The Curse WiP v.2

[coinlocker]

The shipment arrives at two am.

Shouts ring throughout the usually quiet museum, mixed with the groan of heavy lifting, the drone of fork lifts and the grate of wood on polished concrete floors.

By four am, holding was empty of the living save one, surrounded by crates, taking note of all the new artefacts one by one.

He stopped by the biggest box, thumbing through his papers to mark it off. The nails had already been popped and removed; he just needed to lift the lid. He put on his gloves, double thick latex over cotton and carefully opened the crate to remove the protective stuffing.

Awe washed over his face, a childish delight of some dreams coming true. He removed the latex gloves and brushed his cotton lined fingers across groves, sweeping invisible motes of dust from the edges of the open sarcophagus, and peered fleetingly at the wrapped body inside. With a soft smile he made the rest of his notes.

The exhibition technicians returned from their break as Jungsu moved through other items. He barely noticed as they took the artefacts one by one behind him to be arranged just down the hall.

He finally stopped for a break of his own and sat the last precious book back into it's protective casing. It was his first break in eight hours of constant movement and he wandered to take it in the main space of the museum. It was a large hall, delicate architecture that he had not yet had time to admire and was surrounded by a second level housing the bones of a large triceratops and hanging pterodactyl. Jungsu took a seat underneath the sheltering wings, falling down on the plush red velvet sadan and taking the time to survey the work of the others below as he rested. Admiring the exhibition as all the pieces fell into place below him.

A cautious sense of someone being close by washed over him. Jungsu looked around, but saw nothing, saw no one. Still the sense remained. Long enough for him to assess it rationally. He was tired from thirty-six hour days or the rush to get these items from customs and into the museum in time to meet the deadline. For all he knew it could simply be the looming weight of the friendly pterodactyl and his unwavering paranoia in futile things.

Jungsu let his mind wander, his eyes closed while he made lists and ordered everything in his head. What was done, what still had to be done. How his notes would work into his research paper and where he would even start the whole academic adventure considering that was not his strong point. The shrill beeping of his watch roused him straight up as he stretched and made his way down stairs.

In the hours between, eight and nine am creeping upon them as they flitted amongst the artefacts, until ten am brought the guards around to tell them the museum was opening. Jungsu stared around the space, taking in everything that was in order, precious things in glass cases, until his eyes settled finally on the main attraction, the mummy, safe in it's glass box. How hard it was he found, to walk away.


The single glass of wine rushed to his head, a congratulatory offering from the curator as the day wore into night and the exhibition formally opened with business men and women and people in costume making the rounds, an authentic feel for this capital city opening. Jungsu retired from the main crowd, taking his leave to sit high on the circling second floor once more and peer down through wooden banister. Catch his breath.

The sense drifted over him again. Like he was being watched but he right away chalked it up to exhaustion, to the fifty hours of alert forced on him through tea and pills to keep him functioning.

He would sleep tonight and return to finish cataloguing the new additions now that they were displayed.

Before he left, standing dazed at the top of the stairs, Jungsu swore he could feel something touch his arm, a sigh on an air conditioned breeze, a distant whisper and as much as they followed him back to the hotel in his thoughts he could only call them as figments of his exhausted imagination.



He had roused at a touch, not flesh but warmth still brushing dust from the bed he had been at rest in for thousands of years. He woke up, a soul dormant, trapped in a mummified body, at the sight of a face. All tired lines, soft and sharp with lidded deep brown eyes and half smiling lips, oh what a face to wake up to.

He bid his soul to leave the body behind, detached from the feet.

He followed the living as they scattered about, followed his decayed body to it's resting place behind glass and flitted to each object remembering, of memories long forgotten recalled as fresh as if they had just happened, of history and the ages and felt more himself.

He watched the man with the soft face as a crowd swirled underneath, and could not help but come closer to try and reach through the planes and touch the curved and flushed apple of his cheek.

He stood in his way, let the man walk right through him. He sighed for the fleeting warmth, the pulse of flesh and blood through his spirit.

And longed for something more.


He had a routine, following Jungsu throughout the halls of the museum and the depths of storage underneath to his small impermanent office. He learnt Jungsu's name through shouts and whispers and sounded it out to himself for the language was new and strange in his mouth.

He read over Jungsu's shoulder, learnt his tongues alongside his own as Jungsu translated from photographs and transcripts into English and Korean, and whispered answers, imperceptibly into his ear willing Jungsu to hear him.

Sometimes Jungsu did, and he smiled when the answer popped into his mind seemingly from no-where.

He was content when Jungsu smiled. But frustrated too, because he wanted to touch. Never in so long had he wanted to touch.

Jungsu slept with his head cradled in his arms some nights rather than going home. He wanted to brush his hair back from his face. Frustrated enough one night to force all of Jungsu's papers and books off his desk, pencils and knicknacks crashed to the floor in his anger, a choatic sweep of energy.

