Dana and the mannequin

 Dana and the mannequin she loved

Clerk girl Dana from a local dress shop decided to spend her sunday morning looking for a specific mannequin she had grown fond of beneath a pile of trash in the middle of the landfill.

She had come to love the mannequin for it was her favorite from the shop.
Everyday for years she had brushed up beside the mannequin. Looked at it, pretended it was a real person. Told all of her secrets to it. Interacted with it as if it was real.
Certain things had attracted her to that particular mannequin and not the others. The shape of the lips and the head and body, but especially the lips.

The owner of style classics dress shop had thrown it out the day before.This upset Dana deeply. The owner hadn’t bothered consulting Dana, but more so because the owner put no value on the inanimate mannequin. How could teh owner not see the beauty?

It had frustrated Dana, but Dana saw herself as a hero, riding out in her 1992 model hatchback whose motor was a noise pollution violation to the landfill. She had told herself after she had retaken the mannequin, she would pretend it had never happened. Because deep down Dana abhorred landfills. And the thought of her mannequin touching the rancid waste bothered her further.

Dana had spotted the area where the new trash was going in. And she had backed her little hatchback up to the pile. She climbed over a television, stepped around a broken chair and pulled at the mattress until it rolled down the slope. She spotted a head of another mannequin that had been discarded from her shop. That was it. The mannequin must be nearby.

The mannequin's hand appeared first.
She stopped.
The white plastic arm was buried beneath clothes, newspapers and a broken display cabinet.
A plastic back with black liquid inside that by the smell could only be rotten meat.

She crouched and began dry reaching for several minutes.
In an effort to contain herself she hopped back over the obstacles to her car and pulled a small flask of perfume from her purse. Spreading a few drops under her nose and cutting off her olfactory senses altogether.
Back into the mess she went, pulling everything away. A leg came loose. Then the waist. Finally she dragged the whole mannequin from the grimey heap and laid her against the side of the grimy mattress. She felt the smile start to take on her face as if it were a foreign impulse.

Mud covered the dress, the owner had neglectfully thrown out with the mannequin.

The clerk girl went back to the car again, took a bottle of water from her bag and poured it over the plastic face. Dirt ran from the painted eyes. Dana grinned, everything was intact, the face the way she liked it. The way she needed it to be. The way she imagined it in her bedroom at her house.

She lifted the mannequin under the arms and carried her toward the hatchback.
Did her best to fit it inside the trunk, having to adjust the back seat down.
The head and painted eyes looking back directly at her.
As if to say thank you.