Pony and her mother kill all kinds of people. When clients contact them, they never ask for reasons. They never ask for details. They only want to know a name and if there’s a preferred place for the murder to take place. Also, and perhaps most importantly, what the client would like the soon-to-be deceased to look like: a suicide, murder, accidental death, etc.
Pony’s mother takes all the clean kills. Pony makes a big mess.
Making a mess is much more fun.
The first few kills, her mother supervised. She wasn’t in the room or anything. She stayed in a car about a mile away, just in case Pony needed help.
She didn’t. Except with cleaning.
Then Pony did jobs by herself entirely.
Although as a rule, she hates cleaning, but like a person who washes dishes after a big dinner, she gets to experience each step of her process all over again. She can wipe off each blade, measure how far the blood puddles, inspect the room for bits of intestines.
But no matter how fulfilling it can to be re-experience the original experience while cleaning, it is not substitute for the real thing, which she cannot remember.
For a while, Pony tried therapy.
But she never felt she could be fully open with him. Mostly because she understood that legally, doctor-patient confidentiality ends when either crimes are committed or people — whether self or others — could potentially be harmed.
And she definitely harms people.
That is, if dead people are still people.
But she certainly has intentions of harm.
Needless to say, the therapy didn’t work.
So now, as Pony stands with her back against the stainless steel, energy-efficient refrigerator, she is at a crossroads. She can either continue her life as is — enjoyable although ultimately unfulfilling — or she can quit. She can do something else like become a nurse and care for sick little babies.
The dead man’s blood pools at her sneakers, and Pony giggles like she hasn’t giggled since her pony died.
the museum of oddities and eccentricities (from John Madera)
I.
The Museum of Oddities and Eccentricities uses static electricity for power. Very little light or energy can be generated this way, but the curators do not mind. Besides, the glass ceiling lets in ample light.
The museum itself does not need to be seen.
Or, at least, what exists inside the Museum does not need to be seen.
Even if its exhibits are seen, they are often not believed. They are regarded as jokes or frauds. They are unreal, that is, the real that is right before your eyes.
The exhibits invite loss. They encourage time to tinker, an alternation between hallucination and delusion. In the Museum, there is no right or wrong, which is probably the most difficult thing to get right. The exhibits create a mishmash of fantasy, for empty stretches of space.
Visitors may take something away and/or have something taken away from them. Ideally, a visitor learns to bridge this gap. But some walk away with imploding or exploding hearts. Some leave with a head full of empty chatter. Some emerge unbeing. Some leave with hard information that can never be shared.
The Museum finds that using absurd objects, or objects that demonstrate absurdity, is by far more interesting to interact with than dioramas, models, pictures, etc., that simply explain a particular phenomenon. In other words, if there is no way to have absurd objects and/or to be able to interact with absurd phenomena, then perhaps the idea is unsuitable for exhibition. The Museum understands that not every idea brings delight.
As seeing and belief do not always dovetail here, other senses often come dramatically into play. Many of the exhibits are interactive, meaning they may be touched or they may touch. But visitors should resist the impulse. Static electricity runs through the entire institution. Touching anything runs the risk of transference, in the Freudian sense, of course.
To think: this all began as a floating island of garbage.
II.
This does not happen often, but some children, particularly those who do not honor the donation policy (all persons must give a wish), find a transference of oddity when they touch certain displays.
The first donation to the Museum was a hand. Maggie changed the floating island into a garden grove.
III.
Glass ceilings were added to the Museum in the early twentieth century, when the Museum received a rather large donation.
Of course, even though the donation was pseudonymous, everyone knows who the patron is. At the Museum of Oddities and Eccentricities (at least in the eyes of its curators), there has only ever been one donor, one patron, its god of sorts: Gretchen. As Gretchen’s first donation brought the Museum to its present form, all previous donations are considered insignificant.
IV.
On Good Fridays, Curator 1502 plays his euphonium in the blackened tarmac room. His instrument’s name comes from the Greek word meaning ‘beautiful sounding,’ or at least that’s what he’d heard from someone who knew someone who knew Greek, Ancient not Modern.
No matter what Curator 1502 plays, it always comes out sounding majestic by virtue alone: the effect emitted from the cause is necessarily beautiful. On Good Fridays, Curator 1502 plays with earnestness, as if he was mending all the world’s errors with this song or that.
On Good Fridays, Curator 1503 offers all persons hearing aids. Curator 1503’s actions could be called either brotherly love, an act of kindness, or revenge.
A donated foot changed the garden grove into a pile of stones, a sepulchral monument, really.
V.
Before a person is employed by the Museum, he must furnish proof of: hysterectomy, vasectomy, or of having been neutered, castrated, or even spayed. Rumor has it that the Museum heads do not want to be blamed for any defects, aberrations, deformities, or malfunctions, as it were, in offspring that could be traced back to the Museum. For legal reasons. Not only that, but the Museum, being a not-for-profit organization, can hardly pay for health care, much less maternity leave, etc.
As is generally known, parents are more susceptible to revealing the secrets of the Museum. This is an unintentional act. The truth of the matter is that parents often tell their children bedtime stories, and when those get old, as they inevitably do, the parents inadvertently choose to indulge their children with a real life fantasy story, revealing the Museum’s secrets without even knowing it.
So it is for their safety, the employees we mean, that the Museum mandates sterility.
VI.
A selection of Gretchen’s pseudonyms: Rain or Shine Delivery Service; Margaret Dribble; Eye Spy; Realities and More; Mister Fisticuffs; Dripping Cannibal; George the Centerfold Plumber and his Bag of Hideous Thrills; Random Perfume; Virus Cleanser; Empty Amusement Park; Smashed Eggs; Nipples from Hell Piercing through this Stupid T-shirt; Mummy Donut; Religious Alcoholic and His Pointless Viewpoints; Snappy Redemption; Demons or Not; Your Apocalyptic Companion; Her Majesty’s Sympathetic Infection.
VII.
Even though Museum legislation has made a provision for hysterectomy, etc., there has never been a woman employee. Nor have there been female visitors. No little girls ever enter the Museum. Some days, the curators gather around and whisper about it, about why only little boys come in and never little girls and never mothers or sisters. But this is a not a question they field aloud.
Besides, who would they ask?