MUEUM
Mercurius is delighted to share a chapter from SJ Fowler’s novella MUEUM.
A work of ludic menace, a puzzle without pieces, MUEUM pictures the amassing and dismantling of a public edifice, brick by brick, in prose that refracts and breaks the light emitted by history’s ornaments and history’s omissions.
IX.
In gallery sixty six, the Guard on duty is extremely impatient.
About time, he says.
For what? I reply. My shoes are rubbing.
Are you taking the piss? I know it was your go, but seven minutes late? You’ve eaten into time.
It doesn't really matter, does it? But I'm sorry, I say, with equal sincerity.
Well it doesn’t affect you, does it? Sixty seven minutes.
No, I suppose not, I reply.
Yea well, special day or not, I’ll remember.
Do what you like, I reply.
I don't tell him I simply walked from gallery to gallery until I saw a face that was waiting for me and that's why I'm seven minutes late. I'm late because I'm not here. He's here and I've taken his place. He leaves and I am working in The Carcossa Gallery. It's a through-gallery, an en route, with one way in and one way out, doors opposing. It can be a slow post. The walls are lined with statuettes of various historical and mythical figures. Like every other bastard gallery. There are three pieces one would call statues here, given they are human-sized. There are three central plinth arrangements too, one of Dee’s objects, one of pottery fragments, clocks and stones, and one of books. Three books. Books today. There is a bolted door in the wall. It is never been seen open, by me at least, and I watch for new things. No one can quite get their bearings as to where it leads, but it likely lines up with The Enlightenment Gallery, or, less likely, a passage into The Writing Room. So I will not be trying to open it this time. The door is bolted anyway, and it has visible shutters reinforced with iron bars. It's fair to say, this gallery is curated eclectically, and might be a dumping ground, a hodge podge of trinkets. But these are galleries with a certain charm, those without a transcendent theme. If one is going by objects alone, it is not as obviously engaging as the more famous rooms, where visitors get the gist without even visiting and sometimes don’t even go. But there is a mood to what is here, an accident of knowledge. Not a good mood necessarily, with each section telling distinct but interconnected stories. It is quieter place, electric lamp lit, rather than the neon strips. Without the threat of the inner elements, the objects, overwhelming the eye, it's easier to work.
I inspect the clocks. They do not tick. They are in a cupboard that is otherwise gutless. The books are better for just being three, laid on a table. The visitors can easily get bloated with the instinct to pretend to read everything. To lose time, as I do. Whole sections of our lives gone on the page. The books in this room are dubious. Dark arts and psyops. Though I won't veer into the occult as that's the theme of the gift shop. I’m still light-headed and content to rest. This is a fine room to do that. Whether the books here are authentic or not, they could be. You cannot retrace that anyway, and you cannot forge books without an original. These are originals, unburned, or they wouldn’t be leafable. I survey the figurines. My crotch itches and my head aches. Not particularly unusual. What is unusual is that I know where these sensations began. I see visitors drying their eyes beside small statuettes. They have pride, blinking. The visitors are gulping, grinding teeth, seized by a feeling of remorse. Statuettes of military heroes and heretics and such. Two large tears trickle down a face. These people are soft hearted as lambs. Soon they will be loosening or undoing their buttons, giving way. Only I was actually in the conflict, and they look down their noses at me. There are plenty of men and women, less orderly, who, I bet are still out there. And after drinking a bit, with the memories, go looking for trouble, and not work. I come straight home. I don’t fool around and stray far from the galleries. I stay out of my head when needed. They don’t even know how it is. I could kill them all and not remember any of it. I killed my own mother and father, figuratively. But I must moan. That is my job, and the weeping ones are never a bother.
