Tommy was dead, but Billy held on. Though his friend was lost, he had a better, cooler friend in Jesus.

It was a typical spring morning in northeastern Ohio. Sunlight filtered through corpse-gray clouds down onto the soggy ground below. Tommy and Billy were practicing their usual spring pastime, slush fishing. “It’s amazing the things you find in the slush,” Tommy said, swiping his fishing net along the curb.

“I haven’t found anything good since that rusty cigar case back in ’98,” Billy sighed. “That’s when I stopped believing in God.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that, Billy. Jesus loves you, and one day you’ll see that, too.” Tommy was very religious. Sometimes Billy resented Tommy because he got to drink wine every week, but they were still friends.

Suddenly, a big beat-up car came out of nowhere. The frightened children abandoned their fishing nets and dove off the road and over the guardrail. That’s when tragedy struck.

Just over the guardrail, the ground slanted sharply into a ravine. Small trees, bushes, and litter lined the walls of the ravine, and Tommy’s face landed right on a broken beer bottle that had been embedded in the steep ground, killing him instantly. Billy, however, bounced once, twice, then felt the sharp prick of a tree limb ripping through his bowels. Opening his eyes, he found himself dangling upside-down by his intestines over the creek 35 feet below, with Tommy’s body dangling from its impaled face ten feet above him.

“Golly, this sure is a shitload of blood coming out of my gut,” Billy observed. “Hey, Tommy, are you dead?”

Tommy’s silence spoke volumes, volumes filled with the words, “I sure am dead, Billy.”

Billy felt a sharp pain as a something fell from above into his gaping gut wound. Tommy’s Bible! It was then that Billy felt the spirit of Jesus enter his body.

“Me dammit, kid, how’d you manage this?” The voice was deep and otherworldly.

Billy was in awe. “Jesus?”

Billy woke up in the emergency room of the local hospital later that night. There, he recounted his amazing tale about how he dangled by his intestines while talking to Jesus. Despite profuse bleeding, his blood supply was continually recharged by the rain of blood pouring from Tommy’s impaled face above him. Amazingly, they were the same blood type.

Though help did not arrive for several hours, Billy says that’s okay. He got hungry, but Jesus told him to just bite his nails for sustenance. Jesus taught him Bible songs and warned him not to touch his intestines.

Today, Billy has recovered from his harrowing experience and is living a normal life, attending church weekly.

Tommy is still dead.