The Easter story re-told

This week our prompt at Sunday Scribblings is Mentor. Let me tell you about Jez...


Jez wanted to take his mind off what was to happen the next day! So that Thursday night he gathered together a bunch of his friends for a meal at his local pub, The Cross Inn; the last supper he jokingly called it! Vast quantities of food were consumed along with far more beer and wine than would normally have been drunk on a Thursday night! But with good reason.


Jez would never knowingly hurt a soul. He was affectionately known as the Good Samaritan. Jez was their mentor, the person they would  turn to when life threw problems at them. He always put everybody before himself. Unfortunately, an act of kindness he'd carried out a few weeks earlier had been misconstrued and as a result he was to be hauled up before the local magistrates to answer for a misdemeanour he’d not committed.


His friends were in no doubt that the case against him would be thrown out of court, but nonetheless they wanted him to know that they were behind him whatever happened. At least that’s what they thought. But on Friday morning at ten o’clock as they looked on from the public gallery things began to go in a very different direction from that they’d expected. Not only was he found guilty of a crime he’d not carried out, but he was ordered to be taken down and held in custody for six months.


It was not a good Friday and what happened that day would remain in the memories of his friends for the rest of their lives. The shock was too much for Jez to bear and as he was led from the dock his legs gave way beneath him. Even as he lay there he whispered that it was not the fault of the magistrate, he forgave him because he simply hadn't know what actually happened. But something was seriously wrong with Jez. An ambulance was called but he died before it reached the hospital.


On Sunday morning  Jez’s special friend Martha was given permission to visit the funeral home and bid him farewell. She was shown into a room where the coffin sat on a bench surrounded by flowers and candles. She walked slowly forward, in her hand a silver cross which she was to place in the coffin for Jez to take with him into the next life. But to her shock and horror the coffin was empty. It was as if he'd risen from the dead. The room seemed to spin and she passed out on the floor. Everyone including the funeral director said that she’d imagined it, that the traumatic events of the past few days had played tricks with her mind.


The next  morning she was lying in her bed unable to get up and face the day. She thought she heard a mans voice say her name from somewhere in the darkened room.'Why are you crying Martha?' he asked.  She said that they'd taken Jez and she didn't know where he was. Then then in the gloom she saw the figure of a man. The figure of Jez. She watched as he waved to her.'Tell them I'm ok' he said then he faded away and once again she was all alone.


Martha was never the same again. Whatever happened that morning whether real or imaginary, changed her life. At Jez's funeral she started smiling, certain in the knowledge that the coffin contained nothing more than a small silver cross. She couldn’t stop smiling and she’s smiled ever since!