We Go Forward

by Alison Evans

  "But somehow less disgusting than casual cannibalism?" I get into the picture frame and she takes it.

  We take a look and she's got her gaze on the castle, eyes wide with wonder at the scenery, and I'm looking right at the camera. She's got the dorkiest smile on, and my cheeks and nose are red from the cold, but I look a little less lost than I usually do. We're slightly blurry and the castle is the wrong colours because of the light, but there is snow falling around us and it's stuck in our hair and on our clothes.

  "Can you send that to me?" I ask.

  She taps away at her phone and sends it to Jalen as well and I see the email.

  This is the girl I was talking about, she's so COOL help me. Will email properly tonight, later nerd x

  We keep walking, the snow getting heavier as we trudge across the bridge, avoiding the people.

  "More hot wine?"

  I'm starting to lose feeling in my fingers, so I agree.

  *~*~*

  "I swear if we just keep following this street..." Roslyn says, glancing from the map to the street signs. "But we didn't..." She looks back at the map. "We didn't even turn! How the fuck are we here? We literally did not turn."

  We're trying to find the Sex Machines Museum, because Roslyn couldn't stop giggling at the name.

  "Prague does not follow the laws of time and space." I don't know if I'm joking.

  "Bullshit, that's what it is." Roslyn shakes her fist at the sky. "Curse you, you beautiful fucking city."

  People around stare at us before continuing on walking.

  "It's too pretty," Roslyn tells me for the hundredth time today. "I get distracted and then suddenly we're five hundred streets away from where we need to be."

  "I know, I know." We start walking again, hopefully going the right way. I get my foot caught in a hole and I look down; there are loose cobblestones. I pick one up: a white one that sparkles in certain light. "Holy shit, I've found the perfect cobblestone." A lot of them have huge chunks of their corners chipped off, but this one has the exact right dimensions.

  "Ooh." Roslyn picks one up too. "Fuck, this is the coldest thing I have ever touched."

  "Good, though, no need to pay for souvenirs," I say as I place mine in her hand. "This one's better; keep this one."

  She pockets the cobblestone and we continue down the street. We don't make it to the Sex Machines Museum, but we manage to find the astronomical clock, which means that we're definitely in the Old Town and are at least in the right area. The clock is beautiful, intricate with swirling patterns and gold detailing.

  "Well, now, that is definitely a clock," Roslyn says.

  It's almost always underwhelming when you see the things in real life that the postcards depict. The clock's beautiful, sure, but it's surrounded by people who keep pushing their way past everyone else. I sigh. Maybe I'm just too… I don't know.

  We don't stay too long, though; there are too many people and I'm paranoid that we're going to be pickpocketed. The Old Town Square is filled with street performers and tourists, and although the buildings are beautiful, we've come too far and need to double back.

  Eventually, we find the entrance, which is covered in feathers and red velvet. I can't help but giggle as we look at the machine out the front that has a wheel of rotating tongues.

  "Wow," Roslyn says, voice dry. "So very erotic."

  There are heaps of people inside and it's amazing just how many people Prague has in it. They're everywhere, milling through the streets and shops, all with their own worlds happening.

  "Two, please."

  The woman behind the counter is so done and doesn't exactly roll her eyes when we start giggling, but she's been working too many hours. I'm sure one hour would be too much.

  What's in a sex museum? People do make a lot of fuss over the whole sex thing; it's amazing how it's been incorporated into almost every aspect of life. No wonder I grew up thinking I must be a freak. A better question is probably what's not in a sex museum.

  We go through the main hall towards heavy red velvet curtains that are super old and find ourselves in a small cinema. A black-and-white picture is playing, and the movements are the jerky, slightly-too-fast kind that means it's super old. There's a man who I think is a priest because of the collar he's wearing, and a young woman, and there's no sound, except the music.

  "Oh, my gosh," Roslyn says, sitting down immediately. "Ye olde porn."

  I sit beside her on the old wooden bench.

  "Do you wanna watch this?" she says.

  "Yeah." I nod. "I've never seen porn with a piano soundtrack before."

