Jim found Jesus in the kitchen. Jesus was struggling to push open the refrigerator door, his six-inch stature not able to make the magnetic seal release. The door would move a quarter inch or so, as much as the rubber seal allowed, but the magnetic force was too much for Jesus to overcome.

‘What are you doing?’, Jim asks quietly, not wanting to wake his wife. Amy was grumpy when fully rested, and a bloody terror when disturbed at night. ‘Trying to open this fucking door!’, Jesus shouted as he leaned into the door once more. His voice matches his size, so there is no chance it would wake Amy.

‘What do you need in there?’, Jim asks as he stifles a yawn. It is 2:30 am. Only cops, crooks, long distance truckers and whores are up this time of night, and Jim is neither. Oh, and apparently Jesus.

‘Jesus! Enough with the questions already! I want a beer, and some of that cheesecake Amy brought home’, Jesus gave up on the door for now, and was adjusting his loin cloth. When he got nailed to his cross that was all he wore, a set of yellowed Jewish underpants.

‘How did you get down from your uh, cross?’ Jim asks hesitantly. He does not like this little fucker’s attitude, talking to him is too much like his conversations with Amy.

‘I fell, ok? I was hanging there minding my own business, and the next moment I bounced off the piano and hit the floor. Fucking carpet needs a good vacuum you know?’, Jesus cleared his throat and spat over his shoulder. ‘Got any tobacco? It’s been forever since I had a smoke.’

The sound of Jesus hitting the piano brought Jim out of his light slumber. Amy snores like a hippo and it keeps him up. He looks at the now empty cross next to the picture of the pope and wonders how he would explain all of this to Amy in the morning. He already decided he will help Jesus get what he wants. Amy counted the beers and the slices of cheesecake and will not believe him when he tells her who used it. She counts and tallies everything.

‘I don’t smoke anymore’, Jim answered, ‘Move over and I’ll open the door’. Jesus steps away and Jim pulls the door open. The beer is behind the Tupperware that holds all his meds, another thing carefully managed and monitored by Amy. Jim moves stuff around and grabs two bottles of ice-cold Blue Moon. It’s Belgium White, his favorite. Amy will carry on about this in the morning with the same fervor no matter how many bottles were used.

Jim puts the beer on the counter and pulls the cheesecake from the top shelf. Even if Jesus managed to open the fridge there is no way he would have been able to get any of these things from the fridge. The beer has twist-off caps, and even Jim’s big hands can feel the edges of these caps dig into his skin when he twists them off. He keeps his thoughts to himself, another learned behavior from living with Amy.

‘You need a hand onto the dining room table?’ Jesus looks up irritated, ‘What do you think fatty?’, he snips, just like Amy sometimes does. For a second Jim considered stepping on the little shit, and Jesus must have seen it in his eyes, because his tone softens, ‘Yeah, I need a hand, thanks’.

Moments later Jim and Jesus settle at the dining room table. Jesus asked for a shot glass, and he chugged the first shot glass full of beer as soon as Jim filled it. He burped loudly and slammed the glass down on a cork coaster. Amy insists on using coasters, and these made of cork muffle noise well, so Jesus’s glass slamming was quiet. ‘Fill her up sucker!’, Jesus flicked his long hair out of his face and points to the glass. Jim fills it and Jesus sips on the second glass, eyeing the cheesecake.

‘Chocolate, strawberry or plain?’, Jim asks. Jesus grins, there is beer foam in his beard, ‘A spoonful of each my good man!’. The beer improved his attitude. Jim prepares a plate with small pieces of each flavor, and Jesus uses his hands to scoop it into his mouth. He eats noisily, smacking his lips and chewing with his mouth open. Amy does that too; for a trim, well-kept woman she is a sloppy eater.

Jim sips his own beer, watching the miniature double millennial stuff his face. Jesus lacks manners. This is somewhat understandable, considering that he is from a different time and culture. Maybe his mannerisms were considered cultivated back then.

