Macabre Museum

It was the second week of October when the advertisement for Madame Vitas' Grand Opening was published in the local paper. Words like 'Amazing!' 'Lifelike!' and 'Never Before Seen!' were written in bold for the express purpose of drawing people in to see the new attraction. It worked.

Within a week, almost everyone in town had visited the wax museum and word was quickly spreading. The paper hadn't lied. The exhibits were indeed lifelike and amazingly detailed.

At the opening, there were more than forty figures in Madame Vitas' collection, and she promised she would be adding more as time went on. All of them were painstakingly perfect down to the final detail and set up in various scenes.

The first exhibit featured a young girl in a pretty pink dress. She was perhaps eleven or twelve and was in the process of having a tea party in her bedroom at a little table complete with guests and china.

There was one of a man casually dressed in a park, feeding the birds; and a woman, in an elaborate gown and mask sitting in front of a vanity table as though she were getting ready to go to a masquerade.

The museum became well known and loved for it's stunning detail. Many said it was almost as though the figures would get up and move before their eyes. By the first year anniversary she had added another ten figures to her collection and it was a well known tourist attraction.

As popularity for her museum grew, more and more people began to notice the lack of well known faces. There was not one celebrity anywhere to be seen and according to Madame Vita, she had no plans to add any. Plenty of museums offered that, she would rather showcase the beauty of the average person.

Word about the museum continued to spread and people questioned her about her secret to making such realistic wax figures. Hard work, practice and patience was always her answer. Some even asked if she would ever consider making figures of them, to which she would simply laugh and tell them that anything was possible.

Now and then when a tourist asked, she would oblige and a new figure would take up residence in her business, whether the model ever came back to see their likeness no one knew.

The museum continued to be a popular attraction for tourists, though locals came less frequently now, having grown bored with what was no longer a novelty for them. People continued to come by and see her work and take pictures with the figures right up until Madame Vitas death at age fifty one.

With no family that anyone knew of and no will, the museum closed down while the town tried to figure out when and how to re-open. They all agreed they would as the business was so good at drawing people in. Of course more people meant more money.

Hoping to discover what exactly her secret had been so they could add to the collection first, the mayor quickly took one of the figures to be shipped off to a friend in forensics.

The news he received a few weeks later made his blood run cold. After close examination it was discovered that the displays had been set up using human corpses, preserved with wax.