  We giggle as we watch the figures as they go through the motions. They both seem so disinterested, especially the woman. She keeps rolling her eyes. I love it.

  "Sex is so weird," I say.

  "I mean... this isn't the most erotic of things," Roslyn says, giggling.

  "Oh, no, I figured. I know what sexiness is. I'm not a sheltered flower just because I'm ace." I nudge her shoulder with mine. "Just in general. Sex is weird."

  I don't even know what these people are doing, but judging by Roslyn's face, she doesn't either. They don't seem to be really doing anything much at all, they're just sort of… being naked near each other.

  "Yeah, well, ya not wrong." Roslyn continues watching for a few moments, bursts into a giggling fit. "This is literally the most amazing thing I've ever seen."

  Watching porn with someone isn't as embarrassing as I thought it would be. It might just be because this particular porn is so bad, but it's fine. Maybe that's just because it's Roslyn, and she doesn't think I'm weird.

  "That wasn't the worst porn I've seen," Roslyn says, once we leave the cinema. "Which is a little sad."

  "Jeez," I say. "What on earth are you watching?"

  *~*~*

  I've always been in awe of girls who can wear short dresses in the cold, but Czech girls are a whole new level. It's fucking snowing and they're out here in their high heels and dresses that are barely there.

  "These girls are made of steel," I say. I'm shivering in my fleece tights and jacket.

  "Legit," Roslyn says. As she speaks, her words turn into fog.

  Once we're inside and dancing, though, I'm dripping in sweat. Roslyn hands me a drink and we somehow manage to find space in the crowds of people.

  Some dude comes up and starts trying to dance with me and I'm really just not in the mood. I don't mind dancing with people. Sometimes making out with them is fun, but not right now. I look at Roslyn for help.

  She doesn't say anything to him, just pulls me away and into another part of the crowd. "Fuckin' randos," she says. The music here is pumping the blood into my limbs and now, away from the man, I don't mind the dancing and the squish, the way passing strangers push their way past us. We're anonymous here.

  Too soon, it's time to move on to the next club. Sam and Julie tell us they've been here already. This one's got five levels and each floor plays a different genre of music. We're dragged up to the third floor and Sam buys us a round before she disappears into the crowd.

  In the next club, we find Sam and Julie standing near the toilets away from the crowd. It's so scungy that I don't want to touch anyone or anything, and Roslyn and I leave right away.

  The last one, we dance. My feet are starting to hurt and it's getting harder to balance, but I love it. Roslyn keeps laughing and the black lights make her teeth glow.

  "Oh wow, look!" She points to someone dancing and it takes me a second to realise it's Sam.

  She's everywhere all at once, a blur of limbs and hair, and I don't know how she's actually moving. There's a space cleared around her, everyone is too scared to get near her, although I can see Julie just behind her, pashing a girl I don't recognise.

  "She's got some serious moves," Roslyn says, whistling low. "Come on, let's join her."

  "I can't dance," I say. Not like that, anyway, when everyone's watching.

  "You don't need to," Roslyn says, taking me by the hand.r />
  I close my eyes and feel the beat of the music in my bones, vibrating out into my skin. When I can't take anymore, I turn to Roslyn and tell her I need to go home because I can barely see, let alone walk. We lost Julie and Sam a while ago in the crowd, but they'll be fine.

  She laughs and nods in agreement. We can't remember the name of the taxi that doesn't rip people off, but we end up guessing right and getting a cheap one. As we stumble into the hostel, I clap my hand down on her shoulder.

  "Roslyn," I say, blinking as we go up in the elevator. It's made of glass and is definitely not something I want to be in right now. "You're... I'm just glad I met you."

  She laughs and sways as the elevator stops.

  "You're too cool to know me," she says, waving a hand.

  We manage to get out okay, but then fitting the key into the door is another story. The lock is old as shit and you have to angle to key juuuust right to fit it into the stupid thing. It takes us about five minutes to actually get the door open.

