The Mannequin’s Last Gaze

London, 1897. Fog clung to the streets like a suffocating shawl, blurring gas lamps into smudges of yellow flame. On Savile Row, where gentlemen’s names were sewn into silk linings and fortunes measured in wool, one shop stood apart for its quiet magnetism: Wexler & Sons, Tailors of Distinction

It wasn’t only the craft that drew the wealthy to its doors. It was the mannequin in the front window.

He stood taller than most men, broad-shouldered and strikingly handsome. His jawline caught the lamplight with unnatural sharpness, his glass eyes a shade too bright. Clothed in the latest evening coats and polished waistcoats, he seemed more aristocrat than effigy. Locals called him the gentleman who never blinks.

Inside the shop, bolts of cloth whispered against shears. Mirrors stretched from floor to ceiling, multiplying the mannequin’s likeness until his presence dominated every angle. For the new apprentice, Thomas Greaves, the figure was both inspiration and torment.

On his first evening, while sweeping chalked cloth from the floor, Thomas glanced toward the window. For a fleeting instant, he thought the mannequin’s gaze had shifted—ever so slightly—to meet his own. He laughed it off, blaming fatigue. But as days turned into weeks, he could not shake the unease.

The mannequin’s hands, once folded neatly, would sometimes be at its sides in the morning. Its polished shoes, set firmly on the pedestal, appeared at different angles. And worst of all were the mirrors. In the glass, Thomas swore the figure’s lips curled upward in a smile—a smile that never existed outside the reflection.

One evening, as gaslights hummed low, Thomas confided in Mrs. Keene, the elderly seamstress who worked in the back room. Her fingers, bent with arthritis, stilled on her needle as her eyes clouded.

“You’ve noticed, then,” she whispered. “We all do, sooner or later.”

“What do you mean?” Thomas asked, half relieved, half afraid.

“The mannequin,” she said, her voice trembling. “It was never carved from wood nor molded from plaster. He was once a man. A client. An aristocrat with vanity so sharp it cut deeper than any blade. He could not endure the thought of age. So he bargained—Lord knows with whom—for beauty everlasting. When he vanished, the master unveiled this mannequin, and no one asked questions. But I have seen the seams under its collar. Skin, Mr. Greaves. Not fabric.”

Thomas laughed, though the sound rang hollow in his throat. But the very next day, the shop fell into shadow.

One tailor pierced his palm so deep with a needle that blood spattered the fabric like crimson rain. Another collapsed in the fitting room without warning, gasping that something cold had wrapped around his chest. And through it all, the mannequin stood radiant in the window, its eyes glimmering with unnatural satisfaction.

That night, the master entrusted Thomas to lock the shop. He lingered after the lamps were extinguished, the silence oppressive. The faint smell of polish, wool, and candle smoke mingled with something else—something metallic.

When Thomas turned to the window, his heart froze.

The mannequin was gone from its pedestal.

A soft shuffle echoed across the floorboards. In the reflection of a mirror, Thomas saw it—moving, slow and deliberate. Its fine suit brushed against the fabric rolls, its glassy eyes now alive with glinting hunger. The mannequin stepped closer, and as it did, Thomas saw the truth: a faint fissure down the cheek, where flawless skin gave way to something waxy, gray, and decayed beneath.

“You… you’re not real,” Thomas stammered, his voice cracking.

The mannequin tilted its head, as though amused. Then it spoke—though the lips barely moved, the words seemed to echo in Thomas’s skull:

“I endure. They watch me, they admire me, and so I endure. But I grow weary of standing alone.”

Thomas backed toward the door, fumbling for the key. But the shop seemed endless, mirrors reflecting him a hundredfold, each pane filled with the mannequin’s gaze closing in.

When the master arrived at dawn, the shop was silent. Everything was in its place. The bolts of fabric neatly aligned. The worktables clear. And in the front window, the mannequin stood once more—dressed in a newly tailored suit, its eyes gleaming brighter than before.

Only one thing was amiss: Thomas Greaves had vanished. His broom lay abandoned near the mirror, but of the apprentice himself, there was no trace.

Yet some swore, in the days that followed, that the mannequin looked different. Its shoulders broader. Its expression sharper. Its eyes somehow more alive. And in the still hours of the night, those who passed by Wexler & Sons claimed they saw a second reflection in the window: a boy’s face, pale with terror, standing just behind the mannequin, trapped forever in its eternal gaze.