A/N: This is a fic I've been writing, and then sat on for a while. I released a preview (which was this chapter, actually) previously, but then kind of put it on the back burner. But here it is now. It you've read this before, read it again, as I have changed a few things to it.
This fic is an hommage to the 80s film Mannequin starring Kim Cattrall, about an Egyptian girl who begs the gods to help her escape the oppressive fate of a young woman in a backwards time. That is pretty much where the similarities stop. There is going to be a change to the plot, and some darker parts than the movie. But also, it's meant to be campy. So yes, an Egyptian named Kurt, blaring historical inaccuracies, some of the lingo, and yadda yadda - campy.
This is just meant to be fun, so please don't take it too seriously ;)
Dry, warm air irritating his nose.
Old, musty stone closing in around him.
The putridly floral smell of embalming fluid and the sharp odor of stale death choking him.
These would be the last things that Kurt would experience in his young life. As melancholy as it all was, he embraced his end. It was a relief. He had been a loyal servant of the gods. He had lived a short but rich life; he had honored his mother, his stepmother, and his father, despite this inglorious turn-of-events.
He closed his eyes in his eternal resting place and pictured what crossing into the afterlife would be like. Thoughts of his dying became a morbid sort of comfort to him. At least here in this tomb, he knew what awaited him. His spirit would journey to the Underworld, where his heart would be measured against the feather of the goddess Ma'at. If the scales evened out – if he passed that test - then he would continue on. Hopefully, he would find his place in The Field of Rushes – the paradise beyond the suffering of his every day existence.
He hoped that would all come to pass, but considering what he was doing – what he had been doing over the course of the last few months – his heart would most definitely be eaten by Ammut, 'The Devourer', and his soul cast into darkness.
Right now, however, eternal damnation was the least of his worries.
Okay, so maybe he was being disobedient, but damnation would not be his fate. His family would see his body safely cared for. He would be carefully wrapped in linen. He would have the sacred rituals spoken over him; he would be buried with the amulets that would help him travel to paradise, for he was loved.
He was transcendent. He was free. He was…
"Kurt!" a woman's shrill voice echoed throughout the vast, cavernous chamber. "Kurt! Get out here right now!"
Xara.
He was caught.
Kurt held his breath, squeezing his body tight, trying to make himself as small and thin as he possibly could. He tried to think invisible thoughts.
He wanted to disappear.
"I am clear as the water of the Nile," he chanted silently, squeezing his eyes shut tighter to visualize his body as fluid and crystal, flowing far and away to freedom. "I am a simple breeze, winding through the reeds. I am the smallest possible creature the gods could create, scuttling away from here through the sand, somewhere distant. I am…"
"You are such an unreasonable brat!" the woman roared.
Kurt stopped chanting and his eyes snapped open. His mouth itched to dispute those words, but he bit his tongue hard. Unreasonable? Brat? Was it unreasonable to not want his life planned out for him? Was he a brat because, at the tender age of eighteen, he should be free to make his own decisions instead of having his father force his hand?
He heard the woman huff, followed by the rapid pounding of her feet on the ground as she stamped in frustration.
"By the gods, Kurt! I know you're in here!" she screamed. "Come out this instant!"
He blocked her out, and in his mind he continued his mantra.
"I am but a grain of sand," he thought, "one of many…blending into the scenery…"
Footsteps shuffled outside his cramped hiding spot. Kurt's oxygen deprived lungs burned with the urge to suck in a sweet, soothing breath of air, but he abstained. His head swam, his mind becoming muddled and woozy.
He was sure he would soon pass out.
He didn't care, as long as she didn't find him.
The sound of pained groaning sealed his fate, and his heart plummeted into his stomach. The lid to the sarcophagus swung open as a short, squat woman with golden hair like sun and fire pulled with all her might. Kurt could hold out no longer. He gasped, inhaling the cool air, feeling it rush quickly down his throat and into his lungs.
The woman fixed him with an irritated and disgusted glare.
"Kurt!" she scolded. "Hiding in your uncle's sarcophagus? Really?"
Kurt was so busy trying to breathe that he couldn't speak a word in his defense, so the woman continued to admonish him.
"You know you can't hide forever. There aren't that many tombs left."
"Then, I condemn myself to death," Kurt announced through great, painful heaves, sticking his nose haughtily in the air. "I will lock my body away until I shrivel up and die."
"Oh, stop over-reacting, Kurt," she said, smacking him on the shoulder, coughing at the cloud of dust that rose from his clothes.
"Carole, I will not be forced to marry where I do not love," Kurt argued, his voice hoarse from the rank odor of the enclosed sarcophagus and breathless from keeping still. "It's not fair! It's inhumane! And I will not do it! I'd rather be buried alive! I'd rather…I'd rather be eaten by dogs!"
