Author's note: This short vacuous stroker is fiction. People and places are made up. All players are over age 18. Tags: museum, mummy, sting, curators, remorse, Flame Game. Views expressed may not be the author's. Details may be incorrect. The naming convention is deliberate β see note at end. Enjoy!
***** WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN *****
A nemesis with a big cock stalks the museum.
The last stragglers of the day's crowds had been ushered out. The massive doors were locked. The storied Gothic halls and haunting galleries of Capitol City's tremendous Museum of Anthropology were largely emptied but still unquiet.
First came the Security sweep with a dozen guardians testing every locked door and panel. Every lock bore a code the guards ticked-off on their proprietary iPhones.
Right behind came the sanitation sweep with two dozen janitors loosing institutional-grade Roomba cleaning drones on the floors and lazily swabbing-out the restrooms.
And then the junior curators took to their tasks, one for each of the three dozen academic areas, reviewing and tweaking exhibits as needed. Senior curators, mostly dignified older men, ran their divisions and published research while the juniors, mostly harried younger women, performed the schlepping and shitwork. Ever was it so at CCMoA.
(Astrid, junior curator in the Urban Life division, certainly knew the old blues song CC Rider, and she spread her own lyrics to the other junior staff.}
C.C. MOA, see what you done done, oh yeah
You underpaid me, now my self-respect is gone
Sadie in Aztec-Maya, Beryl in Indochina, Isabella in Trans-Arctic, and Julia in Ancient Egypt had finished their tasks and now sat with beverages and snacks in the shabby break room only lightly gone-over by the janitorial Roombas.
Isabella in Trans-Arctic brought up the rumor.
"I hear sounds that shouldn't be there," she said, sipping the cola spiked with rum, an impromptu
Cuba libre
. "Footsteps. Shuffling. Not a damn Roomba. I check the security monitors but nothing shows. No intruders. No ghosts in the machine. Only my suspicion, especially if I'm not standing up straight."
Sadie in Aztec-Maya nodded over her hot tea. "I get weird stuff too, and never in offices, always out in the galleries. I'm on an exhibit, usually leaning over something, and I hear... little things. And I feel like I'm being watched. I try not to react but I'm getting spooked."
"I damn well KNOW I'm being watched," Julia in Ancient Egypt said, slurping cocoa. "And somebody or something IS in here. I find little bits of exhibits moved, out of place, like they've been handled, even though they're beyond public access. But the sounds and my intuition, yeah, it's mostly when I'm crouching. Have we got a peeping-Tom ghost?"
Did a shiver run through the room?
Beryl in Indochina giggled. "I felt weird too. You think someone dead or alive is peeping at our bodacious bods when we crouch or squat or lean back? Do we want to smoke it out? Maybe wear sexier rags. Overload its eyes. See if it manifests or just plain fucks up."
Thea in Pre-Humans had wandered in, leaned against the grubby staff refrigerator with a soda, and heard most of their talk. "A sting operation for a ghost, then?" she asked. "You may need more than just flashing boobage, butts, and thighs."
"We need a strategy," Isabella in Trans-Arctic said, "which needs a working hypothesis."
"You know there are little 360-degree cameras with wireless feeds," Sadie in Aztec-Maya said. "Cheap, too. I could hide one in a hair clip. It'll see anything visible in the vicinity and record on my phone for playback."
"That could get freaky, even weirder than what we know now," Beryl in Indochina said. "Suppose I'm in here one hot night and I'm down to a short skirt, bikini top, and hairclip, and I hear the sounds, get the feeling, but NOTHING shows up on the camera? Does that mean a real, live, fucking GHOST? I can't believe that."
"Okay, not ghosts," Julia in Ancient Egypt said, "no reincarnations or revenants, no ambling skeletons, just real person or persons unknown. Why don't they show up on surveillance? I bet it's some Security goon playing the system."
"Well, I can track them on... oh that's right, I only see what they want me to, and I can't get at the source videos," Isabella in Trans-Arctic said. She looked and sounded rueful.
"Seems simple to me," Thea in Pre-Humans said, chopping the logic. "Anything that shows on a hairclip cam but not on a CCMoA Security monitor is real, and anything else is a ghost. Anyone see a problem there?"
Nobody raised objections. Sadie in Aztec-Maya volunteered for a group buy of wireless spy cams, nicely discounted. The junior curators returned to their tasks somewhat distracted. You would be too, with their thoughts rebounding in your head.
*****
The Flame Game, named by Julia in Ancient Egypt to cast light on the mystery without revealing anything if overheard, began two nights later. Beryl in Indochina recruited a few more junior curators with similar experiences: Astrid in Urban Life, Eloise in Sexology of course, Aria in Sub-Sahara, and Audrey in Industrialism. Nine harried, underpaid women with a mission. And sexy rags.
Every mission needs a leader. Audrey in Industrialism seemed sane so the Flamers elected her. She shrugged her slim shoulders and setup communications protocols.
"We only talk or text encrypted," she said, "and never on Museum grounds. This should stymie Security goons if they're involved."
The Flamers hatched a plan. All dressed as normal when arriving for work and only revealed themselves after admins left. Each night, some went bra-less, some wore miniskirts or tight bike shorts, in no set pattern. Commando was an individual option. Inconspicuous cameras mounted in varied small hairclips topped nine heads. Astrid in Urban Life judged their selfies and declared them passable.
*****
Thea in Pre-Humans got the first hit the next night. She mentally noted the time she heard vague sounds while she hunched over a replica Lucy (
Australopithecus afarensis
) exhibit. She casually shifted her crouch and raised her head just enough to capture full-circle images.
She stood and stretched, half-twisting, bare arms overhead, taut ass in, unbound boobs out, before smoothing and brushing her miniskirt and straightening her tight top. She pressed below her navel as if judging her bladder's fullness and nonchalantly hoofed to the ladies' room without waggling her hips and butt too obviously. Stay cool, now.
Safely in a stall, she fast-forwarded the phone video to the time marker and saw... a humanoid shadow moving between vitrines on a wall behind where she first squatted. So the watcher liked her ass and legs! Or maybe that was merely a good access point. She recalled a service door near there.
The shadow remained still during her stretch-and-twist show. No, wait β she zoomed in and saw that it seemed to be jiggling slightly. Tremors? Self-abuse? Parasites? Whatever. The video showed it was REAL β but HOW real was still a question.
"Do ghosts cast shadows?" she wondered to herself. The Flamers might find out, even without a research grant.