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by • 2023-10-19 • Flash FictionComments (4)

Rob the Living

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The tomb had been closed for millennia and yet it was a crime scene. When Dr. Jonte broke the seal on the final chamber door, he knew what should lay inside. It was depicted in Roman murals and medieval tapestries. In the chamber seventeen corpses would be interred in sarcophagi, sixteen of them flanking the nave, with one at the altar, a golden chalice sitting upon it.

There was no chalice, though. Everything else was exactly as Jonte had expected, but no golden goblet, not tarnished by age or somehow knocked from its place. It simply wasn’t there. Exacting examination showed the chamber had never been breached.

Years of theories and investigations would result in the conclusion that the original crime wasn’t in stealing the chalice. It was in the original description of the chamber, which the writer, giving into the inclination of all writers, exaggerated by adding something that wasn’t there: A golden chalice for the saints.

See the author’s published work here.

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4 Responses to Rob the Living

  1. Jenny Bates says:

    Love this!

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