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“To my lovely starling,
Maybe there are magical words that will make you understand, but if so, I do not know them. Words are your domain. I've always been better with pictures.
I fear you think I am a monster. It's true I've disrupted many graves. The way I see it, the dead are dead. If, after their death, we can learn things from the about the human form - things that will increase the sum of human knowledge and the possibilities of art - what harm is that? After death, new life, new beauty. How can that be wrong? My friends and I have made use of some of the bodies as models. some we sell to surgeons who study them with the hopes of learning something about the frail mechanisms of the human body.
I don't know exactly what Dottor de Gradi does in his workshop on the Rialto, and I was as surprised as you were to stumble on it. He couldn't - he wouldn't tell me if your friend's body ended up there. But he did assure me all of his work is focused solely on extending human life.
I won't lie. I did it for the money as well. Don Loredan is holding a private exhibition in his palazzo tomorrow. The entry fee was quite steep but two of my paintings were accepted. This could be the beginning for me. I could find my own patrons. I could be more than just a peasant. Tommaso's assistant.
So yes; a little for money. But mostly I did for the art.
I don't expect these words to change how you feel. I simply want you not to see me as a monster. I don't want to be a monster. Not anymore. Not after meeting you. I know that we disrupted you dear friend's body, and for that I am deeply regretful. But if we had not done so, if I had not lingered in the San Domenico churchyard after standing guard for my friends, you and I might never have met. Meeting you is one thing I will never regret.
I hope you like the painting. Consider tit a wedding gift. How stupid of me to let my heart go. It was a lovely fantasy while it lasted, though, wasn't it?
Yours,
Falco”
― Fiona Paul, Venom

“As for my feet, the little feet
You used to call so pretty,
There's one, I know, in Bedford Row,
The t'other's in the City.”
― Thomas Hood

“compressed into boxes, packed in sawdust,... trussed up in sacks, roped up like hams...”
― Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

“That afternoon, she thought momentarily of those 1950s B-movies with alien invaders who inhabited unsuspecting human hosts.”
― Rebecca Rowland, White Trash and Recycled Nightmares