2027 Best Small Fictions Nominee: Apostles by Travis Shosa

Apostles

by Travis Shosa

from Issue 23

I met Jesus in juvie. And look, what I did to wind up there is none of your fucking business. What you should commit to memory expeditiously if you ever wanna see the gates of heaven is how to speak the man’s name. It goes hey-Suess. Like Dr. Suess or Diane Suess. Jesus wound up in juvie because he beat the bricks off this kid who said it like gee-sus, like golly gee, that was suspect of you and why would anyone name their kid like that, right? At least that’s how Jesus explained it.

In juvie, there was Wade, Zach, Ewen, Kimmy, Amirah, Ilya, Marcus, Bryce, Duc, Chelsea, Jude, and of course Jesus and myself were there too. We were all crows of a sort and you know birds of a feather and all that. We all had stories. Wade shot a guy who was creeping on his little sister, Ewen had a bit of a vigilante donnybrook thing going where he’d stroll up in pubs with a fake ID and beat down anyone he saw slipping powder in a glass. Kimmy got caught shoplifting jewelry to sell to pawn shops so she could take care of her younger siblings: Amirah turned tricks for the same reason. Bryce stole the weed his dad grew and sold it at school when he found out another kid was selling stuff cut with bad shit. Chelsea wouldn’t say what she didn’t do, but she swore she didn’t do it. She covered for a friend on something but admitted it wasn’t altruism: she had to get away from her dad and that’s all she’d say about it. Some of us were just goons, maybe. Or maybe there was a certain nobleness to our crookedness even we didn’t get.

We played a lot of cards. Go fish, gin rummy, Texas hold ‘em when we were feeling like real cowboys and girls. Duc taught us tiến lên and we liked that one since we didn’t really need to take turns. Jesus always won, except when it was clear someone really needed a win. He said his dad was a gambler, that it was in his blood, whatever that means.

We all got out at different times, of course, but we did all make it out. And once we did, we stuck together. Some of us even paired off. Zach and Chelsea had a thing, but it was Ilya and Amirah who were really built to last. Jude was a big fan of Ocean’s Eleven and all manner of heist flicks and he thought, since no one was hiring straight folks - let alone crooks - in this economy, we might as well do some robberies together. Didn’t push it hard, was an off-handed thing, might’ve even been a joke. But Jesus ran with it. Counted us up and called us “Jesus and His Apostles.” Thought it was fucking hysterical, he did.

Whole thing felt like a running joke, to be true. Jesus leaned into the gee-sus bit: me and the crew would hit a bank armed to the tits with replica AKs and Jesus would follow behind in a tattered robe speaking all lofty and shit. If you weren’t on your knees, you were slapping ‘em. We even had our own Bible we’d leave in the vaults after we’d cleaned ‘em out. It was kinda a theological scrapbook of sorts where we took what we liked, left the rest, and added what seemed missing. It wasn’t like we didn’t all have our own beliefs, but they just never superseded the belief in what we did. We put Matthew 19:24 - it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God - right up front.

We thought it was funny, but Jesus was actually deadly serious about this bit. He said our Bible was as good as any, maybe better. Some fringe Christian outlets actually started claiming Jesus as the Second Coming, claiming our little heists as a sort of spiritual self-crucifixion. Most of the media didn’t see it that way though. Maybe if we’d stolen the right money.

All good things end as all good people fuck up, though. We tripped an alarm and got surrounded. We went to surrender but Ilya motioned his replica gun all wrong and a cop shot at him. Blew his jaw clean off. Watched him breathe his last in Amirah’s arms. Never seen anyone cry that much. Nobody had any will to be angry or resist or anything.

Jude ended up taking the fall, far as he could take it. Called himself the shadow leader, said the whole thing was his idea and that he forced us into it. We went along with it, but I didn’t like it. They gave him the injection. Jude was big, sweet, and quiet. I’m not a sentimental type but the whole thing felt too Green Mile for me. I didn’t like it one bit.

The rest of us got split up, sent to different prisons. Me, Jesus, and Chelsea all got sent to the same one, but everyone else was gone. It was okay, for a while. But Chelsea couldn’t take it long. Me and Jesus did our best to protect her, but men’s prison isn’t anywhere for a woman.

One day, me and Jesus were eating in the caf, and he’d had his wrist up on the rim of his water cup. He said watch close and so I watched close. I saw that mostly clear water turn a rich, heavy red. He said you can call me gee-sus, if you want. He started looking drowsy. And I’ll call you gee-sus right back. He could barely keep his head up. We’re all dyin’ for someone’s sins, ain’t we? I swear he turned water into wine.