Date Posted:Friday, October 21, 09:05:42pm Author: sk Subject: Re: Friday Challenge: October 14, 2005 In reply to:
JayBee and Nell
's message, "Friday Challenge: October 14, 2005" on Friday, October 14, 09:41:47am
Almost too late.
Pere Lachaise
This is not my idea of a good place for a meet. I know what they say, "hide in plain sight," but this is a real tourist magnet. They're all wandering around with their guidebooks in their hands, or those maps the scam artists at the front gate sell them -- "Oh honey, it's Oscar Wilde! I didn't know he looked like that." Well of course he didn't, twit, it's not a deathmask or an image from life -- it's just a statue. If you stay in one place too long they think you're a bloody tour guide, and ask the same questions over and over. "What are all those little houses for? Is it true that people were buried in the sewers?" And over and over again "Where's Jim Morrison's grave?" You'd think they'd open their eyes -- there's signs and graffitti plastered everywhere. "Jim Morrison" scrawled on the side of a memorial with a multi-colored arrow pointing along the row. "This way to Jim" on the stone walkway, with the letters worn away from the foot traffic.
I'm dragging my feet myself today -- I don't want to be here at all. Even with the celebrity skeletons, this is still a cemetery, and when you're already dead, it's a little too close to home. I never used to be skittish about graveyards, but that was before I'd sent so many people to them, Sometimes operatives actually go look for their plot, see where the world thinks they're spending eternity, but that's not for me. Why should I? I'm not really there -- I won't even be there after I'm dead. Roasted in the oven at Section till I'm dust, and then who knows, maybe Madeline will use me for fertilizer on those trees of hers. Sure, that's what I'll do.
It's almost time -- I just put a coin in the box, go in the chapel and pick up the film in the dead drop under the font. Get it, and get out, before I wind up in a tour group, looking for Jim.
