A few drops of ketchup, as red as blood, drips from his veggie burger and falls on the left side of his chest, right on his heart. It is going to leave a permanent stain on his orange official vest. But that in no way concerns Jesus as much as the vision that has just come to him: his heart bleeds like a runaway river charged by seasonal rain. The foreboding nature of the vision weighs heavily on Jesus’ mind. If these visions truly foretell of his future, he would rather freeze time and stay in the present. Being broken-hearted does not seem too bad after all; better than the heart getting torn apart, Jesus’ predetermined future that lurks around every corner. How near is that bloody destiny? Jesus wonders.
From a distance, the voice of a little girl cries, “Help!”
Jesus hears it while sitting on the grass, in the middle of the large open space commencing the adventure park. He stops chewing on his veggie burger.
As usual, there is little visitor traffic around the gate during lunchtime. Quite a few people are still in the area, of whom, God knows how many have the compassion to take time off their busy life in the adventure park and respond to the call for aid.
Trapped among Jesus’ aspirations to save the day and to stretch out his hand for the ones in need, the voice repeats in His his head, its echoes sounding kind of like ‘Help, Jesus.’ or ‘Help me, Lord.’ Who is this little one seeking me? Jesus wonders and surveys the vast space of the adventure park. Near the exit gate, He he spots a Caucasian man holding the arm of a little Black girl.
“No-o-o-o-o,” screams the seven-ish-year-old girl with short curly hair while being dragged out of the park.
Without missing a moment, Jesus spits out the chewed food and dashes toward them. “Hey, what’s going on there?” He he yells while sprinting.
The girl turns back to the voice of her savior.
The Caucasian man does not. He looks bigger and bigger as Jesus nears, gradually casting doubts on Jesus’ initial will to help. What was at first an inevitable path forward is now degrading to an option with pros and cons.
Jesus arrives, panting. With his stretched out hand barely reaching up to the tall man’s shoulder, Jesus gently taps him. “Hey,” he says and draws in another breath.
The man stops, his massive body like that of a destructing bulldozer. Muscles pop out of every corner of his body, suggesting that he has spent half of his fruitful, waking life in gyms—the other half in kitchens and bathrooms.
Jesus gulps in fear, his heart beating faster. He is no match for a muscular guy of that size. What was Jesus thinking? He was not. Ration has no place in Jesus’ heart when it comes to saving the innocent.
With his thick neck slightly turning, over his shoulder the man gives Jesus a dirty look.
The half-eaten burger slides off Jesus’ shaking hand. Frozen on the spot, he cannot say a word or make a move. He clenches his teeth to silence the sound of them chattering.
The man growls like a bull that he is.
Reflexively taking a step back, Jesus trips and falls on his butt.
Looking bigger than ever, the man sneers, his menacing glare replaced with a condescending one, which is somehow more unbearable to Jesus. Leaving Jesus crushed and humiliated, he turns his head back and stomps toward the exit gate, pulling the little girl behind him.
Jesus watches her being taken away, but there is not much that he can do about it. What can average-size, artistic-natured Jesus possibly do to stop a mountain-size of stacked, mindless bricks. At the end of the day, Jesus is just a man. Or is he He?
An idea! Jesus remembers the miraculous moment He experienced a few days back.
The little girl starts whining as if she knows that among the people who hear there is now one who listens.
“Hang on, little one,” Jesus mutters. “Jesus is here with you.” Time has come for Him to use His powers for good. He stands up, closes His eyes, takes a deep breath, and wishfully blows in the direction of the girl, His palms out toward her. A sense of satisfaction and pride fills His heart and takes His mind up to the skies, where it belongs. It is like all events in His life, all the tragedies, all the recoveries and inspirations, they all have been preparing Him for this rewarding moment: to save an innocent child, which, by all definitions of the word, is the ultimate good deed. One cannot top that. That was literally what Jesus would have done, Jesus thinks and smiles.
The little girl keeps crying, louder this time.
His mind plummeting back onto Earth, Jesus opens his eyes, a bit confused and a lot disappointed.
The man is dragging the girl behind him, as he was before.
Perhaps it works only within a certain range, He he thinks of his miraculous blow. The thought, however, does not help with her begging cry. Jesus cannot bear an innocent kid’s tears. He has to do something, anything, no matter the consequences. He takes a leap in the dark, gathers all his courage, and yells at the top of his voice, “Leave the kid alone.”
The beefy man stops, his shoulders moving up and down telling of his fierce breathing. He lets go of the little girl’s arm, returns to Jesus, and stomps toward him.
Jesus’ heart plunges to His his stomach. Trying to ignore the raging bull that is charging at him, he asks the girl, his voice shaky, “Do…do…do you know this man?”
She does not say anything and just wipes her tears with her now-freed sleeve.
The huge man’s shadow falls across Jesus when he arrives. “None of your damn business,” he barks, his deep voice as frightening as the twisted expression on his face.
