Conversations with the Twelve 1 (incomplete)

I. The Thirteenth Spirit in my Dorm

The fall of my freshman year of college brought many changes into my life. I speak, as it were, in retrospect, as now many of the conversations have passed, and I am no longer in that time. My disjointed memories still come in patches of light, relating only to those things which greatly moved me. Times in the labyrinth, laughter with the marauders, tears shed in Sunday service. But perhaps most clear in the framework of this past were these conversations – each was shared in a context that would seem informal to others but myself, and each was held in his own place save one.

It was a chill day and the autumn leaves were collecting in the streets as I made my way to my dorm room. My mind was reeling from my Bible class and the film we had watched. Images continued to play in my memory, one that I was finding especially hard to eliminate. This was one of the few times Thomas didn’t come to me as I was walking, perhaps because he knew of my thoughts. And on it played, over and over, running something like this;

He collapsed onto his knees, coins spilling around him as he frantically cried after the receding silhouette of a member of the Sanhedrin. But his words seemed to echo into the very depths of my skull. Like a mantra, or a pulsating rhythm of sadness and despair they came. But I’ve betrayed an innocent man!

Those words continued as a descant to the sound of my feet on the pavement and I sighed, wondering about the nature of my discontent. Was this blasphemy, what I was pondering now? It was hard for me to place because everything about him in the film was wrong. As I entered the stairwell and made my way to the third floor of my dorm, each step seemed to bring with it a new question, each fueled by the dangerously dogmatic system I was surrounded in. Sword. Greed. Uprisings. Glory. A turn of the corner and a new set of stairs. Tears. Regret. Despair. Noose.

The hall was dimly lit due to the overcast fall weather, and I paused to allow my eyes time to adjust to the shadow. A few more steps and I was led to the door that marked entrance to my shelter. And as I went to sit at my computer desk, I was barely aware of anything out of the ordinary. I went about my daily routine, checking my email, my online journal, the message board that I frequently lived vicariously on, and then to start on the homework. It was in tossing my messenger bag on my bed that I saw him, the thirteenth spirit, sitting at the foot of my bed. At this time, of course, I didn’t know him by this name but by his given name, Judas the Iscariot. But all the same I saw him and knew him, just as I had the others, though this time seemed distinctly different. First of all, he had not in my memory ever appeared to me before, and unlike the others, there was no real excitement or jubilation on his swarthy face. He simply looked calm. I watched him for a few seconds as though not quite sure what to say, but he beat me to it by being the first to speak, his eyes focusing no longer on me but on my bookshelf, which was currently littered with various literature of Kafka, Wilde, Tolkien, and the Fab Four. “I hear you speak to the others,” he said quietly, in a voice that was quite unlike what I had expected. The film had shown him passionate, shouting, bright and resolute. But this man was not like the film at all. This man was practically silent.

“Yes sir,” I replied with an awkward smile crossing my face and I took a seat next to him. This was definitely a new development as I had never in my wildest dreams expected to see him in all that I had seen, but yet here he was, just like the others in my life, and he was speaking to me. Perhaps it was because I had finally found his spot. Some of them had only just been revealed to me because of where they were. Bartholomew, after all, was in the campus church, and had I not transferred to this college, I never would have met him at all. It stood to reason then that this would be the first time I saw Judas. But it was still a novel experience. “You talk to them?”

He shrugged lightly and turned to look at me, eyes of inky black watching me as though sizing me up. “Maybe Thomas…” he replied in his even tone and a hint of a smile broke his face. “Sometimes Petros, but not so much…they keep him busy these days.”

“I see,” I said quietly, trying not to appear too surprised by the whole interaction. Now John had led me to believe that this one wouldn’t be speaking to me. He didn’t have the capability, I was told. But clearly he was wrong, for there he sat. “Did they tell you to seek me?”

He shook his head and leaned back against the wall, sighing deeply. “I was able to read your poem.”

“Ah, yes,” I responded, pulling out a small leather-bound journal from my messenger bag that’s weathered pages were riddled in pencil scratches that were vaguely identifiable as poetry. “Thomas let you read it, I gather…”

“Of course,” was his simple reply, and his eyes glanced back at the door. Apparently he was weary about my roommate coming in, and he had some reason to be. None of them ever wanted to talk to me if someone else was present. They feared it would make me look a fool, and ruin my reputation. Not that I would have minded; half the school already thought I was gay and conservative – I couldn’t possibly have a worse reputation than that on this campus, as true or untrue as it was. Seeming crazy, talking to the spirits of the twelve disciples wasn’t that odd when compared to my other rumors. But it was irrelevant. As he kept his eyes on the door, waiting for the fateful arrival of the roommate, I leafed through the pages of the weathered book that had been given to me as a gift for a birthday. The page was creased and smudged from the very poor pen that I had used to write the disjointed piece, but all in all it was still readable.

