The Museum

All you can think about is the crash.

It was the other driver. All his fault, not yours. Why did you have to be the one, while he stood by and watched your shattered body and mind shriek in terrible agony deep inside, unable to summon the energy to let out a single pathetic scream?

Why you? Why your life?

Maybe this isn’t real. This can’t be real. You can’t still be thinking after you’re dead, can you? There shouldn’t be an afterlife, so why was the pain so vivid, the flash and the sinking down, down into the very earth as your blood stopped pulsing before the police arrived on the scene? Why do you still feel like your heart is beating, your brain still sparking with signals and keeping your five senses alive?

Just as your vision had gone black, you were suddenly standing outside of a building with no features—no windows, no doors except one, built with simple, economic red bricks. It would have been nothing extraordinary if it wasn’t for the fact that you can’t see where it ended. You look behind you to try to see grass, flowers, anything normal, but there is nothing but solid black, as though you and the house are floating. You begin to feel ill, ready to collapse with sheer confusion and shock.

The door opens, making you wince in surprise. A stringy and austere man steps out also supported by the blackness, surveying you blankly before beckoning you in.

You are escorted into the strange place by the tall man with greasy brown hair and stern dark eyes. He doesn’t speak, just walks forward slowly and evenly, as though he has walked this way a thousand times before and it no longer matters.

Together you come to the beginning of the hallway, all cloaked in boastful reds clashing with gold lining that competes with it for attention. The room is bright, but you look up toward the distant ceiling to find that there are no light bulbs or chandeliers. You cannot tell where the light is coming from…nor can you tell where the hall ends.

There are paintings on the left wall, only separated from one another by a few feet. They reach up to the ceiling, dozens of yards tall. You wonder how on earth any mortal being could have painted them—but then, you realize, it probably wasn’t. Some of them are in stunning pastels, with clouds and fields of eternal green and sunlight. Others show towering skylines, flashing with lights that attempt to replicate the twinkling stars but rather manage to produce an entirely different kind of beauty. With a painful twinge it reminds you of your own home.

Still others are magnificent natural wonders, dazzling waterfalls and oozing magma and coral reefs, exploding with color. You can see the texture of the paint, but they are so realistic it’s a wonder they don’t fall out of the walls. And there are still more, some things you don’t even recognize that appear other-worldly—enormous computers with millions of whirring gears, planets outside of the solar system you read about in science class all those years ago but never saw, and blindingly green rainforests bursting at the seams with thousands of species that don’t appear to fit anywhere on the food chain.

Soon, however, they change. The pinks turn to blood-reds, the powder blue skies turn to black and the frames fade. You see pictures of ruined meadows and rainforests, entire universes of life, obliterated by generations of excuses—it’s for the oil, the farming, the wood and the food…You wish you could rip your way into the painting, to stop them from mutilating their own planet.

It turns to images of the darkest memories of history. You see the gruesome image of a woman screaming in contorted rage and fear, a line of skeleton-people dressed in tattered clothing waiting for the gas chamber, a young boy blowing his brains out in his family’s living room. You recognize the deadliest times on Earth—entire families lying in cots vomiting blood and covered in enormous swellings oozing pus, ships of all sizes going down in storms without a trace, deadly riots against oppressive and cruel governments. Your stomach twists and nausea pushes bile into your throat at many of the images. You cannot believe how the painters have held nothing back. This isn’t art, this isn’t human. Although you try to face forward, you cannot tear your gaze away from the awful pictures. Somehow they compel you, clawing at you and screeching Look at me!

But all this time, the man does not care. He turns up his nose at the images of destruction, bored by the scenery. You can’t remember why you ever agreed to come in. You would have been better off wandering through the darkness than having to face this. Better yet, you should have never stepped into that car.

You touch his sleeve, and he stops. He does not turn to face you.

“Can I leave?” you choke out.

He looks away. “Are you afraid to face humanity?”

Are you?

No. Normal people didn’t do those monstrosities. Normal people didn’t start the Holocaust, wars, deforestation, or torture. Sick, disgusting ones that would not be called human if it weren’t for their DNA patterns and speech did.

No.

“No.”

You continue to walk.

