They beat him and drove him away. His crimes were too heinous to mention, so they stripped his name away and sent him into the desert to die. It wasn’t that they were merciful, or cruel, though the desert was harsh and deadly; he was too defiled to kill. No one was willing to take the blood guilt on. So, exile.

Yeshu the nameless wandered through the desert, weeping and gnashing his teeth. He was small, tough, and wiry, with a well-made, handsome face. Fair to look upon, though ugly now with crying. Around midday he found a well and slumped in the shade and cursed the people who’d turned him out. He invented a thousand different tortures to visit on them, but part of what they’d done to him made it impossible for him to go back.

Someone came up to the well, sand crunching underfoot. “Why are you crying, Yeshu? Fear not; there is one who watches over –” Yeshu threw a rock at its head. It crumpled to the ground, bleeding from the ears, and he spat on it. The blood slowed and stopped, and the delicate throat stilled. He’d killed it. He’d only wanted to drive it away, but its death made him happy. As the light went out of its body he stripped its robes off.

The angel was smooth and unmarked from the waist down, but that didn’t really bother him. He raped its corpse anyway, making figs at the sky.