The woman sighed. The fierce look on her face melted away, and she regarded her stepson with sympathy in her motherly eyes.
"Kurt," she cooed, grabbing his elbow and pulling him gently from the ornate casket. Reluctantly, he emerged, continuing to cough from the dust that had settled around him. "Please believe me when I tell you that I didn't want this for you - and whether you believe it or not, neither did your father."
Kurt stopped brushing the filth from his shoulders, staring at his stepmother with obvious skepticism.
"Now, that I will never believe," Kurt griped. "I watched him sign the contract. I've never seen a man sign a papyrus so quickly. To tell you the truth, I don't know what's worse - the fact that he wanted to get rid of me so badly, or that he sold me to do it."
A deafening crack split the air as the flat of Carole's hand came in contact with Kurt's face.
Kurt and Carole both gasped, staring at each other wide-eyed - Kurt with an expression of pure shock, his hand pressed to his cheek, and Carole with eyes aflame.
"Now, Kurt," Carole said, her voice firm and even, "I know there's a lot to hate about this arrangement, but your father is not one of them. Whether you like it or not, you have a responsibility to this family. You are the eldest, and regardless of your bitterness towards your father, this decision wasn't as easy for him to make as you seem to think."
Kurt couldn't find his voice to answer her, but he knew that she was right, and he was behaving like a child. His father loved him, had always loved him. Maybe they didn't always understand one another, but his father had never treated him with anything but love and respect. In truth, his father demanded little of Kurt, allowing him to dream and follow his fancies. But their current situation was beyond his father's control, and in this, he had no choice.
Kurt couldn't imagine what he would have done had he been his father and this decision had fallen into his lap.
Probably the same thing, in the end. He would have hated himself for it, yes, but he would have done the same thing.
Kurt rubbed his stinging cheek, blinking away tears of shame.
Carole sighed. She pitied Kurt. She knew very well what it felt like to have your life signed away without your permission. She placed a gentle hand over the one on his cheek.
"B-but I d-don't want t-to be his h-husband," Kurt blubbered when he could finally speak again.
"My beloved other son," Carole soothed, "I know this may not comfort you to hear, but you will be his number one spouse. Long has he looked for the company of a man and found none that suited him, so you might turn out to be his one true love."
Kurt's stomach turned at the sound of delight in her voice.
"But he is from foreign lands and he already has eighteen other spouses," Kurt whined. "All women. I've met them…and they hate me…and they dress atrociously."
Carole smiled with sincere affection.
"They will mean nothing. He will use them only to get sons," Carole tried to reassure Kurt. "You will be the one that holds a special place in his heart. How could he not fall completely head-over-heels in love with you, Young One Possessed of Many Charms?"
Kurt rolled his eyes.
"I know what you are doing, stepmother," Kurt said, staring heavenward. "You can flatter me with every title Nefertiti has, but it won't soften me…not one little bit."
Carole smiled through a playful pout.
"Of course not," she teased, "He Who Gladdens My Heart."
Kurt blushed furiously. He fought not to smile, commanding his muscles to frown, but couldn't help himself, not in the face of the one endearment Carole had invented for Kurt the day she married his father.
Kurt ducked his head to hide his embarrassment.
"Please, come with me," Carole pleaded softly. "Everyone is waiting for you. Your brother is sick with worry, and so is his betrothed. And your father! Your father refuses to let anyone eat until you return."
"Not even him?" Kurt asked, his voice sour enough to curdle milk at the mention of his husband-to-be, not dignifying the man with the mention of his name, here in private.
"Not even him," his stepmother parroted. She smirked up at him evilly. Kurt laughed, taking the woman into his arms and holding her tight.
"I love you, Mistress of Sweetness," Kurt muttered into her hair.
"And I love you," she said, holding back tears, "you lamentable ass."
Carole stood on her toes to kiss Kurt on his slightly pink cheek. She pulled out of his embrace and held his arms, appraising him from head to toe with shimmering eyes.
"We'll need to clean you up," Carole said, noticing the smudges of ash on his porcelain skin and the dirt embedded in his chestnut-colored hair. What a rare beauty her stepson was, she thought. So unusual was it to see a son of Egypt so fair as he. Carole just knew that Kurt must be a favorite of the gods - one of their perfect creations, sent here to live amongst the mortals but imbued with illustrious intent.
How sad it was then that he might never again see the light of day.
Kurt's would-be husband wasn't a cruel man, but a possessive one. He treated everything he owned as a possession, and he kept his possessions locked away in his palace. His wives were never seen in the market place, nor were his children. It killed Carole to think she would never set eyes on her beautiful stepson again.
