The tour guides always make sure to leave someone behind, not so far they cry out for the group to wait but just far enough that they won't be missed. The key is to pick someone young, someone travelling alone with a backpack full of all they posses and a penchant for wandering off.
Stone remembers, you see. It remembers being a mountain, being cut down and carved and breaking so many people in the process. All the old monuments we worship as masterpieces were built on the blood and bones of hundreds, if not thousands, of nameless workers and they must be fed daily.
They grow used to the taste of blood, the way it flows over their polished surfaces, sticking in the cracks and congealing in such a way as they can savour it just that little bit longer before someone comes to wipe away the evidence.
Stone remembers, you see. It remembers being a mountain, being cut down and carved and breaking so many people in the process. All the old monuments we worship as masterpieces were built on the blood and bones of hundreds, if not thousands, of nameless workers and they must be fed daily.
They grow used to the taste of blood, the way it flows over their polished surfaces, sticking in the cracks and congealing in such a way as they can savour it just that little bit longer before someone comes to wipe away the evidence.
There is always a cleaner close to hand whenever a tour group sets off, they linger in the darker hallways, behind the steeper stairs or just out of sight in a poorly cordoned off room that looks ever so inviting to photo-thirsty tourists.
There are always rooms that the tour guides won't talk about, ones that don't even exist on the maps you can buy in their gift shops. Rooms meant for feeding parched stone and starving basins who suck down the fresh meat so eagerly the cleaners risk losing themselves every time.
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