Writing Prompt 58: Museum
Many years ago, back before time began, at least back before smartphones and the internet, I shared a flat with a friend from art school where we were both studying Fine Art Photography.
She had a room to rent out and asked me if I wanted to move in. I said yes and did so a few weeks later.
My friend, a curious soul, loved to travel. Her flat housed numerous strange objects from around the world — an ostrich egg she kept on an elegant brass stand, three shelves of glasses for wine, for vodka shots and several small espresso cups with their saucers. The first time I tried sake was in this flat in Glasgow. My friend warmed it in a pan on the vintage gas cooker that we kept on through the coldest winter, where the temperature fell to a record -20C, colder than Moscow. The washing-up liquid froze solid on the kitchen windowsill.
On the walls hung a number of animal heads found in charity shops around the city. They were my least favourite items from her collections.
Several catfish swam amongst drifting weed in a freshwater tank my friend had custom-built — the algae eaters liked to lie on the fine gravel at the bottom or sometimes attached themselves to the inside of the glass by their mouths.
There was a collection of cacti of all different types, sizes and colours, gathered on the sill of a large window in the shared front room, growing tall even in the weak sunlight of a Glasgow winter. One became so tall my friend had to chop a length away from the top before it reached the ceiling.
My friend died nearly 20 years ago now from an aggressive cancer that filled her lungs sadly damaged from years of heavy smoking. The terrible irony is my friend had stopped smoking some years previously.
For this week, think about a person and their attachment to a place. Look at the photograph above and see if anything comes to mind and write from there, either long or short, fiction or non-fiction, poetry or prose with whatever time you can give this.
Until next time.
They Were Once Living
The bones of long-dead animals filled the museum glass cases with eerie form.
Weak winter sunlight filtered down from the top windows, illuminating the animals’ shapes, their eyes glinting with new glass. The well-positioned spotlights shone pointedly at areas of interest in the display. A child placed his hands flat against the case of alligator skeletons, his fingers sticky from a jam doughnut. He pushed his lips and nose against the glass.
“Errr, Madam? Please, your son. Please. He can’t touch the case. No touching.” The security guard, new to his job, and awkward in his authority, nodded at the boy and pointed to a sign. Please Do Not Touch. His superior warned him yesterday the school holidays were always a nightmare.
“Of course, yes. God. Sorry.” The boy’s mother chastised her son. “Michael! Get away from there right this minute. Christ, your hands are sticky. How are they still so sticky?” She grabbed his hands and rummaged about in her bag, finding a dried-out wet wipe she rubbed roughly over his fingers.
Michael started to cry large, fat tears and thin snot bubbles dropped out of his nostrils. An older woman looked over and shook her head. The young mother caught the woman's disapproving stare and her face flushed pink. She picked at her blouse, shaking it out, trying to make a light breeze around her body, trying to calm her embarrassment.
“It’s so hot in here,” she said, taking Michael’s hand.
The young security guard watched them leave while a queue of people shuffled forward, waiting patiently to file through Africa. He could just about see the head of the giraffe poking high above the rest of the display.
He'd accidentally put a hand on its leg during training two weeks ago after losing his balance over a chair leg he hadn't seen. Nobody saw him fall.
He remembered the hair felt short and rough under his fingers, its flesh and muscle no longer soft and warm but hard and dry. At the time, the taxidermist was pinning the animal's legs firmly to a large baseboard. The giraffe was new, a particularly tall specimen, majestic once. He felt a mixture of sadness and awe as he stared up the long neck to its head silhouetted against the high windows.
He wondered what might have happened.
Story first posted February 2019 // Photo:Tanya Clarke 2009 - Natural History Museum, London UK