Kurt noticed the change in Carole's expression, the sadness creeping into her eyes. Her worried expression made her face look older.
It broke Kurt's heart.
"Now," Carole said, patting Kurt on the arm, "where are your uncle's remains? Let's get him back to his eternal resting place, shall we?"
"I'll do it," Kurt offered kindly. "As penance for causing you worry. You rush off and tell everyone that you found me. I'll clean up and be there in just a bit."
Carole raised a suspicious eyebrow. She loved her stepson with all her heart, but she trusted him about as far as she could throw him.
And she knew she could not throw him that far.
"I promise," Kurt laughed. "I will come."
"You had better," she said.
Carole gave Kurt a stern glare and one last peck on the cheek before turning and shuffling her way back out of the tomb. Kurt stood still and listened to the sound of Carole's heavy footsteps as she walked farther and farther away.
Kurt sighed, alone again with his thoughts, which became as dark as the low light in the cold, dank, stone room. Kurt took the single torch from the entry way and started lighting the torches all around the room. The walls came to life with bright colored images and hieroglyphs, each one depicting a different spell carved in the hopes of aiding his uncle on his journey to the afterlife. Kurt had read the spells over and over, noting with grim dismay that one of the spells was written incorrectly – a crucial line left out by a pathetic excuse for a craftsman who didn't tell his father that he couldn't read all too well. Now, his uncle's soul might be wandering lost, or maybe his soul lingered on earth, forever haunting the chambers and antechambers of his tomb.
In life, Kurt's uncle had been a cruel, detestable man, so if his spirit had remained in the stone crypt, Kurt didn't want to find out. He retrieved his uncle's mummy from its hiding place - shoved beneath a pile of oil cloths in the corner - and placed him back in his sarcophagus. This wasn't the first burial place Kurt had disturbed in his efforts to escape his upcoming nuptials, and he wondered if he now carried a curse on him that would plague him till the end of his days.
He hoped that if he did, he could share the wealth with his husband.
"There you are Uncle Zephyr," Kurt groaned as he stood the rigid and brittle remains back in their elaborately decorated coffin. "Please forgive me for disturbing your rest and don't come after me in my sleep."
Kurt closed the heavy lid, whispering a silent prayer as he did so, hoping to cast a spell of his own to speed the soul of Uncle Zephyr on his merry way. Kurt figured it was the least he could do for hiding out in the old man's tomb for an hour.
Kurt rested his head against the gold inlaid carving of Zephyr's face and sighed.
"Maybe you're the lucky one, you wretched goat fucker," Kurt whispered. "You might have been a mean son-of-a-bitch, but you lived a good life, had many sons, and married a woman you loved."
Kurt felt a sudden chill of unimaginable dread shake his body. He tried to shake it off, shunning it away as old ghosts trying to rattle his bones, but he knew it truly for what it was.
It was despair.
"Oh, gods of my ancestors," he said as tears began to fall, "if you can hear me, please…please save me from marrying a man I do not love. Rescue me from a life of imprisonment. What did I ever do to displease you that I should have this be my fate?"
Kurt stepped away from the sarcophagus and walked out of the room, his hand running across the wall briefly to trace over the ruined line of text.
"I would go anywhere in the world, anywhere in time, to find my one true love, and live happily ever after."
Kurt sighed, a puff of his breath blowing some loose sand from the wall away, exposing the entire inscription. He eyed it briefly, and then walked on. He wiped the hand that had touched the wall on his clothes, ignoring the tingling in his fingers as he started down the long, dark corridor that led to the chambers above. Blank, carved eyes stared at him as he passed, each step echoing like the tolling bells of doom until, for some strange reason, Kurt no longer heard them. He stopped and turned in place, wondering where the sound could have gone. He raised a finger to his ear to clear away the dust, hoping that while he was locked in the coffin some small squatter hadn't crawled in and decided to build a home. The tingling became overwhelming, traveling from his fingers to his wrists, up his arms to his shoulders, and then tickling his throat – too much for him to ignore. He raised his hands to his face and saw only a ghost of himself – a blurry outline glowing with light but otherwise completely transparent.
"Oh, gods! No!" he screamed, but he heard the words only in his head. His voice had gone. "No! This isn't what I meant. I didn't want to disappear!"
It must be the curse, he thought in a panic. I've disturbed too many graves, foolishly trying to outrun my fate. I've disobeyed the will of my elders. I've solicited the help of the gods for my own selfish purposes and have therefore incurred their wrath.
And this is how I'm going to pay for it.
I'm sorry, father, King of My Family.
I'm sorry stepmother, Mistress Who Loved Me as Her Own.
The light that formed the very essence of Kurt grew blinding for a second and then blinked out.
The tomb was plunged into a frightful darkness and stood empty once more.