Wax Museum

Wax Museum

By: J.D. Hallowell

Life feels still and slow. A constant repetition of days that all look the same to me. Most days on my way to work, I walk concrete slabs with my head down, blocking out the rest of the world and avoiding the people I pass when I see them come into my peripheral.

When I stepped on someone's foot, I looked up to apologize. That was when I realized something was wrong. The man’s face didn’t look toward me. He hadn’t even moved. He was just stopped, mid-stride, and frozen in place. Glancing around at the rest of the people in the streets, it seemed they were also stopped, and cars were affected as well. Birds hung in the sky motionless. There were no sounds, no horns, no echoes of half of anyone's conversations on their phones.

For just a moment, I stopped in shock at the things I was seeing. I turned to a man on his phone. Paused in his words, they sat motionless just behind his mouth, ready to continue when the world kept turning. I waved a hand in front of his face. Not a flinch, not a blink. Nothing.

“Hey,” I said.

He didn’t look up or pay me any mind.

“HEY!” I shouted close to his face.

No response.

I poked his face with my finger. He felt like stone. His skin didn’t give way, and still no response from him. All around me, everything was frozen in time.

All except for me.

I walked the streets and shops. Visited exclusive high-end places I never had the money to set foot in. Any door or window left open, I walked in or climbed through. No place was off limits to me if it was open. I explored abandoned buildings, covered in the now-permanent graffiti art. The dust that clung unmoving to the surfaces felt like sandpaper under my touch. I walked over water in fountains, their surfaces just like any other solid one under my footsteps. Coins trapped under a glassy surface shimmered in the frozen sunlight.

This still world was a gift to me. No expectation, no deadlines, nothing to stop me from doing whatever I wanted. I didn’t even seem to get tired of walking. My watch ticked by, and I knew I had been walking for at least a few hours. I tried running and jumping as I sprinted a few blocks, then a few miles, and still it seemed like I didn’t run out of breath.

The only limit was how long I felt like running. This world was mine to explore without limitations.

So, I ran. The idea that the world would suddenly start again faded from my mind as the faces of people and the towering buildings whisked by in a blur. People thinned out, and so did the great structures society had erected. Soon, I was rushing past trees and bushes, jumping over cars as I sprinted through the long, winding paved roads wherever I felt my heart take me. I found myself in another place. It was a village, or a small town, where things seemed slow and simple.

I decided to stay for a while, taking in the new faces and people. It was so much different from the life I left behind. I pictured myself living here if everything returned to normal. What would it be like to settle in this small rustic village where things were simple and slow? I could meet someone, settle down, and start a family. Things that I would have thought impossible in my old life.

I started having conversations with people. As if striking up conversations would make them wake up. Maybe then I wouldn’t be alone, and I could share this new world with someone else. I found a pretty woman carrying a basket full of bread. I was nervous trying to talk to her at first, for some reason. Old habits, I suppose. I built up some courage and finally introduced myself.

I still felt a little foolish when she didn’t respond. Why would she? Still, I spent hours talking to her about my old life and how I felt trapped and how the mundane routine of my existence had become a prison in itself. I told her about where I grew up on the south side of town and how my parents were poor. How they worked hard to send me to college, and how I wasted all of it by dropping out and getting a dead-end job.

I told her about my regrets and my fears, and how when this world froze, I saw it as my chance to finally break free and live the carefree life I’d always wanted. I asked her if she felt trapped in this tiny village, if her routine also felt like a prison.

Of course, though, she didn’t respond.

I made up a story for her.

Her parents moved here to this remote village in the middle of nowhere to escape the hustle of city life, as I had. That they had found solace in the quiet and calm of this quaint little village, she had only ever known this place, though. She thought the routines of chores and daily life here were boring and dreamed of adventure and wandering through the world I had discovered.

I told her that if she woke up, then we could explore together. I told her that even the oceans could be crossed and that we could run to other continents, other cities, and villages. I told her that we would explore the entire world and see the great wonders together. I told her if she woke up, we wouldn’t have to be alone.

That I wouldn’t have to be so alone.

Stepping back, I turned around and sat down. I stared at the morning sky that hadn’t changed in days. I looked at my watch. The ticking hands kept the records for me, counting the seconds, marking the minutes, and detailing each hour that passed. I unclasped the strap and set it down on the ground. The second hand stopped ticking. I stared at it for who knows how long.