The pictures stretch higher, along with the cracked ceiling that seems as distant as the sun. Now they show smoggy skies, fires burning, hate speech and massacres in the streets, dozens of bodies screaming and climbing over one another from some final, terrible but unknown danger.

You have reached the end of the hallway. A door that reaches just as high as the ceiling with a single bronze knob waits for you. It is getting difficult to see—the air is muskier, the light fading.

There is one last picture.

It's a bone-thin baby, lying in debris. He or she is coated in dust, mouth open in a final silent cry, limbs mangled with caked red-black. There is a hole in its chest, soaked in the shadows where its heart is supposed to be. Maggots are beginning to infest the body, and you can see them squirming and feasting upon the dead flesh.

A title gleams, the only one you have seen, poking out from the ebony walls. It is shined and silver, the only beautiful thing left in the room.

END

The man stops. He gestures toward the door.

“I…I can’t open that,” you protest.

He stares hard at you, sharp eyes narrowing.

You murmur an apology and grasp the doorknob, expecting it to be far too heavy to move an inch. To your surprise, however, it does, sliding open silently without a squeak. You begin to move inside, and as your foot touches over the threshold, lights come on, but with no discernable source. You jump as the man talks.

“You will proceed ahead alone.”

And with that he steps back, seeming to melt into the very walls. You shiver and gaze ahead. As you take the first few steps forward, the door slams with the roar of a cannon and you flinch at the noise.

It is a wax museum. Statues that represent every race in the world stand in the room whose sprawling expanse goes forever, but none of the faces are familiar. The silence is stifling; you wish the man had not left you here.

You begin to walk, looking around in a kind of disturbed wonder. There is one riding a horse, wearing battle armor from the Middle Ages. Another person is in a sterile-white medical coat, frozen in the act of taking notes on a clipboard. Every single time and place seems to be represented—there’s a Neanderthal man rubbing two grimy sticks together right next to a young, ecstatic woman in all black with a Les Paul slung around her shoulders, reaching out toward an imaginary audience.

Each has the same type of gray caption you saw back in the hallway—two numbers in the thousands, never more than ninety or so years apart…

Birth and death, you realize. These are statues of the dead.

They are just as unnervingly real as the paintings. You would swear they’re about to blink, or squirm out of an uncomfortable position.

You choose to go to the left, filing past the figures. There’s an African man sitting cross-legged, staring at the cool marble pedestal he’s sitting on, and somebody dressed in heavy furs, hunching against an imaginary cold. The variety of their props are endless—musical instruments, briefcases, guns, sewing looms, dolls, or untitled books. Some are empty handed and simply stand firm; others are midway through a dance, or holding hands with an invisible lover.

They are of all ages. Some are just infants, lying as delicate as unfired pottery, others are old with shriveled skin, and still others are in the prime of their life, standing tall and strong. Their expressions vary too—most have their mouths fixed sternly and their eyes concentrating into the distance, but others have a simple compassion in their eyes, as though they are cradling a newborn child.

You lose track of time as you make your way across, almost forgetting the things that brought you here. The silence is pressing down hard; you have never heard such calm in your lifetime. Your blunt, echoing footsteps seem to be intruding upon the sullen quiet. Thoughts of going back and finding the man, to ask him why you are here, drift into your mind, but you turn to look back and find that you can no longer see the doors. This also reminds you how sore your feet are becoming, and that soon you may need to stop.

But it isn’t long after that when you come to an empty one.

You kneel to examine the dates. What you find sends a particularly hard throb through your heart, and your breath catches in your throat.

The first year is the year you were born, and the second is the very year it is today.

Suddenly a command leaps unbidden into your mind. You can’t even call it a voice…it’s simply words, as though spoken by an electronic reader that always garbles the most ordinary text.

Step up.

Instinctively, you do. The marble is so cold, you can feel it right through the soles of your shoes.

So cold.

The voice speaks again, ringing with finality.

Dead.

I know I am, you reply hazily in your mind. But this wasn't supposed to...

Rest assured, it was.

You suddenly feel tired, unbelieveably drained. And although your eyes do not close, you are lulled into a deep sleep to forever rest in the museum of humankind. The icy chill of the marble fills you up, solidly and completely.

And you are finally content.