Prompt: What's the weirdest thing you've ever seen in a museum?
Passing through the archway into the newest exhibit, the young mortician froze in place. She once saw an exhibit on anatomy featuring actual cadavers. It had been somewhat eerie… but also tidy. Orderly.
This exhibit looked like they'd started with a similar premise, but they had to cut corners, things got out of hand, and the various pieces got a bit… jumbled. She wondered if maybe this was an ill-conceived exposé of the meat processing industry… but no, the signs and labels clearly referred to human anatomy.
And they needed a bigger budget.
It quickly became clear that the preservation techniques were as sketchy as the physical presentation, and a lot of the subjects appeared to have had loathsome intestinal diseases.
As she watched, a gas buildup ruptured one of the glass cylinders, allowing a particularly bloated length of intestine to flop about wildly like a deflating balloon. Visitors and employees alike scattered, screaming, retching, and tripping over each other.
This was, without a doubt, the best… museum… ever!
With the crowds greatly diminished, she was free to peruse the exhibit at her leisure.
[Actual Entry: "immense grisly anatomy - million wet innards - stomach chunk protrude"]
Sometimes, combining multiple forms of artistic media can produce something that transcends the sum of its parts. A classy puppet show with catchy musical accompaniment and a beautiful matte painting as a backdrop has the potential to push all the right buttons for some people. Trapeze artists playing the harmonica during a laser light show certainly has spectacle. But the final exhibit got a bit too goofy. A morbidly obese performer wearing little more than green body paint to imitate a toy soldier, slow-dancing alone while making surprisingly threatening balloon animals? Not exactly an inspired combo, especially when the paint started to run and an overfilled balloon snake popped, making the dancer faint. Shaking his head, Marcus walked right on by, hoping to find something more to his liking.
The sprawling display of mobile Lego robots playing percussion instruments while a trained octopus cartwheeled through their midst was sheer perfection.
[Actual Entry: "soldier balloon snake"]
The professor smiled at the next display, an R.O.U.S. with scorched fur and multiple puncture wounds. As a kid, the murderous rodents had terrified him. They were still one of his favorite scenes in the entire film. And the small opening in the display allowed visitors to pet the icky prop, which was a nice touch.
Next, he found the sword and gloves of the six-fingered man. For a low-budget 80's movie, the sword was of decent quality. Next, the Holocaust Cloak was actively on fire, which took commitment.
But the final exhibit blew the professor away.
"The Machine" took up most of the room. A sprawling mess of wood, wheels, hoses, and flowing water, it was meant to be the ultimate torture instrument, ripping years of life from the victim. A couple skinny kids with more eagerness than sense ducked under the guard rail to reach the device. The younger boy unbuttoned his shirt and lay down on the machine, while the older boy hooked him up and activated the maximum setting. The younger kid's acting skills were enough to send several onlookers into a panic. He screamed with a decent impression of "the sound of ultimate suffering," and his lung capacity was epic. The older boy wasn't bad either, cackling maniacally like a sadistic mad scientist. When employees dragged both kids away, their laughter earned scowls of disapproval from everyone except the professor, who was deeply impressed.
Eager to give extra support to such a great museum, the professor headed down to the café to buy up a whole tray of Miracle Max's chocolate coated wonder drugs.
[Actual Entry: "bulbous torture hardware"]
Site REDACTED storage CENSORED all CLASSIFIED within REDACTED specimen CENSORED. REDACTED from CENSORED CLASSIFIED while CENSORED postmortem REDACTED, until REDACTED CENSORED CLASSIFIED through CENSORED REDACTED tissue of CLASSIFIED CENSORED REDACTED. Personnel CLASSIFIED with REDACTED therapy CENSORED for CLASSIFIED REDACTED CENSORED REDACTED CLASSIFIED. All other inquiries suspended.
[Actual Entry: "alien booty nugget"]
Author's Note:
That last one startled some major laughter out of everyone present. The girl who wrote it is mature, calm, dignified, and polite, so those three words caught us delightfully by surprise.