Christ hung on the cross, blood dripping from the gashes across his back, the wounds in his feet, and the holes in his palms. The sky above him lit up with lightning, sending ribbons of silver tearing through the thunderous sky. A single woman stood before him, holding a glass vial to his ankle-the only place she could reach, blood streaming from him into her vessel; Her hand shaking uncontrolably.
The sky lit up again with lightening. The old woman dropped the flask in fright, spilling its contents on the muddy earth. An old bent soldier, who had been watching her, shoved her away, his eyes glued to the glass vesel, before kneeling to place a glass stopper in the intricate jar.
There was a crash of thunder, and silver screamed across the sky. Raindrops fell like boulders, soaking the already broken earth. The Roman hid the vial under his cloak, before spitting on Jesus' feet, and then he scurried away like a drenched rat.
The sky roared again, lighting up the crowd in flashes of white. A thread of lightning wove its way down from the sky, reaching a man, hunched; his head covered with a cloak pushing his way from the crowd. It struck him. His arms and legs splayed out from his body, his long, straggly hair peppered with grey floated around his face before he fell to the ground. An object rolling from his clasped hand.
It was the vial.
A Roman soldier walked across the muddy slope of Golgotha, his sandals sliding in the liquid rock. The dawning sun, rising over the horizon, bled all over the sky and staining the clouds a watery red, sending ribbons of scarlet across the morning sky. His feet came to rest by the body of the old Roman.
"Unfortunate." he muttered to himself.
Something glittered in the morning light, half buried in earth. The soldier bent down to pick it up, his fingers brushing away the dirt, compacted on by thousands of feet.
He fingered it, wiping the mud slicked on its surface.
"I wonder...no it can't be.." he said examining it, and holding it to the light.
"What are you doing?" Shouted an authoritative voice from behind him.
I left 'Shouted' with a capital because I ended his sentence with a question mark, so 'Shouted an authoritative voice' is the start of a new sentence?
"Hm? Oh..nothing." He pushed the vial through a small loop in his belt, and pulled a flap of his tunic over the bottle to obscure it, before he stood at attention to his superior.
"Goood.." the superior snarled, looking him up and down.
An old, hunched man, slipped through the door of his old, rickety cabin.
The door slammed as the wind beat against the makeshift house. The man pushed the hood off his head, revealing long, greasy, straggly hair streaked with grey, and a gnarly face, etched with scars.
He hurried over to his cot, and pulled up the thin mattress, to reveal a wooden box.
was lying a small vial
"Mm..Your still here." he said in satisfaction. He removed the lid, and inside, nestled on layers of rich scarlet velvet,was lying a vial; filled with blood believed to be powerful, for it had come from a healer of the sick, a performer of miracles, Jesus Christ.
The vial's presence, had driven its beholder to insanity, as each man had striven to protect his prized possession, believing in his madness that the world had hunted, and wanted it, and would kill to posess it.
Each frail master had died. And in a slow, and tortuous drive to madness, they had killed to protect their possession, holding what they thought was the key to power