Jungsu jolted upwards at the noise, bleary eyed at the noise, his lips turning downwards into a frown. Tired tears sprang up in those brown eyes and he felt guilty.

Jungsu opened his mouth to speak, hesitant words forming in the parted bow of his mouth, which promptly closed without a sound and got down from his chair to crawl on the floor to pick up the papers one by one.


For a week Jungsu no longer felt anything following him throughout his duties. He would make a trip to the main room and walk by the mummy during his breaks to see the shrouded body safe and whole in his glass case before returning to his small little room to decipher more obscure hieroglyphs but no longer heard whispered answers.

He could hardly believe he missed a ghost, a figment of his own lonely imagination.


Jungsu carried books piled high to his nose in his arms, trying to manoeuvre the narrow corridors of the museum's underbelly. He passed through glass doors backwards, using his backside to open them in place of his arms and crashed into something or someone. The books fell from his arms, a haphazard pile of texts and printed pages that he followed to the ground with a terrible thud and a swearing groan of pain from a protesting hip.

A hand appeared in front of his face, and Jungsu followed the hand up along a muscular shirt clad arm to broad shoulders and an attractive smile where his gaze happened to stop.

“Are you okay?” A voice (rusty and almost unsure) asked as Jungsu stared unable to gather his wits.

“I, um, yes. I'm very sorry. I wasn't watching where I was going.” Jungsu blathered, taking the hand and let himself be hauled from the ground. Together they started reaching for books, one by one until their hands met atop the last one.

“Excuse me.” Jungsu said softly, hinting that he wanted his hand back.

“Jungsu,” The stranger's eyes bored right into his. “Let me help you carry them?”

Jungsu debated, but considered that there were probably many members of staff that he had not met yet that would know his name, but there was something about this man that he could not quiet put his finger on. That sense beyond what he could see.

“I don't want to intrude, but if you're able, I'd like the help.” Jungsu replied before he could stop himself and the man instantly took more than half the books from his arms.

“My name is Youngwoon.” the man offered and Jungsu nodded.

“Thank you, Youngwoon.”


Jungsu smiled at Youngwoon gratefully when the man placed the pile of books on his desk and dropped his own beside his notebook of practically illegible scrawlings.

“What do you need all the books for?” Youngwoon asked, touching his fingers over the covers of some of them, lifting pages curiously before letting them flop down.

“I'm trying to find a translation for a certain hieroglyph. I haven't seen it before but I've only just started on the more complex symbols. It's for the paper I'm meant to write.”

Youngwoon smiled and nodded respectfully, though he could not stop staring at Jungsu.

Jungsu settled down to begin looking through the books, distracted for a few honest minutes before he realised Youngwoon was still there. Jungsu was about to speak before Youngwoon beat him to it.

“Would you let me see? Perhaps I can help?” Youngwoon moved behind the desk and leant down behind Jungsu, his lips close to his ear.

“I-I, oh, I guess so..” was all Jungsu could get out and cleared away the loose sheaths of paper from on top of his main work pad and showed Youngwoon the photocopied hieroglyph.

“I know this one. It's part of the symbol for a curse.”

“How do you know?” Jungsu asked softly, though somewhere inside him had already answered that question no matter how impossible it could be. Despite this he chose not to believe, took the most logical route available. “Ah, it's must be why you're here. You work for the museum don't you? Thank you for your help but I really should get back to work. There's a lot to do and I'm sure you're quite busy yourself.”

Youngwoon didn't move, his hands settling on the arms of the chair either side of Jungsu, he just wanted to remain close, so desperate for this human contact.

“You know me, Jungsu.”

“I don't see how I could.” Jungsu flubbed, starting to shuffle his papers unnecessarily and tuck them underneath books in a fit of anxiety. “We've never met before. You should go.”

“Do you want me to go, Jungsu?”

Youngwoon leant down, his lips brushing against Jungsu's ear and began to whisper words in old language, old words and ancient words, dead and impossible words and Jungsu could only shape his mouth into a quiet No.



“Why pyramids?” Jungsu asked half seriously, taking Youngwoon's offered hand between his own and leading the way.

“Think of them as an invitation.” He replied with a laugh, letting himself be led.


They spent their nights in the museum after it was closed and the cleaners and caretakers flitted about their business. They walked through the halls of marble and concrete and Jungsu pulled him to items in the exhibit to ask him at length while Youngwoon questioned Jungsu about the paintings and sculptures and the history so seeped into the walls of the place. Youngwoon with his innocent curiosity, how quickly he learnt. As Jungsu told him jokes, coaxing laughter at every turn, Youngwoon would pose like Dega's ballerina's and then would catch at Jungsu's arm and twirl him like he saw in another painting. They would dance until he learnt the steps and Jungsu's breath caught, their smiles stretched wide.

