Apocryphal Tales of The Saint of the Desert

Jeremy Smith sent me some stories about the Saint of The Desert, prefacing them with the following:

I’m really digging the Saint of the Desert stuff. But I’m worried that he lacks Apocrypha, which is important to any faith. So I’d like offer some.

Here are Jeremy’s offerings, with an illustration by Jason Novak).

If you have a drawing, story, or idea you’d like to contribute to either the canon or the apocrypha, send them to me, at nikita.s.petrov@gmail.com.

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A woman at an AirBnB opens the dishwasher and reflects how remarkable it is that no two dishwashers have the same design and arrangement of trays. *You’d think it would be something they’d figured out and standardized, like manhole covers*, she thinks. *But no. Every new dishwasher manufacturer thinks he’s Leonardo Fucking Da Vinci.* She laughs hollowly. When she turns on the TV, she sees it’s already logged on to a previous guest’s Netflix account, and that guest was the Saint of the Desert. “Continue watching Season 2, Episode 3 of *Glee*?” the program asks.

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Two Saints of the Desert are at a Halloween party. One is dressed as Wonder Woman. The other wears normal jeans and a t-shirt and is being eyed balefully by the host. Everyone is between 22 and 25, still unsure about their overall direction in life. “I mean, he could have just put on a sheet, and said, ‘Boo! I’m a ghost.’ It’s not that hard,” the party host mutters as he and the Wonder Woman Saint of the Desert share a smoke.

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A small boy is walking alone from elementary school to his best friend’s house, carrying the evening’s math homework assignment. (His friend was sick and missed school.) A block from the house, he passes a man carrying a poodle. “Why are you carrying the dog instead of letting it walk?” the boy asks. The man says it’s been a hot day, the poodle is quite old, and he doesn’t want the sidewalk to burn its sensitive paws. The boy nods politely. A few minutes later, he reaches his best friend’s front porch. When he takes out the homework assignment he had written in careful block letters on a piece of paper, however, it now says, in red cursive: “The Saint of the Desert is watching you with love.” Both boys fail their math class and become lifelong dependents on the State.

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The Saint of the Desert is taking tickets at an aquarium. A family of four enters the facility, obviously hard on their luck, with ragged clothes and grime-stained faces. “Is there a free day?” the father asks the Saint. “Like the first Sunday of the month or something?” The Saint pretends to ponder the question. Then he smiles and winks. A second later, the entire family finds itself thousands of feet underwater—in the real ocean, not some crummy aquarium. They’ve been turned into fish! And nothing that happens will ever turn them back.

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The Saint of the Desert is sent to outer space. He requires no breathing apparatus and therefore can withstand conditions beyond any capable of astronauts or cosmonauts. Near Mars he realizes he left the oven on. “Shit,” the Saint of the Desert says.

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