Religion | Bible | Story |
The Third Man
I don’t know if I believe all that is in the Bible, but sure wish I’d written it!
I huddle in the dank corner of my dark cell. Outside, the shouts of the crowd roaring in my ears, freezing my heart with cold fear. It is a frenzied sound that make my skin crawl with something other than the filthy bugs that share my cell.
I wince at the nastiness of the slimy muck that has long since filmed over the cold floor. I pressed my palm down to aid in shifting my aching body to a slightly different position. The roaring crowd outside at least takes my mind off my impending fate, momentarily, and places it on another’s.
Their cry is for blood but not mine. I am a simple thief, and my death will be routine. Perhaps it is Barabbas’ blood they scream for.
But Ia guards laughs at my cell door, telling me Barabbas has been pardoned by the people.
Crazy, I’m thinking. To release a man like Barabbas is but to smite oneself.
Who will take his place? Who could be so vicious, so evil that Barabbas is the better of the two? I’d heard rumors, but they made no sense to me. Why would a people choose a madman over their own king? But they were just rumors. Who knew the stature of the man passed over in favor of a murderer. His sins, I thought, must be great to warrant such radical movement from the same people who had condemned the killer Barabbas to death.
My own fear creeps back in as I hear the heavy footsteps of the guards nearing my cell. I shift again, pressing back into the corner, this time not noticing the filmy muck that smears beneath my hands. Every nerve in my body tenses and focuses on the sounds outside my cell. A loud clanking echoes through the small confinement and through my head as one of the guards unlocks the door and jerks it open.
I fight their hands as they try dragging me out, though such resistance is useless. A sudden agonized scream explodes from me as I’m struck hard across the back of my neck. My head swims and dizziness washes over me.
The guards grab me beneath my arms with rough hands and drag me from the cell and up the stone steps.
The roaring of the crowd explodes in my head. The guards drop me on the ground and before I can move, a fierce weight is dropped on my back, driving me down closer to the earth. The smell of the ground is strong in my nostrils as it mingles with the odorous stench of animal droppings and the sweat of the frenzied crowd. I gasp for air and claw at the dirt as I struggle to get my feet under me and lift this unbearable weight.
“Move!”
The stinging tip of a soldier’s leather whip lashes my hip, cutting my skin. Blood, like a serpent’s flickering tongue, trickled down my thigh.
“Get up!”
My jaw clenches. Pressure settles on my temples as I press hard against the ground with my palms and somehow stand to my feet. But the weight of the wooden cross hunches my form as I stumble forward, piercing slivers burrowing deep into my back and shoulders like tiny insects.
A burning heat scorches my lungs. I suck for air while my naked feet scuff the surface of the hill that leads o my place of death. The place of a skull, it is called.
Calvary.
The soldiers throw me down on top of the cross they’d taken from my shoulders. Fear cuts through my heart as a centurion grabs my right arm and stretches it out the length of the cross beam. He stomps his foot down on my wrist, pinning my hand while he picks up a large, steel spike and mallet.
Cold sweat dampens my face and stings my eyes as the tip of the spike presses against the skin in the center of my palm.
I gasp sharply.
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