Unsolved

Today’s prompt: “A famous, unsolved crime”

The master art thief had arrived in the Getty in the dead of night with a copy of Cezanne’s Still Life With Apples forged by her associate. She had swiped security badges and snuck her way past guards, and was stealthily removing the real painting from the wall.

Or at least, that’s what she thought she was doing. Because there was no wall to speak of behind the painting.

The thief shrieked aloud when she had removed the Cezanne only to uncover a recess in the wall, and staring from its depths, a human skull. She jostled the painting in her surpise, and it clattered against a ribcage, sending bones scattering. The trembling thief set the painting down and stared at your skeleton propped up in what appeared to be a hand-dug alcove hidden by the canvas. Your femurs were crossed, your spine was attached to the back of the recess with garden stakes, and your arms were stretched out to the sides of the carved-out hole as though to embrace the woman who found you.

Security guards arrived. The woman confessed to the attempted theft, but claimed ignorance about the origins of the skeleton. To this day, no one knows how long you had been behind the Cezanne. Investigators were unclear how long you had been dead, though most believe your killer had put your corpse in some kind of insect colony to speed up decomposition. No one knows who killed you, or why, or why you were in the Getty. But the art world can’t stop talking about you.