Unveiled

She kept looking and looking at the stone bust. Despite all her efforts she couldn’t stop staring at it. The face’s expression was too compelling and distressful to be ignored. She has been working at the Museum for almost twenty years; her restoration work was well known around the world, as she has successfully restored many great and valuable pieces.

She did her work with pleasure, treating each piece with profound respect and veneration. Each piece of art was unique, as each one has a story to tell, a message to pass, an emotion to show, a legacy to preserve and a culture to represent.
Maria didn’t take her work lightly, one little mistake and a whole world will be destroyed…

Whenever she was restoring she moved into trance, doing the connection with the different artists and allowing their spirits to take over her body, so they could guide her hands and senses throughout the whole restoration process. The connection was so strong that she was able to experience the emotions that drove them to create their pieces, sensing their muses, their quandaries and dramas.
But this time Maria is afraid of working with this woman’s bust, she can’t stop thinking about the images she saw the time she attempted to make the connection. She is still shivering and horrified of what was unveiled while in trance.

The bust was the resting nest of many phantoms from the past – it contained the ghosts of many women that were murdered by its artist. It took sixteen of them until he could carve and shape the right expression of astonishment and shock of a person the second after the final breath….


This post is a submission to Magpie Tales #17, writing on a theme of the above photo.


© 2010 Gabriela Abalo