Rosalia Lombardo's was the last body to be placed in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo in Sicily. She was only two years old when she died in a local epidemic, and that is all that anybody seems to know about her as a person. Let's face it, the poor girl didn't have much of a chance to prove herself. Perhaps in a course of time parallel to our own, miss Lombardo wrote the most beautifully symphonious poetry known to the Western world, or lived to rid the world of terrible diseases, saving countless lives. Alack, in our lonely string of the fourth dimension, she is relegated to eternal infancy. On the bright side, she is the only example of perhaps the greatest embalming technique known to man.

Rosalia, known colloquially as the sleeping beauty, died in 1920. Despite this, she would appear to be alive, or at the very least, very recently deceased. Delicate curls still frame her cherubic face. Even her gray eyes are perfectly preserved, lying unutilised but millimetres from our world. The only clue as to her true metabolic state lies in her skin tone, which is decidedly flattened by lack of blood. That, I suppose, and her lack of a heartbeat. After her death— probably moments after— she was mummified by one Dr. Alfredo Salafia, who (probably) injected her with a slurry of (probably) toxic chemicals. She was then placed on display in the catacombs, where she remains today. Shortly afterward, Doctor Salafia died and took the secrets of Rosalia's mummification with him. Sic transit gloria mundi, as the saying goes.

Some say that Rosalia is not dead at all, but simply suffering from Economo, a disease in which the affected can sleep for decades without aging. I've heard rumours that scientists once monitored her body and found that her brain registered slight activity for a few minutes. This soon faded, only to repeat three days later. If you want to believe this, be my guest. It would certainly be fascinating and would certainly make for a good story to tell at cocktail parties, or wherever it is that people with social lives tell stories.

I think it's obvious what the truth is, but I'm not sure if I'd rather she be dead or sleeping.

Can you take me back where I came from?

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