TRANSCRIPT - Episode 57: The Exhibit
April 3rd, 2019
[Eerie theme music plays]
YOUR NARRATOR:
Good evening, my friends.
I’m not sure what kind of words of wisdom I have for you tonight, if any.
Do you want some? Do you need some?
What can I say?
I think you’ve got more wisdom than I do, really. I think you know how to navigate your world far better than I ever will. After all, I see you out there. Working as you work. Travelling as you travel. Laughing as you laugh. Loving as you love. I cannot do any of these things. Or, at least, I have great difficulty with them. I have difficulty doing them as you do.
Or, do we all have our own difficulty with these things? Perhaps that’s more the point. It is no easy feat, carrying oneself through time and space in the way that you do. Being human is an act of bravery. I think each and every one of you is brave and amazing in that way. Can I tell you how often I’ve simply decided to sleep through time? I have missed so much, simply because I was too scared to go out. You are brave, lovely creatures for doing it.
I should like to take lessons from you. I should like to go out and laugh without fear that you’ll think of me as something different, something wrong. I should like to go and find joy in things like travelling and working and loving.
I don’t have words of wisdom for you this week. Only words of praise. I’m sorry, but I hope that will do. Continue to be brave and beautiful, and continue to find your joy however you find it.
But, perhaps a story about someone who was just a little more like me, someone who slept through time (in a manner of speaking), may do the trick tonight.
This week, I’ve remembered a story to tell you about someone who found himself in the centre of a place he didn’t recognize.
“Where am I?”, he would have whispered, if he could.
[A very simple octave is played in a consistent rhythm]
His new eyes opened with great difficulty. They were dry, and they hurt, and at first, he could see very little of this new, falsely lit world, but it would not last too long. He gasped a deep, hoarse breath, and it stung his sleeping, renewed lungs. His heart - new, just like his eyes - pounded in his chest for the first time in…well, he wasn’t sure how long. The more his eyes blinked, his lungs breathed and his blood pumped, the more his body began to realize that it was awake again. Alive again.
He had images in his mind. Vague, brief glimpses into the life that he had left to find himself in this one. Opulent palace chambers. Marble statues in his image. A golden throne that was meant for him, but that he hadn’t sat on long. A life that had been full of beauty and wealth and splendour that had been cut short far too early. He didn’t see the priests that gathered around him and carved a prayer into his casket after he’d passed. He didn’t see them chant as he was buried, deep, deep, deep into a tomb that was almost as large as his glorious home. He didn’t know that he was meant to come back. But, he hadn’t planned for any of it, had he?
He wasn’t in that casket now. Not that he could tell, with the dirty rags that still clung to the new skin of his face. A trembling hand reached up and ripped them away, and the cold false light hit him full force. He sat up, but was quickly met by an almost invisible barrier. Glass. But unlike the glass he had known in his days…this glass was so clear and clean that he could see the room around him.
At first, he was comforted by the image of some treasures that looked familiar. They weren’t his, but they were of his time and from his home. Also, behind crystal clear glass. He wanted to see it more closely…but there was no door he could see. Panicked, his hands raised up and pounded on the case he was in...and, not knowing his own strength, it shattered easily.
He stood on shaking legs. He didn’t know that the blood that came from his hands was a miracle. For all he knew, he had been gone only a day. Or, for all he knew, this was the afterlife he had long been told of. But he hoped that wasn’t true. This place was cold and clean and strange. He had hoped for warm, open fields.
He took a step down from his resting place, and looked at it. He saw a little tablet with strange writing on it; and he realized, with growing terror, that he had been on display. Just as those treasures across from him, treasures from home, were on display. He turned around frantically, and soon began to see treasures and items from times and places he didn’t recognize. He saw images on the walls that were stunningly realistic, and ones that looked like the drawings he was a little more used to. He saw statues, ones that looked exactly like people, and ones that looked much more simple. He saw tiny, moving images on what he didn’t know were screens. Lights of different colours all around him. He did not know how many years had passed since his death, but he knew it must have been a great span of time.
His new heart began beating faster, and he kept wondering in his mind…why now? Why here? He knew of prayers and curses that could resurrect the dead. He recalled the priests and his family discussing this with him when he had fallen ill. But why now? Why here?
