Short Story: The Miscellaneous Room

A few weeks ago I was wandering through one of my favourite haunts, the Canterbury Museum, when I fell prey to the “thinking the manikin was a real person” mistake. Once my heart resumed its normal pace, I took some photographs, jotted down a few impressions of the room and those passing through it, and ended up with this:

The Miscellaneous Room

 

Among the various advantages of existence as a museum manikin, the greatest had to be the sudden jolts and sharp breaths from those who caught him out the corner of their eye.

The plethora of smells was another benefit; a mingling of well-preserved antiquities (polish), diligent upkeep (glass cleaner) and the enduring pervasion of the human condition (sweat).

But it was that flash of horror which brought such job satisfaction: the realization that they were no longer alone; the blush of having been watched for some time without knowing it.

There was the usual litany of sounds; snatches of conversation, coos of discovery, the screams of terminally devastated children. They cried over untied shoelaces or the speed of older siblings with all the despair usually reserved for those witnessing loved ones perish before their eyes.

But few wandered through the miscellaneous room. It was caught between the gift shop and the vintage street, filled with old science equipment, the bones of an elk, and the taxidermied remains of animals deemed too unappealing for the children’s area.

Only occasionally came the squeaky clomp of footsteps on the shiny floor; the sideways glance into his cabinet room of glass and polished wood. Then the gasp, the jolt, the embarrassed laughter: “I thought he was real!”

The very old and the very young needed clarification. “Is he real?” They were the ones more heard than seen: the slow shuffle of feet past the doorway; hedged voices turning the names of their offspring into curses: “KATIE. Get OFF. We are LEAVING.”

And coughs. Someone was always coughing.

Such an existence supplied a perfect view of them all: tattoos and piercings, tutus and boots, ponytails on men and women with shaved heads; each filing through the still space between and beneath the door frame. They entered, looked and left.

He sat. To be seen was his purpose; to observe was a bonus, and in those fragments of time when passers-by believed him real, he was alive.