The Summer Job

In the summer, I started a new job at a small wedding dress store in my town. There wasn't anything that made the wedding dress store stand out from the usual stores, except a mannequin that always creeped me out.

It had been there whenever I started working, so i didn't know how old it was.

I tried to stay away from it most of the time, even if it seemed silly to be scared of something that can't hurt me.

The mannequin was so unnaturally life like.

Her eyes were so dull, yet they looked so pretty. She had soft make up on her pale skin and she always looked like she was blushing and her hair was so beautiful, it almost looked real.

She looked like an actual bride ready to get married any minute.

Another weird thing about her was that she always smelled like chemicals, unlike the other normal mannequins. I never asked the store owner why she looked so real.

He wasn't very friendly and didn't talk to me at all. Sometimes I caught him staring at the mannequin, which made it even weirder.

One day, i was working late and I was tidying the owner's office. I saw a photo on his desk. It was a photo of him and a girl that looked exactly like the mannequin.

I smiled, guessing that maybe he based the mannequin off his wife. I put the picture back and left the room.

The next day, i was talking to my co-worker about how sweet it was that our boss made a mannequin based off of his wife.

My co-worker looked confused, and said something that made me realize that there was a much darker story behind the mannequin. "You know his wife is dead, right?" My heart dropped, and I looked over at the life like mannequin that stood in front of the store.

That was definitely not a mannequin. Afterwards i couldn't stop thinking about it, it was too much of a coincidence.

After work one day, I decided to tell my best friend who worked at the police station. At first he told me i was just being paranoid, but he still decided to look into it.

After more investigation it was proven that the mannequin was actually the owner's dead wife's corpse, who had been preserved to look young forever.

He admitted that the day before their wedding, she had been thinking of calling it off, so he killed her so she wouldn't leave him. Then preserved her body as a mannequin for the store.

He was arrested and the corpse was properly buried, but i'll never forget her life like eyes staring at me like she was pleading for help.