The visitors in sixty six tend to cluster around the first plinth, drawn to the objects associated with Joseph Dee, mathematician, astrologer and con artist, whom certain people seem to regard. There’s controversy, I haven’t followed it, but a lot of the copy on the labels is about conjuring up divine spirits using some of the displays, or some other drivel which misses the point. The labels talk about how the materials came to the Museum, through a chest they found buried. Then traced to the antiquary of Sir Bob Cotton, who was big before his country home was flattened. It's all made up. There’s a large wax disc, called the ‘seal of god’, engraved with names and symbols, and it reminds me of the animal that bears its name. And there’s a small projection you have to squint to see, where Dee, or the actor playing him, is using the seal for his ‘shew-stones’, where he is allegedly seeing visions of divine beings unveiling the secrets of the universe. Fair enough. Useful information to have. Perhaps I could do with shewing some stones of my own today. There are two smaller discs also. The smallest, golden disc is engraved with a so called ‘vision of the four castles,’ and there’s an obsidian mirror, originally from overseas. It’s a cult item for the visitors, who in their own way, conjure spirits. The obsidian has a fitted case and a label in the hand of Horatio Walope, who was a writer, and his note is translated on a card, talking about human sacrifice. This phrase always makes me think of how much can be considered a human sacrifice. To the earth? To the appetites of permissiveness? To bad tempers? There's a lot going on. There’s also a small penknife, the end of which is goldened. Dee pretended to make it so by dipping of it into an elixir, proving alchemy. Another shitty trick. Today, as ever, the gaggle of visitors gets bored and moves on through.
I stick my head out to see who is guarding the adjacents. To the south of sixty six is the small room of paintings. In it I see Terry and I'm happy to recollect the team. Terry is Blue. I'm in the right place. He is an old man, but daunting. More than Kevin or any of the other old timers. He's a proper vet. He has a plate in his head, they say. No one will ask him. There is an element of volatility with Terry, but he seems to tolerate me. Not that this ensures my safety. I get away without molestation because of my service probably. He doesn’t like Greg and did try to bite him once. He will also often grab a handful of Greg’s arse and move him around with the grip. He doesn’t trust him. Terry is sat, looking into nothing. Surrounding his slightly bent, strangely muscular frame are the small selection of canvasses we were allowed to keep. They are connected to our collection. They haven’t been taken to another Museum. They say there are other Museums just for paintings. I cannot imagine that’s true. It would be deathly boring to just look at bloody paintings all day. I think it's just a good excuse to remove thousands of depictions which might stir the visitors. They likely burn them. Our remaining paintings likely began as copies of lost masters. It's all a bit symbolic for me, two dimensional things. Obviously made to encourage the most passive doubt. To give the sense of letting one’s hair out, to relinquish tension in the eyes, but not the brain. The paintings are of feasts and famines, cycles of the seasons, farming folk with a touch of obesity nostalgia thrown in. Nothing of us, guarding. Nothing of squads ducked in formation, sneaking through bushes. No implements of gaining information. No systematic eradication of enemies. Yes there is some tortuousness, but no depictions of how long you can go without food. There are some outrages, and unnecessary cannibalism, but no people snapping under the pressure. Nowhere in these images is the very earth itself rejecting its animals. Just portraits and pastoralism.
I look again, as Terry isn't looking at me, and think, there are a few good ones though. Ira. Ira is the famous one, and it hangs directly above Terry. I'd temporarily forgotten it. It is quite dense. There’s an armed figure in the centre, who the label says signifies anger, personified, emerging with a sword drawn, with an army swarming around her, from a tent and into a landscape filled with violent scenes, including human figures roasting over fires and naked figures being cut down with a large knife. At the feet of anger, her attendant is biting the leg of a hapless naked victim and above her a gigantic hand holds a knife. A great fire consumes a fantastical structure at right middleground also, and a fearsome man is shat out by the fire, thick all over. He has a heavy beard, that when you look closely, turns out to be made of bees. His face looks then like a beehive, with a lopped grin and chisel teeth at its middle. More dressed red attendants flock to pin him down and are pushing syringes into the back of his head, to restrain him and draw out a bit of random brain, the label says. Up close the woman that is anger, in the picture, seems to be having a stroke, or something, a mental incident that has come from her character malfunctioning. She looks like she’s boiling, twitching. She looks like a baby grown massive. No one in the picture is laughing. It's a quite interesting painting, yes, as they go. Terry, rousing to see and recognise me, looks like he’s of the picture and I am having another moment of aesthetic inference. This is one I can enjoy, it's bookless and not under the influence.
Alright, I shout at him.
Fink so, he grumbles, going still again.
