Mannequin Syndrome

Larry sees the first one on a Tuesday.

Seven forty-three AM. Coffee still burning his tongue through the travel mug lid. NPR voice discussing supply chain failures like they're discussing weather. The mannequin stands in the Carpenter house window, second floor, wearing a neon safety vest and yellow hard hat. Construction worker. Face aimed at the street.

At him.

He's driven this route eleven years. The Carpenters moved to Phoenix in March.

Wednesday brings number two. Nguyen's courtyard, visible through wrought iron painted black. Female form in a sundress. Positioned by the fountain that hasn't run since the drought. One arm raised. Waving or drowning, depending on how you want to see it.

"You notice the mannequins?" Larry asks Dennis at lunch.

Dennis thumbs his iPhone. "What mannequins?"

"In people's yards. Like someone's staging something."

"Staging what?"

"I don't know. That's why I'm asking."

Dennis keeps scrolling. Conversation over.

Thursday multiplies them. Running gear frozen mid-stride on Morrison's lawn. Business suit with briefcase at the bus stop where buses stopped running in 2019. Wedding dress behind the elementary school fence, hands pressed against chain link.

Larry documents. Teacher brain, still functioning after eleven years of retail. Pattern recognition. Data collection. The thing they couldn't take when they took his classroom.

Seventeen by Friday noon.

He walks the neighborhood. Counts twice to be sure. Mannequin family around a patio table, plates positioned but empty. Mannequin mailman bent toward mailbox, envelope extended forever. Mannequin child on a swing, chains wrapped once around its neck. Twice.

The sound comes from behind him.

Crack.

Larry turns. The construction worker in the Carpenter window has shifted. Head angled down now. Looking directly at him.

He runs.

Three blocks. His Corolla. Doors locked. Heart doing something arrhythmic against his ribs.

The mannequin hasn't moved again.

Hasn't needed to.

Monday. Three forty-seven PM. Seventeen dead flies on his dashboard. Same seventeen as yesterday. As last week. Small black bodies arranged like a constellation that means something he can't read.

His Corolla idles in Discount Paradise parking lot. AC died in March, same month the Carpenters left. Arizona heat turns the interior into a kiln. His shirt shows geological layers. Salt rings. Archaeological evidence of every shift worked since May.

Through the windshield: automatic doors practicing breathing. Open. Close. Open. A lung that can't quite fill.

Forty-three minutes sitting here. His shift started at three.

The engine ticks. Metal contracting. Everything pulling back into itself.

Inside, fluorescents hum at a frequency that makes molars ache. Bad tube in aisle six flickers every seventeen seconds. Larry knows because he counts. Started counting two months ago when sleep stopped working. Now he measures everything. Pitch of shopping cart wheels, the precise beige that makes people invisible, the way everyone blinks faster under this light. How 11:47 PM feels different than 11:48 PM. How his manager's shoes squeak every third step but only on Tuesdays.

He stocks shelves. Been stocking shelves eleven years. Temporary position after Riverside Elementary. After budget cuts. After twenty-three teachers, one had to go, last hired first fired. Mathematics. Not his fault but everyone remembers anyway. The way they remember car accidents. The exact position of bodies.

The mannequins occupy aisle four. Always have. Discount Paradise sells them to boutiques going out of business, which is most boutiques.

The one in red. Her hand yesterday touched her hip. Today it rests at her ribcage. Different position. Higher. Nobody else would notice. But Larry catalogs deviations. Has to. What's left of his teacher brain: patterns breaking, small wrongness signaling larger collapse.

"Larry."

Dennis from shipping. Maintains exactly three feet of distance. Larry's measured. Always three feet, like there's an invisible fence.

"Your hand."

Larry looks down. Left palm. Gash across the lifeline, blood threading through the creases like water finding channels. No memory of cutting it. No pain. Just red.

"I'm fine."

"That needs—"

"I said I'm fine."

Dennis backs away. Three feet becomes six becomes gone.

Blood hits the floor. Plip. Plip. Beige linoleum drinking it. The mannequin in red watches from aisle four. Can't watch. Has sockets where eyes should be. Dark spaces where vision would live if vision were possible.

