Previous |Table of Contents| Next

The Queen of All Things Lost and Forgotten

Adelaide Windsome

Introduction:

Who holds silence over your body? What intrinsic memories have been denied of you? How based in your reality are you allowed to be?

The Queen of All Things Lost and Forgotten

There once was a young girl with green eyes and serpentine black hair. Aside from those features she was the perfect monster - an invisible creature ever bending to the fearful will of collective imagination.
The young girl gave herself a name so she could remember whom she was- Marie Antoinette. She had private conversations in her head with invisible people that went something like this:

"Hello I am a passing stranger. What is your name handsome young monster?"

"My name is Marie Antoinette."

"Oh like the French queen who was beheaded?"

"No, nothing like the French queen who was beheaded although...

...I am a queen."

Marie Antoinette declared herself the queen of all things lost and forgotten, if for no reason than because it is not difficult the hold royal authority over things that people no longer care about or cannot remember. She felt that the attic teddy bears, curbside mittens, misplaced keys, dusty books, windowsill insect corpses, expired leftovers, blown eyelashes, skipped stones, words lost to the tips of tongues, etc. deserved a sense of nationalistic pride that only a queen could bequeath upon her subjects, or in this case - her objects.

There was no more appropriate dwelling for such a queen, no other place that operated as a sanctuary for all items lost and forgotten, than a thrift store.

One day, Marie Antoinette stood on her anxious tiptoes and reached through the cobwebs and junk trinkets to a rare and certain something her eyes had been drawn to. She had caught a glimmer of the rare objects that she had initially mistaken for some old tarnished trophy or small figurine. This was not true, but truth is rarely believable especially in its earliest moments.
What she painstakingly reached for had obviously been untouched for many years though her need to possess these objects became obsessive and urgent. What if someone taller came along in the moment she went to ask for help? What if the thrift store manager had the sudden realization of these valuable objects that were hidden among the other items?

She tumbled backwards off her tip-toes and onto the carpeted floor, thick with dirt. Clutched to her chest were the brass hands of Medusa priced at $11.99. The fingers were long and gnarled and each nail cracked from releasing arrows directed at the hearts of men who could never so much as look her in the eye.

Marie Antoinette smiled greedily and plotted her escape, for she had no money to pay for the brass hands. She decided it would be the least conspicuous to saunter from the store wearing the brass hands in a nonchalant fashion.
Hiding the brass hands underneath her shirt she skulked over to the pile of cutlery in the kitchen aisle. She chopped off both her hands with a dull butchers knife and replaced them with Medusa's brass ones. She uncurled her gnarly fingers, the bones cracking noisily. Marie Antoinette hid her former hands that dripped with winged albino worms in an old teapot.

As with most royalty, the desire to spread your empire is an alluring force. With her brass hands Marie Antoinette could preside over objects that were in someone's possession or recent memory. Perhaps she could even preside over the someones who possessed the certain found and remembered objects.
These thoughts rolled through her head like a swelling storm as she made her way towards the front doors. Her thought process climaxed when she saw the only other object that could possibly compete with the mythical value of her hands of brass.
On low shelf in the front of the thrift store was a crumpled and soiled paper bag adorned with these words written in a thick red sharpie (or was it blood? no it must have been sharpie): THE HEAD OF MEDUSA $2.99, marked down from $7.99.
Could this be true? Marie Antoinette glanced around her at the various customers who nonchalantly browsed the racks of items. All of them could be under her control forever, frozen in time with their quizzical expressions directed at this or that abandoned item.

The young queen carefully reached in the paper bag that made a loud crumpling noise in her ears though no one else seemed to notice. She reached inside with one of her brass hands that were so accustomed to running through the serpent hair, the fingers that sought to have their calluses suckled on by the cold poison lips.
A graven voice echoed from Marie Antoinette's memory:

Everything that is lost and forgotten must turn to stone and crumble.

In that moment she understood that a queen must not, can never truly escape from her duties, her destiny. A queen is always a reflection of that which she ruled over. She is the legacy of her subjects and her objects.

Marie Antoinette pulled Medusa's head from the crumpled bag. The head was pale green and clammy with forlorn death though the most beautiful object she had ever come by. She thought Medusa's eyes would be green like her own but they were the color of polished crystal blanketed by a thin layer of dust.
Marie Antoinette slowly turned to stone so that she could remain with her objects, so that she was incapable of being found or remembered, to preserve her royal legacy and fulfill her destiny.

The Queen of All Things Lost and Forgotten was priced at $14.99 by a thrift store employee though was primarily used as a display for hats, scarves, and gaudy necklaces. When a curious customer leaned in close enough, a voice would echo from their memories.

"Not like the French queen who beheaded at all although ? I am a queen."

No curious customer would ever mention this happening. As soon as they stepped away the voice would be gone and with the voice a little part of their memory - lost and forgotten forever.

Epilogue:

My body is a loud howling beast. I pacify myself as a form of survival and I am constantly discovering my history; I am forever grateful to those skilled diggers who make these realities known and I exist as a headless creature; my head exists was a wandering cloud - I try to hold power in my own reality and be aware of my power over others.

Moral of the Story:

There is no moral to this story and, in fact, this is a true story. If I have learned one thing it is that morals and truth have no relation to each other.

I am a monster and wish to be in the company of monsters, which is why I purchased the head of Medusa - so I could preserve the most perfect moment with you forever.

When I reached into that crumpled bag all I discovered was a squirming horde of golden boar babies and flying glitter ponies. This is rather anti-climactic for me. Though it did provoke one final question that could be conceived as a moral:

If and/or when your head is to be chopped off, what myths, what legends, what fairy tales and fables, what histories, herstories, and other stories would escape from your body?

Previous |Table of Contents| Next