I worked with Terry in the Mummies once and witnessed why he has his reputation. He gave a small boy, he looked like a waterboy, a nearly teen, a grim warning to stop touching a sarcophagus. But the boy keeps touching, of course, and Terry gives notice, and tells me to walk away. Alright I say. The boy then actually leans down with his cheek and caresses the lid of the stone coffin. Terry, like a massive purple fruit, grabs his wrist in his heavy, inescapable meat hook. The boy must’ve realised amongst that grip; he's made a mistake. With Terry’s head shuddering, veins closing his scalp, he forces the boy’s fingers in-between the crack of the lid and the box. The thing being solid rock weighs a tonne. Terry whispers to the child, right close to his face, that he is going to lift the lid and slam it shut, smashing all of his fingers to juice. The kid begins to wail and cry in pure terror of this mental gorilla majesty. Terry, in a surprising move, matches it, begins wailing too, straight into the child’s face, in the middle of the Mummies, in front of thousands of hungry visitor mouths. Terry is above this boy like a broken machine, roaring, spit flecking into the little eyes and mouth. Of course, Terry’s anger can lift the pure stone lid with one hand! The other still fixed on keeping the boy still. I don’t know what happened, I walked off, as I was told to. It is simply inconceivable what ferocious ideas can ferment in the depths of a brain. I admire Terry. Even if you’re not bitter by nature, it does make you mad when somebody puts on your own shoes to trample upon you. The visitors need guards like him. If anything, at least his is a vision of the future I can get with. His Ira.
I walk away, back to the Carcossa Gallery before I inspect the big three, the statues. They are not accidentally placed and have emblematic similarities to the paintings next door. Same author probably, but names of creators aren’t displayed, obviously. Would be dangerous. The smallest of the three is Invidia, whom visitors tend to ignore. It’s basically a woman holding a human heart, a real one, but plainly made up. She is having a vision, spasming, just like Ira. Blood is pouring from her nose. Then there’s the middle statue, busier, Luxuria. It’s basically a figurative nude female, again, exposed, hiding in the hollow of a tree. She seems unperturbed but is hiding, she’s covered in something but is fine with it. Then Residia, surrounded so you can’t get close. She lies asleep over the back of a donkey while a devil adjusts her pillow and around her other figures sleep at a table or in a bed drawn along by a strange duck-billed creature. They are an ambitious set. The maker must have been on one. Like me today. His mates probably mollied him. You can see slugs and snails, other animal representatives scattered through the statue bases. Residia has in her hand a small boy, nearly nude, his penis half-hacked off. Painfully thin, she looks sick. People can stare at her for hours. It’s all a bit like a memory of things their parents have seen and through some genetic quasi-remembrance they somehow know.
I wander to the book table. One volume lies atop the other two, so you can't read them. Because you can't touch. The large, faded book above the others is shut and attracting no visitors. The cover is creamy, for it’s a big, jaundiced thing. Normally this is the book at the bottom of the pile. I look around, there are no visitors near me or aware of anything but themselves. The label says, Hastur. It feels a bit rude reading someone’s thoughts, but I open the book. As my fingers lift the pages, there is some movement in the gallery that I should take notice of, though I am sick of doing so, so I ignore it. I am on the precipice of reading something important. It's hard to even look up. The tiredness just gets in your bones. The day I've had. The motion attempting to draw my attention is what seems to be a visitor walking through the gallery at a pace that makes no sense. It is too fast, too tall. I have no choice but to slam the book shut and glare.
Passing through my gallery, Greg does not stop to wave, or shake my hand, as is customary. Even if we have had a fallout, which we have not. In fact, he does not even acknowledge my existence. My feelings are hurt, even after all that has happened. I would think it incumbent upon him to apologise to me; for being different in the morning and for dosing me at lunchtime. But he worsens the discord by adding obliviousness to the afternoon. I'm going to kill that bastard, I think. He clears the gallery like a giraffe, taking large, familiar strides and then he is gone. I look again at the book and consider what is more intriguing, its contents or Greg. I think, well, it’s about time I got him, given his determination. He needs a smack. Books can wait, Greg needs a dig. I dip into the next gallery and seek Terry.
Can you watch my post? I ask, without pre-amble.
Terry’s neck cranes. He stares. He nods slowly.
How long? He asks, sluggishly. Why?
I think about lying to him, that I need the toilet, which I do.
I'm following Greg and when I catch him, I'm going to clump him.
About time, he replies and nods, smiling. Use your little club, he adds.