Installment One: Unearthed
Chapter One
The Mummy misses its home, the Nile, the flowers, the egrets in trees, the scent of orange blossoms, the snorting and bellowing of hippos and alligators.
     The Mummy misses the honking of the water birds in great flocks, the wind in the reeds, the hot air of the desert blending with the cool air of the Nile. The Mummy misses the gold jewels, soft cotton, minor chord music and the desert moon at night. The Mummy misses having her hair done. How horrible she looks right now with her hair matted and lusterless. They should soak it in scented oils and braid it into a hundred braids. It’s unbearable.
     But the Mummy doesn’t miss anyone. No one.
     The Mummy was dug up. It became conscious from the conscious vibes of the archaeologists. It became aware and it could see. It saw men covered with sweaty grime and hair. Their hair was a mess, too. Their hair was like the Romans. But the Romans kept their hair brushed.
     Next the Mummy was aware it was in a pile with other mummies. The other mummies were corpses. They were utterly dead. "Why me?" wondered the conscious mummy.
     Laying on top of the pile, under a makeshift sunshade, The Mummy couldn’t move, but it could look around. Sand everywhere. Sun everywhere. A dog came over. It began to bark. It was barking at the conscious mummy.
     One of the archeologists came over. He was a professor at Montana State University. He watched the dog barking. The dog looked up at him and then moved closer to the conscious mummy and growled, lowering closer to the ground. The professor looked around. There was no one looking. He marked the conscious mummy with a secret little "x".
     They had found so many mummies on this expedition, not in individual tombs, but stacked together in caves like cordwood, that almost everyone got to take one back to their university for further study.
     So the conscious mummy went to Montana.
     All the dogs in baggage barked at it the whole trip. The mummy enjoyed this. It felt good to be the center of so much attention after so many years. It felt good to experience such a living cacophony. It was vitalizing.
     The professor, a tall man, cramped in coach class for 24 hours, was nonetheless more pensive than pissed for much of the trip. He didn’t get pissed that much, and tended to be more pensive than pissed anyway. He was having weird thoughts like: the mummy bride.