 I always felt uncomfortable in my own skin. When I was a child, I was shy and lonely and clumsy because of this. I used to hide myself away in cupboards at home in the tangled bushes that grew on wasteland nearby. I didn't want anyone to be able to see me, the weird kid. I didn't even want to see myself. When I was 12, I turned around every mirror in my parents house so that they face the wall. I was sent to a counselor shortly afterwards. All through this time, I found a kind of refuge in books. In what I was 19, I told my parents I wanted to be an academic. The idea had been planted by a story I'd read in a tattered old magazine. There was a profile feature of a professor of literature. He'd been nominated for an award and was pictured in the wood-paneled room lined with books that seemed to stretch on forever. I attended an open day at a nearby university as part of my new ambition, but the crowded campus and the way that lecturers had to stand at the front of the room, all eyes on them, was a crushing experience. There was no way I could do that. My parents, though, continued not to give up on me and it was my mother who first suggested I look at becoming an archivist. She died 10 years ago of cancer and I miss her every day. My father is still alive and in a residential home, but he no longer knows who I am. I have a lot to be grateful to them for. Not least, that suggestion. After studying at home for a number of years, I did become a qualified archivist. And after a number of other positions and aged 45, I was working in a facility caring for and cataloging a fascinating and intriguing collection of objects. I would have described this as a dream come true until a few days ago. It was a 24 hour a day, seven days a week operation with all the staff working shifts. I preferred nights as the streets were quieter as I drove the short distance from my parents' old house where I still lived to the archive. That was the only name I'd ever heard it called and had never asked if there was a more individual designation. Questions like this were strictly no go alongside who actually owned and ran the archive. And why? In my idle moments, I imagined it was a branch of the government which kept itself well clear of the media and elected representatives. But as long as they paid me every month, which they did and handsomely and I was allowed to keep working there, I was happy in my ignorance. The building itself looked like a bland industrial unit. Dozens of CCTV cameras blended discreetly into the exterior and facial recognition technology was used to grant access. There were armed guards as well, but they also kept very much in the background. Just before 10pm, six nights a week, I blinked into a scanner, walked through a body scanner and breathed a sigh of relief. In many ways, I was still that screwed up kid who did not fit in the world. In here, I was surrounded by order, filing systems, checklist, and routine. The lights were kept low, the temperature constant, and the occasional conversations were short and to the point and conducted in quiet voices. I would, if I could, have spent all my time there. My section of the archive was reached by a corridor that took me 16 minutes to walk. At the end of this corridor, a small sign was fixed into the wall. It read, creatures of myth. I always smiled when I opened the door to my kingdom. There was a single PC in the middle of the room and the walls were lined with shelves packed with boxes. There were more than 10,000 of these and I knew the contents of around a third of these. By the end of every shift, my aim was to have opened at least one new box and studied and cataloged a new item. So far, I had encountered the shrunken heads of ogres, their shocks of hair intact and to perfect scale. A leprechaun pickled in a glass jar, fairies mounted on boards with sewing needles piercing their chests, holding them in place. A mermaid's scales, each separated and placed in small glass display cases, a gargoyle's head draped with the corpses of snakes. And these were just a few of the fantastical things that were stored here. They were fictions created over centuries by artists, craftsmen and show people to entice, terrify, thrill and mystify. Many were made from real skin and bones with animal hide used for my pickled friend the leprechaun and insects transformed into fairies with porcelain for the faces. Nothing I'd yet examined was really what it appeared to be. But each time I opened a new box, I kept an open mind. Without wonder, we are all poorer. The box I opened at the beginning of that shift was small, whatever was in there was wrapped in paper that was clearly fragile with age. I unfurled it slowly, carefully, and the headline of a bill poster was revealed. See the two-headed terror it read. I'd seen this type of thing previously. It was for a freak show, probably of the Victorian period from the design. I continued opening out the poster until I could see what it held. I'd seen this method of preservation before. Momification was effective and relatively simple, and I believe the thing I held would have been made especially for the freak show. The rat's body was intact, down to its slender tail, and it was impossible to tell which of the two heads was its own, and which added after its death by the maker of this bizarre, yet engrossing specimen. I logged on to the PC, selected the next available serial number, and began to type up a description for the archives database. Time passed, and I was oblivious to anything else. Until there was a gentle knock on the door, Michael Malone was the head of staff at the archive, quietly spoken and rarely seen outside of his own office. I was jolted by his appearance. Can I sit down? He asked, which threw me even more. The last time he'd asked me a question was when he interviewed me for the job. He pulled up a seat without waiting for me to answer. I wanted to tell you personally. He said, rather than just email you like I was told to do, you're a good man. I think certainly a dedicated one in your work here has been exemplary. I'm telling you this because here he hesitated. I noticed that he had a cigarette ash on the lapel of his jacket. Notice the slight yellowing of his fingernails. Could hear now the huskiness in his voice when he went on. I wanted you to know that this decision has not been made because of you. It's a matter of economics, pure and simple. Our budget has been slashed and the work of the other sections have commercial and, though I hate to say it, military potential. The imaginings here sadly do not. So your section is being closed and the objects will be disposed of. I'm so sorry. He paused for me to say something I figured, but I was lost for words. My world lay shattered into pieces. I began to cry Malone cleared his throat and got to his feet. I'm afraid this is with immediate effect. Your security clearance has been revoked and you need to leave. He had the good grace to look embarrassed and added, If you'd like a few minutes alone to compose yourself then I'm sure that would be fine. Then he left. I wept my eyes. One thought began to burn inside me. I had to save her. When I arrived home an hour or so later Dawn was close. I closed all the curtains then sat in the kitchen. I was soaked in sweat and shaking as I took the small box out of my coat pocket. Walking down the corridor, leaving the building and heading to my car, I'd expected at any point to be stopped and challenged. But I'd made it. I'd smuggled her out of the archive and brought her home with me, where she'd be safe. I lifted the lid of the box. Inside was a second container. It was wooden ornate. A miniature was affixed to it and oval. Her eyes reached out to me from it. Her gentle smile. My love. I said, I'd always been alone as an adult. I think there's a saying that you have to love yourself before someone else can love you. And I never would. Is it pathetic to have fallen in love with a young woman who I'd only seen in a portrait painted hundreds of years ago? Judge me as you will. My heart was captured and I did not want to be released. I rested my fingers on the miniature, closed my eyes. Below it I knew from where I first opened the box was dust, fragments. I could never go back to the archive, so I had nothing else. It was time to do something I dreamt of, had longed for. It was time to discover where my obsession would lead me. I took the sharpest knife I could find in the kitchen and rolled up my sleeve, then opened up the wooden box, revealing the dust. Then I drew the blade across my skin and watched as my blood began to fall. There was a hiss and steam began to rise, gray wisps which curled and joined until in their depths I could see a smile, fangs, a tongue flickering. I staggered backwards, fell and lay cowering on the floor, fear pulsed through my veins. I could only watch then as she was remade. Two days have passed since then and my mind has raced with thoughts of what could have gone wrong. Had the dust become impure once I opened the box was my blood not good enough, like me? Whatever the reason, she is not as once I believed she had been, before a stake pierced her heart. Her limbs are not fully formed. Her torso is twisted and she is blind. Her eyes are faint, unseeing traces below the skin of her face. Her teeth though, they are sharp and keen. She's asleep now, after once more taking her fill from me. The house is quiet, draped in darkness. My neck stings, my heart races. I do not know what will become of me and for the first time in my life I do not care. I am free.