I fall asleep on a bed of wilted roses. Between the withered edges of petals are only brittle thorns. Broken stems. I rest all the same, another creature tamed by silence. Not quite man nor monster, but a pariah of the in-between.
In the reverie of a dream become drunk on nightmares, I watch a world of waste become filled with wonders. Grass rots to yellow beneath my feet, and trees shake their summer leaves all at once, moulting to a frayed brown as I pass. Around my feet, the dead are rising from the earth. They chase in every state of decay. I see doubled joints, conjoined bodies, missing pieces and parted seams. With the earth cracking beneath me from the cadaverous resurgence, I am tossed headlong towards a rotating horizon. The air becomes a heavy mist clouded with debris, a stench I cannot place.
It is burnt. Spoiled. A sickly sweetness.
The hands of the damned are reaching, grasping, creaking and snapping. Some even manage to clutch me before they, too, are flung into this plunge devoid of gravity.
Falling, I tumble towards that sky flipped groundwards, passing through a layer of scarlet clouds colored by flames. The blow of my fall is softened by a pile of ashes, my weight causing it to spew forth in every direction. It billows, shrouds my entire body in a light layer.
No amount of shaking will clear it off. Here, it is always snowing with ashes. Not of incinerated timber or plaster or stone. But bone.
A glance around reveals that I am in a chapel. The majority of its roof has caved under the weight of the ashfall. Its pews lay in fragments of charred wood and ivory. The layers of remains are thick enough that it is impossible to discern any pattern of cracks in the cobblestone below.
Again, there is that smell. It coils in the lungs, sits at the bottom, pinching at my abdomen.
"You have come here too soon."
I turn towards the voice. Though it rings with a maternal gentleness, behind it echoes a sterner timbre.
"I came here precisely when I needed to,” I say, though I cannot bring myself to look at who I am speaking to.
She is sitting atop a throne which reaches just above what used to be the ceiling of the chapel, what is now a dismembered collection of eaves and sagging beams. A collection of bones assembled with meticulous symmetry comprises the thin staircase and railings leading up to the seat, another configuration of pure, human ivory.
The figure herself has no flesh or clothes, though her bones appear inhuman. A wide, unnatural grin sits below slanted sockets which convey a permanent expression of curiosity. Amusement. Her shoulder blades are rounded like a kind of armor, rising up to jagged points, guarding her skull in a half circle.
Her fingers are impossibly long and fine. At their farthest point, they are as delicate as spider's silk. Death reaches out with them, placing several fingertips beneath my chin to tilt my head up. "What would you ask of me?"
"When will I go?" I ask.
"Why don't you wear the crown and see?"
"Crown?"
The figure folds, collapses, and crunches in size. First in a half, then a quarter, then a tenth … until she is but a polished, white wreathe of ivory that clatters upon the seat.
Hands of ash rise up from the piles around me. They fold about my body with a sifting grip and lift me up from the ground. I ascend passed the steps of the throne, what seems to take hours, until I am turned and placed.
The seat is smooth, firm, without warmth.
There is no more voice to guide me as I hold the wreathe in my hands. Its ornate carvings of budding, wilting and thorn roses continually crumble to ash and rebuild in my hands. It breathes. It lives.
It dies.
I place it upon my head.
Here I grow weary, and heavy. Easing against the back of the throne, it now begins to feel soft, even inviting. My back feels flat, and perfect, against it. There is no other place to be, not anymore.
Now that the crown is mine, I am it. I am the dust on the ground, the expressionless face, the city of breathless bones. I am them, and they are me.
In the haze of my dimming consciousness, I remember the question I wanted to ask her.
