A Lonely Contemplation and a Coalescence of Ephemera

Through the long, quiet hours of the night, all that I had to keep myself awake were my own thoughts. I supposed that falling asleep wouldn't have caused any real problems, but I still didn't fully trust the porcelain girl who sat before me. She was kind, but I had no way of knowing if that was genuine, though it was hard to convince myself I was being deceived—I wanted to believe that the understanding we had reached was real, that she and I were on the same side in this bizarre situation. Although, if we were on one side, who was on the other? Who was the reason for her incarceration? I wondered if I would meet them when the morning came, but strangely I hoped that I wouldn't, that they would just leave the money and stay hidden.

At some point, I discovered to my relief that I could stand again. It was still painful to do so, and I couldn't walk without a serious limp, but I gained some confidence knowing that I would be able to leave that place in the morning. I practiced by pacing around the perimeter of the room for a while, walking my hand along the rough concrete walls, but my breath became heavy before long, and I had to stop and rest.

I would occasionally check the time on my phone, and I was tempted more than once to take another picture of the mannequin, but I decided against it. For one thing, I was worried about what I might see—worried that somehow the soft and caring façade would crumble away to reveal a sinister truth. If the mannequin really was out to get me, I didn't need to know. After all, I'd be gone in the morning. More than that, though, the idea of taking a picture of her while she was in that state didn't sit right with me anymore. It would have been like taking a picture of someone while they slept. Although, the mannequin wasn't really asleep. She had known earlier that I had taken a photo of her, so she must have been conscious even while she was restrained by the talisman.

It was a truly odd feeling to be observed by someone right in front of me, yet to be unable to observe them in turn; such were the limitations of the mannequin's sealed body. In a way, I felt that it might have been nice to inhabit such a body. It was a body that didn't need to eat or sleep, presumably, and it was beautiful in the way that all mannequins are designed to be. Of course, it was a fragile body, too—a porcelain hip would have fared far worse against the steel door than my own had. And for someone like her who longed to be a part of the world, to be loved, I could see how that body would be like Hell. It was a prison within a prison, locked tight by the small cloth rectangle that clung to its forehead.

I sighed as I watched the mannequin. I pitied her. I found myself chewing my fingernails as I imagined the guilt I would feel if I just left her there and didn't return. For how long would I be tormented by the memory of this surreal place? How many times would I recall the feeling of her hand enveloping mine in glassy compassion? Would I see those haunting sable eyes when I turned on my phone, or while I dreamt, or in my nightmares? I didn't want to learn the answers. I wanted to help her.

I shimmied over to the plastic chair where she waited. I stared up at her, then looked away, then back at her.

"It couldn't hurt..." I muttered to myself, and I reached up toward her forehead. My hand brushed against her leg, and I drew it back with a whispered "Sorry" before continuing. The talisman came off like a month-old bandage, and the girl came to life with a twitch and a surprised little "Ah!"

"Dorian..." she said, "What are you doing?"

"I think I'm going to help you after all," I said.

"But, what about your job?"

"It should be OK as long as I put the talisman back on before morning." I had already determined that there were no cameras in the room, so it wasn't as if my anonymous employer had any way of knowing what I was up to.

"Oh... are you sure?" I was surprised the mannequin was asking me that. She was the one who needed my help, yet she was willing to sacrifice that to ensure my "job" went over without a hitch. Of course, the events that had transpired that night were already enough to have constituted what one might call a hitch, so I thought that there wasn't much point in turning a blind eye to the supernatural anymore. I was interested in this sad, strange girl; I wanted to help her, and I wanted to talk to her, and so I would!

I nodded and yawned, and from the mannequin girl emanated a breathy noise which at first I could not identify, though a hypothesis quickly came to me. "Was that a yawn?" I asked.

"Oh! Excuse me," said the mannequin, and her hand came up to cover the place where her mouth should have been as she swiveled her head to the side. "It's been so long, I've forgotten my manners."

"Oh, no, don't worry about that!" I chuckled, endeared by her self-consciousness. "Sorry, I just was wondering earlier if you slept or not."

Her hand dropped back into her lap. "What? Oh... no, I can't sleep, exactly. I can't do much of anything in this body." There was a wistful tone in her words, and I wondered if she might have been thinking back to a fond memory of the time when she was flesh and bone.

"Do you remember anything about your life, you know, before this?" I asked. I was curious, but I also thought some knowledge of her past might be useful if I was going to help her.

She sighed. "I remember the tile floor of the kitchen; someone else's pet dog, who was missing a leg; my mother, crying, for a long time, but I don't know why. There was a grandfather clock. And, there was a field I would go to—no, it was an orchard, and I would go there with a friend when I was little, but we wouldn't ever pick the peaches. We would just climb up in this great big tree and sit in the branches and... well, I don't really know what we did after that."

She kept going, recalling whatever she could. Sometimes, she would begin to sound excited, or laugh at something, but she inevitably got quiet again when she realized the incompleteness of her memory. Each scene she recounted was vague. They were the sorts of hazy memories you come to possess as a young child and suddenly remember years later without any context—vignettes of singular moments, with the details you wish you could see again hidden just beyond the frame. In that way, I understood her, for my happiest memories were also those of a time I could barely remember. I, too, missed my mother and father, our old house, our dog Cassie... God, I forgot about Cassie.

As fuzzy visions of my own childhood flashed in my mind, they intermingled with the girl's recollection, and I felt a torrent of melancholy break upon my soul, carrying on its fierce waters a revelation which I felt in an almost religious way:

She was, like me, completely human.

And when I looked up at her, tears rolling silently down my face, she stopped talking and returned my gaze, and it was as if life had only just begun.