Larry wraps his hand in receipt paper from his pocket. Blood soaks through, turns prices red. Proof of purchase.

Wednesday. Wakes at four seventeen AM. Left hand numb. Belongs to someone else. Someone dead who forgot to take their hand when they went.

He lifts it with his right hand. Fingers stay curved. Like holding something invisible. Orange-sized.

He sets it on the kitchen table. Studies it. His hand but not his hand.

Skin looks processed. Filtered. Instagram for flesh.

Coffee. Black. Folgers from the red tub. Mug shakes in his right hand. Left stays perfect. Still. Photograph of a hand pretending to be a hand.

Calls in sick. Diane answers. She always works Wednesdays.

"You sound different," she says.

"Flu."

"August."

"Summer flu."

Silence. The kind that means documentation. Diane keeps notebooks. Tracks patterns. Absences. The mathematics of unreliable employees approaching zero.

"Feel better," she says.

Click.

The left hand hasn't moved. Still holding its invisible orange. Larry touches it with his right index finger. Surface gives slightly. Basketball texture. Or,

Memory: Sarah's wrist, prom 1999, corsage refusing to pin. His fingers stupid with wanting to get this one thing right. She held still. Didn't help. Didn't laugh. Just waited. Gymnasium lights made her skin look like pearl. Like injection-molded plastic. Should have known then.

His left hand is the exact temperature of that memory. Twenty-four years old. Perfectly preserved.

Thursday. Condition spreads.

Ten AM: wrist locks ninety degrees.

Ten forty-seven: elbow joins.

Eleven fifteen: shoulder surrenders.

He documents in his old lesson plan book. September's curriculum still mapped. Fractions. Long division. Mathematics of taking things apart.

By noon his entire left arm hangs perfect. Mannequin perfect. He practices in the bathroom mirror. Casual lean. Thoughtful pose. The gesture of a man appearing natural while becoming unnatural.

His reflection looks corrected. Like someone cleaned him in Photoshop.

Friday. Returns to work. Long sleeves. August pressing through polyester.

The mannequin in red has moved. Hand touching her throat now. Surprise or suffocation, depending. Fingers curved exactly like his left hand. Same invisible orange.

"Inventory's off," Gerald says.

Gerald. Forty years at Discount Paradise. Started at sixteen. Never left. His tragedy is thinking that's not tragic.

"Missing one male mannequin. System shows five. I count four."

Larry counts. Four males. Six females. Two children. All present.

"I'll check the back."

"Already did."

Gerald walks away. Squeak-squeak-squeak. Shoes on waxed floor. Sound of a man walking the same path forty years, knowing every squeak by heart.

Larry touches the red mannequin's hand. Plastic. Seventy-two degrees. Room temperature.

His left arm twitches. Recognition.

Saturday. Brad's retirement party.

Brad who started the same month as Larry but somehow accumulated twenty years. Time works different for believers.

Split-level house. Pool. Boat in the driveway: Second Chance in cursive. Brad's girlfriend Melissa arranges supermarket sushi on real plates. Everyone pretends it's not from Safeway.

Larry keeps his left arm inside his windbreaker. North Face knockoff from aisle nine, fourteen ninety-nine. Like Napoleon. Like something broken that can't be discussed at parties.

"Twenty years," Brad says. Miller Lite raised. "Feels like yesterday."

It doesn't. Larry knows what yesterday feels like. Yesterday feels like today with different light. Same furniture arranged differently.

"You okay?" Denise from HR. She spots divorces before papers file. Cancer before diagnosis.

"Fine."

"You're sweating."

He is. Right side only. Left side doesn't sweat anymore. Doesn't do anything anymore.

"Heat," he says.

She studies him. Assessment invisible but thorough. "There are programs. If you need someone."

Everyone wants someone. Nobody wants to be someone. The difference is everything.

Sunday. Doesn't sleep. Watches his left arm in moonlight. It doesn't glow. Reflects. Like plastic reflects. Like things without pores reflect.

Four AM: left leg stiffens.

Five AM: right leg.

Six AM: he can't stand without assistance. Can stand but wrong. Joints work at specific angles. Nothing between. Ken doll articulation. Bendable at designated points only.

