Ogre John was an ogre and his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to Golgotha, had led him into the Judaean Desert without a single bottle of Evian, Dasani, Aquafina, Fiji, SmartWater, tap water, ditch water or, most ignominious of all, Contrex. Ogre John’s huge ogre hump, the traditional ogric desert-survival mechanism, was dust-dry and deflated. High on an escarpment, still far beyond the Holy Sepulchre, Ogre John with his walking stick saw the sin-charred Devil of Finance climbing up the slope to meet him.
“Hello, friend,” the devil said as it approached. “I bet you’re wondering, ‘Who is this guy? Why is he wandering by himself in the desert? And how did he make $13 million in three days?’ Well, maybe you weren’t thinking that last part, but now–and I can read a room like a book–I can tell you’re definitely wondering about it! (laughs) But let me take a step back. First of all, I’m not a smart guy, I didn’t go to Yale, folks, but I’m an innovator. An innovative thinker.
“Gandhi once said, ‘What matters is initiative. If you have a problem, and you can solve it without a text book, that’s what makes you a star.’ And the day I sold my social media startup to Google after eight days in business–that day, the whole day, Gandhi’s words were ringing, vibrating in my head. I didn’t grow up rich, believe it or not, and there was absolutely no one around to tell me how to get rich. But I’m here to tell you, if you want to hear it. Are you ready? Really? I can’t hear you!”
Ogre John waved away the devil, wordlessly, and planted his walking stick in the loose dry pebbly earth, and dragged himself further toward Jerusalem.
But he was soon approached, this time on a desolate brown terrace, by a second devil: the Devil of the American Dream, around whom the torturous desert air was neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm. This in itself was a temptation. The devil plied Ogre John with his most loathsome promises: suburban housing with a reasonable mortgage; two passionate flare-out marriages; a strip of fast food establishments–Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Rally’s, Domino’s, Sonic, Burger King, McDonald’s, KFC–and enough money to graze on them for ten years, without once cooking his own meal; and a full-priced Netflix subscription–the kind with the DVDs, even Blu-Ray Discs, in the mail.
“Look how far you’ve come already!” the devil cried out. “The Apostles themselves could never have made this journey, especially without a Chipotle Quesarito–Taco Bell’s cheesy quesadilla wrapped around a beefy burrito. Come, rest awhile in the tepid air and we’ll order in.”
Ogre John suffered terribly under the devil’s persuasions, for he had in his past life eaten a Double Down ironically and enjoyed it secretly, but he said nothing, and he waved away his tormentor, and he trudged into the horizon. Jerusalem came into sight, high on a hill. And, to his surprise, he entered its walls without further incident.
At the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, dying and delirious, Ogre John’s thoughts became darkened. He felt the third devil, small as a hairpin, gnawing on his potatoesque ogre thumb. It was the Devil of Ressentiment, in the Nietzschean Sense of that Word. “Think of all who belittled and bullied you, Ogre John, for your ogre nature!” the devil screamed in its hundred-tiny-chainsaws scream. “Think of how they lorded their human intelligence over you! Who is more exalted than yourself, the least of all, the lamb to the eagles? And who more deserving of this triumphant pilgrimage?
“How many on Mount Athos scoffed at your awkwardnesses of speech? And how many of them are here, now, having been rewarded as you have been?” roared the devil, who had now grown much larger than Ogre John himself, and whose shadow enclosed every old structure in the Old City. “The last is now first, the first last, and your recompense is well earned. Those who shamed and exploited you–and who, in their pampering, would likely have been too weak to evade my brothers in the desert–are now cast down themselves. Rejoice, for justice is done.”
Ogre John had never used Twitter–in actuality he knew the word only as birdsong–, and his memory of Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right was spotty, but he succumbed for one moment to the devil’s words. And then Ogre John spoke with a burst-bagpipe voice. “Devil, you have succeeded where the others failed,” he said, and he sat down three yards from the door he’d sought, his fists together, statue-still, mind blank. And there he sits to this day, miraculously without food or water, waiting to be ready to enter.
John Gabriel Adkins is a Pushcart-nominated writer of anti-stories, microfiction and other oddities, and is a member of the Still Eating Oranges arts collective. His work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Squawk Back, SPANK the CARP,Danse Macabre, Sick Lit Magazine, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, The Sleep Aquarium and more.
–Art by Thomas H
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