In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Connect the Dots.”

The Daily post gave us this instruction today,

Open your nearest book to page 82. Take the third full sentence on the page, and work it into a post somehow.

Pg. 82 of the book nearest to me read, “As new tombs were needed the tunnel was lengthened and new chambers were excavated on both sides…

Here is a short story based on the book this was taken from, The Blood Of the Martyrs.

The House Of Worship

by JE Lillie

It had been a month since I had seen daylight. The catacombs were not just the place we buried the dead. They had become our sanctuary in every sense of the word.

The number of martyrs grew by the day. Johanan had been fed to the lions a week ago and then his wife Cybele had been burned at the stake as her children watched just two nights later. Nicanor and Lavinia had been sold as slaves in the market, confirming my mother’s decision to stay below ground with the dead.

The dead or what pieces of them could be salvaged were brought to our little family sheltering in the catacombs and we saw to their Christian burial. The hidden cemetery was filling fast so  “As new tombs were needed the tunnel was lengthened and new chambers were excavated on both sides. My hands did some of the digging.

My fourteenth name day came and went while I dug away in the catacombs making a space for the newest family of martyrs. In the process we were told to make a chamber wide enough for the church to meet in.

I still remember the night we Christened that new section of tunnel. We, the soon to die, sang hymns among the dead and relished the thought of the Coliseum if only it would take us into the sun and out of the musty, dirty darkness that had become our house of worship.