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He can't recall the last time he slept peacefully. His nightmares, or rather visions, filled his head with blood, his thoughts with screams, and his skull with guilt.
When he was just a child, he would wake up in his mother's and father's tight and strong embrace, away from his bed. They would tell him that he cried in his sleep, that he mumbled and choked between tears and words no one understood. They thought he was possessed, that the Devil himself was torturing him from a tender age.
Jesus thinks it would have been easier that way, because that would have meant that it could be cast out from him, or at least it would have killed him without knowing why or how.
Instead, God and Heaven themselves were the ones who hunted and haunted him.
There is no way to cast out holiness.
There is no way to negotiate with it.
There could only be acceptance. There could only be their way. His way.
So, he grew up with it. Not out of it. As he grew up in stature and wisdom, the scratches in his mind did too. It was more difficult now, in and out of his own brain.
Every neighbor knew him and his weird circumstances. Some knew about the "immaculate conception"; others had had enough with hearing him writhing and whining every night.
Whether they didn't say anything out of respect for Mary and her deceased husband, or because they didn't care for either of them, it was unknown and irrelevant.
The neighbors' silence and indifference were more of a blessing than Jesus could have thought. They didn't like him, but never stopped him. Maybe they knew it was futile or just disliked him. Anyhow, this meant he could waste his life however “he shamelessly wanted”, as some old woman said to his mother one time. Which was going to be the little freedom he had left to enjoy.
He met Magdalene when he was young, as young as five or maybe younger. They played, they talked, they enjoyed each other. Magdalene was one of the first people Jesus talked to about his nightmares, his visions, and the voices that tormented him. And still, Magdalene stayed.
"Because I love you." She said with a big smile, tenderly. It was true, Jesus saw that in a way that he can't explain to this day. When love shines, his eyes perceive it, and when it rots, he can taste it.
His mother always smiled when she saw them playing and laughing together. Jesus thought that she was happy for him; that she, just like him, was having a rest from the daily pain and exhaustion that comes with God's perpetual love and watch. And she was, of course, she was. But there was something else, an underlay of something buried that was rising again.
"You must treat her correctly. Be a gentleman." His mother said to him, just as Magdalene went back to her house after talking to him. "You don't want to stop being the apple of her eye, do you?" She said lovely, like a joke, like a promise.
"She is just my friend, mother," He answered with a smile. It was a game, a kid's game.
"Everyone says that sweetheart," Mary wiped out some dirt from his cheek with her thumb. "When you grow up and become a man, you will change your mind."
He thought about it for a while.
He didn't think about it, honestly. He just went along with it.
A wife, two or three kids, a house, a job, and then die at an old age. Everyone wanted that. Jesus wanted that, too. Perhaps.
But he couldn't, he never will either. There was no place for it in the Great Plan, he found out when he was around twenty-two. Nevertheless, there was no place for it in him either; he found out when he was about thirty, maybe younger, but he won't ever admit it, not now, not ever, because Magdalene didn't deserve that.
He saw how much love she poured with her whole existence, pure and innocent; she gave away her love for everyone in the village, especially for him, and he knew it, for such a long time he knew it. He was taught to receive any gift from anyone, so when Magdalene looked at him with those expectant eyes and blush, he asked her to be his girlfriend. Because he loves her, even now, and she loved him, maybe she still does, and she shouldn't.
Her mother was beaming with happiness, and he should have been too. His "future wife" was beautiful, delicate, and patient. He should have been ashamed of himself, taking such a precious heart and breaking it with his indifference, his fear, with his lack of real romantic feelings he didn't want to admit. He promised her an eternal life together; he still does, but it wasn't the life she expected, not the "normal real life" she hoped for with a husband and their new lives together in a better home as a family.
She cried, and Jesus couldn't comfort her. He was a coward; he could speak parables, talk about faith and holiness, but they wouldn't matter, because she didn't need prayer and new expectations; she needed real support, someone's shoulder to cry on, someone to take action instead of guided words, someone who loved and desired her as much as she did. And Jesus couldn't, he just couldn't. So he let her go, but he still visited her at the brothel, still loved her, and never interfered in her decisions, even when he should have.
Not that he could give her what she wanted, nor what she needed.
He couldn't explain how his love for her worked; there was no reason to do so this late. Or maybe he couldn't accept its implications.
Mary should spit on his grave, but she will never do so. So he let her spit on him as many times as she needed.
