The Journals of Death.

Part Three

It was a long backless black gown that I had no memory of ever owning. Someone must've snuck this in here while I was away. Life? Hades? I don't care, to be honest, at this point I'm just glad I found something suitable. With some tweaking, I might manage to turn it into the best dress at the ball. I snatched a skeleton from the corner of my office and stuck it on the handle of one of my old scythes to use as a mannequin. What else would I keep old bones around for?

I searched through my unwearable clothing to carefully pick out any intact cloth with a pattern (or texture) that I found desirable. I then examined it for imperfections and stitched it to the dress with threads of dark energy. Flair. It's all about making others jealous.

"What do you think, Augustus, should I add more lace?" I patted the skull and the jaw, quite literally, dropped. "You're right, you can never have too much lace."

I stared at the finished product after making my final adjustments and nodded. All I needed now was to find a mirror. Did I own one? I couldn't even remember the last time I so much as glanced in a mirror. If I did own one, it would be covered in more dust than my wardrobe, that's for sure. Ah, wait, vanities usually have mirrors. I turned to face the monstrosity and attempted to wipe enough dust off the mirror portion in order to see a bit of my reflection. I tore off my robe in one fell swoop and put the dress on. I glanced at my, interesting (to say the least), appearance. The piece that was backless was now mis-matched pieces of fabric interlacing as if they were pretty pieces of skin to form a pattern of a cat in the center of my back. Tail leaning toward my shoulder, body sprawled along my back, looking as if it would come to life and materialize out of my dress to pounce. I'd torn off the sleeves to have a similar mismatched pattern along my arms with loops around my middle fingers in a sort of glove. I'd have to wear gloves underneath it anyway but at least I could make part of it fashionable.

I slowly moved my fingers up to the tarnished glass, tracing my reflection in the mirror. My fingers pulled back a hair's breadth from the glass and my eyes wandered over the shape reflected back at me. Just when, had I changed so much?

"I look hideous," I breathed out. "Well, let's see what I can do..." The dress was the least of my worries now. I hadn't cared about my appearance in centuries, if not millennia, and I still couldn't recall a time when I had looked beautiful simply for the sake of dressing up. By the time I'd won the battle with my tangled hair, I was half tempted just to chop it all off. It was worth the effort, however, of trying to engineer a hairbrush out of the materials in my office. My hair now shined and hung down to cover my shoulders, reaching down to my calves, I spun around, looking at myself in the mirror, before turning my head toward the skeleton.

"Augustus, how do I look?" I grabbed the phalanges and danced with the bones for a minute or two, swaying them around in the air to a soundless tune. The jovial atmosphere I'd created fell away as fast as it had come, as the whispers of a memory chased away the grin on my face. I'd danced this dance before, long ago, in a different body, in a different time, with a different partner. I stopped and rested my forehead against Augustus' whispering words of sorrow.

"I still miss him," I admitted out loud to the silence of my room. I fought the burn of tears threatening to slip down my face. The tears that threatened to make my sorrow real outside the boundaries of my own mind. The skeleton wouldn't know what I was talking about. Augustus didn't have a soul anymore. I wiped the tear away. Time to wait for the ball.