The Miracle of St Veronica; an Easter story...

[count tiszula]

Christos voskresen' !

I must admit to having been inspired to write a religious sneeze story by someone else's post; still, I'm sure a whole rash of such stories are lurking in the collective subconscious. But I must repeat; those who find blasphemy or indeed heresy offensive [though in my view the story is quite reverent really] GO NO FURTHER!

THE MIRACLE OF ST VERONICA

In the garret above the Via Dolorosa she had rented for Passover, St Veronica woke with her nose streaming, as she had every day since her encounter with the Master had relieved her of a yet more distressing flux.

" Haah...Haah...HAHTISHOOOOH!" Messiness of both kinds flew from her mouth and nose, typifying the bread and wine which she had helped with the washing up of the previous night. She grabbed the gremial she carried with her always and used it to wipe her face and nostrils. There really ought to be something called a narial, she reflected.

Her friend St Monica stirred and sat up in the bed, peering about her short-sightedly. "Bless you, my girl..." she yawned . "What on earth is going on outside? " Though it was but about the thrid hour, a huge noise as of an unruly crowd filled the street below, strait though it was. Veronica hopped over to the window, to assist her friend's visual disability. A wave of spring pollen struck her in the sinuses like the blow of a scourge.

"HAH-TSCHOOOO! Hah-TISHOOOOH! Hah-TISHOOOO! I thigk it's just the procession of codvicts cubbig past. There are ad awful lot of people watchig. Add....I cad see the Baster!" Grabbing a spare gremial, she ran to the door. "Cub od, Sdt Bodica!" St Monica picked up a round-bottomed flask she used to look through to improve her sight of distant objects, and followed.

Veronica elbowed her way through the crowd thronging the ancient street. A long line of criminals , bearing their crosses, were toiling by, encouraged by a guard of Romans. But in the distance she saw the unmistakeable figure of the Master at the end of the line, albeit he was now stumbling, half-naked, his face and body stained with blood, his head crowned with a wreath of thorns. Beside him marched the Centurion, and somehow he had been relieved of the necessity of bearing his Cross, which was now carried by a tall , pale man with a shock of red hair and a freckled nose, which Veronica recognized at once as the mark of a man of the Jewish diaspora whose family had settled and intermarried in Africa in some Greek colony, perhaps Cyrene in Libya.

And behind them, a pair of criminals with crosses finished the procession, nagging furiously away like an old married couple. "You can't even carry your cross properly; look at you!" said Gestas. St Dysmas gave a huge sigh. "You'd think this would be the one occasion that you could actually shut up, old bean." he muttered wearily.

" I can't see Him," said St Monica, arriving at St Veronica's side. But she was not listening. Despite, or perhaps because of the unbearable tickle in her flaring nostrils, she ran forward and stood before the Master. His face was covered in blood, sweat and tears. Just at that moment the tickle in her nose became inevitable.

"Heh- heh....HEEEEEEHCHISHAAAAAAAH!" It was such an enormous sneeze that the full force of her copious spray shot out and bathed the Master's face in its cooling balm. Impulsively, she stuck out her spare gremial and wiped the Master's face, cleansing it of all the sorrows of this world as if she were spraying it with hyssop, until it was made whiter than snow. The Master stretched out a hand and touched her nose, and at once she felt the stream of matter from her sinus dry up, and the tickle which had so annoyed her before now felt like a true pleasure, so that she longed to sneeze again.

Looking at the damp and bloodstained gremial in her hand, she was astonished to see that it now bore the true icon of the man before her.

"My eyes are dim, I cannot see." He said. St Monica burst out of the crowd, holding her flask to her eye. She smashed it against the passing cross, took the thick bottom fragment in her hand, and placed it gently in the Master's eyesocket.

He smiled gratefully at the pair of saints. "Bless you, my children." He said.

And that is where we get the word "monical".

[Vetinari]

An Unholy Trinity, if I may say so. Truly you are the Master of bad taste, worse jokes and blasphemy. I raise a glass of Monicle'd Madeira to you.

[Chanel_no5]

Truly you are the Master of bad taste, worse jokes and blasphemy.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[NoV]

This has cheered up my Easter in all sorts of blasphemous ways... Certainly a better gift than a chocolate egg

[murphy dee]

I groaned, then I laughed, then I kept laughing, groaned for a second, then laughed some more.

And the "You can't even carry your cross properly" line...I just about died. And maybe it's just me, but I totally read those two as Eric Idle and John Cleese.