“I… I… I’m making it my damn business,” Jesus responds with a trembling voice after he swallows hard against the lump in his throat. The line that he borrowed from the TV show ‘The Act of Valor’ does not work as well as it did on TV.
Sneering through his clenched teeth, the guy puts his big hand on Jesus’ face and violently thrust him backward.
Before he gets a chance to react, Jesus falls back on the ground like a lifeless staff. Apparently, God does not have his back as he thought He would. Is He not supposed to be with the good guys? Where is God where we need Him? Where is He now? What kind of Father abandons His son? Never writing a letter, not even a postcard! Where was He when Sally broke Jesus’ heart to thousands of pieces? Where was He when Jesus suffered? The many nights that he shed his shattered heart out, one tear at a time.
The guy swings his right foot toward Jesus’ stomach. Kicking the weak when he is down! It is as if he is providing hard evidence of his evil nature, sneering at God for doing nothing, just being a silent observer of the injustice on Earth, the kingdom of the devil.
Clenching his stomach, Jesus readies it for the pain of the upcoming kick. That is the gist of his life: getting kicked in the stomach, swallowing the pain, and then crawling back into his solitude, searching for a meaning for this meaningless cycle. He would pray for an intervention, a miracle, but if history has taught him anything is that God is more of a great listener than a moderate meddler. His hands are tight these days, if He ever had any.
A fisted hand punches the guy in the back of his head! Like 300 pounds of humane meat, he collapses to the ground, next to Jesus.
Pleasantly confused, Jesus looks up and finds Omar, his East Indian colleague, rubbing his knuckles. God indeed works in mysterious ways. This time apparently through Omar’s fist!
One punch is all it took for Omar to knock the bulky man out. He is a kind of comic-book hero that Jesus neither is nor wants to be. Omar, as always, does not look handsome in his long beard and shaved mustache. His long greasy hair is his best feature, which makes him look somewhat likable. “Omar will later shave off his hair”, foretells another vision that crosses Jesus’ eyes. Jesus wishes that Omar would not. But knowing Omar and how stubborn and reckless he is, he probably will.
“Dude,” Jesus objects to Omar, gesturing to the unconscious man lying down beside him, “I wasn’t finished talking.”
“Talking?!” Omar sneers. “Blah-blah doesn’t get things done. Punching does. You should learn how to throw one. I’ll teach ya.”
“You could get fired, you know.”
“Not if no one saw,” Omar says while checking the surroundings. “Except this little one.” He turns to the Black girl and kneels next to her like a soldier kneeling before a princess. “Where’s your dad, Missy?” he asks, giving her a boop on the nose.
The little Black girl is not crying anymore. She takes a step closer to Omar as if she wants to take refuge in the arms of the brownish superhero. Half-way there, she takes a step back again, not clear why. She slowly raises her hand over Omar’s shoulder, pointing to the knocked-out, Caucasian guy behind him.
That tiny piece of information paints the events quite differently. The jerk that Jesus stood up against and Omar stunned is not a kidnapper or anything like that. Biting his lips, Jesus turns to Omar, who is doing the same. They stare at each other, each waiting for the other to break the awkward silence. Although still a jerk, the guy is her father, and as a father he has the right to… Or does he?
“Well,” Omar says, slapping his knees and standing up, “my job’s done here. Are you finally joining us this Friday or what?”
“Dude, seriously? You’re leaving?”
“I’ll let you clean up the mess with…ah…with your blah-blah. Friday. Yes or No?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“You gotta start sometime,” Omar says while stepping away. “Imam Zahid is the man of God. Trust me. It’ll be good for you.”
If only Omar could see the visions that Jesus does. There will be blood; Jesus’ blood. And there will be a brown hand stained with it. Omar will stare at his hand painted red, like Lady Macbeth does. Weirdly enough Jesus worries for Omar’s soul in that moment more than he does for his own bleeding body. If only Omar knew the dark future that is awaiting him.
Watching Omar leave, Jesus thinks about how to turn down his invitation without hurting his feelings. Omar has been trying to convert Jesus to Islam ever since Jesus revealed that the church no longer has the answers he seeks. Jesus, however, has no intention of hopping from one religion to another. He is rather looking beyond all of them for the eternal truth that has been silenced. He wants to unearth it, be its voice, and let it be heard by the masses. But first, he has to find it; listen closely to hear its muffled sound.
Bzzt. Bzzt.
Jesus’ phone vibrates. It has three missed calls from his mother. Leave me alone, Jesus growls. Silencing the notification that disrupted his elevated thoughts, he turns the screen off.
Jesus sighs and turns his gaze on the man that is passed out next to him. “Is this really a father?” he asks the little girl and immediately realizes that his question is weirdly worded.
She nods with a sad face.
“Don’t worry. We’ll call your mom, and soon you’ll be safe at home.”
That does not seem to put her at ease. The words ‘safety’ and ‘home’ are not correlated in the mind of Crystal, the little Black girl from the inner city.