Read Online Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart by Caitlin R. Kiernan - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Caitlin R. Kiernan
Ads: Link
regarded with caution, the sort of door, for example, from a Charles Perrault fairytale about a man with a blue beard and a young wife too curious for her own good.
“Have you ever heard of an ossuary?” she asks the boy as she unlocks the door, as the door swings slowly open, and he says no, he’s never heard of an ossuary. The room is dark, but there’s a switch on the wall by the door, and she flips it, winch saves her the trouble of explaining to the whore what an ossuary is and isn’t. All he has to do is look at the thousands of bones covering nearly every inch of the room, the walls and the ceiling and the floor, all of it clearly illuminated now by tasteful incandescent tracklighting to reveal shades of tortoiseshell and ivory, cream and ginger, innumerable greys and browns.
“Fuck,” he whispers.
“No, we did that already,” she says, because she’s tired and it’s too easy and she can’t help herself. She watches the boy’s eyes as he studies the intricate arrangements of ribs and femora, humeri and countless vertebrae.
“You did this?” he asks.
“Yes,” she replies. “I did this. Well, technically, I still am doing this. A work in progress, as they are wont to say. Truthfully, I’m not sure that it will ever be finished. Or that I’ll know if it is. Finished, I mean.”
The boy steps into the room without being told to do so, and his unpolished-emerald eyes are wide, and his mouth is hanging open just a bit.
“It is really somewhat amateurish, I’m afraid,” she says, because false modesty is one of those things that has never particularly bothered the collector of bones. “Now, if you want to be impressed, you should see the Sedlec Ossuary in Czechoslovakia. Well, it was still called Czechoslovakia when I was there in 1987. Anyway, there’s an enormous chandelier hanging in the vault, and they say it contains at least one of every bone in the human body.”
“All these bones are human? ” he asks, taking another couple of steps forward, and she gently pushes the door closed behind them. The latch clicks, but he doesn’t notice. “Jesus fuck, lady, where the hell does anyone get this many human bones?”
She almost reminds the boy how she requested he not call her lady ‘, but decides to let it go, because her ego’s really not as frail as that. “Well, no,” she says, instead. “They’re not all human. When I started, I didn’t want to limit myself,” and she points to a pair of scapulae mounted nearby, wired with their glenoid cavities set end to end so that the effect is rather like the wings of an enormous ivory butterfly. “Those two came from a sort of camel called a dromedary. This ,” and she motions towards a massive tusked jawbone set just above the scapulae, “this is the mandible of a hippopotamus. There are more than three hundred species represented here, all told, mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles.”
“And people,” he says, not quite whispering.
“Yes, child, and people. That was covered under mammals. Don’t be so goddamn squeamish. There are more than six and a half billion people in the world, and do you know how many of them die every day?” She doesn’t wait for him to say he doesn’t. “About one hundred and fifty million, which is something like two per second. Say roughly half the population of the United States, every day, and the adult human body has an average of two hundred and eight bones. So,that’s something like thirty-one billion bones a day that are no longer needed by their former owners. Now, is it really such a big deal if a few of them wind up in here?” The boy just stares at her for a moment or two, then shrugs again and blinks drunkenly before he goes back to examining her meticulous patterns and groupings. There’s a narrow path snaking between the heaps and jackstraw sculptures, leading farther in.
“The human bones,” she says, before he asks, “have come mostly from suppliers in China and Africa. There
“Have you ever heard of an ossuary?” she asks the boy as she unlocks the door, as the door swings slowly open, and he says no, he’s never heard of an ossuary. The room is dark, but there’s a switch on the wall by the door, and she flips it, winch saves her the trouble of explaining to the whore what an ossuary is and isn’t. All he has to do is look at the thousands of bones covering nearly every inch of the room, the walls and the ceiling and the floor, all of it clearly illuminated now by tasteful incandescent tracklighting to reveal shades of tortoiseshell and ivory, cream and ginger, innumerable greys and browns.
“Fuck,” he whispers.
“No, we did that already,” she says, because she’s tired and it’s too easy and she can’t help herself. She watches the boy’s eyes as he studies the intricate arrangements of ribs and femora, humeri and countless vertebrae.
“You did this?” he asks.
“Yes,” she replies. “I did this. Well, technically, I still am doing this. A work in progress, as they are wont to say. Truthfully, I’m not sure that it will ever be finished. Or that I’ll know if it is. Finished, I mean.”
The boy steps into the room without being told to do so, and his unpolished-emerald eyes are wide, and his mouth is hanging open just a bit.
“It is really somewhat amateurish, I’m afraid,” she says, because false modesty is one of those things that has never particularly bothered the collector of bones. “Now, if you want to be impressed, you should see the Sedlec Ossuary in Czechoslovakia. Well, it was still called Czechoslovakia when I was there in 1987. Anyway, there’s an enormous chandelier hanging in the vault, and they say it contains at least one of every bone in the human body.”
“All these bones are human? ” he asks, taking another couple of steps forward, and she gently pushes the door closed behind them. The latch clicks, but he doesn’t notice. “Jesus fuck, lady, where the hell does anyone get this many human bones?”
She almost reminds the boy how she requested he not call her lady ‘, but decides to let it go, because her ego’s really not as frail as that. “Well, no,” she says, instead. “They’re not all human. When I started, I didn’t want to limit myself,” and she points to a pair of scapulae mounted nearby, wired with their glenoid cavities set end to end so that the effect is rather like the wings of an enormous ivory butterfly. “Those two came from a sort of camel called a dromedary. This ,” and she motions towards a massive tusked jawbone set just above the scapulae, “this is the mandible of a hippopotamus. There are more than three hundred species represented here, all told, mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles.”
“And people,” he says, not quite whispering.
“Yes, child, and people. That was covered under mammals. Don’t be so goddamn squeamish. There are more than six and a half billion people in the world, and do you know how many of them die every day?” She doesn’t wait for him to say he doesn’t. “About one hundred and fifty million, which is something like two per second. Say roughly half the population of the United States, every day, and the adult human body has an average of two hundred and eight bones. So,that’s something like thirty-one billion bones a day that are no longer needed by their former owners. Now, is it really such a big deal if a few of them wind up in here?” The boy just stares at her for a moment or two, then shrugs again and blinks drunkenly before he goes back to examining her meticulous patterns and groupings. There’s a narrow path snaking between the heaps and jackstraw sculptures, leading farther in.
“The human bones,” she says, before he asks, “have come mostly from suppliers in China and Africa. There
Similar Books
