“Jesus...” John muttered past clenched teeth.
He was climbing the fire escape to the top of his building, an apartment complex in a paved sea littered with cars. It was a Sunday afternoon in North Carolina and the Sun’s heat was intense only made worse by the humidity. He had skipped church that morning telling his wife, Sarah, that he wasn’t feeling very good and needed to get some rest. He just needed some rest. A short time after Sarah left things started getting fuzzy, his head was swimming, and he started itching all over.
“Go to the roof.” Jesus told him.
“Why Lord?” John muttered.
“Come to the roof and I’ll absolve your sin John.”
“What sin?”
“All of your sins John. You missed church this morning John.” Jesus calmly rebuked.
“Your will be done.” John mumbled.
John stumbled out of the bedroom, down the narrow hall, through the small living room dining room combo, first bracing himself against the back of the couch, then the dinner table, and finally out of the door of their little apartment, door left ajar. A sheen of sweat rolled over his face, shoulders, chest, and back. He made it out to the fire escape by some miracle and opened his red rimmed eyes to the glaring Sun.
“I’m coming Lord! I’m coming.” Pain rippled over his moist skin and a pulse thrummed back to front through his head giving him an impulse to move forward and up the stairs. He was half way up the stairs and he could see Jesus poking his head over the side of the buildings molded concrete wall.
“Jesus...” John muttered past clenched teeth as a jolt of pain doubled him over. Warm bile filled his mouth and a gold and green stream splattered against the pavement so many feet below. Retching and jittering, strong acid burning his throat up and down he turned and looked up for Jesus again but didn’t spot him.
“Keep climbing John!”
“Yes Lord.”
He pushed on up the hot metal steps, not minding the pain on the bottom of his feet, it was no match for tides of pain crawling on spidery legs up and down his skin or cramping his abdomen.
Finally, at the last landing, so close to his ultimate goal he spies the enemy. Jesus is standing there, arms spread wide in a welcoming pose, beckoning him up the ladder.
“You must make it to the roof John, to receive your blessing.” said Jesus.
John lurched forward, and clung to the bottom of the ladder for support. Rolling his head back and his eyes up, head swaying on watery neck muscles the enemy looms large over him. A padlocked hatch at the top of the stairs. An iron sentry standing in the way of salvation. Jesus peers down at John through the diamond mesh of the hatchway.
“Can’t you make it John? I want you to receive my blessing John.” Jesus says, looking disappointed. John frantically scrambles up the ladder and starts hammering against the hatch.
“Lord,” John meekly cries “please move the hatch Lord.” Tears streaming down his face he weakly pushes against the hatch and yanking at the padlock.
“Please Lord.” he whimpers. “Please.”
Jesus just stairs down at him and the pain and the heat drill into John. He hooks his arms and legs through the rungs of the ladder and slaps helplessly at the hatch, growing weaker by the second. He doesn’t feel his bowels let go leaving a bloody stain in his shorts, he doesn’t care about the hair that lifted off his head in a gentle breeze to float out into the Carolina afternoon, and he doesn’t notice the rivulets of blood slowly seeping from his pores. All that matters is Jesus’s face, staring down at him limned by the hot Sun, still beckoning him up to the roof. A euphoria spreads even as the real pain begins.
“Forgive me Jesus.” He mutters and coughs. “Forgive me...Lord...forgive...me...”
He does not realize when he finally bleeds out. His consciousness is long gone when the cells of his body, host to trillions of viral particles become a red mist in the wind. He is long long gone when the next person who was just walking to their car, a neighbor he never knew, takes a breath and is infected.