They sat in silence when their words died down, weeks later somewhere in the early am on the second floor that looked out above the exhibit. Jungsu left distance which Youngwoon soon filled and relished this forbidden warmth of contact.

He remembered his past, the same warmth against fleeting flesh that belonged to the boys of the court. Apprentices like him and slaves only two or three years younger or older, then a little more as he aged six and twenty. Their softness and their youth and life. Youngwoon closed his eyes. He had missed this human part for so long.

“Are you cursed?” Jungsu asked all at once, turning to face Youngwoon seriously. Youngwoon shook his head, though his heart, right to his soul started to ache.
“I think that I'm cured.” Youngwoon replied and leant closer, catching Jungsu's face between his fingers to kiss him before he could say another word. Jungsu stiffened, his surprise not unwarranted before it melted away with a sigh.

Jungsu wavered in his seat, sighed as Youngwoon pulled away and began to speak once more.

“Hey. No, wait.” Jungsu said with a scowl, pushing at Youngwoon's shoulder before he could, because, “That's not an answer. You don't get to do that.” Youngwoon caught his wrists, smoothing his thumbs past a pulse and into the well of his palms with reverence. He pulled his hands until they rested on his shoulders and kissed him again, until Jungsu forgot everything, pressed into the velvet.


They soon left the museum as the days grew longer, and volumes and volumes of history were crammed inside Youngwoon's mind. Jungsu took Youngwoon out to explore the world around them. He showed him to cafe's and bars for coffee and alcohol both which Youngwoon took to like breathing. Then brought him home to the hotel apartment that he barely saw anyway.

They would talk then, curling like lovers on top of the blankets, Youngwoon was curious about Jungsu's life down to the smallest details and pried gently until he would talk.

“You have a lover?”

“Have. Had. Don't ask.”

“Do you still love them?”

“No. There's someone else now.”


They rarely spent a moment apart as the exhibition dragged on through it's third month. Youngwoon would wander the museum during the day, sometimes venturing outside, then more and more often rather than staying inside the marble tomb as he became accustomed to the world. Large and fragile and beautiful. Kinetic, but most of all, Alive.

He would still meet Jungsu at the end of every day, either at the door or in his office to convince him to come back with him early, rather than stay and research like he should be.

Youngwoon was very persuasive and Jungsu had always had trouble saying no.


Jungsu didn't notice it so much at first. He was always tired before they had met, working long hours combined with writing his paper and planning the next stop for the exhibition, while trying to figure out how to bring Youngwoon with him. Whether Youngwoon would want to come at all. If he even could.

Until it got harder and harder to stay awake sometimes, harder still to wake up afterwards. To ignore the growing aches in his joints that a man his age should not have.

He would fall asleep at his desk often these days, always intending just to put his head down for a moment until a whole afternoon had passed and his papers were the worst pillow between his face and the desk. Youngwoon would be there sometimes already, stroking hair away from his face and trying to wake him up, a sadness permeating his touch until Jungsu would smile at him.

“Are you cursed?” Jungsu asked peering through his glasses and rubbing his knuckle against his eyelid to wipe the sleep away. Youngwoon didn't answer, but gathered Jungsu up into his arms and carried him all the way back to the hotel.


“The exhibition is moving in two weeks,” Jungsu told him as he curled into the corner of the couch, unwilling to get up though he knows he had to. When he looked at himself in the mirror he found his cheeks hollowing out, his lines sharper than softer and his clothes hung odd, tailoring gone ot waste.
“It moves every five months. We're moving to London.” He organised logistics from the hotel room instead of his office for a few days, helping the curator and in those days he didn't really notice that Youngwoon wasn't there at all.

One night when Youngwoon is home, Jungsu tugs him down to sit, his lips twisted in anxiety.

“Where did you go?” Jungsu asked, “When you weren't here?”

“I get to live again. I want to experience that.” Youngwoon replied, his fingers stroking hair back from Jungsu's face. It's not the same as when they had met. It was like he had aged thirty years in the blink of an eye, deeper lines and dark eyebags and yet. “Your world is so much wider than mine was.”

“That's not fair.” Jungsu murmured. He could feel the words rising in his throat. “I want to live with you.” He sighed and leant down against Youngwoon's shoulder, tiredly closing his eyes. “Don't live without me.”

Jungsu was already asleep when Youngwoon whispered to him.
“I'm sorry.”


The move to London took so much energy out of him. Jungsu stood in the centre of the room and orchestrated the dance of fragile priceless objects and their glass cases, trying not to rely too heavily to the cane in his left fist.

Youngwoon stood by in the shadows, waiting for the delicate operation to be finished and to have Jungsu to himself until the opening rolled around later in the night.

“Jungsu,” he whined