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Preserved for Eternity

Jon Brunette

    Wendy Hamilton walked through Midwest Science Museum, inspecting the exhibits and writing when the latest items will move from her business and when the next major showpieces will ship to her business. She held a clipboard, and pen around a necklace. Her heels clicked loudly on the tiled floor. Her eyes looked up and down the exhibits like the hidden security cameras that followed her movements. Finally, she stood inside the room that housed the Tyrannosaurus Rex. It towered mightily, and almost touched the vaulted rooftop with a small tilt of the head. Wendy inhaled deeply, shook her head slightly, and walked quickly into the large showroom.
    Off a ladder with a wood-and-metal ledge, one man placed cloths around the hefty fossils to protect them. Dust and debris always formed naturally. People walked through Midwest Science Museum hourly, in mixed bunches. Dust accumulated quickly. Now, the place just closed and Wendy and the janitor stood alone. He failed to hide the attraction that burned his eyeballs when he looked upon Wendy in the white jacket worn loosely. Her body bounced lightly with her walk, and added sexuality to the jacket. With her voluptuousness, the laboratory jacket just barely hid her carnality. Now, the janitor stood just below his boss, and he failed to concentrate on his job anymore.
    Anyhow, the janitor understood sensuality when he looked upon her body. Truthfully, he had never witnessed sexuality as intensely inside his body as beside Wendy Hamilton. Quickly, his blood pumped wildly, almost painfully, in the same room.
    Looking down from the ladder at Wendy, the janitor yelled, “Maybe I deserve a raise. After all, I have worked punctually for a few weeks. Almost I month, I have worked beside you. And you have never complained vocally.” He winked, but Wendy just looked at her clipboard. “I performed my job beautifully. Every room has been mopped thoroughly. Trash has been brought to the bins. In thirty minutes, I will be able to leave.” With a laugh, he said, “Only to return in six hours.” Then he said, without the laugh, “Maybe I should wait for you before I leave.” She failed to hear him, like a robot that just wrote continually on paper. “Should I wait for you before I take off?” Still, she offered no response, but walked into the hallway. The janitor walked off the ladder, and followed Wendy to the hall. Three exhibit rooms joined the hallway, but Wendy had already finished with them.
    Quickly, the janitor took Wendy by the arm. She told him to take his hands off her or he would need to look for another job. He said, “You shouldn’t take that tone with me. You shouldn’t take that tone with anyone.” Cocking her head, Wendy presented a look that told him he had been hired to work. She didn’t socialize with the help in any manner. “Intelligent people hate janitors. Wherever I work I find people who hate me because I mop floors, wash toilet bowls. Maybe I have no idea what you do on your job, but I work like an animal. Only animals should wash toilet bowls. Would you like to scrub a toilet bowl?” Disinterested, she tried to leave the hall, but couldn’t budge her arm.
    Holding her cellular phone, Wendy began to dial 911. “I never assaulted you,” the janitor said. “Maybe I just wanted to feel your jacket. It looks like the type your staff wears continually. Maybe I just wanted to bring you back to the Tyrannosaurus Rex room for a little kiss! Police would believe that, looking at your low-buttoned blouse above that stylish skirt!” She raised an eyebrow that announced repulsion. Finally, he said, “Maybe I just wanted to kill you. Did you think before that I kill people like you?”
    Thirty minutes later, the buzz at the front door told the janitor that someone wanted entrance into Midwest Science Museum. He placed the final sheet over the final fossil, and went to open the door. Two police officers stood in the lighted walkway outside the windows. The janitor allowed them into the hall, where Wendy had stood moments before, when she had rejected the janitor. Beside his bareheaded partner, the officer in the black hat said, “Dispatcher told Red Arrow Police Department that a telephone patched into Midwest Science Museum called 911. Anybody need help?” The janitor shrugged lamely. The officer said, “Maybe we should look around anyhow.”
    They found Wendy below white sheets placed over the Tyrannosaurus Rex, across the hall from the final fossil that got the sheet by the janitor. Splayed like an insect, the curator of Midwest Science Museum had blood pooling thickly around her mouth, off a jagged laceration in her throat, hair pulled tightly, tied to the fossils, reddened by blood, and no clothes but her laboratory jacket. That blanketed her body, adequately, but not completely.
    One officer looked at the janitor, at Wendy Hamilton, and back at the shaggy-haired janitor. He said, “Now, I recognize you.” He raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you just leave Arrowhead Asylum about two weeks ago?” Reluctantly, the janitor nodded. “Didn’t you play baseball in the courtyard of Arrowhead Asylum?” Nodding, the janitor looked at his wristwatch and tried to look hurried. The officer in the black hat said, “One man just escaped from Arrowhead Asylum. He had black hair, stood about your height, and held a build like yours. Actually, he looked like you, but you left Arrowhead Asylum before he did.” Looking at his buzzed-haired partner, and at the janitor, the officer added, “No—you had already left Arrowhead Asylum.”
    The employee of Midwest Science Museum said, “You want to arrest me, I assume.” The beefy officer in the hat shook his head. The janitor said, “Don’t you suspect me in her murder? I spent the last two hours with Wendy Hamilton, alone, and before that, six hours until we closed.” He stiffened and said, “By the way, she treated me like filth, like a lot of people treat janitors.”
    The elder officer said, “Looking at Wendy, I would assume the killer would be blanketed in blood. Tying Wendy Hamilton to the fossils, her killer would be sweating profusely. We nabbed the man who escaped from Arrowhead Asylum, before we knocked by the windows. He walked across the lot of Midwest Science Museum. On routine patrol, we arrested him. He looked wet, bloody, and nervous, like a man who realized he would sit in jail for fifty years. Yearly, he had killed women who looked medical, with laboratory jackets, and blonde hairdos. In childhood, he suffered trauma from a female physician who had touched his body inappropriately. Now, he will sit in jail eternally because Wendy Hamilton wore her laboratory jacket. Treated psychiatrically or not, he will never leave Arrowhead Asylum anymore.”
    The officer without the hat brushed his badge until it shone brilliantly. He said, inquisitively, “Why did you stay at Arrowhead Asylum? You look just like anyone off the streets. What—did you feel empty after some girlfriend broke off the relationship?”
    The janitor said, “It began innocently, with my family. They found no abusiveness, but isolation abused me. When they behaved abusively, they instilled guilt when I tried to punish them for it.” The officers lifted their eyebrows impatiently, and nodded restlessly. The janitor said, “After ten years, I walked away from Arrowhead Asylum, finally, but psychiatrists told me to blame my family. They instructed me to never speak to my family anymore. People respect their families, but I cannot anymore.” Cocking his head, he said, tearlessly, “They never visited me in Arrowhead Asylum.”
    Clearing his throat, the janitor continued, “I hate people who ignore me. Some people behave like I don’t exist. It bothers me—always has, always will. To land in Arrowhead Asylum, I killed a coworker. What could I do? After all, she ignored me. And I hate when people ignore me.” With a sparkly light behind his eyes, he said, “I pounded her until she confessed loudly about her admiration for me. According to her, that attraction added to her alienation. It got attention, not from my family, but attention anyhow.” He breathed slowly, and said, “Unfortunately, I spent ten years in Arrowhead Asylum.” Turning his back, the janitor walked to his floor buffer, pushed the handle into the hallway, and said: “Naturally, I wanted attention, like anyone. Anyhow, why wouldn’t I?” Below his breath, he said, “Attention like that which I wanted with Wendy Hamilton, like anyone would. Why shouldn’t I have it anyhow?”

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