[ WP ] You find a wanted sign with your face on it ... in a museum exhibit .

“ Over here, ” I called Jim. His disbelief was the reason we visited the museum. The inscription below my wanted poster read: *Lauren Tomb – painter, murderer, 1893. * The tint of my sunglasses made the ancient picture look bronzer than it already was. Two of my paintings hung right next to it. A landscape and a young girl in a white dress whose identity I had long forgotten. 
 
 The police copied it off of a painting made by Claude Monet. Tongue out, hair tied back, and my cheek raised in a sly wink—I still owned that yellow dress, or cream in the poster. The drawing ink was well preserved, but the paper they could do little to salvage, yellowed and torn at the top right edge. The wink he hadn ’ t truly mastered, it looked more like something had caught my eye and made it water. I still had the painting, hidden in the basement, and boxed for over a hundred years now. 
 
 Jim leaned closer to the painting, his eyes narrowed for a clearer inspection. “ That does look like you, ” he said as his eyes lingered on it for a moment before turning back to inspect me. 
 
 “ That ’ s because it is me, ” I said. Jim was a historian whom I met at an art gallery. He was investigating the life and works of Lauren Tomb, who by many years of bending the law had become my great, great, grandmother on paper. I hadn ’ t made a dime on any of my paintings before my so called death, and now as my own granddaughter I gathered quite a fortune. *What a time to be alive! * 
 
 “ Will you show me the paintings now? ” he asked. 
 
 My art gallery was quite famous. Mostly because I had some of my early work still displayed. I told Jim that if he listened to my story—the true story, not the one of a vengeful, scorned painter who murdered her husband and drowned herself in the sea—then I would let him keep a painting that I had not revealed as an original yet. There were plenty to choose from, and I was tired of hiding in the shadows. 
 
 “ Yes—but remember that the deal was for you to keep an open mind. ” 
 
 “ You know that if this is true, which I have strong doubts about, ” he raised a bushy brow showing me that he still thought I was a mental case, but came along anyway, because there was no better source to crack the story, “ that you ’ ll be tested and put up on display like a money in a zoo? ” 
 
 I winked, hoping that it would strike a stronger resemblance between me and the me of 1893. “ They can try. ” 
 ***** 
 
 He hovered over Monet ’ s painting with a small monocle looking contraption to verify the authenticity. “ Wow! ” 
 
 “ I told you. ” 
 
 “ This still doesn ’ t— ” 
 
 “ Yes, yes, ” I rolled my eyes, looking at his dumbfounded expression, “ you ’ ll have your DNA sample, Jim. ” 
 
 “ That ’ s if the museum even lets us take a hair from that hairbrush. ” 
 
 “ Oh they will. Once they see my collection, they ’ ll let us do whatever we want. ” 
 
 Jim moved onto the portrait I painted of my father. He was sharp faced man with a trimmed white beard and a dreadful pipe that might as well have been a part of his face, since I barely saw him without it hanging from his mouth. It killed him in the end, and all I could do was watch from a distance as they lowered his coffin right next to my empty one in the family graveyard. 
 
 “ How do you want me to proceed? ” Jim asked, ogling the painting with a bright spark in his eye. He knew very well that he had just struck gold. 
 
 “ Well, I ’ d like you to believe me first, if I ’ m going to trust you with making others believe me. ” 
 
 He narrowed his eyes, shoulders slumping down just a tad in defeat. “ Alright, then. How? ” 
 
 “ How what? ” 
 
 “ How are you alive. ” 
 
 I smiled dimly, my eyes not following the tight crease of my lips, and my mind traveling to a place where darkness lurked. “ I sold my soul. ” 
 
 He laughed. “ You ’ ll have to think of a better story. That one ’ s overused. ” 
 
 “ It ’ s not a contract that you sign with a red, horned man, ” I said, my voice losing its friendly tone to set the young man straight. “ I lost more than I gained, and it ’ s taken me years to realize it. The soul is stored energy. Upon death, it is released for travel to afterlife. Losing it means that I can not die, but neither can I live *again*. If the earth crumbles tomorrow, I will be the only one to walk upon it or drift in space for eternity—whatever comes, at whatever cost to humanity, I will be spared. You can lose your soul by being vile, and be reborn over and over until there is nothing to be reborn to, then you will simply keep your body and be like me, or you can sell it. ” 
 
 “ That is quite a story, ” Jim said, and turned to another painting, his mind cladding me in madness once again. 
 
 
 ***** 
 More of my prompt responses and other writing can be found here: /r/AlinaKG 
 
 Thanks for reading! 

