Mannequin Syndrome
Tuesday. 3:47 PM. Larry counts seventeen dead flies on the dashboard. Same seventeen as Monday. As Sunday. As the Tuesday before that.
His Corolla idles in Discount Paradise's parking lot. AC broken since March. The thermometer reads 97. His shirt shows salt maps of old sweat layered on new. Through the windshield, the automatic doors practice breathing. Open. Close. Open. A lung that never quite fills.
The engine ticks as it cools. Metal contracting. Tick. Tick. Tick. Everything pulling back into itself.
Larry's been sitting here forty-three minutes. His shift started at three.
Inside, fluorescents hum. The bad tube in aisle six flickers every seventeen seconds. Larry knows because he counts. Started two months ago, when sleep stopped working. Now he documents everything: the pitch of shopping carts with broken wheels, the exact shade of beige that makes people invisible, the way everyone blinks faster under these lights. His molars ache from clenching.
He stocks shelves. Started eleven years ago. Temporary, after the thing with Riverside Elementary. The thing nobody mentions but everyone remembers. Not his fault. Budget cuts. Twenty-three teachers, one had to go. Last hired. First fired. Mathematics.
The mannequins occupy aisle four. Always have. Today something's different.
The one in red. Her hand was at hip level yesterday. Now it hovers at her ribs. Nobody else would notice. But Larry catalogs everything. Has to. It's what's left of his teacher brain: patterns, deviations, the small wrongness that signals larger collapse.
"Larry. Larry."
Dennis from shipping. Maintains exactly three feet of distance. Always. Larry's measured it.
"You're bleeding."
Larry looks down. His palm. A gash across the lifeline. No memory of how. No pain. Just red seeping through the cracks of his hand like rust through paint.
"I'm fine."
"You need—"
"I'm fine."
Dennis backs away. Three feet becomes six becomes gone.
The blood drips. Plip. Plip. Onto the beige linoleum. The mannequin in red watches. Can't watch. Doesn't have eyes. Has sockets. Dark spaces where sight would live.
Larry wraps his hand in receipt paper from his pocket. The blood soaks through. Becomes numbers. Prices. Proof of purchase.
Wednesday. He wakes at 4:17 AM. Can't feel his left hand. Like it belongs to someone else. Someone who died but forgot to take their hand with them.
He lifts it with his right hand. The fingers stay positioned. Curved. Like holding an invisible orange. He sets it on the kitchen table. Studies it. His hand but not.
The skin looks different. Smoother. Like someone ran it through a filter. Instagram for flesh.
Coffee. Black. The mug shakes in his right hand. The left stays perfect. Still. A photograph of a hand pretending to be real.
He calls in sick. Diane answers. Always Diane on Wednesdays.
"You sound different."
"Flu."
"It's August."
"Summer flu."
Silence. The kind that means she's writing something down. Larry knows she keeps a notebook. Documents everything. Patterns. Absences. The slow dissolution of reliable employees.
"Feel better."
Click.
The left hand hasn't moved. Still holding its invisible orange. Larry touches it with his right index finger. The surface gives slightly. Like pressing on a basketball. Like pressing on—
Memory intrudes: Sarah's wrist, prom night, 1999. The corsage wouldn't pin right. Kept slipping. His fingers stupid with wanting to do this one thing correctly. She held perfectly still while he fumbled. Didn't help. Didn't laugh. Just waited. The gymnasium lights made her skin look like pearl. Like plastic. He should have known then.
His left hand is the exact temperature of that memory. Not warm. Not cold. Just preserved.
Thursday. The condition spreads to his wrist. He experiments:
10:00 AM: Wrist locks at 90 degrees.
10:47 AM: Elbow joins the revolution.
11:15 AM: Shoulder surrenders.
He documents it in his old lesson plan book. The one from Riverside. Still has September's curriculum mapped out. Fractions. Long division. The mathematics of taking things apart.
By noon, his entire left arm hangs perfect. Mannequin perfect. He goes to the mirror. Practices positions. Casual lean. Thoughtful pose. The universal gesture of a man trying to appear natural.
His reflection doesn't look right. Too symmetrical. Like someone corrected him in Photoshop.
Friday. Returns to work. Long sleeves. August heat pressing through polyester.
The mannequin in red has moved again. Her hand now touches her throat. A gesture of surprise or suffocation. The fingers positioned exactly like his left hand. That same invisible orange curve.
"Inventory's off."
Gerald, the manager. Forty years at Discount Paradise. Started at sixteen. Never left. His tragedy is that he's happy about it.
"We're missing one male mannequin. The system shows five. I count four."
Larry counts. Four males. Six females. Two children. All accounted for. All in position.
"I'll check the back."
"Already did. Nothing."
Gerald walks away. Squeaking shoes on waxed floors. Squeak-squeak-squeak. The sound of a man who knows exactly where he's going because he's been walking the same path for four decades.
