With every step Jesus took, more thorns fell from his crown and littered the path. Mattiyahu and Hannah ground them into their bare feet without slowing. Blood welled between their toes, mingling with the dark trail dripping from the cross. The pain kept in perfect time with their heartbeats. They would not fall behind. They would not look away. They would be the last thing he felt before the nails slammed into his wrists.
When the soldiers stopped at the top of Golgotha, Mattiyahu and Hannah fought their way to the front. They claimed their spot as the crowd shoved behind them, stones still clenched in their fists. Roman legionnaires laid Jesus on the wood and positioned the spike over his wrist. They waited for the cry that would justify their fury, the proof his suffering matched their own.
The hammer fell.
The sound of iron tearing skin and grating against wood rang loud. Christ's body arched in a single violent spasm, eyes squeezed shut. He shook his head from side to side as if speaking to someone unseen. No cry escaped him. No wail.
A wave of pure rage passed between husband and wife. The sound they had come for was not heard. His silence was the final insult. Legionnaires in worn leather and gleaming steel set Christ's feet for the final nail. Something inside Mattiyahu shattered. He surged forward with a strangled cry and hurled his stone straight at the man's face. Starvation robbed him of strength. The rock sagged in its arc and clanged on the soldier's armor.
"Scream!" Hannah shrieked from behind, spit flying from cracked lips. "Suffer, damn you!"
The signifer dropped his hammer and rose, hand falling to his gladius. Two soldiers advanced with heavy oval scuta, shields creaking on leather straps. They formed a wall of disciplined muscle and iron between Mattiyahu and the Son of God. His face carved by years of battle, raised a hand and thrust a finger toward them. "You!" His voice cut like gravel, silencing the front line. "Take your screeching whore and get back. Now! Or join him on the wood."
The two soldiers advanced another step, hobnailed caligae grinding into the dirt. The threat was clear: leave or die. Rage and humiliation clashed in Mattiyahu's chest. He dragged Hannah from the hill. Soldiers' insults chased them through the dust. Adrenaline faded. Pain returned to their punctured feet. He led her beneath a withered olive tree. Its gnarled branches offered little refuge from the sun.
Mattiyahu sat against the bark and fumbled at the pouch on his belt. His fingers closed around a thin, rusted shard of iron. He unearthed it from the sand weeks earlier. It had splintered from a Roman blade. It was sharp, cruel, and perfect for the task. He took one of Hannah's feet into his lap. Her breath hitched as he probed for the thorn buried deep near her heel. With a grimace, he worked the metal shard underneath and pried. It came free, followed by a bead of brownish-red fluid. He lifted her filthy, bleeding foot to his lips. The next thorn sat deeper. He abandoned the shard, clamped his teeth on the stubborn wood, and pulled. Turning his head, he spat the thorn into the dirt.
"I'm not well," Hannah whispered and lay back. Her skin was clammy, a gray pallor washing over her face. "It's… the baby. It's not moving." Her hand pressed the side where the infant had once stirred most.
A cold dread snapped the last thread in Mattiyahu's heart. "We need to go home." He tossed the thorn aside and began searching his own soles for the next one. "You need rest." Standing he offered his hands to help her up. The sigh built up in his chest finally released as she stood. "At least it is over." Looking into her eyes, red rimmed and yellow inside. He placed a hand to her forehead. "You are wet with fever, let's go home."
Their dwelling sagged like a tent of patched cloth and crooked poles. It stood as a failure now with rot and neglect. The hides stretched across it hung in ragged scoured strips. As they neared, Mattiyahu saw the Nazarene's tent had vanished, gone like judgment itself. He lifted the flap for Hannah. She ducked inside and collapsed onto a reed mat. The mat creaked under her weight, reeds snapping as her breath rattled in her chest. Through the tears in the roof, the last of the sun's light drained away. Darkness pressed in from every side.