Time didn’t really matter here anymore. I didn’t need to eat, or sleep, or shit, or tell time. I didn’t need anything anymore, and nothing needed me. I stood and turned around to look at the woman, still standing there, carrying her basket full of bread.

“I’m going to go now,” I told her.

Just as always, she didn’t respond.

I stepped past her and took a few steps, half expecting her to spring to life and tell me to stop. That she had heard every word I had said, and that she wanted me to take her with me. But I kept walking and heard nothing. Reaching the outskirts of the village, I picked up my pace, then I started jogging, then into a full-blown sprint. The sky, the sun, and the trees all whizzed by as I ran. I ran through new villages and cities, I saw new people and new faces, but I wanted to escape it all.

I only stopped when I reached the sands of a beach.

I looked out over the expansive blue ocean, whose waves had been trapped by the rules of my existence. I reached out and touched the white foam bubbles; they were smooth under my fingers. I laughed as I looked out over the surface. I thought about all the life, the undiscovered creatures that thrived just beneath the surface. I thought about the trillions of microbes that kept the ecosystems underneath the water teeming with life.

Standing, I looked back at the people all enjoying their day at the beach. Eternally care-free and without worry. Would it also be as much of a punishment to be like that, I wondered. To know only happiness, would it lose its meaning? Would everything you know eventually erode into the same emotion and become nothing?

How long would I run for? I don’t remember what day I left. I don’t recall the time or what I was doing. Where was I, even? I wasn’t sure I could find my way back home even if I wanted to. I stepped out over the water, just like everything else, what was supposed to give way under my foot felt like solid concrete.

Once more, I ran.

The vast nothingness over the ocean is like nothing I have ever experienced. Running over land, there are sights and people, things to see. Out here, there are long periods of time when I see nothing, absolutely nothing but the open ocean all around me. I’m trapped out here among the swells of a leviathan with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company.

I start to miss even having the still life around me. Sometimes I stop and sit, watching the planes overhead stuck in the sky. I think about how many people are in them. I’d spend weeks, maybe months, or years or decades perhaps, lying there looking up at them, making up names and stories for dozens of passengers. Where they’re going, the people they meet, the lives they live. I imagine them meeting me one day as I recount their life in excruciating detail, and they stand there dumbfounded by my perfect recall of every moment of their life. They ask how I know, and all I can say is that I had too much time to think.

Eventually, though, I move on.

I don’t have any idea where I’m going or how to find anything. I have to keep moving so I can reach the next place.

Finally, relief washes over me as I reach land. I find new faces, new things, new places. I explore the new land over the next period of my lifetime. I explore new cities, new states, and new places. Once again, everything feels novel and exciting for a moment. Soon, though, I memorize the paths it takes to get places everywhere I go. In each new location, I have a desperate need to feel something new, see something I haven’t seen before. To see a face that tells a story I have not told myself a thousand million times.

Each new experience eventually leaves me with the same disappointment as the one before. They all begin to blend into a haze of things I’ve seen.

It all looks the same.

It all looks the same!

It ALL looks the same!

Standing on the tallest building I can find, the ground looks so very inviting. I think that if I can end it all, the world will return to the way it used to be. I sway and finally lean forward, the world rushes forward, and I hit the ground, but there is no end. I don’t die or don’t feel any pain. I felt the impact of hitting the ground, but my body didn’t break, and I remained completely conscious through it all.

Pain.

I’m not even allowed that.

I pick myself up and sit there on my knees.

Futility.

There is only one thing I can do. The thing I have done for so long that my past life, by comparison, seems like the tiniest speck of bliss compared to the grand expanse of time I have experienced in this place.

I continue. Walking, in vain, to find something that holds novelty and meaning in the world. I have walked for so long and repeated the same places more times than I can even count. I don’t know why I have been cursed to this eternal silent moment, and what is to become of my mind at the end of it all. I don’t even know if it will end. I think the last flickers of my will have long since been snuffed out. Eons of the repetition and numbing of it all have left me so empty that I am nothing more than a husk.

There’s no more novelty left in my world, no new experiences to be excited for. I’ve walked for so long, seen everything there is to see, and the only thing that seems to get tired is my own imagination. There’s nothing left to do except wait for the tiniest glimmer of the thought of a new experience. It would be a light in my empty and dull world. I stop when I find a place that looks familiar again. A place to stand, and that is where I remain. Unmoving, silent, and still, like the rest of the world. I will not die, nor will I ever. If the world ever turns again, it will turn without me. I have not stopped existing; I have only stopped trying to.