"I prefer con ," I say automatically, while my brain tries to catch up with events. "Or I would. If I was one. Which I'm not, obviously, ha ha."

  Silence. I glare at the skull.

  "Are you real, voice, or am I going crazy?"

  i am real. i offer no opinion as to your sanity.

  "Are you the skull? Am I chatting with a talking skull right now?"

  i am not embodied in the skull, but it serves as a convenient locus to focus my attention.

  I blink. There's a distant sigh, like the last exhalation of a corpse.

  yes, i am a talking skull.

  "Okay. Chatting with talking skull. Very, uh, very Seventh of me, very He-who-looks-inward." All priests are mad, but the priests of the Seventh are madder than most, and have a reputation for getting up to unsavory things with corpses. "How do you know anything about me? We just met. Are you reading my mind?"

  not your mind. your history.

  "My … history?"

  and a sorry tale it is, too.

  I straighten up and adjust an imaginary lapel. "Hey, I think I've done all right for myself."

  you were born to privilege and comfort. in pursuit of more, you lied, cheated, and stole. eventually you were caught and punished. have I left anything out?

  "I mean …" I swallow, unexpectedly feeling real hurt. "Of course it sounds like shit when you put it like ." I try to rally myself a little. "Besides, it's the . Everyone lies, cheats, and steals, that's just an ordinary day's work. I may be a little bit cleverer about it, but I didn't do anything worse than anybody at court."

  i did not say that you did.

  "I have to tell you, if I'd imagined a conversation with a talking skull, this is not what I would have pictured."

  When the skull doesn't respond, I close my eyes for a moment and try to focus. The strangeness of events has temporarily taken my mind off the rather desperate situation I've found myself in, but a moment's contemplation brings it roaring back. Killer bug, trackless desert, etc.

  "I have some questions."

  doubtless.

  The sarcasm is evident, but I still take it as an invitation. "Who you?"

  i have many names.

  "Would you like to pick one?"

  i have been called admixture-of-purity-and-absence.

  "It's a bit of a mouthful."

  you may call me gray.

  "Gray. Fine.

  are you?"

  it would be difficult to explain. a talking skull will suffice for the moment.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  "How long have you been down here?"

  The skull doesn't actually move, but I have the sense it gives me a withering look.

  how long do you think?

  "Fine." I clear my throat. "I don't know if you noticed while you were picking over my past, but things have not been going my way lately --"

  to put it mildly.

  "And I was ," I go on through gritted teeth, "if you could be at all helpful in that regard. Other than as a flashlight. A secret passage back to the surface and a hidden oasis, for example…?"

  the only way to return to the surface is through the trappist's chamber.

  "Could I my way out, maybe --"

  the rest of the building is buried under ten thousand tons of sand.

  "So no, then. How about --"

  even if you were to leave this place, there is no oasis within a hundred miles. you will be dead by the time the nightsun rises tomorrow.

  "Has anyone every told you that you have a very negative attitude?"

  it comes with the territory.

  "What territory?"

  being a skull.

  I stare at it in stony silence.

  that was a joke.

  "Really."

  i am also known as he-who-brings-forth-laughter.

  "Okay, now you're just lying."

  yes.

  Another silence. I cough.

  "So what you're saying is, I'm doomed, so I might as well lie down and let it happen."

  yes.

  A third silence, even more fraught than the previous two.

  "Listen," I say eventually. "I'm not very happy about that."

  why would you be? happiness is illogical.

  "I mean that I'd rather

  die, if it's all the same to you."

  i suspect most people who die feel that way.

  "You seem to know rather a lot. Is there you could do to assist me?"

  i do. The slightest pause. and there is not.

  But that . You don't get to be a con like myself without some finely honed instincts about when someone is peddling bugshit, and even when that someone is a talking skull and doesn't have much in the way of body language you can still hear that tiny hesitation that comes from knowing what you're about to say is, strictly speaking, a load of roach dung.

  Which means he help me. He doesn't want to, but that's just a matter of motivation.

  "Huh," I say. "Well. Nothing left to do but, you know, contemplate my mortality and so on, then."

  yes.

  "You want me to put you back on the rock there for the next fellow?"

  if you would.

  I make to set the skull down, then pause, head tilted theatrically as though something has just occurred to me.

  "You know. If I'm going to die of thirst --"

  you are.

  "-- then I may as well spend my last few hours doing something , right?"

  the concept of 'fun' loses much of its meaning under these circumstances.

  "I don't know. I like to think I'm able to find the fun in almost any situation. Right now, what seems like it would be fun is an old-fashioned game of corridor kickball."

  Gray says nothing, perhaps sensing what's coming.

  "Used to have a good time playing that as a kid, up and down the halls, you know? Never really had a ball, but we'd just use an old junk. Stuffed animals, flowerpots, those tins you get chocolate in. You know the kind with the flowers on top?" I shrug and look into Gray's empty eye sockets. "Nothing like that around here, though. All I've got is a skull."

  …are you me?

  "You bet your bony scalp I am."

  i told you that i am the skull. no amount of damage to it will inflict pain on me. He gives that weary sigh again. perhaps i should have expected this from someone of your limited intellect --

  "Yeah? Tell you what. When I'm done playing kickball with you, I'm going to take whatever bits are left down to the sand and bury them deep. Nobody will find you again, not if you wait for a million years. And since the first thing you said to me is that someone 'finally' turned up, I'm guessing you don't want that."

  A con artist always pays close attention, you know.

  For a long while, Gray says nothing.