The man who lived only with mannequins

The Atlas of Curiosities: Part 37
He was the keeper of a warehouse of window models, plastic human beings who wore clothes well, like toys, or like ghouls, depending on your point of view.  His point of view was unique.  The sole man living in this warehouse, and a worker here since a very young age, he had never seen the outside world.  His universe consisted of the four walls of his small room and the wider warehouse, with its towering floor to ceiling shelves of dark metal.  He knew only the cavernous roof which capped the chamber… and the mannequins.

There were no other workers to dissolve his solitude, nor did he receive visitors from the outside.  Deliveries arrived without accompaniment, and shipments were sent in the same manner.  He kept company only with the rows upon rows of stationary and static human beings, in various poses, with whom he was forced to establish a strange camaraderie.

The shelves were lined with one blank stare after the next, and the man walked up and down each day, greeting them by name, asking them questions, even quarreling with them.  Nearly every mannequin was taller than he was, and given their position on the metal shelves, they towered over him in a manner that was almost demeaning. Still, he moved back and forth through the shelves, roaming in order to keep up the inventory which existed in his mind. His footsteps echoed, and the words that he mumbled to himself were lost int he vastness of his enclosure.

His isolation had become so extreme, we heard, that the shock of true human contact might cause him great distress.  As a result, we prepared a written message which our host graciously slipped under the warehouse door.

Late that night, a reply came written in what our host described as a childishly formed Mandarin script.  In translation, it read:

“No one is home.”

Our host sighed at reading this.

“Imagine,” our host said. “Not a single time has one of his jokes been met with laughter.  At his touch there is no reaction, not even revulsion, to signal that he is not alone.”

“Why doesn’t he leave,” we wondered.

“Perhaps he might pose the same question of you,” our host mused.

We laughed.