The final installment, including several of the ideas people have suggested along the way :-) I love working like this - makes the stories feel collaborative :-) Enjoy!

Pt 10

Using a pair of the metal tongs to start things off, the brown-haired woman started to pull the skin from Dinah’s face as if it were a mask that had been glued on. Her Indian colleague, who must have had some surgical training, was on hand to make the necessary delicate cuts anywhere the outer skin was connected to internal parts, such as where Dinah’s cute, pouty lips met her gums.

“Try to relax.” The woman instructed softly as Dinah’s gurgling wails became more distressed. “Try to breath deeply if you can, it will help the drug to get around your system better. We probably should have waited a few more minutes before starting,” he admitted, letting go of the girl’s peeled face and letting it flop with a wet slapping sound onto her chest, “but the worst bit is over now, I promise.”

The sound of the woman’s voice was a little hazy, a little indistinct, but Dinah understood her. Through her pain and fear she wondered why her hearing was strange until it occurred to her her ears were now just holes on the side of her head, lacking the round funnels that directed the sound. Despite the horrific thing they were doing to her, the woman’s voice was kind and reassuring and Dinah couldn’t help but relax just a little. She tried to focus on how the finished figure would look, how her pretty face and cute body would be preserved to be admired and enjoyed by who knew how many thousands of people over the coming decades and even centuries. Thin, bright-red blood was trickling from her forehead into her eyes. She tried to blink it away but realised she no longer had eyelids with which do so.

“Oh, sorry!” The woman remarked, realising from the way her muscles twitched what Dinah was trying to do. “Here, this should help a little.” She picked up a bottle with a mister on top, such as someone might use to water the plants on their windowsill, and squirted it about an inch from each eyeball in turn. The cool mist was soothing and did serve to flush away the stinging blood. “I’ll do that for you every thirty seconds or so.” The woman promised and Dinah tried to smile, succeeding only in twitching the muscles in her flayed cheeks.

Next, the man who was apparently called David came and held her firmly under her arms, supporting her wait like a father lifting their small child onto or down from something. His large, warm hands made Dinah feel safe, despite what was happening, it was almost like being hugged and she felt very grateful. Another spray came to moisten her eyes then her wrists were unstrapped. The hung loosely down as the man continued to hold her in place by the torso. Using the slit down her pack as a starting point, the two woman began using the tongs to pull the skin from her arms, shoulders and chest. Despite the pain which felt like sunburn but a hundred times worse, Dinah could not help a little internal giggle at the idea that she was being peeled like a banana!

Then, suddenly, there was no more pain. Perhaps the drug really started to kick in and work more effectively or maybe the pain-receptors in her brain had simply been over-loaded and shorted out like a plug socket with too many extensions plugged in. Either way, Dinah now felt nothing but a slight tingle as her arms were strapped back in and her ankles released so that the skin could be removed from her waist and legs, pulled inside out like a pair of tights! Her whole body was filled with a warmth like sinking into a nice hot bath or diving into a heated swimming pool on a cold day and she could not remember a time she had ever felt happier!

A little scalpel work was needed to separate her cute vulva from her vagina, not to mention the other internal pipework which came to the surface in a similar area, but soon the young girl’s skin was completely off and he hung, a flayed, bloody mess with her intestines spilling out of her belly onto the floor. She felt a slight tugging as the woman with the scalpel made a few cuts to release the viscera and let it fall onto the plastic sheeting below but nothing more. After another spray to her eyes, Dinah watched with interest as her skin was turned back the right way in and sprayed inside and out with the chemical preservative. Dinah had a much harder time relating to it than she had the hair. At least her hair had still looked like hair but, emptied out and hanging loosely like this, her skin looked nothing like her. Instead it looked more like a flesh-coloured wetsuit!

The man took over the responsibility of periodically spraying her eyes while the women set to work fixing the now clean and treated skin onto the waiting mannequin. Slowly but surely, with the women working quickly but very carefully so as not to tear or otherwise damage the specimen, the skin was pulled on to the squishy interior as if they were dressing a child in a particularly tight onesie. Tiny, surgical stitches with all-but-invisible thread were used to sew up the slit in the back and then covered over with soft wax which had been blended to perfectly match Dinah’s skin tone. After that, the face was pulled on and pinned into place with tiny, rustproof tacks that the hair would cover and finally, the hair wig was set in place and fixed. The taxidermy was complete.

Looking at the figure, Dinah was suddenly struck by the feeling that she wasn’t herself any more. The real her was stood a few meters from her, forever young and beautiful, looking back at her with glass eyes that twinkled under the overhead lights as if she was excited for her adventures to come.

“I’d ask you what you think, but I know you can’t answer.” The brown-haired woman came and stood by her again. “I hope you approve, ‘though. You really do make a beautiful specimen!” Dinah warmed with pride. She had seen her reflection before, of course, and photographs of her own naked body but looking at herself from the outside was such a strange yet fulfilling experience. She certainly did approve of the work they had done and was very happy with the choices she had made that had brought her to this place. The pain was a memory, already fading. All she felt now was pride and happiness and a strange sensation of being a living ghost, someone who no longer exists and has already been replaced but is still around for a short time longer.

