Moses’ 115th Plague

Helen, who’d recently arrived from Memphis after her scene with Paris, burst into the Jade Room with Pharaoh’s goblet, which was either half full or half empty, depending on your perspective. “He’s back!” she exclaimed, out of breath, handing him the goblet.

“Who’s back?” he asked, looking up lazily from a more important task, which was filing his hangnails. He took a drink from the goblet and spit it out. “I said regular, not diet!” He honestly didn’t know who’s back.

“You know!” she said.

“No! I don’t know!”

“Big old guy with long hair and a beard!”

Ramses scratched his head. “That could be anyone!” he screamed. He was supposed to be nice to Helen, who was here on loan from Proteus while Menelaus made his way down from Greece to fetch her. What a mess all that had turned out to be. He said “sorry for yelling” and looked at her kindly.

“The one with the staff!” She was only here for tourist season and hadn't gotten everyone’s names straight yet.

“You mean Moses?”" he scowled.

Helen jumped up and down and said, “YES! Moses!”

“Send him in,” said the pharaoh, cursing under his breath. “I’ll show him what’s what,” but she was already gone.

In comes Moses, with his staff, standing there, not shaking pharaoh’s hand. The sort of behavior that could land you in a pit of asps. But he was Moses, and everyone was used to his eccentricities.

“Let my people go!” he said, same as ever. The pharaoh always mocked him. “Let my people go! Let my people go! Bah!” Then there’d be another plague, this one worse than the previous. We were now up to boils and cattle disease, which were pretty bad, though quite popular at modern Passover seders.

The pharaoh glared or maybe even glowered at Moses, pointing towards the door. “Get out of here, I’ll tear you limb from limb.”

“You know they refused Jesus, too.”

He said “You’re not Him. Get out of here before I break your bones, I ain’t your pop.”

“I’ll have you arrested,” said Moses, and he went looking for a cop. But the cops threw him out on his cape and laughed. “Arrest the pharaoh? Ha!”

“You’ll be sorry! Just you wait and see!” So Moses left the cops, who were still laughing, and he went straight to God, who was beholden to no one, not even the pharaoh. “I tried to reason with him, but I can’t get past his damn hangnails.”

God said, “so be it.” Then, as if to pharaoh, he raised his voice to where everyone in the room could hear. “Don’t say I never warned you.” To Moses, “which do you prefer, hail? Or locusts?”

Moses thought for a minute and said, “Hail. You’ve got to build up to locusts. How about a twofer? Hit him with hail, and then do the locusts right afterwards. That’ll grab his attention.”

“I don’t do twofers,” God said. “Very well. Hail it is.”

The sky opened up above the pharaoh’s palace, and hail the size of goat’s heads fell from the heavens, making loud, crashing sounds, breaking windows, denting car hoods, and even landing in the pharaoh’s soup. “Moses!” he cried. “Get me Moses!”

The same cops who’d earlier laughed at him grabbed Moses outside Taco Time, where they serve the best tater tots, only they call them Mexi-fries to be more culturally accurate. “Pharaoh wants to see you,” said Chief Moab.

“Tell him I’ll swing by after lunch,” Moses said, continuing to chew on his Mexi-fries, but more slowly now. The cops left, but they came back with reinforcements, and Chief Moab said, “aren’t you done yet? Man, you sure eat slow.” They left again, only this time, they didn’t come back.

Moses wrapped up his lunch and stuck it in one of the pockets of his multi-colored dream coat (the one handed down to him from Joseph), then he made his way back to the palace to see pharaoh. Helen showed him in. I don’t know why he even bothered, it was always the same.

“Let my people go!” Moses cried.

“Let my people go!” the pharaoh mocked. “Get outta here!”

“You’re really not going to like the next one,” said Moses, knowing it was locusts.

“Get out!” screamed the pharaoh, and so Moses left, shaking his head, wondering why God wouldn’t just allow the Children of Israel to let themselves go, and to hell with pharaoh and his chariots of fire.

He turned to Helen on his way out, letting loose a satisfactory belch. “You can come with us, you know.”

She flashed her “takes one to know one” smile. “No,” was all she said.

He gave her a thumbs up as he walked out the door, figuring even the locusts wouldn’t change pharaoh’s mind.