“Don’t worry, Judas,” I said as I was aware of how constant his stare was fixated on the door. “My roommate won’t be back for at least another hour or so…” Then I got up and pushed the lock in so that no one would be able to get in without my permission. “There. Better?” I continued as I sat beside him once more, and I cast him a gentle smile, hoping to set him at ease. He nodded without speaking and turned his eyes to the journal within my hand. I passed it to him, making sure not to actually touch him, as that always caused odd reactions. Though I had been able to hug Peter on occasion, most of the time when I tried to touch them, it only caused an odd sensation to penetrate my entire body. It was a feeling of which I could barely describe, but if I were to equate it to anything, it would be standing in the sunlight on a particularly windy day. Though the sun fills your entire body with an intense sort of warmth, the breeze cuts through you, leaving you with a dual sensation of hot and cold in one simple motion. It was not unpleasant so much as unsettling, and with this man’s history, I wasn’t sure what it might feel like if I were to touch him. Although I doubted he was any different from his brethren.

“It’s a beautiful poem,” he continued as though his paranoia hadn’t even existed, and this time a real smile broke his otherwise distant expression. “It’s what made me know I could come here.”

I blinked as I wasn’t quite sure how to take the complement. I wasn’t particularly fond of my poetry, as most artists usually are about their work, but coming from the subject it was an odd sort of euphoria that passed through me. I couldn’t help but blush slightly and smile. “Thanks. I had a good subject,” I said quietly.

That got his attention, because his eyes shot back quickly to my face and the small smile that was on his face had grown. He didn’t say anything though because he didn’t seem to know how to take what I had said. But then he turned his eyes back to the page, reading through the verse with an odd sort of sparkle in his deep eyes. “I especially like the last few lines,” he added as he ran a finger across the lines in the page. “It makes it as though you knew me.”

“Sometimes I think I do,” I added, and unconsciously I placed my hand on his shoulder. That strange sensation ebbed its way through my body, but I did not fight the contact once it had been placed, not wanting to seem insensitive, as he seemed one in need of sensitivity. His distant expression and quiet eyes told me that clearly. “Or at least, I want to.”

He laughed lightly and closed the book, letting it rest in his lap and keeping his eyes ever locked on the cover. “I’m glad Thomas told me about you…it’s nice to know there is someone around who even understands.”

I didn’t speak, as there wasn’t anything I could say. I didn’t know what he was speaking of, nor would I ever understand how it must have been to be the traitor throughout history that was hated, depicted grotesquely, and even hung in effigy in certain antiquated sects. I would have hugged him, but I think the sensation would have been too much for me, and so I restrained myself.

“How long have you been this way?” he said finally, his dark eyes locking with mine, holding an interesting luminosity all their own and within them I could see that emotionally, he was happy. Or at least, as happy as someone as subdued as he looked could be. I smiled back at him brightly and shrugged.

“Not sure,” I said in a flippant voice. “Long as I can remember…”

“It helps.”

A few seconds passed in silence where I was smiling at him and he was watching me with an understated joy about him, which was suddenly broken by another crashing in though my door, literally coming through it like a shade, with a bright smile on his face. It was Thomas, my Thomas, the one who came to me most often. He wasn’t bound by parameter like the others. Whereas each of them has his own sphere of influence (Peter my living room, John the fire pit, Bartholomew the church and James the labyrinth), Thomas was not bound to these walls, and frequently appeared to me wherever and whenever he pleased. Not that I minded too much; I related to the disciple on a level that none of the others had been able to achieve. Peter came close, which is why it was easy for me to embrace the tortured saint, but Thomas had a playfully sardonic nature that intrigued me and made me smile, no matter what might have been chancing in my life.

“I see you two have met,” he said with a bright smile playing across his darkly tanned face.

I stood up immediately and approached him with a mock-threatening expression on my face. “You, my friend, are a real creep,” I said with a laugh. “Who said you could share my poetry with random people?”

“No one,” he replied, and his laugh joined mine, filling the room with our mutual amusement. “Besides, I knew you wouldn’t mind. You’ve only been obsessed with him for the past…month or so.”

“I am not obsessed,” I answered quickly, glancing back to Judas, who now appeared to be extremely shy, hiding as best he could behind his thick mane of black hair. “Don’t listen to him, Judas…he’s trying to embarrass me.”

