Beth opened her eyes.  It took a few seconds for her sight to adjust to the darkness surrounding her.  She looked around and the bottom of her stomach fell away.  Why was she still at work?  Surely the night guard would have noticed her as he locked up but apparently not.  

‘Here for the night then,’ she thought aloud.  There was nothing she could do now except wait.  And wait.  

There were no lights on except the emergency exit with its eerie green light creeping through the blackness.  It was illuminating the faces of the wax models, lighting up their fake smiles and vacant eyes.  They looked like dead bodies propped up on sticks in this green glow.  Beth found it hard to look at them.

She took a few steps and jumped at the loud rustle of her dress that cut through the silence like a knife.  She had forgotten she was in her work clothes.  
‘Stupid effing dress,’ she growled through gritted teeth.  Lifting her skirt she took a few more tentative steps into the opaque corridor facing her.

The canteen was nearby.  If she got to the canteen she would be able to get out quickly as it was the first place the cleaner went when he started work

The darkness seemed suffocating here and she was unable to see anything more than two feet in front of her.  Beth never usually admitted to being scared of things but this was rather unnerving.  After a few more steps another fire exit sign loomed out of the darkness throwing its green light onto more wax models which stared blankly in front of them making her shiver.  She had entered the hall of fame now.  The usually spangling lights had been turned off leaving just the glowing emergency strips on the floor.  Using these to find the doorway out she walked on, listening carefully for any noise.  All she could hear though was her footsteps echoing through the corridors.  

But was she sure they were hers?

She stopped and listened.  There was the distant humming of the generator fizzing through the silence but nothing else.  She walked on making as much noise as she could so as to drown out any other noises that might creep through the corridors.

Suddenly the emergency strip ended.  Feeling around Beth found that they had gone underneath a door.  ‘This should be the canteen’, she thought.  Pushing it gently she walked over the threshold and into the next room.  

This room was lighter than any of the other corridors in the building due the huge floor length windows that spanned one wall.  The light was spilling in from a full moon floating in a sea of twilight surrounded by pinpricks of light.

There was a large clock on the wall which told Beth that it was 2 o’clock in the morning.  Had she really been asleep that long?  She remembered being told that the cleaners come in at 5 o’clock so she had 3 hours to use up before they came in.  

Not feeling very tired she went over to the kitchen area and found some mugs.  None of the coffee machines would work now.  They all needed a key or swipe card to start up.  She would have to make do with water.

In an attempt to entertain herself Beth found some plastic cups and began stacking them into pyramids.

Suddenly she heard footsteps and jumped knocking the cups to the floor.  It couldn’t be the cleaner.  It was too early.  They were getting closer.  She froze.

*

Paolo couldn’t believe it.  At least he was getting paid extra for this.  Coming into work two hours early at three in the morning was an outrage.  Fridays were his least favourite day of the week.  He trudged down the long corridors of the museum muttering to himself.  He reached the canteen and took out his keys but found the door already ajar.

“Ruddy Vandals.” He walked across to some plastic cups strewn across the floor.  So far he had ignored the most obvious sign of vandals.  After having picked up all the cups he found he was unable to ignore it any longer.

“Same statue every time,” he muttered, loading the wax model of Queen Elizabeth the First onto his trolley.