He calls no one. Who answers: Hey, I'm becoming plastic, started Tuesday, please advise?

Monday. Manages to drive. Barely. Movements jerky. Mechanical. Click-click at every joint. Other drivers stare at red lights. He stares back. Face stuck between expressions. Pleasant but vacant. The face of someone thinking about dinner while the kitchen burns.

Discount Paradise. Same spot. Seventeen flies unchanged. Eternal in their small deaths.

Inside, Gerald corners him.

"You look different."

"Lost weight."

"No. Different different."

Larry turns. Whole body. Can't just turn his head anymore. Turntable motion. Smooth but wrong.

Gerald steps back. "Jesus. You sick?"

"Never better."

True. He feels nothing. No pain. No hunger. No sad. Just present. Perfectly, terribly present.

The mannequin in red has moved again. Aisle seven now. Sporting goods. Wrong department. Wrong everything. Her hand reaches forward. Beckoning. Warning. Both. Neither.

Larry approaches. Click-click-click with each step. Customers turn. Look. Look away fast. Sound of wrongness without name.

He touches her face. Plastic. Smooth. Perfect.

His reflection in the security mirror: standing beside her. Same height. Same posture. Same reaching hand.

Same face.

Realization arrives without surprise. Of course. Of course this is the shape of eleven years temporary becoming permanent. Mathematics of dissolution. He'd calculate it exactly if his brain still worked in numbers.

Tuesday. Exactly one week. Three forty-seven PM.

Larry doesn't make it to his car. Legs lock completely. Aisle four. Where the mannequins live.

Where he belongs.

Click.

Final joint. Neck. Head fixed forward. Eyes open.

Seeing everything.

Understanding everything.

Gerald finds him ninety minutes later.

"Jesus Christ, when did corporate send this?"

Taps Larry's shoulder. Thock. Hollow plastic sound.

"High-end model. Looks expensive."

Checks his clipboard. Makes a note. Squeak-squeak-squeak away.

Here is the joke:

Larry can see.

Can think.

Can't scream.

A girl breaks from her mother. Tuesday or Thursday or Saturday. Time doesn't parse anymore. She touches his hand. Warm. Small. Alive.

"This one's weird," she says.

"Don't touch." Mother pulls her away. The warmth fades.

Larry remains.

He sees everything now:

Woman who steals pregnancy tests. Third Tuesday. Two fifteen PM. Always ClearBlue. Never the cheap ones.

Man who cries in the toy aisle. Holds the same action figure. Star Wars. Original trilogy. Never buys it. Just holds it like it's a small dead thing he used to love.

Teenager reading spines. Same book. Catcher in the Rye. Never opens it. Afraid of what's inside. Or afraid of himself inside it.

They don't see him. Or they see mannequin. See plastic. See price point. Don't see the mathematics teacher who calculated the exact velocity of his dissolution. The one who counted seventeen flies because counting was all he had left. The one who noticed small wrongness before it became large wrongness became complete wrongness became his bones.

Gerald was right about the missing mannequin.

It was him.

Been him since Riverside. Since temporary became permanent became plastic.

The inventory was always off.

He just didn't know which direction.

Night. Store closes. Lights dim to security minimum. Forty percent. He knows because he counted the difference once. Before. When before existed as a concept with meaning.

The other mannequins don't move. Can't move. They're just plastic. Molded. Formed. Finished.

But Larry hears something. Or thinks he does. Or needs to.

The one in red. Back in aisle four. Different dress now. Blue. Like Sarah wore to their wedding. Before everything. When before was still possible.

Her hand touches his.

Click.

Small sound. Impossible sound.

Her fingers moved.

He tries to look. Can't. Eyes fixed forward. But peripheral vision catches it.

She's not plastic.

Or she is.

Or she was.

Or she's becoming.

Click.

The sound again.

Her fingers curl around his.

Squeeze.

The mathematics of temporary becoming permanent works both ways.

Addition.

Subtraction.

The space between.

Somewhere in Discount Paradise, in aisle four, under fluorescent lights that flicker every seventeen seconds, two mannequins hold hands.