The Harlot by The Side of The Road: Forbidden Tales of The Bible Read Online Free PDF Page A

of your own daughters on their hands?”
    Then, as if to silence her, a sharp cracking sound was heard from far away, and a wave of heat rolled up from behind them and enveloped them. The air seemed to thicken and shimmer before their eyes, the stink of sulphur filled their nostrils, and new sounds reached their ears, as if the cries of men and women and babies, suffering and dying, were carried on the hot wind across the plain all the way from Sodom.
    “Oh, Momma—” cried the older daughter.
    “Hurry!” cried Lot, pulling ahead of his wife and daughters.
    But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. And Abraham got up early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. And he looked out toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the Plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the land went up as the smoke of a furnace. And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the Plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot dwelt
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    — GENESIS 19:26–29    
     
    Now they began to walk faster, panting and gasping in the vile air, suddenly so heavy with greasy white ash, and they hastened toward the first house on the outskirts of the little town. They heard another rumble from far behind them and broke into a trot, not stopping until they reached the shelter of the first house.
    Lot bent over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. His older daughter simply folded up like a doll and rolled to the ground, weeping quietly. But his wife stood upright and rigid. “Maybe the others are coming right now,” she said aloud. “Maybe we can see them on the road—”
    “Momma, don’t!” cried the younger daughter, but it was too late. Her mother turned and looked. Shading her eyes with one hand, squinting against the terrible light that burned on the far horizon, Lot’s wife stared into the distance. What she saw, the rest of them never knew.
    Her eyes widened, but she did not speak. Her mouth twisted into a horrible knot, and then, as Lot’s younger daughter looked up at a face she barely recognized, the terrible expression began to harden. The hot ash that was drifting down from the sky like silent rain began to cover the crown of her head, the tip of her nose, her arms and shoulders. And then, falling more quickly now, the ash cooled, hardened, and crystallized, until Lot’s wife was encased in a shell of opalescent white rock that turned her into a statue of herself. Whether it was the flakes of ash falling on her lips or the tears falling from her eyes, Lot’s youngest daughter suddenly tasted salt on her tongue.
    “Father!” she shouted, but Lot could barely hear her voice over the hot wind that blew around them from the direction of Sodom. Then, turning to follow his daughter’s gaze, Lot beheld what had become of his wife. He nodded slowly, then sighed.
    “She should not have looked,” their father said. “You heard the angels tell her so, did you not?”
    The little town where they found refuge had been spared from hellfire and brimstone, as the strangers promised, but the place was deserted. To Lot’s relief, no corpses were to be seen in the tents and low houses that lined the road, but also no townspeople, no livestock, not even a stray dog. Perhaps the townspeople had been exterminated by the angels, or, more likely, they had fled before the sights and sounds coming from the direction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot and his daughters trudged along the road, hungry and weary, their eyes burning and their lungs straining for breath, until Lot stopped and held up one hand.
    “Let us pause here,” Lot said at the threshold of the largest house, “and refresh ourselves.”
    If the owners of the house had escaped, they left in a hurry. Lot and his daughters found warm food on the plates in the kitchen, clothing in the chests, a well-stocked pantry, and a storehouse