Wendy Masters
Wendy Masters
Wendy Masters is a North Carolina writer whose fiction explores folklore, queer joy, family, and the quiet resilience of ordinary people. Inspired by Southern folklore, fairy tales, speculative fiction, and the strange questions that live just beneath everyday life, she writes stories that blur the line between myth and humanity. Her work often asks who we call monsters, who gets to decide, and what hope looks like after the stories we inherit are questioned. "The Museum of Monsters" is part of an interconnected collection of speculative short stories that are unpublished.
The Museum of Monsters
The museum had no sign. People found it in the way they found old grief… by accident. It stood
at the end of a narrow street where maps had given up trying to be useful. The building was
small, made of weathered stone. Ivy slipping through the cracks as if the earth had been trying,
slowly and politely, to take it back.
Above the door hung a brass plaque.
THE MUSEUM OF MONSTERS
Admission was free. Inside, the air smelled faintly of dust, rain, and old paper. No roaring
creatures guarded the halls. No vampires slept in velvet coffins. No skeletal hands reached from
glass cases. The first room held only a painted map of a forest and a silver bell on a wooden
desk.
A guide stood beside it. They were neither young nor old, neither tall nor short, the kind of
person visitors forget how to describe after leaving. “Welcome,” he said. “You have come to see
monsters.” A woman near the front laughed nervously. The guide smiled. “Most visitors leave
having seen something else.” He lifted the bell and rang it once.
A door opened. The first gallery was warm. At its center stood a dragon. It was enormous, with
bronze scales and wings folded like old sails. Children gasped. Several adults stepped backward.
The dragon did not roar. It did not bare its teeth. It lowered its long neck into a stone basin, filled
its mouth with water, and turned toward a painted forest on the far wall.
The painting moved. Trees bent beneath a terrible dry wind. Deer stood thin legged beside
streams. Birds circled above the cracked earth. The dragon opened its mouth. Rain fell. Not fire.
Rain. The guide folded his hands behind his back. “People often wondered why dragons guarded
forests,” he said. “Very few wondered what the forests were being guarded from.”
The visitors watched the dragon spread one wing over the smallest trees. A man in a blue coat
frowned. “But dragons burned villages down.”
“Some did,” the guide said. “So did men.” No one answered. Beside the exit, a question had been
carved into the wall.
Who benefits when the guardian becomes the villain?
The second gallery smelled of bread. That was the first thing people noticed. Then lavender,
rosemary, and warm milk. A fire crackled in a hearth, and beside it an old woman showed a little
girl how to crush leaves with a stone. There were no pointed hats. Nor broomsticks or warts.
Instead, there were shelves of jars, dried flowers hanging upside down. A table covered with
bread, apples, clean cloth, and tiny bowls of honey.
The old woman held up a plant. “For fever,” she told the girl. The child nodded solemnly. The
visitors softened. That was the museum’s first trick. It made them gentle before it made them
ashamed.
The guide stopped beside a display case. Inside lay a deed to a cottage. A broken wedding ring.
A list of names written in dark ink. “Records suggest accusations rose whenever a widow
inherited land,” he said. A woman crossed her arms. “That can’t be the whole story.” “No,” the
guide said. “It rarely is.”
He looked toward the old woman by the fire. “History can be remarkably convenient.” The little
girl in the gallery laughed as flour dusted her nose. On the wall by the exit was another question.
How often has fear worn the mask of righteousness?
The third gallery looked like a garden. Visitors entered slowly, as if afraid their shoes might hurt
something. Sunlight poured from nowhere. Bees moved lazily among flowers. Stone statues
looked terrified. Some looked furious. Some looked surprised.
Someone was humming. At first, no one saw her. Then a child pointed. A woman knelt beside a
rosebush; dark hair wrapped in a scarf. Tiny snakes moved through it like living ribbons. She had
soil beneath her fingernails and a basket of clipped stems beside her knees.
“Please mind the tulips,” she said without looking up. No one moved. The guide’s voice
dropped. “Medusa receives visitors only when she wishes.” A man whispered, “Is she
dangerous?" Medusa laughed softly. “Most people ask that too late.”
The visitors stared at the statues. The guide moved to the first plaque: Merchant. Accused by
fourteen women. The second: Judge. Ignored testimony. The third: Commander. Ordered three
villages burned.
The guide did not say they deserved it. Medusa did not say she regretted it. The garden kept
blooming. A visitor near the back asked, “Was it justice?” The guide considered this. “Visitors
often ask whether justice and vengeance are the same thing.” Medusa tied a rose stem gently to a
wooden stake. “She has never answered.”