Larry touches the red mannequin's hand. Plastic. 72 degrees. Room temperature.
His left arm responds. A twitch. An acknowledgment.
Saturday. Brad's retirement party. Brad who started the same month as Larry but somehow accumulated twenty years. Time works different for people who believe in it.
The party's at Brad's house. Split-level. Pool. The boat visible in the driveway: Second Chance in cursive. His girlfriend, Melissa, arranges grocery store sushi on real china. Everyone pretends it's not grocery store sushi.
Larry keeps his left arm inside his jacket. Like Napoleon. Like something's broken that can't be discussed in public.
"Twenty years," Brad says, raising his beer. Miller Lite. The official beer of settling. "Feels like yesterday."
It doesn't. Larry knows what yesterday feels like. It feels like today with different light.
"You okay?" Denise from HR. She notices limps before they happen. Divorces before papers file.
"Fine."
"You're sweating."
He is. But only on the right side. The left side doesn't sweat anymore. Doesn't anything anymore.
"August," he says.
She studies him. Her assessment invisible but thorough. "You know there are programs. If you need to talk."
Everyone wants to talk. Nobody wants to listen. The difference is everything.
Sunday. He doesn't sleep. Watches his left arm in the dark. It glows slightly. Not glows. Reflects. Like plastic under moonlight.
4:00 AM: Left leg stiffens.
5:00 AM: Right leg joins.
6:00 AM: He can't stand.
His joints work but wrong. Like a Ken doll. Bendable at specific points. Nothing in between.
He calls no one. Who would understand? Hey, I'm becoming plastic. Started Tuesday. Please advise.
Monday. Manages to drive. Barely. Movements jerky. Mechanical. Click-click at every joint rotation. Other drivers stare at red lights. He stares back. His face doesn't move right anymore. Stuck between expressions. Pleasant but vacant. The face of someone thinking about dinner while their house burns.
Discount Paradise. Same parking spot. The seventeen flies unchanged. Eternal. Perfect in their preservation.
Inside, Gerald corners him immediately.
"You look different."
"Lost weight."
"No. Different different."
Larry turns. His whole body. Can't turn just his head anymore. The motion smooth but wrong. Like a turntable. Gerald steps back.
"Jesus. You okay?"
"Never better."
It's true. He feels nothing. No pain. No tired. No hungry. No sad. Just present. Perfectly, terribly present.
The mannequin in red. Moved. Now in aisle seven. Sporting goods. Standing among the fishing poles and camping chairs. Wrong department. Wrong pose. Her hand reaches forward now. Beckoning or warning.
Larry approaches. His legs click-click-click with each step. Customers turn. Look. Look away. The sound of wrongness they can't name.
He touches her face. Plastic. Smooth. Perfect.
His reflection in the store's security mirror: standing beside her. Same height. Same posture. Same reaching hand.
Same face.
The realization arrives without surprise. Of course. Of course this is how it ends. Not ends. Transforms. The logical conclusion of eleven years of temporary becoming permanent.
Tuesday. One week exactly. 3:47 PM.
Larry doesn't make it to his car. Can't. His legs lock completely in aisle four. Where the mannequins live. Where he belongs.
Click.
The final joint. His neck. Head fixed forward. Eyes open. Seeing everything. Understanding everything.
Gerald finds him an hour later.
"Jesus Christ, when did we order this?"
Taps Larry's shoulder. Plastic sound. Hollow.
"Looks expensive. Must be one of those high-end models."
He checks his clipboard. Makes a note. Walks away. Squeak-squeak-squeak.
This is the punchline: Larry can see.
Can think.
Can't scream.
A child breaks from her mother. Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday. Time doesn't work anymore. She touches his hand. Warm. Small. Alive.
"This one's weird, Mommy."
"Don't touch."
The mother pulls her away. The warmth fades. Larry remains.
He sees everything now:
The woman who steals pregnancy tests. Third Tuesday, 2:15 PM.
The man who cries in toys. Holds the same action figure. Never buys it.
The teenager reading book spines. Same book. Catcher in the Rye. Never opens it. Like he's afraid of what's inside.
They don't see him. Or they do but wrong. See mannequin. Not man. Not the mathematics teacher who calculated the exact speed of his dissolution.
Night. The store closes. Lights dim to security minimum.
The other mannequins don't move. Can't move. They're just plastic.
But Larry hears them thinking. Or thinks he does. Or wants to. The difference doesn't matter anymore.
The one that was in red. She's back in aisle four. Different dress now. Blue. Like Sarah wore to their wedding. Before. When before existed.
Her hand touches his.
Click.
Not his imagination. Her fingers moved. Slightly. Imperceptibly. But moved.
He tries to look. Can't. Eyes fixed forward. But peripheral vision catches it: she's not plastic.
Not anymore.