Chapter 19 Daddy Dorian #2
“Uh-huh.” Murry muttered against my chest. “We got separated from Phoenix, then we got separated from each other, then I ran into a candy cart and knocked it over while I was trying to get to Raleigh. He was hollering my name from the escalator.”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Raleigh said. “I didn’t think it would get us all kicked out of the mall.”
“In all fairness, it was a huge mall, and people were being extremely rude and shovey that day,” Murry complained.
“Raleigh stopped to look at a tarot cards in the bookstore window, and someone bumped into me and swept me along with the crowd. By the time I was able to duck into a shop, I still couldn’t go back in the direction I’d come from because there were so many people chatting and on their phones that they completely ignored me when I said, Excuse me, and tried to step out of the shop.
I will never go anywhere on Black Friday again.
That was crazy. No one seemed to care about anyone; they were just rushing around clutching bags and ramming into everyone”
“Yeah, Black Friday is not a day to venture anywhere but the couch,” I said, hating that they’d gotten caught up in the crush of holiday madness like that.
Unlike the stories during the after-Thanksgiving frenzy, the Museum of the Odd and Mildly Disturbing only had a handful of other visitors inside.
“Whoa,” Raleigh breathed as we stepped inside and paused to let our eyes adjust to the low light and shadows that filled the place.
They certainly added to the creepy vibe, as did some of the murky blue and purple lightning behind some of the displays.
“Is that…oh, ewe, ewe, ewe, who does that!” Murry declared, backing into me.
“Who does what?” I asked.
“Models their hair into the shape of a tarantula!”
He pointed, and I followed his finger to a display.
Behind the glass was a life-sized tarantula sculpture, statue, I wasn’t sure how, exactly, to refer to it after spying the sign behind it saying it had been crafted entirely out of human hair.
I felt Murry shudder before he sidestepped and turned away from the creepy-ass display.
The place was certainly living up to the description I’d read online.
Judging from my pet’s scrunched-up nose, he wasn’t going to forget that tarantula anytime soon, either.
I just hoped there was nothing in here that would leave one of them with nightmares.
Or me, for that matter, holy shit. Recoiling, I could only stand there and stare in utter disbelief at the next display in the row.
“Why would someone sew a bunch of different animal parts together like that?” Raleigh asked.
He leaned against my arm as we peered past the glass to see the mounted remains behind the glass. The placard read "Figi Mermaid," and it was nothing short of grotesque.
“To fool a mostly uneducated public paying for the privilege to see what they thought was a real mermaid,” the caretaker explained.
“Folks back then still believed that myths were real and that all manner of creatures roamed the earth and oceans. Carnival showmen would buy pieces like this and display them as truth, knowing that they were really just a fish and a monkey sewn together.”
Aspen snickered as he stepped up to get a closer look. “I guess it’s all in the marketing.”
“Dude, marketing can only go so far,” Raleigh declared. “Mermaids are supposed to be beautiful. That thing is hideous.”
“Not all mermaid myths depicted them as beautiful with long flowing hair and tails that sparkled like jewels as they leapt from the water,” the caretaker said.
“Some of the old tales, like those of the Russian rusalka, speak of them as being vengeful, vicious, and even terrifyingly hideous. The truth is probably somewhere in between, depending on what creature those sailors saw sunning themselves on a rock. If it was a seal, then the sleekness likely led them to describe it as something beautiful, while a walrus with large tusks and its mouth gaping would lead them to describe it as a terrifying being. We’ve got a whole shelf of books at the front that are filled with myths and the likely truths behind them, all 50% off right now, since we need to make some room to add new ones. ”
“Thanks, I’ll check them out before we go,” Raleigh said.
“See,” Aspen said as he nudged my arm. “I told you it was all about the marketing.”
All I could do was snicker and shake my head as Raleigh moved on to join Murry at the next display.
There was no denying the smoothness of the way that caretaker had woven that story with his sales pitch without missing a beat, or the way his tale had held Raleigh’s attention.
At the end of our tour, he spent fifteen minutes in front of that bookcase shelf, carefully selecting books on mermaid mythology from around the world, as well as ones on ghost ships, sea monsters, and water sprites and spirits.
Murry added a tarot kit to Raleigh’s stack, the whole set based on mythological creatures, before snagging a book filled with obscure laws.
Even I managed to find a few books to add to my collection, including one on strange fashion trends throughout history and another that was filled with photos of men dressed in an assortment of bondage gear.
The museum caretaker hadn’t even raised an eyebrow at me as he rang it up, but then, I suppose if someone ran a place like this, very little shocked or surprised them.
We paid for our purchases and were on our way as a van full of laughing teenagers pulled up, music blaring, along with a trickle of smoke from the half-open windows.
They reminded me of myself in my youthful years, always looking for something new and totally left of the norm to explore.
Those experiences had shaped me into the man, as well as the designer, I was today.
Such a contrast from the upbringing my pets had endured.
I couldn’t imagine what it had been like for them, living in survival mode, scratching and clawing to create a home for themselves when they were cut loose at eighteen with nothing.
Listening to them excitedly talk about the things they’d seen in the museum while leafing through their books, showing each other the images inside, made my heart swell with joy as we pulled out of that parking lot.
One stop into our journey and we were already making memories, and the best part was that there were many more to come.