  I've no idea what the time is but when we get inside, everyone else is asleep and the lights are off. We giggle and clutch at each other as we make our way across the room, somehow without tripping over anything.

  "Goodnight," Roslyn whispers before kissing my hair.

  "Sleep tight," I say.

  It's difficult to get up the ladder, but I somehow make it without falling off. When my head hits the pillow, I sigh and melt into the mattress.

  Chapter Seven

  Roslyn

  I wake up in the middle of the night and Julie's walking into the dorm, yawning and running a hand through her hair. Sam's nowhere to be seen, but then the room's super dark and she's probably in the toilet or something. I fall back asleep.

  I wake up again, though I don't know how long after. Because there are twelve beds in the dorm, we don't really get a good night's sleep; some rando's left the door open and the hall light is streaming in. I look down, but Sam's bunk, under mine, is still empty. There's what looks like a lump of clothes or whatever, but it's not big enough to be a person. Unless she's just curled into a tiny, tiny ball.

  It's dark enough that I can't tell, but if I crane my neck out over the edge of my bed, I can see Julie's asleep in her bed.

  Sam just might be in the toilet… again.

  My eyelids are too heavy and I fall back asleep. I drift in and out of sleep in the night and I don't know what's dream and what isn't, but Sam doesn't appear.

  When the morning finally properly comes, the dorm is empty except for Christie, who's sitting on her bunk drying her hair, and Julie, still in bed.

  "Where's Sam?" I ask, shielding my eyes from the sunlight coming in through the window. Goddamn curtains: someone's opened them.

  Julie shrugs.

  "Is she all right?" I ask.

  "Yeah. She does this all the time, don't worry about it."

  I frown. She's very calm about this. "Really?"

  She nods. "She just better not have lost my wallet. I gave it to her to keep in her jacket last night."

  "You've got your phone though, right?" Christie asks. "Can you text her?"

  "Sent her a message; she won't wake up for ages, though."

  But she might be dead, I think. Julie is so calm; it's unnerving. There's a pit of worry in my stomach for this girl I barely even know.

  "Well, we're going to Kutná Hora today, if you want to join?" I ask, sitting up properly. "You can pay us back."

  "I'll just stay here," Julie replies and picks up a book. "Feeling pretty seedy. Thanks, though."

  While we're getting ready to leave, Sam doesn't appear and Julie remains calm.

  The bus to Kutná Hora isn't really that long, though I realise I may have a slightly warped sense of transport time, now. Three hours is nothing.

  @roslyn: this bus has ###wi#######fi????

  At the hostel we picked up a little information booklet on Kostnice v Sedlci, the Sedlec Ossuary.

  @roslyn: so we're going to a chapel full of bones en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Oss...

  @roslyn: full of actual human remains tho? like whose idea was that???

  @roslyn: 'hey we got all these corpses' 'just pile them bones up into pyramids' 'you sure?' 'just do it mate, trust me'

  Christie's watching episodes of Broad City on her tablet and she keeps snorting with laughter as she eats M&Ms. I have to close the tab on the fanfiction I'm reading, because I don't want to cry on the bus about fictional ladies, so I turn up my music and stare out the window. The Czech countryside is beautiful and cold, and the towns are so cute that they might not be real, much like Prague. The bus is going fast, but trucks keep overtaking us on the tiny, winding roads, and each time they do, I think we're about to die.

  I tweet a picture of the view outside my window. There's a lot of farmland and it's all bare because of the winter. A couple of seconds later, Jalen replies:

  @ja7en: @roslyn hate u. have fun xoxoxo

  It makes me wonder if Vee is still checking on my twitter profile, but then, I don't need to think about that. No one really warns you about friendship breakups. Relationship breakups, sure. There are literally zillions of songs and movies and everything about those. But friendship breakups aren't talked about, really. There aren't songs for those.

  The loss of her is a knot in my stomach. I try to ignore it as I rest my head on Christie's shoulder. Not everyone is a good friend, and maybe I wasn't the best friend to her, either. It's not all supposed to last, anyway, just like relationships. Friendships don't have to endure everything.

