The Thousandth

A thousand of them. One is not part of the display.

You are alone on the retail floor of a department store that closed a long time ago. A thousand identical mannequins stand in rows in the dark — blank faces, arms at their sides, waiting for a season that never came.

One of them is not a mannequin.

It never moves while you are looking at it. Not a twitch. But turn a corner, sweep your torch down another aisle, let the dark take it for a second — and it will be closer when you look back. Always closer. Always facing you.

Find it. Break it.

Your torch is dying and there is no spare cell. A resonance scan gives you a rough bearing and nothing more — never an exact answer. What it will not tell you is which shape in that direction is the wrong one, so you have to get close enough to read the two things it can never hide: it stands off the display grid, and it is always turned toward you.

Swing the axe at the right one and the floor is yours. Swing at the wrong one and you shatter an empty shell, lose your nerve, and the real one closes half the room while you are still watching plastic fall.

Three floors. Three nerves. It only has to reach you once.