The Disappearances
by Julia Webb
My son’s museum has been packed away and nobody knows where it has gone. In the early days he spent hours toiling over the labels and laying out the sticks and stones and bits of tree bark carefully – convinced that they were the bones of a stegosaurus or diplodocus scales. At his bedroom door we would be required to stop and buy a ticket – with real money or imaginary, it didn’t matter. Then the curator would let us in and show us around. No one remembers when the funding was withdrawn, or when the museum finally closed its doors to the public. Perhaps the public simply stopped showing up – enticed by more modern distractions – escape rooms, cinema, or online gaming. Perhaps the curator left town or got a better paying job. All we know is that when the whole operation was finally forced to move further out of town to a smaller noisier building, the boxes containing the artefacts had inexplicably disappeared.
Julia Webb is a neurodivergent writer from a working class background. She has an MA Poetry from the University of East Anglia. Her fourth collection Grey Time was published by Nine Arches Press in 2025.