“I’m succeeding,” Thomas broke in, and he clapped me on the shoulder, sending me wheeling with the odd sensation filling my body. “And you wanted to meet him, didn’t you?”

I sighed and rolled my eyes at him, clearly defeated. “Of course I did, you creep,” I replied in a voice dripping with exasperation. “Which leads me to my question of why you didn’t tell me I could talk to him.”

Thomas shrugged and collapsed with a little too much force onto my bed, causing his companion to loose his balance momentarily, grasping rather frantically for the post so he could steady himself. “Thomas, you’re like a saint in a china shop,” I scolded him as Judas cast him an odd glance but said nothing.

“Oh stop,” he murmured, shaking his hand at me. “You know I couldn’t tell you anyway. Would you have believed me?”

I stopped to think about this fact. Didn’t make sense to me. As far as I knew, I had always been sympathetic to the quiet man sitting beside my talkative guardian. Why wouldn’t I believe him? My first experience with him at the age of six made me feel terrible. I had even talked to my mother about him and how bad I felt about him, and the conversation had only ended badly. At that time, I had embraced that strange worldview that, despite all that had happened, he was a malicious spirit, concerned only with money. Looking at him now, as he sat there, I knew that couldn’t have been the case. And somewhere in my heart I had always known it, but not had the words. “I think you’re wrong, Thomas,” I answered finally after some thought, and as my bed was taken up by the two men, I decided to sit at my computer desk, though from that angle I could barely see Judas, as he was hidden by Thomas’ form. With my taken seat came a new seriousness that would rule me now that the two were calmly seated. This was my room, and they were my guests, and the appearance of the non-disciple had shaken my view of this whole experience. “How many of them know he’s here?” I asked Thomas in a hushed tone, and his face went from playful to deep in an instant, glancing from me to the man beside him, not sure how to answer.

“Well, Peter, of course…it’s hard to get things past him, with his position,” Thomas spoke in an even tone. “I can’t say for the others, although they keep such a close watch on you that it’s hard to tell. John will know eventually – he cares a lot for you.”

“I know,” I replied, turning my eyes to my lap and trying not to meet either of their gazes. They all kept such a close watch on me that sometimes it was hard to be myself. It was unsettling to know that everything you did was being watched by eleven saints who died several hundred years before your birth. Twelve, actually, if one counted the newest addition to the family. It was flattering, to be sure, that they all trusted me so well, but having them watch me kept me from ever succumbing to selfish desires. Which again wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it was certainly inconvenient at times.

“It bothers her,” Thomas spoke as an aside to Judas, to which the other looked strangely bemused, which suited him much better than the silent pensiveness that seemed ever present on his face.

“Of course it does,” he answered lightly and nudged Thomas in a playful manner that he hadn’t exhibited earlier. Apparently he was close enough to Thomas to be more open with him. I hoped the two of us could reach that level, but right now we were not quite there yet. We were just beginning the awkward mutual-appreciation stage that I had gone through with each of them. It would be at least a month until he was comfortable enough with me to be open. But then again, his was a special case, and it could take longer for him to be open with me.

“Eh, its not that big of a deal,” I explained as I compulsively ran my finger across the touchpad of my laptop, watching it explode to life and vitality, my web browser popping up as per ritual, revealing that I had no new messages. Not that it surprised me. I was enough of a nerd that I only had a handful of friends outside the apparitions that came to me softly. “It is weird though, having twelve dead apostles watching out for you constantly.”

Thomas laughed again and rolled his eyes. “Hey, I asked you if you minded the first time we met, and you didn’t have a problem with it.”

“I don’t,” I covered quickly, and closed my laptop to avoid any distraction it might bring. “But you have to admit, it’s weird.”

He shrugged and leaned back on his elbows, making it much easier to see the man seated beside him. “It is weird, but keep in mind that everyone is in the same position,” Judas spoke, and it was perhaps one of the longest things he had said the whole time since he’d revealed himself. “You just are the only person who knows about it.”

I laughed lightly, trying to cover my discomfort and shook my head. “Well, I suppose your right, but that’s still pretty much creepy. You’re all like…stalkers…or something.”

“Spiritual stalkers,” Thomas broke in and I tried to cover my explosive laughter, only to have it come out a half-snort. “Well, that’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“That’s an oxymoron, Thomas…” I added as I tried to reign in my amusement, hoping I didn’t seem too irreverent. Although, thinking back on it, how irreverent could I have been, sitting and joshing with the spirits of two apostles? It wasn’t a normal situation to find oneself in, to be sure, so it didn’t call for normal judgments.