As the visitors made their way to the exit, the guide lingered for just a moment. He reached out
and brushed his fingertips across the petals of a rose. Without turning around, Medusa smiled.
At the exit, the question waited.
Can protection exist without consequences?
The fourth gallery was the smallest. It was a child’s room. There was a wooden horse with one
wheel missing. A blanket folded at the end of a narrow bed. Tiny sandals. Drawings pinned to
the walls. Most showed the sun. One showed a house with no door.
The visitors looked around, confused. “Where is it?” someone asked. The guide did not ask what
they meant. He walked to the center of the room and lifted a small wooden toy from the floor.
“The Minotaur,” he said, “was born before the labyrinth.” The room went quiet. The guide
turned the toy over in his palm.
“Children rarely choose where they are abandoned.” A woman covered her mouth. On the wall
above the little bed was the question.
Who built the labyrinth?
The next gallery held books. Shelves climbed toward a ceiling that vanished into shadow. Music
played softly from a gramophone. A large figure sat in a chair near the window. He was turning
pages of a worn novel with careful hands. He slipped a pressed flower bookmark between the
pages and closed it with quiet care. He then watched the birds beyond the window. His face was
not beautiful. It was stitched and uneven.
He looked up when the visitors entered. Some flinched. He noticed. Of course he noticed. “He
asked for companionship,” the guide said. The creature rested a hand on the worn cover. “History
remembered the violence.” The creature returned his gaze to the birds beyond the window. “And
forgot the asking.” No one spoke for a long time. Beside the door, the wall asked:
What does loneliness become when no one answers?
The final gallery was not a gallery at all. It was a hallway. The walls, floor, and ceiling were
white. No paintings. No music. No dust. The air felt scrubbed clean of memory.
The guide stopped before a brass door. His smile disappeared. “There is one final room,” he said.
“We have not yet agreed upon its classification. Some argue it may be the one true monster in
this museum.” The door opened. Inside stood a wooden chair beneath a circle of warm light.
Behind it, the room kept changing. A woman held a stranger’s hand in a hospital. A man sold
another man in chains. Someone planted a tree they would never sit beneath. Someone set a fire.
A child shared bread. A crowd watched someone suffer and did nothing. A teenager stood
between a bully and a smaller boy. A poem was written. A bomb was dropped. A hand reached
out. A hand struck. All of it flickered across the walls at once. All humans. The visitors did not
move.
“Our previous residents shared one characteristic,” the guide said. “They could become only
what they were.” The chair waited. “Humans appear to be different.” A young man laughed, but
the sound broke before it became anything. “So,” he said. “Are humans monsters?” The guide
walked to the chair and turned over the plaque.
Humanity. Classification: Pending
No one laughed then. The guide looked at them kindly, which somehow made it worse. “We
have found humans uniquely difficult to display,” he said. “They have an unfortunate habit of
becoming whatever they choose.” One by one, visitors left the room. Some hurried. Some cried.
Some looked angry, which was easier than looking afraid.
Only an elderly woman remained. She stood before the chair for a long time. Then she sat. The
room became impossibly still. At first, nothing happened. Then her face changed. She saw a
child in a red raincoat. She saw a kitchen table. She saw the phone call she had not answered.
She saw the girl she had been too tired to protect. She saw the apology she had swallowed for
thirty years. She saw the kindness she had offered once and forgotten. She saw the cruelty she
had excused because everyone else had excused it first. She saw them not as punishment or
judgment. Only memory. When she stood, she looked smaller. And somehow more whole. The
guide waited by the door. “You understand,” he said softly. She nodded. “I spent my whole life
believing monsters looked different.”
“So did most of them.”
She glanced back at the chair. “It isn’t showing a monster.”
“No.”
“It’s waiting for one.”
The guide smiled sadly. “It always has been.”
Years passed and thousands visited. Some stayed only seconds. Some remained for hours. Some
refused the final room completely and complained that the museum had misled them.
The dragon kept carrying rain. The witch kept teaching children the names of healing plants.
Medusa kept tending her garden. The child’s room stayed empty. The creature kept reading by
the window. And the chair waited beneath its circle of light.
People continued asking where the monsters were. The guide always gave the same answer.
“They are not exhibits.” He opened the door for the next visitor. “They are decisions.”
Outside, the brass plaque caught the afternoon sun. For one brief moment, it reflected whoever
happened to be standing in front of it. Most visitors looked away.