Our waiter turned on the television. There was a commercial naming the endless side effects of a pain relief pill. “May cause paralysis,” the voice on the television said. After the commercial was finished, an image of the art museum appeared with a man in front. Crap, he already noticed. The director began, “The opening of the human sculpture exhibit in the museum that was scheduled to be on Monday will be delayed until the sculptures are recovered. Please help us find them. Their names are Chris and Peter.” We stared at the pictures of us on the screen. The pictures shown were of us a few years ago and probably the only pictures he had of us.

     We didn’t just run away because we felt like it. The director, Mr. Schapel, we worked for was a lunatic. He was a normal person and a good teacher when we started working with him as apprentices as he liked to call us or as normal as an artist can be. He was nice but had a short temper. We began to work with the man that was speaking on the television. After a year of working with us on charcoal drawings, he began to explore a different form of art--sculpturing. It ultimately led him to human sculpturing. We watched him work on many other people before he turned to us. Every time he wanted to make a new statue, he would go to the orphanage and take a child. He had made an agreement with the manager there, and the manager let him come in and take anyone whenever he wanted. I watched Mr. Schapel speak into the microphone he was clutching with his pale hand that had a faint red tint to it. “Thank you for your attention,” he finished.

     Chris was crying with a mouthful of pancakes when I turned around. “What are we going to do now? I know we need to get Rose, but I don’t want to go back Peter,” he said.

     Every time Mr. Schapel started a new statue, he made us watch him chisel away from each person’s flesh with a scalpel. We never questioned him because we were afraid that we would be his next sculptures. One day for my birthday, he got me a little girl named Rose from the orphanage to make my own sculpture with. When I refused to, he started shouting at me and threatened to make us into sculptures. Since I didn’t, he started to make a sculpture out of Rose. A few days later, he began working on me and my brother. Rose, Chris, and I were supposed to be his first set of human sculptures shown to the public.

     “Don’t worry. No one can recognize us from those pictures. I don’t even remember us looking like that. It’s like plastic surgery; when some people come out, they are completely unrecognizable,” I whispered. “You’re not going back. We’ll figure out how to get Rose out later. Finish your breakfast.” My brother reached for the syrup and soaked his pancakes. A weatherman was now on the television making lame jokes about the rain that was predicted to stay throughout the week. I finished my own pancakes and gave the last of my money to the waiter who had been staring at us from behind the cash register. Only three days out, and I’ve already run out of money.

     “Let’s go,” I said.

     “Where?” Chris asked.

     “I don’t know,” I took his hand and walked out back into the pouring rain. We walked along the narrow street in back of the restaurant so that no one would stop and stare at the scars on our faces. We bought jackets and sweatpants to cover up our body scars the day before. I stopped at the corner of a street. “You still have a little clay on your neck," I told Chris.

     “I don’t care anymore,” he said. “We spent forever trying to wash everything off these past two days. I’m sick of it.”

     “We don’t want to look like freaks walking through the streets. Everyone was giving us strange looks back in the restaurant. The waiter was staring at us while we ate.” I started rubbing my hand against my left arm. Some green paint washed off with the rain.

     We continued to walk through streets. We knew the general direction where we wanted to go--away from Mr. Schapel and his museum. It was almost night when we found ourselves walking through a neighborhood. I found an empty house at the end of the street that was still under construction and went in. The inside of the house smelled of sawdust and fresh paint. I collapsed in the corner of the first room and sighed. Chris laid himself next to me. We didn’t even bother to explore the rest of the house.

     I watched Chris as he fell asleep on the cold floor. I almost forgot what he looked like after seeing clay and paint plastered onto his face for so long. I remembered watching Mr. Schapel step back and tilt his head to decide what to alter next. He once asked me if I thought Rose’s small ears should be cut off and replaced with elephant sized clay ears. I tried to turn around as he sawed off her left ear, but he made me watch. “You can’t learn if you don’t observe,” he had said to me countless times. Mr. Schapel must be working on Rose all day now that we’re gone. She could barely move when we left. I need to go back to get her. I slowly got up and walked out through a door on the side.

     A light shined from one of the windows as I walked closer to the back of the museum. The door that I had broken through the night before had already been replaced with a new one. The black curtains over the window were separated just enough to see through. Inside, Mr. Schapel’s familiar bloodstained hands were working overtime. I thought he was done with the cutting part with Rose or “reshaping” was how he liked to call it. He had been almost done with the painting part a few days ago. Mr. Schapel stepped back and tilted his head to the right. He wasn’t working on Rose. A little boy about Chris’s age was standing on a pedestal before him. His feet had been bonded together with clay and glued down to the pedestal. To the left of the boy, I could barely see Rose in a glass container. Her eyes were half closed and lifeless. Mr. Schapel had done a tremendous job covering up all of her incisions with clay and paint.