When he reached the eighteenth year, Joseph fell ill. He and his mother prayed for his well-being, for health, for some mercy. The next week, Joseph died.
Jesus took Joseph’s place in the workshop; he wasn’t as skilled as his stepfather, but he got the job done, which, for a humble Nazarene carpenter, was a good job. Especially when he did the crosses as he was asked for instead of refusing for his own morale, he was good at keeping his head down.
A normal, peaceful life. He should want that. He wanted it.
But then Judas appeared, of course, he did, he wondered if there was any possibility of him not doing so.
Judas Iscariot. Kerioth. Nice place, he thought. Everyone said the complete opposite, the same about the red-haired man who came from it.
He came as bad news came. Like a sickness, a plague, only there to stay and change everything around it except itself.
Judas Iscariot.
He was something else, something that added and took away at the same time. They were going to stick together, Jesus knew, and he wanted to cry.
His dreams were always the same, blurred clouds of sharp sounds and irrational views. But they said something, something he only understood when the time came, or when the excuse was believable. Whatever.
He remembers how Judas and he met in such a lovely memory. Jesus was making a cross, splinters under his nails, and a hammer almost breaking itself against the wood. Judas then threw a rock at him.
“Traitor.” It was a description, calm and firm. Pointing with his voice instead of fingers. “Roman puppet!”
Jesus kept his head down, trying to keep hammering something he didn’t remember.
“Listen when I’m talking to you!” Judas grabbed him by his long hair, making him groan. Jesus didn’t meet his eyes.
“Are you proud of whatever abomination you are doing? You are betraying your own nation. Is the silver worth it?” Judas spat the words on his face.
“I’m helping my mother,” Jesus said with all the calm and steadiness he could find in himself. “I’m keeping the family workshop, she can’t work, I have to- “
Judas let go of his hair in that moment. His eyes showed something dimming, but not weakness, not entirely soft either.
“You should feel ashamed of yourself, selling your own people.” Judas took his own distance from him; Jesus did not move, not even to touch his sore scalp. “You and your mother could be the next ones on those. Romans do not care about honest workers either way.” Judas seemed worried, probably about Jesus’ mother overall.
Jesus met him the next day. Judas gave him an annoyed look, not that Jesus ever cared about people’s disgusted faces towards him anyway. Judas got used to having him by his side, even when they didn't talk at all. He still remembers how nonchalant Judas tried to look when he started to welcome himself to Jesus' workshop; he didn't comply, he accepted him gladly, even in their usual silent agreements and conversations.
Judas, Judas, Judah.
He was with the Zealots. Jesus should have known by then that he was as ruthless and extremist as they were, but Judas was different from them, from every person Jesus saw and met.
Judas loved hard; his love burned harder and hotter than any flame he touched in moments of weakness. Judas also hated; he hated with passion, he destroyed and blasphemed everything he resented.
Judas’ love and hate were so solemn, so raw, and strangely so human. Imperfect. Judas was despicable. He was that type of person you see your Rabbi whispering about and praying his father would never know what his son had become.
Judas was shame itself, but lovely. Judas burnt, and he burnt everything around him; that’s why no one dared or wanted to be there when he, eventually, imploded.
Oh, but he wanted to. Jesus wanted to be calcinated to his very own bones; to the ground, where his ashes would be mistaken for any other dust.
Jesus loved freely, and Judas loved selectively. Or so Jesus was told.
But when one night his nightmares reached a new agonizing peak, where not even waking up made him calm, Jesus hated. He hated how scared he was, how much he was hurting his mother, how much humiliation he was bringing to his only family in the name of a great fate he never asked for or cared about.
He hated his mother, his father, His Father, Magdalene, every person in the village, every sacrificial animal, every prophet. He hated Heli, Matthat, Levi, Melchi, Jannai, Joseph, Mattathias, Amos, Naum, Esli, Nagge, Maath, Mattathias, Semei, Josech, Joda, Joannan, Rhesa, Zerubbabel, Shealtiel, Neri, Melchi, Addi, Cosam, Elmodam, Er, Jesus, Eliezer, Jorim, Matthat, Levi, Simeon, Judah, Joseph, Jonam, Eliakim, Melea, Menna, Mattatha, Nathan, David, Jesse, Obed, Boaz, Salmon, Nahshon, Amminadab, Arni, Hezron, Perez, Judah, Jacob, Isaac, Abraham, Terah, Nahor, Serug, Reu, Peleg, Eber, Shelah, Cainan, Arphaxad, Shem, Noah, Lamech, Methuselah, Enoch, Jared, Mahalaleel, Cainan, Enos, Seth, Adam.