  Christie's so warm and I solid; I know I'm safe with her. I nap the rest of the way to the Ossuary.

  When we get there, the ossuary is surrounded by graves covered in flowers. It's not snowing, but it's freezing; Christie and I link arms as we walk. The wind has managed to get in everywhere and I don't remember what being warm feels like. This will definitely be how I die.

  "It's supposed to have, like, twenty thousand people in there," Christie says as we walk up to the entrance. "I was reading that brochure they gave us at the hostel when you were sleeping."

  "Wikipedia said between forty and seventy thousand."

  "Jeez."

  We pay the woman sitting behind the desk and she hands us more brochures along with our tickets.

  The ossuary is tiny. I thought it would be huge... containing the remains of 40,000 to 70,000 people. It's tiny. It's so tiny. I sneeze. And fuckin' dusty, Christ.

  We don't walk together. I take the steps one at a time, staring at the skulls lining the arches on the ceiling. The fronts are turned down so they're looking at the floor and the bumpy, round, grey tops are showing. Beside me on the wall, skulls without jaws sit on top of two thigh bones, just like on pirate flags.

  It's cold in here. Colder than outside.

  I come to a pyramid of thigh bones. They're covered in dust and cobwebs, and on a shelf at about waist level, people have placed coins. I don't know why they're there. For luck? The pyramid has a tunnel running through it, and at the forefront, there's a collection of skulls.

  They all look different.

  Plague victims, I'm guessing. How else do you get this many bodies? War, maybe. Wikipedia did say, but I can't remember anything.

  There's a cabinet beside the pyramid where there are skulls displayed. These skulls have holes in the tops of them; one near the back has half the front of it gone. The one nearest me has huge cracks in it. Swords, arrows, maces, and flails. There's a sign next to them, and it says that's how these people died. My skin feels like it has beetles under it and I have to look away.

  In the middle of the room, hanging from the ceiling, is a chandelier made of pelvises, vertebrae—I don't even know what some of these bones are, even though I have them inside me. There are so many.

  "Roslyn," Christie says, and her voice sends the blood back into my head in relief. She's standing in front of a barrier. "Do you have any coins?"

  I walk over to her and see there are candles you ca
n light, for a donation. There's only one lit right now, and the rest are either unused or burnt out. I get out coins for both of us and we light the candles. As I place mine down, I think of the skulls in the cabinet. I can't concentrate on anything else—not on the multitudes of people whose bones are on display, only those few skulls.

  As we turn, we're facing the chandelier again. I look up to the four towers surrounding it and see that perched on top of each one is a painted cherub.

  Fucking Christ. I can't.

  "I think I need to leave," I tell Christie.

  She places a hand on my arm. "You okay?"

  "It's just..." The worst place I've ever been? A church decorated in parts of people. "It's weird. You stay, I'll just go sit outside or something."

  "I won't be long." She squeezes my arm and I leave without trying to look at any of the bones, but they're everywhere, burnt into my brain.

  I want to sit when I get outside, but it's too cold to stay still, so I wander through the graveyard. There are so many flowers, pinecones, and leaves placed on them; the colours are vibrant, set against the grey and white. Some of these graves are out of living memory, but every single grave has something decorating it, even if it's just a little branch of pine.

  Although it's starting to get colder out here than it was in the ossuary, the warmth returns to my fingers, my nose, as I start to forget exactly how the skulls looked.

  We both sleep on the bus ride back; the heaters are on, and with the steady mutterings of conversations around us, it's easy. I fall asleep to words I don't understand.

  Halfway back up the hill of doom, we stop for a rest at the trdelník shop. The warm bread is a small comfort that helps with the gaps that have started to form in me. Christie points to the sign on the wall, and there's the little WiFi logo.

  "WiFi!" I say, spitting crumbs all over Christie. "Aw shit, my bad." I dust off her jacket.

  After a while, we swap blog URLs and I'm reading through her 'about me' page.

  "You've said aromatic asexual here." I point to her blog's profile. She looks at my phone, giggling. "Do asexuals come in unscented?"