The Schism, parts 3679 - 3682

 3679. Fortunately an elderly aunt living in Moscow came to her timely rescue. Just about the time Alexis was being locked in the detention room of the military academy, the elderly aunt has halfway down a long flight of stairs in her elegant townhouse.

 3680. She was headed down the stairs in an awkward position however. She was backwards, traveling at a high rate of speed, and turning over and over in the air. Someone had left a rolling pin on the top stair and it was that object that precipitated her unnatural position and speed. It would turn out to be her last dramatic experience in an otherwise humdrum life. 

 3681. They say that when you are about to die your life seems to flash in front of you from beginning to end, but for Aunt Marfa that was not the case. What flashed before her eyes was the series of portraits of her ancestors that were hung in a row going up the walls of the staircase. She saw an uncle who was a famous General of the Napoleonic era. He passed by upside down, followed by an Aunt Bertha with her three favorite Borzoi hounds, all a blur.

3682. Her last vision was the huge family portrait almost four feet long that adorned a large space at the bottom of the stairs. It was framed with one of those thick ornamented gilded frames. It was one of the lion headed ornaments protruding from the corners of the frame that put an end to her life.