He hated himself overall. He always did.
Strong arms wrapped around him, not letting him writhe and squirm further. His body was slammed to the ground.
“What the hell do you think you are doing?!” The man above him said, Judas, he should have known.
His body was pushed further down. He felt his bones bending, his breath shallowing, his head pulsing. He whined and groaned louder. It was painful, but if it had to be done, Jesus was glad it would be right then.
Mary was crying, not only from the horror of her son’s usual night pains but also for how merciless Judas was treating him.
“Stop! YOU ARE GOING TO KILL HIM,” Mary was shouting while trying to push Judas off him.
Only when Jesus’ breath weakened alarmingly, did Judas let him go.
Mary held his face in her hands; tears of dread, relief, and exhaustion stained her old face. Judas held his body, calloused fingers sinking on whatever flesh he could grasp.
“Please,” He heard Judas’s whisper in a pathetic voice, “Stay.”
“I love you”.
How tender the whisper came out, raw and fresh like a wound, a scared animal, God-forsaken vermin. Jesus savored the words, trying and failing to ignore the buzzing drilling into his skull.
The ground was cold, and he was boiling in the fever of his own blood.
Judas never said those words again, but stuck closer and longer to him.
Judas, such a lovely man. Perhaps he was the one who so devotedly would pour his eternal love onto humankind, ripping his body apart?
That was selfish, even for Jesus, sadistic even. Jesus should be ashamed of himself. To think he could take and consume such love and passion for himself.
Like a perverted joke and timing from the world, or worse, from His Father, the next week he saw Judas washing his bloody hands and knife behind a tree. Not hidden out of fear, or cowardice, but something more obscure that Jesus was taught not to say out loud. Judas met his eyes; neither of them flinched or talked in each other's presence.
Such passion, such loyalty was only meant to burn, everyone and everything.
Jesus should have known better.
That night, he expected scratching dreams in his mind that would make him cry; instead, he dreamt of a man beside him, like a shadow covered in what could be innocent blood, or maybe sinful blood, he couldn't tell. He only knew it was blood for the strong smell of it and the kiss that threatened to drown him.
He felt part of himself rotting at the iron taste flooding his mouth. He thought the bloody figure was going to rip his tongue off, but just in time, it let him breathe again.
Jesus didn't say anything; he just wiped the blood from the figure's face.
Kerioth must be a nice place. And he wasn't going to let the chance pass to indulge in it.
The rest of his dream was just about him letting himself be burned to his bones and streched to brutality by the fire that took the shape of Judas' hands; boiled from inside to outside, he strangled him and was bruised in exchange; all under the comforting, suffocating weight of the red-haired man and the abomination they were making in the deeps of his consciousness.
When he woke up the next day, he forced himself to throw up and bleed.
He never mentioned the dream to anyone; he made himself think that he was imagining it, and if he did imagine it, then he did it wrong.
Stained, filthy, and idiotic made-up dreams.
He could use that time for other worthwhile things. Like obeying his disgraceful job, pray for Magdalene to forgive him for breaking her heart and hopes, pray for his mother not to cry for him, pray for his Father's blessing, or curse, grieve the normal life he was denied to him, and for everyone around him, or grieve the normal life everyone wished him, or grieve whatever he should grieve.
He will regret not grieving it someday, that's for sure.
No wife, no children, no home, no man.
He should pray and grieve for all those things.
Yes, he should.
And he will.
Eventually, he will want all of those. Perhaps he will also want sex.
He must.
What will break him? What is the doubting seed that Satan will plant in his head so he can mess everything up? He wonders.
He wishes he could be killed. Some zealot to come by and kill him on the spot, slitting his throat and letting his blood flow onto the dirt, so he doesn't have to do anything ever again.
But again, there was a zealot by his side, walking and hearing and doing as he does.
Jesus looks at the sky above him. It's dark.
He wishes he could be killed, and he wishes his death wouldn't burn anything.
And again, Judas will burn him to the ground; he hopes Judas stays, and his flame too. Such a devoted, righteous, well-made man should have the honor of having a normal life, and want it.