God Wounds

They crucified me upside down.

My death was a mockery to a god I didn’t love. I, like many others in that place of cold stone and hollow words, simply going through the motions. Of course there was a hint of belief, a wanting for it to all be true. Everyone wants to look over there shoulder and know that there is a guiding hand, a presence to watch over them and show them the way. I thought I’d found that person.

When you grow up as the only child of stoic, religious and business orientated parents you can expect to be ignored a lot. I think I had a nanny from birth before I started boarding school. Church on the weekends. College was worse, home every evening to an empty house. Absent parents and this great big silence that spoke of a life not lived.

I turned around and there he was, in this city of people ignoring each other there was a hand on my shoulder and this boy with the nicest smile asking me directions to someplace. He chatted to me and we got to talking. He asked me if I had plans for the evening ahead and I had to shake my head. I’d never gone out in the evenings but I doubted my parents would notice. I doubted they’d recognise me as their son.

Come with me to this party. He said, and I just had to go. Arranged to meet on the corner and parted company. I thought that finally my long wait was over and that I’d found someone who would care about me, the hand of god.

Would you call it a martyrdom? They didn’t find me for days and it seems they only ever found one of the culprits, sitting right below me, a silver bowl in his lap. He drunk from it sometimes. No doubts as to whether or not this was a crime of religious hatred. That fact could be seen and know. I’d call it creative genius of the worst type as the boy I thought was my saviour lead me into a deserted warehouse.

I thought we were going to a party?

We are. Private function.

Here? I was doubtful and about to ask more when he turned on me, pushing me up roughly against the wall, ripping the back of my shirt. He pressed against me, looming over me and bent his head to whisper my name over and over in my ear. I shook and shivered and I didn’t try to push him off as he handled me roughly, tearing away my shirt, pushing his thigh between my legs. He kissed me, hot and aloof and like nothing I’d ever experienced, and bit my lip to make me bleed. Then he pulled away completely as four more boys, almost men, came around the corner, laughing.

They didn’t stop short when they saw us and my new friend smiled broadly. I started to get worried just then, what was going to happen to me? I was encircled, dragged deeper into the warehouse and forced my knees before the cross. I was gagged, pushed to the floor and kicked until I lay still.

They took my feet so that I could not run,

They took my hands so that I could not escape.

They cauterized my wounds so I did not bleed to death to soon. They hoisted me onto that inverted cross and tied me to it. Shirtless and bruised and bleeding. They nailed me in place, wrists, ankles. My belt was loosened and a nail was driven into my hip bone.

I remember the feel of his tongue in my mouth, kissing me just before he took his knife and too my tongue so that I could not scream.

They drove a nail, six inches long, through my throat and left me to die.

All but the boy who’d brought me there, who placed a silver bowl under my head to pool my blood.

And that was the end if me.