     Mr. Schapel was trying to make the boy in the middle into something that looked like a merman; that was what he wanted Chris to be. He decided to chisel away at the side of his calves and thighs. He reached into a large bag full of sponges and soaked up the blood. The boy’s mouth had been stuffed with sponges to muffle his screams. His tears were dyed green as it streamed down his face ruining his freshly painted face. Noticing that his artwork was being ruined by the boy’s tears, Mr. Schapel took another sponge and taped it under his eyes. He picked up a needle and began to stitch together his cuts. After a while, he put down his needle and exited into another room. The little boy turned to his right and tried to say something through his mouth full of sponges.

     I slowly opened the back door and slid in. There was an older boy on the other side of Rose. He was trying to replace me and Chris. Rose looked up at me as I approached her. I tried to open the glass container, but it was locked. She tried to move her mouth, but it was sewed shut. Blood began to trickle down from her lips, and she pressed her eyelids closed. I heard Mr. Schapel’s footsteps growing louder and looked around the room for a hiding spot. I wrapped myself in one of the curtains. His footsteps seemed to stop a few seconds later. I moved my head and peered into the room. Mr. Schapel was standing at the entrance looking around the room. I quickly jerked my head back. More of his heavy footsteps came from the wood floor. “Are they in here?” I heard him ask. “Tell me Rose or I’ll make you!” A door creaked open and something was being dragged along the floor. “You know, now that you have elephant sized ears, what do you think about having a nose as long as theirs too? Tell me where he is if you don’t want one.” She gave off a whimpering sound.

     “She can’t talk. You sewed her lips together idiot.” The words seemed to leak out of my mouth. I clamped my hands on my mouth.

     “So one of them is in here. Is it you Peter? If anyone here’s an idiot, it’s you,” Mr. Schapel said. There was a pause. “Like he said, you’re no use. I’ll find him myself.” His usual footstep rhythm seemed to speed up three times as he walked around the room. Things were being slid and tossed across the floor. I tried to stand as still as I could. He seemed to stop moving, and I only heard Rose’s faint whimpering. I closed my eyes and held my breath. I heard the curtain to the left of me being pulled back, and then I felt the velvet curtains that surrounded me being tugged away. I grabbed onto the curtains. “I think I found one of them Rose,” he proudly proclaimed. He slowly pried my fingers away from the curtains, and I opened my eyes.

     Mr. Schapel was standing in front of me with his blood stained smock that he never washed. “Hello Peter. How has your day been?” he asked while dragging me by the arm to an empty glass container next to Rose. I flinched as he slammed it shut. “So where is that brother of yours?” He stared at me for a while. “I see you’re like that girl next to you. She’s also refusing to talk.” Mr. Schapel looked around the room again. “Well I’m not going to waste my time trying to get a word out of you. I have a lot of work to do.” He walked around and inspected me. After his fourth circle around me, he sighed, “This won’t do. What did you to my artwork? I already had you painted and carved to just the right shape.” He continued walking in circles. “Look at you. Most of the paint has washed off, and you’ve grown too fat.” What was he talking about? I only ate a few pancakes. I won’t have you ready in time. Mr. Schapel stopped in front of me. “Why don’t you spare us the pain of having to reconstruct you and help me on these new ones?” He waved his hands towards the two boys on the other side of Rose and looked at me for a response. “Look, you can either go through everything again or help me finish the sculptures. I’ll even give you some credit when this exhibit opens. The Schapel and Peter Human Sculpture Garden. What do you think?” He waited for a while longer. "Great, you can start tomorrow morning," he decided for me. He took a pillow from the couch in the corner of the room and threw it into the glass container that surrounded me. "Get some sleep tonight. We have a lot to do tomorrow." He walked out of the room and the lights were turned out. I heard a door slamming in the background. I began to kick and punch at the door. Rose was standing trapped in her own glass container shaking her head at me. I fell down and stared outside through the curtains that were now drawn apart. Drops of rain started to pound heavily in the windows. At least Chris is finally out of the human sculpturing business. I fell asleep as I listened to the rain.

     “Time to get up,” someone said. I slowly opened my eyes and saw Mr. Schapel’s face a few inches away from mine. He grinned and said, “Good morning Peter.” An aroma of bitter coffee escaped from his mouth and surrounded me. I eyed the door.

     “Don’t worry, you won’t be able to get out of here,” he seemed to notice. “You should only be concentrating on the art.” He dragged me out of the container and led me in front of the glass box where the little boy was sleeping while standing. The sponges were still taped under his eyes. He woke up when Mr. Schapel unlocked the door. He passed me a cotton swab and a tube of Neosporin. “Here, this is easy. Put some of this onto the cotton swab and spread it over Oliver’s wounds.” He watched me as I stood in front of Oliver without moving. “I’ll even take him out for you,” he said as he pushed the pedestal out of the glass container.” He waited for me again. His wounds were in the same places as Chris’s. “I’ve already done the hard part. All of the cutting is over. You just need to help me mold the clay onto him and paint him.”

