|
|
NAEVIA SERVILIA
VIXIT ANNOS XV
MENSES II DIES IV
A SMALL MARBLE container in the form of a temple, the finest work that tears could buy, to hold the ashes of Naevia Servilia.
Her bowed parents insisted on an inscription that included her two months and four days on earth as well as the fifteen years, clinging on to the scraps and wisps of a life hardly lived.
Battered by time, looted by a barbarian lord, the rare sculpture is now on display to the indifferent in a dismal museum far from her Rome.
In from the Scottish rain, a family wanders disconsolate. The teenaged son scowls along behind them. He eyes the masterpiece and mutters: ‘What a load of shit.’ He reads Naevia’s name and gives her the finger. Then he gets his phone out to play some brainless game.
A swirl and surge in his guts.
Tight, tiny steps to the lavatory.
Total evacuation.
Wiping, wiping,
ineffectual wiping,
increasingly frantic wiping.
A sudden realisation:
his hand has gone right up his rectum,
is now wiping his bowels,
which are soft and slippery.
Then somehow through the cubicle door
appears a face,
Naevia’s face,
her charred lips hissing:
‘Sic semper maneas!’
Appalled, his sphincter contracts,
trapping his hand up there,
permanently. |
|
|
|
| |
