When Juliet met Annabelle Lee, almost all they could talk about was
the Mona Lisa. Was she really Francesco del Giocondo's wife, or was
Mona actually Leonardo? His mother? Or someone completely
different?
“Well,” Juliet countered, “you know it was actually Madonna Lisa,
according to a quote from a book, so calling her Mona was a
mistake.”
Annabelle Lee, who now was tapping into the quantum field,
instinctively knew everything. “Ma donna. My lady.”
“I believe,” Annabelle Lee answered, “that Francesco ordered a
painting that was never picked up.”
“But why?”
“Francesco moved with Lisa to Venice. Leonardo was left with a
painting that was ordered and never picked up. Unfinished work
becomes legendary. Humanity wants to finish what was not finished.
James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, Diana. They all died young, and so
people began wondering why and made up stories that they were still
alive.”
Juliet waited. Thought for a moment.
They returned to other subjects now and then, like why they were here
in this place and how they had come here at all. Juliet could only
remember drinking the poison and dying and then suddenly
reappearing next to Annabelle Lee, not knowing why she felt such a
certain connection to her. Annabelle Lee felt the same way, and as if
they knew how the past, the present, and the future interacted, this
painting came to mind.
“I mean, the legends are alive. Just not physically.”
Annabelle Lee looked down at her body. Her dress was still intact.
Pink silk. “Was I a legend?”
“Well,” Juliet countered, “in Edgar’s poem it sounds like you drowned,
being mourned by some sailor. But researchers say you were Edgar
Allan Poe’s wife Virginia. So the secret alone makes you a legend.”
“Beyond space and time,” Annabelle Lee said.
“You are in the quantum field,” Juliet said.
“So we are information?” Annabelle Lee asked.
“Conscious information,” Juliet corrected. “Like Q in Star Trek.”
“Back to Mona Lisa,” Annabelle Lee wondered, “she was just a silk
merchant’s wife and became the most valuable woman on Earth.”
At that very moment, a brunette walked into the room, wearing a light
dress and a beguiling smile.
A slight wind seemed to breeze through the room, giving her a
mythical appeal. “795 million dollars, honey.”
“Who are you?” Annabelle Lee asked.
“The actual Mona Lisa.”
“So did you actually move to Venice?” Juliet countered.
“We moved to Naples, sweetie. Francesco gave me a life of great
wealth. It inspired the career I have had since. Fame. Adoration.
Beauty.”
“Does that make you better than me?” the Girl with the Pearl Earring
spat back. She followed Lisa del Giocondo one step behind her, but
seemed to want to walk ahead of her.
“No,” Lisa sneered. “But honestly, you were just the painter’s mistress.”
“Wait a minute—you’ve got it backward.”
“Hey, girls,” Juliet whispered tenderly, “there is no need for this. Look,
Annabelle Lee is already crying.”
“Who are you?” Lisa snapped.
“Romeo’s dead girlfriend. Juliet Capulet.”
“Dead?” the Girl with the Pearl Earring asked. “What do you mean,
dead? Dead tired, yes. But dead?”
“Well, we are a lively bunch,” Lisa chuckled. “Annabelle was not
thought up, and when I was painted, you weren’t written yet, Juliet,
baby.”
“I lived my life prior to the bard,” Juliet smiled cunningly. “Shakespeare
simply wrote me down.”
Annabelle Lee wept again.
The Girl with the Pearl Earring came and sat down next to the woman
with the red hair. “What is the matter?”
“Tuberculosis. Edgar is mourning me. He even wrote a poem about
- My father forbade us to marry.”
“Hey, girls,” Lisa interrupted, “sorry to bother you, but what is this
place?”
A blonde woman with a tiara on her head, a lovely, sweet girl tilting her
head, walked through the main door and sat down on a chair with a
red cushion. “Waiting room. St. Peter is discussing imperialism with
Gandhi. We have to wait for our turn.”
“What?” Lisa spat.
“We’re in heaven,” Juliet smiled.
“Waiting for heaven,” the Girl with the Pearl Earring nodded, holding
Annabelle Lee’s hand.
“What’s your name, anyway, love?” Annabelle Lee said, drying her
tears.
“Magdalena van Ruijven,” she answered, caressing Annabelle’s hand,
“and I wasn’t Johannes’ mistress. I was his friend’s daughter.”
“So you say,” Lisa snapped. “Johannes was in love with you.”
“Did Francesco love you?”
“He called me his Gioconda. So there.”
“Why are you being so bitchy?” Magdalena cried.
“Do you blame me? All people remember me for is my smile.”
“Well, they just see my earring.”
“Hey, babies,” Juliet countered, “I killed myself because I thought my
boyfriend was dead.”
“We’re in heaven. None of that makes any difference,” the blonde
woman said quietly.
There was a long, awkward silence as everyone looked over at the
blonde with the tiara. “What’s your name?”
“Diana Spencer.”
Annabelle Lee nodded. “You’re the woman who opened up the British
monarchy. Or so they say.”
“Have you decided what you wanted to do next?”
Lisa whispered, for the first time sounding friendly.
“I’m thinking of becoming a dog,” Diana smiled shyly in that famous
way that made her famous. “Nice and simple.”
