お空にお月さま

Words by Aardvark Animated transformation by BigBerserk

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Finally somewhere to sit, Miller thought as he crashed his tired limbs into the cushioned seats of the museum’s screening room. Why didn’t museums ever have anywhere to sit? It made any visit so much worse - not only did you have to shuffle around looking at ugly, meaningless paintings for hours on end, but you were guaranteed to be completely exhausted by the end of it too.

“hiding out in the movie room lol,” Miller texted one of his friends. “i just can’t take it anymore. lmk if you guys get far away and i’ll catch up.” He got a thumbs up emoji in response and then jumped to TikTok, grinning as he viewed prank video after prank video. Since no one else was in the screening room, he turned the volume up and let himself laugh out loud.

Miller didn’t notice the lights of the room slowly dimming, or the back doors shutting with a quiet click. It was only when the sound of a string orchestra surged that he looked up from beneath his baseball cap. An odd series of colors flashed across the screen as he watched, and they made him tired, his eyes lolling sleepily. “Good thing I’m not epi…epileptic,” he said, and his tongue felt like molasses. Even when he looked back down at his phone, he felt like he was underwater, stuck in a world where everything was buffering. He could suddenly feel the start of each breath from deep within him, and his ears picked up on minute sounds from elsewhere, like a vacuum running somewhere nearby, and the chatter of voices outside the door. It was like he was plugged into the museum itself.