"Bloody Pawns and Blind Faith"

"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality" - Dante

The sun had, in righteous anger, burned down upon us; I remember well, how my armor felt as a blazing conflagration against my flesh, roasting me as we used to roast meats for travel. The bronze breast plate I had worn was tarnished, but still conducted the heat through to my chest thoroughly in an agonizing fashion. My helmet lay discarded in the dusty sandy street some 100 paces back. I had held my spear poised and ready as my commander had ordered of all my comrades. Guarding the spectacle behind me from the angered mob. I overheard the man mutter in his native tongue, " Father, why hast thou forsaken me?"

I don't know what came over me at that moment, call it a blind spontaneous rage if you must. Maybe, it was just jealousy that this man was supposedly the son of my creator. This bloody and broken peasant, this lowly yet noble carpenter who preached of acceptance, faith, and love, how I loathed him so. I pushed the tip of my spear through the naked flesh of his bruised gut. Through organs, muscle and sinew, with blood running down into my face and eyes, I fell to my knees, weakened and exhausted.

I have no idea, still to this day, who had shown me tender mercy by cradling my damp sweaty head in their hands as my father once had when I was but a babe dreaming of being a soldier in my mothers gardens, after the news of my mothers death from a horrible flesh eating plague. Those hands had tenderly held me, and I, a soldier known for my vicious nature, my uncaring treatment of peasant and slave spread and preceded my reputation, had simply hung my head low and wept to an unspeakable sadness with great scope that filled my bosom. I truly wept softly, my tears falling into the hot desert sand like the blood falling from the tip of my spear that now lay dormant on the earth pulsating with a heart beat of its own, loosing more and more blood into the dirt with each hellish throb.

When I had looked up to see who had held me like my father so many years ago, I beheld no one. There was nothingness, the only hint was a ghostly whisper upon the arid currents that sounded as a soft paternal voice saying, "Everyone has a part, and you have only just begun yours my child... only just begun..."

I stood, blind and emboldened by those deep haunting words, and shouted to my fellow comrades, "What has this madman done? How has he in his delusions forsaken our king?" I questioned in a bold rage.

The soldiers had fallen away from my side where once we had all stood like brothers in arms, as the villagers threw stone and cobble at me. Hardened armor, bruised flesh were nothing compared to the bruises in my pride. My noble bearing lost, I stumbled blindly away in retreat.

Days of wondering, that seemed like years now that my eyes were gone, I had somehow wondered back to the crucifix's base where the blood had once pooled like a sea of red against the tan sand of the desert. My hands scouring for food, I felt a delicate flower sprouting up miraculously out of a thick wet pool or blood I could only assume. Later my wife and child took me there and told me it was a white carnation in full bloom that never withered, never died, and never bent to the elements. And I had realized that that man I let die, help die helped me find faith and hope.