     “Why do you think I will ever help you?”

     “If you do, you won’t be turned into a sculpture again.”

     “I don’t care what you turn me into. I’m not helping you with your disturbing art form.”

     Mr. Schapel bit his lips and sighed. “Look, what if I let his little brother over there go. I haven’t started on him yet, and Oliver has already gone through all the painful stuff.”

     “No, I won’t--”

     “Please just help him finish me so that my brother can go,” Oliver said.

     “You should listen to the boy,” Mr. Schapel said to me. “He’s a lot smarter than you.”

     “Let him go first,” I said.

     “Start cleaning, and I’ll let him go.”

     As I squeezed out the ointment onto the cotton swab, Mr. Schapel opened the door of the glass container next to Oliver’s. He picked up a phone and dialed some numbers. “Hello? Yes, I would like to return a little boy.”

     I rolled the cotton swab over his cuts and took off the sponge Mr. Schapel had taped under his eyes. The phone call seemed to go on forever. I was done coating all of his cuts with ointment by the time he hung up. He took the boy outside to the back and returned alone five minutes later. “Now let’s get to work,” Mr. Schapel said.

     “Where did he go?” Oliver asked.

     “Back to the orphanage.” Mr. Schapel handed me a palette with the three primary colors. “Try to get an olive green color. You know what it should look like; it’s the same one that was on your brother.” I had forgotten about Chris since he locked me up. Where could he be right now? Anywhere would be better than here. “Tell me when you have it.” He began to pile clay onto Oliver’s legs to shape them into a fishtail. I turned around so that I wouldn’t have to watch and began to mix blue and yellow together.

     “I’m done.” I passed him the olive green color.

     “Thank you. This reminds me of those good old days when I was teaching you valuable art skills. You have become less enthusiastic in the past year or so. What happened?”

     “Your human sculpturing happened,” I muttered.

     “I’m just exposing you to different forms of art like all the good teachers.”

     “We can do watercolors after this exhibit if finished if you want to,” Mr. Schapel said. He picked up a brush and dipped it into the color I had mixed.      He coated Oliver’s whole face with the sickly green color as the base.

     “I’m fine with doing anything as long as it’s not this,” I said.

     “I understand that human sculpturing is not your passion, but I enjoy doing it. Maybe you’ll learn to enjoy it when you start helping me. Here, cover up his cuts with clay.” He passed me a clump of clay and started mixing more colors together. Oliver winced as I pressed a small piece of clay against his skin.

     I couldn’t get him to stop wincing no matter how lightly I pressed the clay.“Can I paint instead?” I asked.

     “I don’t think you can handle it. You need to have a lot of experience,” Mr. Schapel said.

     “Well I was taught by a very good teacher.”

     “I think the clay here is hard enough to paint on.” He pointed at the tail that he had sculpted. “You can paint scales onto it if you insist.”

     “Thanks,” I said and dropped the clay. I picked up a palette and a brush.

     “I was thinking that the tail should be a purple color. You can decide the shade of purple.” I painted as he covered up Oliver’s wounds.

     In the evening, Mr. Schapel locked me up in my glass container. “I’ll be working on you tomorrow,” he said through the glass.

     “I thought you said that you wouldn’t make me into a statue if I helped.”

     “I said that I wouldn’t turn Oliver’s brother into one. Now that I let him go, you’re the only one I can use. We have another long day ahead of us.”

     Mr. Schapel was already working on my arms when I woke up. I couldn’t move or feel my entire upper body. What did he do to me? When he saw me trying to move my mouth, he said, “It’s a treat from me. You won’t have to feel the pain as I work on you.” He lifted up a box of pills I had seen on television to my face. “I should use this more often. I’ve been re-sculpting you for a while now and you’ve been peacefully sleeping.” My head was fixed toward the window and couldn’t see what Mr. Schapel was doing. I saw someone jump up to look through the window. Two arms covered with scars reached up to the edge. Chris’s came up again from the edge a few seconds later, and he was just tall enough to get his eyes over. His eyes wandered across the room and then fixed on me. “Please don’t do this too,” Mr. Schapel said. “You’re messing up my artwork. Stop your leaky eyes.” Chris stared at me from the window, and the only thing I could do was stare back. He had started crying. I closed my eyes; I couldn’t look at him anymore.

     The human statue exhibit opened four days later. We were placed outside at the side of the museum. By the opening day, Rose, Oliver, and I only had enough strength to open our eyes. We stood in each of our glass containers half conscious. I saw a little girl pass by the exhibit. She came back a few seconds later and looked at me. “Mom,” she cried, “The creepy sculpture’s eyes are following me.”