One night a year, all the statues in the world come to life. Last year, I got stuck on shift during the change.

I used to work the night watch as a security guard at the Smithsonian’s Natural Museum of History. I loved doing graveyard, the quiet, the solitude, it was peaceful. <br><br>Things all changed last year, when one night, all the statues in the world came to life. <br><br>I’d always thought of it as a dumb legend, and figured if it was true no one would notice anyway. But that night, if you’ll recall, the statues watched their people burn cities to the ground. When I discovered what was happening, I tried to get home as fast as I could. But the world was quickly falling apart, and the responsibility of my job was too great to just abandon. I had to make sure everything was okay.<br><br>I checked all the exhibits and galleries, but none of the displays in the museum seemed to have been affected. None of them even seemed to have moved. <br><br>I felt confused and relieved. Maybe this would be easier than I thought.<br><br>That feeling went away when I got to the main hall.<br><br>In the center of the room, our entire dinosaur exhibit is mounted. It’s a life-sized trex killing a triceratops, with pterodactyls suspended in the air above them. <br><br>Except none of its wings were spread wide now, and there was no illusion that these were any ordinary museum displays. <br><br>The T-Rex stood tall, taller than I remember, I think he was waiting for something. The Tri-Corn was on the ground, thrashing in death’s throes. The Pterodactyls were perched around the walls of the room, their mouths open in screeching cries like we had disturbed their hunting grounds.<br><br>I moved as quietly as I could back to the security room. I don’t think they noticed me. I sat my trembling body in the chair and watched the cameras. All of the displays were back to life, animals hunting each other, cavemen lighting fires, ancient Egyptian mummification rituals being carried out by living people. <br><br>I had to press the panic button. <br><br>I didn’t know what would happen when I did, but I couldn’t just sit there as the museum ran itself into chaos. So I did the only thing I could do, I hit the button.<br><br>I heard a low drone, and the museum was filled with a faint red glow. It reminded me of when I was a kid and the fire alarm in my school would go off, with a flashing red light to signal the deaf. It looked the same, except instead of the, bee-bop-beep-bop of a fire alarm, this just sounded like a low siren.<br><br>I watched the security cameras, and saw the reaction it had on the museum. <br><br>The cavemen stopped roasting their meat, the sharks in the Mocha Exhibit stopped attacking each other, and the dinosaurs in the big hall all huddled in on themselves.<br><br>I started to feel hopeful.<br><br>But then, I heard a voice.<br><br>It was muffled, and it seemed to come from around the corner of the room I was in. It was saying something, but I couldn’t make out what it was. After a couple of minutes, the voice stopped.<br><br>I knew I had to check the cameras to make sure I knew what was happening in the rest of the museum. The panic alarm was soothing, and stifled my fear enough that I could check. <br><br>If I had actually gone out and looked myself, I might not be here today. <br><br>The cavemen were in the food court, roasting food they had taken from the display cases. They had started a fire in the center of one of the dining tables. The sharks were alive, but they weren’t killing each other anymore. Instead, they were killing the other ocean creatures we had displayed in the exhibit. <br><br>I checked the feed of the hallway where I had heard the voice. <br><br>As far as the camera showed, the hallway was empty.<br><br>I kept checking cameras, and at first, it seemed like everything had gone back to normal. The displays were acting like they were Displays, not living creatures. That was, until I checked the camera in the main hall. <br><br>I’ve blocked most of it out, but I’ll remember for the rest of my life the sight of the life sized T-Rex in the main hall tearing apart the fiberglass body of an equally life sized Tri-Corn. <br><br>I couldn’t watch anymore. I got out of the chair and walked out of the room. I knew I had to see this for myself. It was my responsibility after all.<br><br>When I walked out into the hallway, I felt a sudden rush of adrenaline. I had almost forgotten about the voice. <br><br>As I got closer to the main hall, I heard screeching, ripping, and tearing. There was a sound like nothing I had ever heard before. <br><br>I rounded the corner to see the T-Rex tearing into a Tri-Corn, just as it had been in the display. It was the same display I had seen earlier, in the same position as well. <br><br>Why were they still doing this? I thought the alarm had brought them back to their old lives. But after a few minutes, I started to get the feeling that the T-Rex wasn’t acting out the display. Tearing flesh from bone is not something they had ever put into the museum displays. <br><br>The T-Rex looked over at me and squinted. “This isn’t my hunt. This was your hunt.” <br><br>He tossed the Tri-Corn to the ground. <br><br>The Pterodactyls flew down from the walls and started to scavenge the corpse. <br><br>The T-Rex approached me. <br><br>“You poisoned our rivers, murdered our families, and wiped us out.” It didn’t scream at me, but the anger radiating from it made its words burn inside of me. “And then you put us on display, as if that was how our lives had always been.”<br><br>The T-Rex stopped in front of me. <br><br>“You should not have sounded the siren. Now, we’re back to that life.”<br><br>With that, the T-Rex grasped my shoulders in its scaly hands and lifted me off the ground. I looked back and forth at them. It was just about to tear my head off when I was blindingly covered in red light. <br><br>I was back in the security room, I don’t know how I got there. I was sitting in the chair, my head in my hands.<br><br>Not a minute later, I heard the voice outside the room. <br><br>“It should not have been your hunt.”