The terrible flux of her mind was precipitated by two things—Godric's sudden disappearance and being knocked to the ground—conscious thought became a thing of luxury to Adelheid Galli. Found herself in a strange state where every beat of the heart and goose pimple across her body was seared into her memory yet the actions she took, the purpose of her frantic movements, and the events all around became a drunken swirl. Remembered holding a jacket before the punch, and that a black thing had fallen, something electronic. She'd assumed it was hers and shoved it in a pocket.

Remembered the zipper of the valise biting her with a loud rip as she pulled it open—that the place was utterly silent otherwise—but couldn't remember digging through it beyond the feel of oiled bones against her skin.

At some point she dumped everything across the floor—thinking only to locate the skull—a moment of panic almost folded her when half the bones landed in Wexler's blood. That a couple bounced and danced and fell through the railing to the floor below. A shock of panic followed; feet were now running about the museum all around her.

Black headless shapes looming in her peripheral vision—a terrible alabaster bust appeared before her as she searched. That stones rolled into view with it as though carried by the wind, and fingers were caressing her body.

A strange and wide-brimmed hat with a feather in the brim tried to drop over the skull of Sotor II after she noticed it among the other bones, but it fell too slow, drifting on the air in delicate twirls and she snatched the skull out of a pool of Wexler's blood. Terrible curses assailed her ears from every angle when she did. Things she knew were terrible but were lost on her ear—the world had reverted to Italian and all English became but the gibberings of the insane.

Remembered the skull felt funny in her hands—quite cold—and that she'd nearly crushed it in her grip when she held it up in the air. She shouted something too, but she remembered nothing more than that it had been so loud and sudden that her throat hurt from the effort. It may even have been in English, but she remembered her tongues movement as it slapped around her mouth better than any syllable she might've shouted.

Then there had been a loud crash of all the case's breaking—of the bones all around her suddenly being tossed about at any angle as though struck by lighting. But the skull in her hands did not even tremble. It become colder than ever—a blue hue drifted over it.

In that same instant the looming shadow of a headless corpse vanished and the alabaster bust of the emperor shattered violently; sending little bits of stones smacking against her legs.

She'd looked around then and found Godric down below, laying atop a broken case. The ones around him shattered then, but the glass didn't strike him—the pieces simply did not him. Every one of them missed.

Her heart sank and crinkled all the same—he was dead. It was a zombie arising before her eyes not him. It rolled over, a bleeding arm filled with glass from his impact fell limp and slapped his side when he found his feet. He was alive! No zombie at all.

Drops of blood rolled off his fingers. He tried to lift the glass filled and the top quarter of it went up but the rest hang limp as though he had a second elbow. He stared at this and merely sat down on the floor, still holding the arm up as though he'd forgotten he could put it down because it already sagged at his side.

She too sat then, and no matter how much she tried the only memories further to be wrested from her mind were that after an ocean of time sirens came flashing through broken windows, throwing red and blue across lifeless walls.

Remembered a gurney, and then being given something along with oxygen. The same again in a white room before being handed a phone to find the disembodied voices of her parents on the other end talking rapidly over each other. They were at Heathrow, they said.

She'd be home soon, they told her.

The contents of her pockets were in the room too—among them a small black audio recorder that she wasn't hers. Reached out with a weak arm and swept it into a drawer, and shut it.

Her phone made noise later, communications from the entire world it seemed—too many names! Ignored any that wasn't her parents. She was going home.

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775 words.

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