Prologue

The man came to his feet with some effort and looked around the room. He was confused at first and did not recognize anything around him. Thinking felt almost new to him, as if he had woken from a deep sleep, a sleep deeper than death itself. His memories felt stretched apart like a worn spring, but slowly he started to recognize things around him as his fragmented existence began to tumble itself into a recognizable whole.

The first thing he realized was that he was in a familiar room, and there was a bed by his side. Lying on the bed was a pale, older, man dressed in an impeccable business suit. The suit was obviously custom tailored but appeared to be too large for the older man. On closer examination, he realized that the older man was dead. His skin was gaunt and stretched as if he had struggled near the end of his life, to the point of being unable to eat for quite some time. There was a poultice pressed to the corpse’s head with a kitchen rag, messy and dripping onto the pillow with medication that had failed to save him.

There was a woman standing near the bed looking down at the man. She wore a sturdy, woolen, dress that probably itched ferociously, and a spotless apron tied around her waist. Although her head was pointed towards the dead man, she held a blank expression on her face. She was deep in thought, staring into nothingness as she contemplated an unknown concept. Then a small smile played at the corners of her mouth as if a moment that she thought a long way off had come before its time.

 The man approved of the woman’s outfit for some reason. Not nearly in the same sense that he had admired the dead man’s business suit, but he admired it all the same. Her outfit was functional, clean, and orderly. He approved of the plainness of the woman’s features, nothing overly pretty or ugly to distract the affairs of a man’s day to day business. He believed this was suitable for a maid, so she may do her job quickly, and with little distraction to those around her. At least in his opinion.

“Why do you smile so at this man’s death?” he critically asked the woman.

His voice sounded hollow and seemed to echo. The mere act of speaking felt draining, as if he no longer possessed the energy for such a basic concept.

The woman did not respond to the question. Instead, she removed the apron from her waist and began walking towards the large fireplace on the other side of the room. There were several pieces of coal burning in the fire, much more than proper for a room of this size; at least in the man’s opinion. The woman put two more pieces of coal on the fire, then pulled a handkerchief from her pocket. Bending forward she began wiping the soot and ash from the hearth with the handkerchief, just outside of the flames. She stood up and threw the spotless apron into the fire, and turned back to the bed with the dirty handkerchief in her hand as the apron burned.

Upon reaching the bed; the woman rolled the handkerchief until it resembled a short rope, hiding most of the soot inside of the roll, and knelt on the bed next to the deceased old man. She removed the poultice-laden rag from the man’s head and flung it towards the fireplace behind her, not caring if she missed, or that the sodden rag almost put the flame out. Ignoring the leftover poultice clinging to the side of the deceased man’s head, she placed the center of the rolled handkerchief under the man’s chin, pulled the ends to the top of his head, and tied his mouth shut. The man recognized the practice of tying the mouth shut to prevent it from dropping open before rigor mortis.

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He was about to repeat his earlier question to the woman when he suddenly realized that he knew her name.

“Cora, what on earth do you think yo-” he began to shout angrily, but his hollow voice was cut off by the inability to open his mouth.

He put his hands to his mouth and felt nothing odd, but the force holding his jaw shut remained unchanged. His hands moved to his head and he felt cloth, and he moved his hands along the cloth to find that his mouth was tied shut. Furiously he clawed at the cloth, grabbing and pulling, trying to force it off of his head, but it would not budge. His fury turned to panic as he thrashed about, tripping over something hard that made him stumble forward.

The man expected many things at that moment. He expected to land on top of Cora and the old man’s corpse upon the bed. He expected to feel flesh, one cold and one warm, and to injure himself, Cora, or both. He expected to flounder about, desperately trying to regain his footing and his composure, but none of this happened. Instead, he fell through the bed and onto his knees. He did not feel the floor as he landed, but something solid stopped his descent nonetheless. Then something very unexpected happened.

Chains fell on top of him and all around him, yards and yards of chains. The chains were followed by metal boxes. Not just boxes, but heavy cash boxes laden with coins. Shackles, massive book ledgers, and dozens of heavy locks that seemed to hold no purpose dotted the links. There were other odds and ends, all heavy and pointless like metal purses, massive keys that went to no lock man could make, and broken balance scales. Oddly enough a single piece of paper which appeared to be pierced by the chains, yet was not torn, sat on top of the portion of the pile in front of him.

The man tried to stand, but the weight of the chains was too much to bear. He tried calling for help, but his mouth was still tied shut, and he could not grab onto the bedpost he had landed next to for some reason. He started to crawl, to drag himself out of the chains which were holding him down, and slowly he began to loose himself from the mound. Inch by inch he crawled out from the side of the bed, freeing himself from most of the pile in the process.

The man was finally past the edge of the bed when he tried again to come to his feet. As he made it to his knees, two of the shackles rose from the pile and launched themselves toward the man. Quickly he came to his feet and backed up, waving his hands in front of him in fright, mumbling a scream that could not escape his locked jaw. The chains attached themselves to his wrists, and the man stared at them in shock. His eyes followed the chains attached to the shackles until they fell on the pile that lay partially concealed by the edge of the bed.

Two more shackles rose into the air followed by a large part of the chain which came towards the man. He turned to run, and made it halfway across the room before the mound of chain flung itself over his shoulders, crossed at his chest, and wrapped around his middle twice before connecting to the shackles which were now on his ankles. The man tried fighting the chains, fighting the weight, but he felt overwhelmed by sheer exhaustion, and he collapsed to his knees as the final pieces of his fragmented memory clicked into place.

Jacob Marley brought his eyes up to gaze around his bedroom and saw Cora coming to her feet from the bed where his body lay in peace, a peace his laden soul would never know.