Drifting out of your sleep, you slowly creak your eyes open as you feel the warmth of life suffuse your limbs, once cold with the rigor of death. Unfolding your arms from over your chest, you look around. Set within a deep tomb, you slowly push yourself to your aching knees, splaying your long fingers wide against the lid of your earthen womb. Pushing, the lid, which should be hard to remove, seems to slide off as if greased, falling to the wayside with a horrendous shatter of stone.
Getting up to your feet, you look around you and blink for the first time in decades. Other men have emerged from their coffins, emaciated figures full of worms and wood roaches, some missing parts of their body entirely. One stood off to the side, climbing out of his coffin, his ankle broken at the joint, forcing him to walk in obvious pain.
"What woke us?" You ask, coughing up dust and dried flesh. Your tongue feels heavy in your mouth, and dry as the deserts around you.
"The messiah's return!" One of the other dead moaned, earning groans and protestations from the surrounding dead.
"The messiah?" You ask, thinking back hard on the prophecies of the Old Law. "Could the Messiah really have come?"
"I sensed him in a vision," the other corpse, eyes deflated and jawbone cracked, quipped. "He wants us to storm Jerusalem and preach the word of God."
"He wants us to preach? As we are, right now?"
"That is the will of Yahweh..." Cracked Jaw murmurs, holding his hands out wide.
"The will of Yahweh..." the other corpses around us all intone.
"And you think people will listen to us? As we are right now, wrapped in burial shrouds, rotting?"
"They will listen... we will force them to listen. It is His will..."
"The will of Yahweh..." The corpses intone as they wrap their burial shrouds around themselves to provide some modesty.
"And nobody finds this the slightest bit odd? I mean, the Messiah is alive and out there, shouldn't he be the one doing the preaching?"
"Oh, they killed him," Cracked Jaw says, his voice coming in cleaner with every word.
Panic grips your unbeating heart. "They killed him? Why would they do that?"
"Because they doubt his claims at being the Messiah," Cracked Jaw explains, moving to the side of the room and taking up a great walking stick. "The Elders threw him to the wolves, allowing him to be tortured to death at the hands of unbelievers."
"Why on earth would they do that?" You ask, grasping the sides of your head as you feel a massive headache coming on.
"They don't believe he's the Messiah," Cracked Jaw says with a casual shrug. "He's come back to life and he brought us back as well. So let us storm the streets of Jerusalem and preach the word of Yahweh!"
"The will of Yahweh..." the others intoned, following their charismatic corpse of a leader.
"This is all going to end badly, I know it..." You mutter as you shuffle alongside the other zealous dead, listening to them spout off pious words and phrases through rotten teeth and over blackened gum. Still, it would be nice to see the city once again... you don't know where you've been, but it certainly hasn't been Heaven like you'd been promised...
Getting up to your feet, you look around you and blink for the first time in decades. Other men have emerged from their coffins, emaciated figures full of worms and wood roaches, some missing parts of their body entirely. One stood off to the side, climbing out of his coffin, his ankle broken at the joint, forcing him to walk in obvious pain.
"What woke us?" You ask, coughing up dust and dried flesh. Your tongue feels heavy in your mouth, and dry as the deserts around you.
"The messiah's return!" One of the other dead moaned, earning groans and protestations from the surrounding dead.
"The messiah?" You ask, thinking back hard on the prophecies of the Old Law. "Could the Messiah really have come?"
"I sensed him in a vision," the other corpse, eyes deflated and jawbone cracked, quipped. "He wants us to storm Jerusalem and preach the word of God."
"He wants us to preach? As we are, right now?"
"That is the will of Yahweh..." Cracked Jaw murmurs, holding his hands out wide.
"The will of Yahweh..." the other corpses around us all intone.
"And you think people will listen to us? As we are right now, wrapped in burial shrouds, rotting?"
"They will listen... we will force them to listen. It is His will..."
"The will of Yahweh..." The corpses intone as they wrap their burial shrouds around themselves to provide some modesty.
"And nobody finds this the slightest bit odd? I mean, the Messiah is alive and out there, shouldn't he be the one doing the preaching?"
"Oh, they killed him," Cracked Jaw says, his voice coming in cleaner with every word.
Panic grips your unbeating heart. "They killed him? Why would they do that?"
"Because they doubt his claims at being the Messiah," Cracked Jaw explains, moving to the side of the room and taking up a great walking stick. "The Elders threw him to the wolves, allowing him to be tortured to death at the hands of unbelievers."
"Why on earth would they do that?" You ask, grasping the sides of your head as you feel a massive headache coming on.
"They don't believe he's the Messiah," Cracked Jaw says with a casual shrug. "He's come back to life and he brought us back as well. So let us storm the streets of Jerusalem and preach the word of Yahweh!"
"The will of Yahweh..." the others intoned, following their charismatic corpse of a leader.
"This is all going to end badly, I know it..." You mutter as you shuffle alongside the other zealous dead, listening to them spout off pious words and phrases through rotten teeth and over blackened gum. Still, it would be nice to see the city once again... you don't know where you've been, but it certainly hasn't been Heaven like you'd been promised...
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