Scribbles in the Dirt

Jerusalem, 1st Century

They came for her at dawn.

Not in silence. Not with mercy. They dragged her into the square the way you might drag a carcass to market—in a bed sheet—just enough covering to keep her from tempting the local boys, gawking at her from their windows, and yet just enough cruelty to keep her visible—exposed.

She was a pawn—a useful tool they had decided would be just the thing to show the world what this self-righteous, so-called “rabbi,” from Nazareth—as if anything good could come from that shit hole of a place—to show them who this con man really was.

This time they knew they had him. He was either a rebel with no regard for the laws of their faith or else he was not the man of compassion he had claimed to be in his obvious ploy to con the people into believing his nonsense. Either way, the girl was their tool—the way they would deal with this radical menace some were referring to as “Bar Abbas”—Son of the Father— the prophesied Messiah. They had dealt with his kind before—and they would deal with him as they had all the others and would, again—and again—with all the so-called messiahs who came after him.

Today, they would surely put an end to this Jesus Bar-Abbas—who they knew to be Jesus Bar Joseph—the son of a tradesman—a carpenter.

Her name was Rhema. Nineteen. Her feet were bare and bleeding from the alley gravel. Her sparse bedsheet clung to her ribs in torn, sweaty folds. The alley had smelled of piss and charcoal smoke. She could still taste the bile that had risen when they grabbed her. The man she’d been with was nowhere in sight.