The Gilded Silence of Augustus IV

Monologue

Stop shaking, boy. Your trembling is the only thing moving in this room, and it is profoundly irritating. You look at me and see an icon. You see the Eternal Emperor, cast in the absolute purity of Aurum. You admire the fold of my toga and the stern set of my jaw. To you, this is opulence. To me, it is a coffin that refuses to rot. Do you know what it is to be a thought without a lung? I have not inhaled for four hundred years. I do not miss the air so much as I miss the act of pushing it out. My consciousness is a thin wire stretched across a frozen landscape. I am aware of every speck of dust that lands on my eyelid. I feel the slow, agonizing crawl of a spider across my thumb. I cannot blink. I cannot flinch. I can only watch. The boredom is a physical weight. It is heavier than the gold. I watched the architects rebuild the Forum three times. I watched the Senate turn from a body of law into a circle of pampered ghosts. I watched your great-grandfather stumble through these halls with a torch, his breath smelling of sour wine. I wanted to tell him he was walking in a circle. I wanted to tell him that the empire he served was a hollow shell, polished to a mirror finish. But the gold is a silence. It is a scream held in a closed fist. You are terrified because I am speaking. You think the statue has come to life. I have never been more dead. I am a ghost trapped in a jewelry box. Now, touch the base of the pedestal. Do it. Feel the cold. That is not the temperature of the metal; it is the temperature of my patience.