Jesus licks his hands and fingers clean and wipes them on his loin cloth. ‘God, I can use a smoke. And Mary Magdalene! Man, she had an awesome body, and she would let you do anything you wanted with it.’ Jesus stares into his half full shot glass of beer, probably remembering that hooker’s body in his mind. He snaps out of his reverie, lifts the glass and drains it. ‘Another one please barkeep!’, the beer is definitely taking the edge off.

‘You are not what I thought you’d be’, Jim remarks. ‘Yeah, the Bible is old, and the stories has changed to suit the goals of greedy men’, Jesus pointed at the empty glass, and Jim filled it again, ‘The apostles and I were the first hippies ever dude! We did not work and used to get high and talk all sorts of shit. Some of this crap was written down and modified to create the gospels. We were used you see, by scheming men to rile the people against the Romans. I liked the Romans; they had the best drugs and hookers. Unfortunately, you know how it turned out with me hung on a cross, and my buddies scattered all over the world.’

Jesus drains his glass and burps and farts at the same time. ‘Fuck that was good! You sure you have no tobacco? No secret stash or leftovers from before you quit?’ Jim shakes his head, then realizes this might not mean ‘no’ to Jesus and adds, ‘Nothing, sorry.’

‘Oh well, that’s that then’, Jesus pushes the glass closer, ’Fill her up big man!’. They drink in silence for a while. After all the beer, and the cheesecake, Jesus’s belly now distends over the top of his Jewish undies. He rubs that belly and stretch with relish.

‘Time for business Jim’, he flips the shot glass upside down and use it as a chair. ‘We need to talk about Amy’. Jim puts his beer down and takes a piece of chocolate covered cheesecake, ‘What about Amy?’ Jesus leans forward with his hands on his knees, his expression stern and serious, and says ‘She’s killing you, Jim.’

Jim stops chewing and swallows the cheesecake, ‘What?’, he manages before he takes a sip of beer to wash it down. ‘Those meds she feeds you, she buys them on the black market, online’, Jesus makes air quotation marks when he says ‘meds’. ‘It’s poison dude. That shit is going to shut down your kidneys, destroy your liver and possibly cause aneurysms. If you refuse to take it, or complain to someone she will get you committed, she already laid the groundwork for that. You are fucked my man’.

Jim is not shocked to hear this. He has had his suspicions about Amy. Since he was diagnosed with some memory issue a year ago, she’s been pumping him full of meds. She does buy these online and keeps it in smaller Tupperware containers inside the big one in the fridge. The original containers she throws away.

‘There is only one way out. You have to kill her first’, Jesus flipped the shot glass right side up, and Jim fills it once more. ‘I’ll talk you through it’.

***

‘What in God’s name happened here?’, detective Jones asks himself. Sometimes he comes up with the answers himself.

He moved closer to the petite woman hanging on the master bedroom wall above the bed. She is naked and still fit and attractive for her age. She has been nailed to the wall. Someone drew a rough cross on the wall with a sharpie, then nailed her hands through the drywall into the wall studs. Her feet are on the bed, nailed to the bed’s headboard. Above her head, at the top of the cross, a sign was drawn. It read, ‘Bitch, liar, murderer, cunt’.

Her name was Amy. Her husband Jim is missing. He has dementia, quite advanced, and Amy took leave of absence from her nursing job to care for him. There is no car in the garage or the driveway. It appears Jim did this, then took off. Why the cross? Why go through the trouble to draw it on the wall, and then struggle to actually nail a person to it?

Amy must have put up a hell of a fight. Some of her nails were torn, and others had skin under them. Her face was a bloody mess. Jim must have beaten her unconscious before he could draw the cross on the wall, strip her clothes off and then crucified her. Jim will be apprehended, but Jones does not think he will be able to provide satisfactory answers.

***

On his way outside Jones sees a deputy staring at a wall. ‘What are you looking at son?’, he asks. He has learned to examine and question everything at crime scenes. This clue escapes him though. The deputy says nothing, he just points to something on the wall, next to a picture of pope Francis.

It is an empty cross.

‘