All of the girls in the room knew about Diana. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t
known about the soul sent to live this short and intense life to bring
some humanity to a cold system. None of them doubted for a
moment that time did not exist. And somehow the knowledge that
they would be sitting here together, reviewing their lives and knowing
about each other, was preordained.
Lisa del Giocondo immediately felt guilty for snapping at everyone.
She looked down at the parquet floor and wondered if this floor was
real.
Juliet regarded the paintings. The Mona Lisa was here, The Girl with
the Pearl Earring as well, and a beautiful oil portrait of Princess Diana
in a silk dress on a creamy background.
The women all instinctively looked at the painting. It was as if Juliet,
the strongest of the five, had inspired them all to turn toward it.
“That was painted by Richard Foster, a painter from Norfolk,” Diana
shrugged. “I gave his children a box of chocolates as a thank-you.”
“Did it hang at Buckingham Palace?” Juliet whispered.
“It hung there for a bit until the divorce, and then I took it over to
Kensington Palace.”
“Was your death a conspiracy?” Lisa whispered, her voice cracking as
she wondered how she could know about Diana’s life beyond space
and time.
Diana shook her head gently. “The driver was drunk. Dodi and I were
confused about all the hubbub of the press following us, and we
weren’t even sure we wanted to marry—only that we felt we had to,
because of his father. We got pushed into fleeing. The driver had
expected to spend the night drinking. Why should we leave the Ritz?
But we did. And now I am here.”
She paused, then continued more softly.
“Had I not died, Elizabeth would never have loosened up, and William
and Harry might have suffered Charles’ fate—living their father’s life
instead of their own. All life is about transforming the past: turning
melancholy into nostalgia, and finding the middle ground.”
“Where is the middle ground?” Magdalena van Ruijven asked quietly.
“We are bridges,” she continued, almost answering herself. “Our lives
are gateways to new understanding. The middle ground is truth.”
Lisa nodded slowly, her expression deepening.
“We pave the way for new possibilities. Had I not left for Naples, my
painting would have ended up as an ordinary status symbol in some
mansion. But by leaving it a mystery, people began treating it like a
secret.”
“Writing stories about it,” Annabelle Lee smiled.
“Stealing it,” Diana added with a soft smile. “Like they stole me.”
“Don’t forget the song,” Magdalena said, “who wrote that?”
Diana smiled, as if touching a distant memory. “Jay Livingston. I
listened to the song in my playroom while grooming my kittens. I had
six of them. I pretended I was you.”
Lisa raised an eyebrow. “Me? You were to become the most famous
of all royals.”
“Back then I was a lonely child. Shy. Oh my dear, I was shy. I blushed at
everything.”
Annabelle Lee gazed around the room again. “Where are we, really? I
mean this projection—what is it?”
Juliet exhaled slowly. “Windsor Castle. Right?”
Diana nodded.
“Why here?” Juliet asked.
“German aristocrats posing as Brits,” Diana said thoughtfully, then
smiled at the others. “Windsor represents time.”
A door opened at the far end of the room, dissolving both Windsor
Castle and any remnant of earthly existence. The mahogany door
became only an opening—and in it stood a figure.
None of them could tell whether it was a robe or simply light. It was a
presence. A brightness.
All of them felt drawn toward it, as if their individual consciousnesses
were becoming part of it—yet without losing themselves. The only
analogy they could find was waves on an ocean: distinct, yet one.
Mona Lisa knew what the Girl with the Pearl Earring felt.
Annabelle Lee felt Juliet’s memory.
Diana sensed why they had all been brought together for this brief
meeting in the twilight between worlds.
To weave together the Middle Ages with the Renaissance.
To connect the Baroque imagination with the 19th century.
To stretch a bridge into the modern age.
They understood then what Einstein had meant: past, present, and
future were all layered together, simultaneously.
And among them stood Diana—humanity’s modern emissary, the
living bridge between crown and compassion.
As they stepped forward into heaven—walking across green hills
beneath an everlasting sun—they remembered why they had taken
their journeys in the first place:
To act as bridges.
For souls longed to connect Heaven with Earth, to create Heaven
within the world of form.
To learn how to be light.
To create happiness.
To believe in love, even in the face of challenge.
They were a family.
A spiritual family.
And they remembered.
Mona Lisa felt drawn toward ancient Egypt, to return as a textile
merchant once more.
Annabelle Lee longed to become a camel in Africa, feeling the wind
across the dunes.
Juliet dreamed of becoming an astronaut in the 24th century.
The Girl with the Pearl Earring chose to become a detective novelist in
20th-century England—writing mysteries for a brilliant Belgian sleuth.
And Diana smiled, imagining the joy of life as an Irish sheepdog
named Fred.
And in that shared awareness, the five souls understood:
They were five corners of one spiritual room—
in Windsor Castle,
and beyond it.
***
Bio:
Charles E.J. Moulton is a professional stage performer of all genres
from opera to rock 'n roll, a singing and acting teacher, a painter and
the publisher of three webzines. His written work has been published
in
Skirmish, Idea Gems, The Horror Zine,
Asylum Ink
,
Cheap Jack Pulp,
Contemporary Literary Review India, SNM, TWJ, Paradigm Shift,
Shadows Express, Aphelion, The Woven Tale Press, Socrates, Blood
Moon Rising
and
Indiana Voice Journal
. He lives in Herten, Germany, is
married and has a daughter.