Centurion: Mark's Gospel as a Thriller by Ryan Casey Waller Read Free Book Online

into the steel doors as they shut, sealing us inside.
    The elevator shudders and moves downward.
    Under the red glow off the elevator, I regard my new friend. Her face shines with sweat, and I wonder what it would be like to hold her in my arms, to kiss her delicate lips.
    "Do you trust me?" she says, her breath shallow and quivering.
    "Yes."
    "Good," she says soberly. "Because down here...you'll need to."
    As the elevator plunges hundreds of feet beneath the earth's surface, the din of barking dogs is replaced by the thick whir of the elevator's machinery—
hummmmmmmmm.
    Down we go.
    Then the thumping begins, hard and fast, its pulse infecting my bloodstream like a sticky flu—
Doosh. Doosh. Doosh. Doosh. Doosh.
    I hear it loud and clear long before the elevator finishes its descent. It's a pounding beat, repeating its rhythm over and over, the trance quickly imprinting itself on my brain. When the elevator stops and the doors open, the beat is joined by a bass so bruising that I feel it reverberate in my knees. I've never heard music so loud in my life, if music is even what you call such a noise; it sounds more like an explosion.
    Maria grazes a hand across my chin as the doors open. Above the noise she hollers, "Follow me." She offers me her hand, and I take it. "Don't let go!" she orders.
    "Never" is what I want to tell her.
I'm never letting you go.
Our hands meld as if they were fashioned from the beginning of time to do so, as if this is all they're good for, to make the other body know the tender touch of love. We've barely shared ten sentences between us, yet I feel as if we've traveled a lifetime by each other's sides—intimately familiar with how the other moves, breathes,
wants.
I cling to her as if she were my only purchase in this world, the one true thing I can grasp. I long to touch more of her.
    Maria guides me out of the elevator purposefully, her eyes focused ahead on some unknown target, a destination I can't imagine. My eyes dart this way and that, my mind manically doing its best to process the imagery my senses feed it. But it's maximum overload, and despite my best efforts, I can't absorb this dark circus in its entirety. I catch only vignettes, my attention divided between my surroundings and my need to stay as close to Maria as possible.
    The space is damp and cold. My initial guess is that we're in an abandoned underground railway. The walls are a dark brick, and they're covered in a slippery film that shines like oil. I smell a putrid mixture of mildew, stale tobacco, and vomit. I reflexively lean closer to Maria and inhale the vanilla of her jet-black hair.
    We walk at an even clip. The bass continues to thump at an unholy decibel, and my eyes slowly adjust to the absolute darkness of this buried place. To my immediate right is the brick wall, but to my left is what feels like a cavernous space. I squint and confirm my initial guess was correct. I make out a deep divide and can just barely decipher the steel railing running along the base of the depressed floor.
    I put my mouth near Maria's ear, my lips grazing her skin, and ask, "What is this place?"
    Maria shakes her head. "You don't want to know."
    "Why won't the centurions come down here?"
    Maria makes a sharp right turn, and we hurry up a small set of stairs that leads through an archway that's slightly better lit than the first room. That's when I begin to understand.
    The hallway is filled with people. There must be hundreds of them. They're filthy, their faces smudged in grease, their foreheads shiny with alcohol-laden sweat. The smell in the hallway is infinitely worse, and no amount of vanilla in Maria's hair can prevent the stench from invading my nostrils.
    Our pace is dramatically slowed as we snake through the overcrowded space. The farther we travel, the louder the music gets, growing to a deafening crescendo. I can't understand how anyone could stand being in here for any length of time. My head aches.
    Doosh. Doosh. Doosh.