“The drugs we gave you are very effective,” the woman explained, taking the bottle from her colleague and spraying Dinah’s eyes again, “but they can only do so much. I imagine you’ll be dead within half an hour. We need to get you to the ant farm so they can start to clean your bones, we’ll wheel you there on this trolley.” She patted the plastic-covered catering trolley Dinah had noticed before. “The museum opens in about ten minutes and I’m sure visitors will be excited to see the process. Now that we know everything has gone well, we can inform the press and unveil your taxidermy in a few hours, probably around lunch time, and then in a week or so when your bones are clean we’ll get your skeleton wired together and displayed behind you like the others.”

Dinah heard the words but she was not really listening. As the woman had rightly observed, the drugs could only do so much and her body was going into massive shock from the skinning and evisceration. Dinah could almost feel herself staring to shut down as her spirit realised it had no further use for her ruined body. Her entire focus was on the beautiful figure of the naked, olive-skinned young girl with stunning green-brown eyes and long, jet black hair smiling at her from across the room. The real Dinah.

“I’m going to remove your eyes now.” The woman explained. “We won’t be able to keep them moisturised while you’re in the ant nest so it’s better to take them out. This shouldn’t hurt but you might feel a little tugging then it will go dark.” Using finger and thumb, the woman took a grip of Dinah’s right eyeball and pulled it forward, snipping the optic nerve with a pair of surgical snips. The last thing Dinah saw before her right eye was removed, plunging her into safe, comforting darkness forever, was her own smiling face.

Although she could no longer see and only had a vague idea what was happing around her, Dinah was aware of being taken down from the frame, almost like the painting of Jesus being taken down from the cross that she had seen in a different part of the museum, and laid on the trolley. She was slightly aware of the trundling motion as she was wheeled through the corridors to the Hall of Bugs where she was once again lifted and placed gently in the tank with the ants before the lid was put back in place. It felt nice in there, cosy, like a nice soft bed. She was ready to sleep. It had been a very busy morning and now it was time to rest.

“Is it still alive, Mummy?” a small girl asked, standing on tiptoes to look at the thing being nibbled all over by hundreds of ants. She wasn’t sure what it was. The lady in the corner had told them that it was a girl but it didn’t look like any girl she had seen before.

“I wouldn’t have thought so.” The mother replied, leaning in for a closer look.

“It is, Mummy, look!” the little girl who was maybe four or five years old bounced excitedly, “It’s breathing!” But by the time the mother looked, the chest was no longer moving. Dinah was at peace.

Three months later, Margaret, a retired school teacher who volunteered at the museum twice a week was making her rounds, completing the tasks expected of volunteers after closing time. There were monthly, weekly and daily jobs and now she was conducting her favourite weekly duty – dusting off and gently brushing the hair of the taxidermy figures in the Human Development display. She was particularly fond of the new girl with her long, raven mane and could not get over how much more lifelike she seemed than the older specimens. She half expected the little girl to start wandering around the glass-fronted space and asking questions about the skeletons, including her own which had been added to the display a few weeks earlier.

Moving on from the new girl, she started to brush dust off the shoulders of the boy in the next couple, the teenager, but noticed as she did so a small patch of black on the skin of his right shoulder-blade. Retrieving the spray-bottle from the supply cabinet inside the stand on which the babies were displayed, she squirted on the anti-fungal bleach and wiped it away. The black mark was gone for now but she knew it would come back and very soon this figure would need replacing too. She wouldn’t be surprised, she thought to herself, if over the next few years the whole display needed updating. Probably for the best, she thought, people looked a bit different nowadays, what with the changes in lifestyle and improvements in medicine over the last century or so, and it would be nice if the display better represented the current broad ethnic mix of their little town rather than the all white Victorian specimens.

Returning to the office, Margaret took out the folder where she was supposed to record any changes or damage to any of the displays and found the section for the preserved figures. In the corner of the office was a small TV that Margaret liked to have on in the background when she was working alone. The show she was tuned in to was a sort of compilation show where the host showed and humorously commented on weird and wonderful pieces of footage from around the world. The current clip was from an American chat show where a pretty young girl of maybe nine or ten was sat on the sofa wearing nothing but white leather cowboy boots and a white Stetson decorated with pink rhinestones. Margaret looked up curiously, the girl’s curly blonde hair, aggressively American beauty-pageant looks and noticeable southern drawl putting her in mind of a very young Dolly Parton. Curious as to why someone would be on television in such a state of undress, especially such a young girl, Margaret set the form aside and turned up volume so she could hear exactly what was being said.

“…and that’s why I think every girl should have the right to be cooked and eaten if she wants to be!” The girl concluded, shooting a dazzling smile first at the host and then directly into the camera.

“Well I wish you luck with your campaign!” The host replied, clearly a little nonplussed himself. “And maybe if you’re still around this time next year, you can come on again and tell us how it’s going?”

“I surely will!” The girl agreed, once again flashing her pearly-white teeth.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the host turned towards the audience and held out his hand to indicate his young guest, “Sidney Roebuck!” There were wild cheers and applause from the studio audience. Margaret chuckled and shook her head as she turned the volume back down to background levels. Thinking of the cup of sweet tea she would treat herself to once the evening’s paperwork was complete, she returned her attention to the form.