Body and Blood Shed for Steve

Steve hated being paired up with Jess, because Jess liked to play with the bodies.

Everyone else in the gang avoided violence if they could, knowing it was safer to get in, burglarize a home, and get out. Of course, if some unwitting person stumbled upon you in the middle of the job, then you did what you had to do. Steve had no problem with that.

But it sure felt like Jess happened to have someone stumble upon him more than everybody else did.

—

Steve, despite having grown into a degenerate, had been raised a good Christian. Some nights he lay awake, terrified of God’s judgement.

On those nights he would tell himself he was just stealing from rich assholes. He wasn’t like Jess.

But he knew the truth. By letting Jess continue to defile the bodies of their victims, he was signing off on the behavior.

And God was going to judge him for that.

—

“Oh Steeeeeeve!”

The call from one of the bedrooms in the house they were currently ransacking sickened Steve. Jess had something to show him.

Steve pushed the bedroom door open and peered inside.

When he saw what Jess was doing to the little boy and little girl that shared the room, he pulled his gun.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Three bullets later, and Jess and the children had each been put out of their own unique flavors of misery.

Steve should have done that years ago, though, and he knew that acting now wasn’t enough for God to forgive him completely. He would need to do something more…something to show God just how much this was a turning point for him.

He thought of Jesus on the cross, dying to save the whole world from their sin. Jesus, who was crucified with two criminals on crosses next to him.

Steve considered the three dead bodies in the room.

His mother had always told him that without Jesus being nailed to that cross, humanity would have been doomed to eternal hellfire. Jesus and the criminals being crucified was a necessary act of violence.

Steve kept staring at the bodies.

—

When he returned an hour later with the bag full of long metal nails, Steve couldn’t help but feel a little like Jess, playing with his victims.

This was different, though. This was a necessary act to cleanse him, to put all his sin onto Jess.

This act would serve the exact same purpose as the crucifixion of Jesus. The only difference was scale. Jesus’s death saved the entire world from their sin, while Jess and the kids would be more of a one-off thing, redeeming Steve alone. Sort of a personal pan pizza of salvation compared to Jesus’s family-size pie.

Steve felt the guilt he had long harbored begin to lift immediately. There was just one little nagging fear he couldn’t shake.

He lined up a nail with the girl’s ankles.

“No resurrecting in three days,” he said softly.