Thursday 23 April 2015

A Room FULL of Skeletons

My flesh has been whittled away by time and decay as has my companions: Agnes and Anne. There are others here, but I do not know the fictitious names they were given. None of us remember what we were christened. Our real names taken from us along with our clothes and possessions. Funny, that I can't recall what letter it began with or the sound of it on my own or my mother's tongue, for I did have that: parents and siblings; a well-thought of family, unless I'm lying to myself. Who can say when all are gone? I only survive, as do Agnes and Anne, because my bones, once entombed, were disturbed and now I cannot rest.
Peace had not come to me in death because I hadn't died of natural causes and so a part of me lingered, but upon being dug up, the core of me was forced back into my skeleton like a smoker taking a desperate drag on a used cigarette. Greedily inhaling the nicotine and coolly exhaling a wisp of curled smoke. It was a shock, I can tell you, re-entering my skull like that, through my sunken left eye socket.
Some of you may be pondering how I'm able to communicate in modern language? Well, I shall tell you...I'm using a bored writer. She was just sitting here, not doing anything when I found her, although her mind was certainly busy. She seemed to be in-between stories which was perfect, and of course for my story to be understood it needed to be somebody who could translate my old-fashioned colloquialisms. And she's kind of quirky. A blue stocking but more than that. Scholarly, but edgy. Not much to look at, but then looks change and fade, and carry the least importance.
Through this vessel, I now talk to you.
Where was I...?
My bones dug up from their tomb were lavishly re-dressed in such fine splendour, the likes of which I'd never seen in my earthly life. My family were humble. Poor. We belonged to the lower classes. We made our own clothes or wore hand-me-downs, and could not afford burial ground, hence my suffocating chamber. Suffocation you might think is a word for a life brutally and intentionally extinguished, but I assure even though physically I was dead, my soul felt choked underground. It was strange to feel so shut in after living above, and my soul could still feel all that a human could only these sensations came in crashing waves. One on top of another, the sort that a modern surfer would die for now.
Forgive me for I keep losing my thread. It's been so many years...more years than you could possibly imagine.
As I was saying, dug up, I was re-released but weighed down with jewels: precious gems in my eye sockets and a gold crown. My skull felt like a pebble being thrown to the bottom of a dry well. Unbelievably light, yet mystifyingly heavy. I still wasn't free from my painful early death and now there was this humiliation. And because the essence of who I once was was still attached to this broken body, it meant I wasn't privy to confidential information. I hadn't transcended completely. I had been adrift...unable to access other levels.
I can't tell you where I was displayed or to which country I was sent to, although I do believe it was somewhere in Europe, but I can tell you who I was renamed for: Anastasia, a student of the Apostles Peter and Paul who was tortured under the reign of Nero. A falsehood of course, but then I was in no position to disclaim it. A couple of centuries may have passed before that trickery was discovered; I honestly couldn't tell you as souls have no defined concepts of time. But what a scandal when it was!
Back to the here and now: dishonoured. A fake! In a cold, damp and dark storage room with numerous others. No rest, no escape. My skull separated from my skeletal frame, as are Agnes's and Anne's.

Picture Credit: Pyramid of Skulls, Paul Cezanne