There was no point in wondering, because there was no chance for an answer. He would, most likely, never know. And so, he walked around in terror and wonder at the strange things around him. Some of the decrepit wrappings that had bound him still clung to his skin, while others fell off in a trail that followed him wherever he went.
[The guitar from earlier is heard, but this time there are a few voices chanting and whispering the names of ancient deities]
He found his way to a window, and what he saw took his breath away. All around him were enormous palaces, reaching up to the sky. Lit up from the inside with what looked like the light of the sun. Chariots that were also lit up from within and without, moving at unimaginable speeds, roaring at one another. What a monstrous, glorious place. When he looked up to the moon, it was full and it was very, very close to earth. The stars were very bright. He didn’t know how to read them, not like the priests, but Perhaps that’s why this was the night. Perhaps this was the night he was meant to wake. He no longer felt ill; rather, the contrary, he felt stronger and healthier than he’d ever been in life. He smiled at the moon and whispered a soft thanks, for whatever reason brought him here to see these incredible sights.
Just then, he heard a noise several rooms away.
He had no weapons, but he was confident that his newfound strength could protect him if there was a need. And, he longed to see someone. He knew that someone of this time might fear him, might misunderstand him. He was ancient, but he was by no means stupid. He may be seen as a stranger, as an invader, and he had no one. The dawning realization that he was alone in a strange time and place struck him especially now. And yet, he followed the noise anyway.
He moved through a display of what appeared to be bones from very large animals. He’d heard of dragons, and he imagined these might be dead ones. The beasts wouldn’t wake as he had, he thought to himself sadly as he nodded his head to them in passing, greeting them. He would have loved to see a dragon, alive. He’d imagined it as a child. At least he had made it to see their bones.
The noise came again, and he followed it. A jostling, a banging kind of sound, and a muffled scream. He moved through a display with stuffed lions and tigers, elephants, other great beasts, arranged in scenes. He smiled in wonder at them. Another room with metal suits and swords and helmets, from another time and another place. He was fascinated by them, but didn’t pause. He kept moving towards the sound.
He saw someone, covered in mud and ash, in another glass casket, but they were having trouble escaping theirs. More trouble than he’d had, at any rate. He couldn’t make out their face, not quite yet. The tablet outside this display said different words, but ones he could not read again. Around this display were others that contained ancient tools; farming tools, it appeared, though he’d never used any in his life and wasn’t entirely sure what they were meant to look like. There were rustic bowls, plain items and necessities. Simple items. No gold, no jewels. Nothing like that.
Eventually, the person in the casket broke through, as he had done. They sat up abruptly, and peeled ancient dirt from their face just enough to expose their mouth and breathe deeply.
The man from the other display went over and peeled some of his ancient bandages off of himself. He began to wipe the other person’s face, help clean the dirt and mud from it. He soon revealed a young woman, just as terrified and confused as he’d been.
[The chant is heard again, this time with more soaring voices harmonizing above it]
He tried to speak to her, but she didn’t understand his words. He didn’t understand her words. Their voices were thin and pained after so long without using them, but they kept speaking to each other nonetheless.
There was some kind of fountain nearby, another display with strange sculptures, and he helped the girl wash off in it. He washed the dust from his body as well. And soon enough, across her collarbones were two prayers, carved in the skin. Everything else about her had healed, just like him. But she, too, had been given her own blessing and curse from her own people. She looked own at it with confusion, and blurred memory. Though she was a peasant, and he was a prince, they were bound by the same moon.
Arm in arm, they went forth into the night, through a great window on the ground floor. Clad in moonlight, on shaking, renewed legs, they walked.
As I said: Brave and lovely creatures. All of us, really.
I have no words of wisdom. I can only share with you what I’ve seen in my long years. I don’t have any advice, but I have stories. I have stories of my collectibles. My collection of people, creatures, and souls just like you and me, or very different, or both different and not different.
I’m not making sense. I’m just sharing. That’s all that this is, really.
I hope that’s enough.
Sweet dreams, my friends.
[Eerie theme music plays]
[Speaking out of character, as Kristen:]
Hi everyone, and thanks so much for listening to episode 57 of On a Dark, Cold Night. This is Kristen; I’m that writer/producer girl you know so well, or not well at all. Who knows. Anyway, I hope your April is off to a great start.
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Thanks so much for tuning in this week. Be well, sleep well, Happy April, my friends. Good night.
[Eerie theme music plays]