand on my head to comfort me.
"It's ok now," he said. "We're back."
Next: On the Run with Jesus' Son
Doing Drugs with Jesus’ Son is always free.