You see, earlier today I was feeling a bit stressed so I desided to take a trip down to the museum. All of humanity's secrets can be found in museums. Besides being educational, they're wonderful places to meditate. I soon found myself walking through the antique section. There, out of the corner of my eye I glimsed a medium sized doll house. Upon passing by this particular house, my heart sped up twofold with a little third beat at the end (In fact, it hasn't slowed down since). So I went back to it and took a look inside. Immediately, He caught my eye. A small, pale butler figure leaning against a tiny wooden chair in what must have been the house's miniature library room.

After a second look I could plainly see that though he may have been a butler, he was nobody's servant. The kids were picking up their own toys while he was having a drink and watching the fire. It was a whole world. A life's story in one still setup.

He was suited up proper. His brown hair, painted on, neatly combed. And no, this wasn't like a cheesy Twilight Zone episode, the thing wasn't the slightest bit alive but he never had been and therefore wasn't dead either.

Such an old doll, born before the times of plastic moving joints, never lived, existence being stiff; To drink and watch the glass fire all days and nights long. And to give the impression that he does a lot of reading, cooks, and cleans the house but only does more than he has to when his position is in jeopardy. Of course he never really does any of these things other than leaning, drinking, and watching in a room full of books. But you somehow feel, know, that these other actions are a part of him. Entirely painted, every intricate detail, entirely porcelain but his face somehow appears to be so soft... Eyes that never close. The deep red colour of his thin lips show a sign of human error, a miniscule droplet just above the lip line, only noticeable to the eye of someone in such deep a trance as I. It didn't even occur to me at the time that holding a museum piece in the palm of my hand might be wrong. I don't even remember taking it out of the doll house. I looked at it, then I looked into it, so deeply I didn't see him anymore.

There was nothing around me but light. There was no museum, no city, no world, no backround at all. Just me and the figurine in my palm surrounded by the light. Then I blinked and I opened my hand.

I let go. For whatever reason, for no reason at all. The trance had been broken. Hundreds of pieces of painted plaster flying everywhere. With a shock, everything, everywhere, had come back to me. It was all over.

I think he fell in slow motion. Even though I don't believe in slow motion.

For but a second, just enough time to mentally photograph its image, I glanced at the floor. Then I ran, quick and blurry, to the place where I reside, to the place where I was born, the place where I will die.

Oh, Ha, I just realized, How ironic, I'm dying in the living room. Tsk, that stain will never come out. I'm getting very dizzy now so I'm going to lay down and stop writing.

Copyright 1997 mint