Part 1 Good Friday - Mary Magdalene

The Nail
Part One Friday Afternoon
Chapter Six Mary Magdalene...

All day long I waited. The sun made its slow course across the sky, and I waited. I stood in the shadows away from the crowd as they screamed and scoffed. I saw the hate in their eyes. And I was carried with them down the winding roads to the city walls. I watched it happen. Saw them stretch him out on the wood. Saw them pounding the nails into place. Saw them lift him up. And all the while there is this screaming in my ears. People shouting abuse. People joking. Everyone wound up.

But death comes slowly. And while I stood there, motionless, fixed to the spot, punctured, everyone else drifts away.

He isn’t saying anything any more. There’s no magic, no fireworks. Just the sun turning in the sky; the suffocating heat, and his life turning to an end, like when you wind a piece of catgut in your fingers, round and round, pulling it tighter and tighter until it just snaps...

Taken from The Nail by Stephen Cottrell