Mattiyahu crouched and struck worn flint against brittle sticks. His hands shook; the day's rage and the long punishing walk had emptied him. Sparks flared and died unanswered, leaving only the smell of scorched wood. Clouds shifted overhead. A thin moon lit pale silhouettes, then swallowed them again. He sighed, dropped the flint, and scooted close to her. Both were slick with sweat and nausea. Heat rose from their thorn‑pierced feet. It climbed their legs, molten fire inch by inch. Hannah whimpered, the sound swallowed by dark. She clutched his arm, anchoring against the fever.
Hannah's body no longer belonged to her. It had turned into a battlefield where two disasters collided. A contraction gripped her. A monstrous fist tightened in her womb and arched her spine off the mat. Before it could ease, a seizure took control. Limbs twitched in electrical jerks. Heels pounded dirt. Fingers raked empty air. Her head snapped backward, throat tight in a voiceless scream, then whipped forward. Sweat soaked strands of hair stuck across her lips and nostrils. Fever coated her skin in a slick, glowing gray under the brief moonlight. Her breath escaped in short, punched grunts. Each was harsh and shallow, as if her lungs joined the chaos of her muscles.
Blood covered everything. It flowed from her bitten tongue and lips torn against her own teeth. It welled from the half-moon marks her nails dug into her palms. Amniotic fluid poured hot with each seizure, sickly sweet, soaking her inner thighs. The child emerged not in steady waves but in one unstoppable slide. There was no rhythm, no mercy. Each convulsion narrowed her vision to a pinpoint. Mattiyahu's pallid face and the canvas overhead, then back out. Her life was not ending. It was being ripped away, piece by piece, with every violent surge. No midwife offered comfort. No fire held back the night's chill. No clean cloth waited.
Only Mattiyahu's hand remained, crushed inside her palm. His fingers grinding together under the force of her grip. It was her last tether to a life collapsing. In that instant, Mattiyahu saw her eyes. Wide and glassy, emptied of all humanity, before darkness swallowed them once more. Their fingers stayed locked. They pleaded with whatever God might still hear.
The child slid into the world gray and breathing, lips the color of old bruises. Its eyes were dark amber, threaded with red. The pupils widened and narrowed, observing, absorbing. Two tiny needle-sharp teeth showed above, four below, visible through its open mouth. It arrived so fast it seemed her insides might follow it out.
Mattiyahu retched. Hot, half-digested rat and bile sprayed across the mat onto her leg. His wife twisted, fists clenched. Wordless cries broke as brown and scarlet pooled around the infant in a thick ring. He leaned over her on one elbow, hair hanging like a curtain around a face turned the color of ash. Vomit clung to his beard. His free hand found hers and squeezed until the knuckles stood white.
"Forgive us, Lord," he whispered, the lie bitter on his tongue. "We have sinned against your son." The words dropped into a silence that had already delivered its answer.
Nausea rose again, but beneath it, came something far worse. An obscene warmth twisted in his groin. It climbed, blending torment with pleasure until he could no longer separate the two. His body jerked. What little remained in his stomach emptied into her lap. His head fell against her belly, cheek sinking into the warm mess. Hannah's moans faded away. Her arms dropped limp. Her eyes stared at the sagging roof, dull as painted clay.
In the new stillness, the only sound was vomit dripping from his chin into the bowl-shaped fold of her torn robes. Drip, drip, drip. Then the newborn screamed, a raw, flaying sound that filled the tent. The infant stared up through the holes in the canvas, glazed in its mother's birthed slick mucus. It kicked at the cord still joining it to the corpse. A bright pink tongue trembled between those impossible teeth, tasting air.
With his head lying on her lap, Mattiyahu watched the thing that could be his child. He searched for Hannah's hand, found it cold, and clasped it anyway, love and horror braided tight. His breath hitched, slowed. Gray climbed his neck, seeped beneath the beard, and claimed his face. An arm dragged across the gore‑slick dirt between her legs. His fingers reaching for the squirming creature. They stopped inches short. He died as the last bits of air pushed through his lips. The last light in his eyes guttered out as he watched the infant.
Hours drained away in silence. The infant whimpered, clawing at the cord, alone between its mother's slack thighs. The night air pressed heavy and damp, sour with old fluid and the stale weight of rotted flesh.