Exposition

Flash Fiction by Ivy Dillinger
Author of The One-Eighty



Whenever Julie sees a skull and its corresponding bones in a museum, she's struck by thoughts that make her not quite sad, but close. She thinks of herself - her remains, her skull and bones - in a glass case in a museum. She imagines a year well into the future. 2505, say. She assumes human nature will remain unchanged. She assumes the basic tendencies of the people of the future will be the same as they are today, just as our basic tendencies are the same as the people of five hundred years ago. She thinks of future teenagers roaming the museum making jokes, of future children complaining of being tired, of future museum guards indifferent to all that surrounds them. She thinks of the museum after hours, her remains lying in darkness, surrounded by EXIT signs.

Her final thought, always: the odd privilege of eternal rest in a museum, perhaps the lamest, most anonymous kind of fame. A fame unknown and unasked for by its subject, a fame barely perceived by its subject's audience.