Why Are There So Many Mummies?
The mummies were rotting things. The linen around them was frayed, yellowing along the edges
where their corpses had, at some point in their history, begun to seep through.
They shuffled well enough, adjusted to their new balance, having been under for centuries and
finding that their weight had shifted and that they were, on balance, heavier than they had been.
And they were hungry. That was the second thing.
They shuffled out of the museum in pairs and triplets; it was dusk by then and the streets still
crowded; people gawked. The mummies tested the stairs: some fell down entirely, others falling and
getting back up but dirtier, and others had gone more precariously – on the street more slowly, but
having maintained some dignity.
The crowd gawked that first there were mummies, then that the mummies could walk, and finally
that some mummies could maintain their dignity.
Even slacker jaws – the presence of a dignified mummy presupposes the existence of an
undignified mummy.
It had been such a quiet street, which they’d only come to appreciate recently.
They’d commented to their spouses just earlier that day – hadn’t they – what
a quiet street this is. Their spouses had tacitly agreed but had actually been
thinking that potatoes or a vegetable medley or something would be good as a
side for dinner.
The mummies meanwhile weren’t thinking communally, as bees and ants and some humans do, but
having spent so much time together it was only natural that their thoughts would turn simultaneously to
their hungers. Had they their genitals, some of them might have thought to bone, and they might have
gone in two separate directions.