The Museum Guard by Christina Hoag

Lila liked being a security guard at the museum. Roving the galleries in the silent isolation of the wee hours, having Rembrandt and Van Gogh, Renoir and Picasso all to herself, keeping them safe. The characters in the paintings had become friends of sorts, their stares sightless yet soulful. It was too bad that her days working here were numbered.

She shrugged off her coat, heavy with the tools and pieces she’d need for the job zipped into the lining. She hung it up in her locker and entered the security room, coffee cup in hand. 

Mac was draping his cardigan on the back of his chair in front of the bank of CCTV screens. A slideshow of empty galleries and corridors flashed by in grainy greys. 

“Hey, Mac,” she said. “I got you a mocha latte.”

“Aw, Lila. You’re sweet but you don’t have to keep doing that.”

“I got a whole bunch of gift cards from people after my son died. Have to use ‘em up somehow.”

Mac, three years from retirement, was happy to let Lila do the walk-arounds as he sat at the desk, reading a fantasy novel between glances at the screens. That suited Lila. She’d been able to case the place with ease, determine the security cameras’ blind spots, time her operation with exactitude.

Her heart slammed suddenly. She slumped into a chair, short of breath.

“You all right?” Mac said. 

She waved her hand. “Low blood sugar. I haven’t eaten much.”

“That’s no good. How come?”

She hesitated, trying to swallow the words but they burst out of her. “My son overdosed six months ago today.”

“Aw, jeez. I’m sorry. He was an artist, you said.”

“Yeah, a struggling artist.” 

How he’d struggled. Adrian was singled out at art college as having exceptional promise, landed representation at a gallery soon after, but an establishment critic panned his first solo exhibition. He failed to sell, and the gallery dropped him. He couldn’t gain traction again. Galleries kept saying he was too dark, too demonic. His paintings became bigger and wilder, more ominous, with each rejection. He painted on walls and got evicted. He painted on buildings and got arrested.

Then she got the call every parent dreads. Accidental or intentional? She’d never know.

Mac sipped the coffee and grimaced. “Needs sugar,” he said. “I’ll get some from the breakroom.”

Crap, she thought. She should’ve gone heavier with the sugar. “Sorry. I must’ve forgotten. It’s been a weird day.” She heaved herself to her feet. “I’ll start on the first round. Walking will get my mind off things.”

Nerves jangling, Lila had to force herself to slow to her usual stroll. After the first floor, she doubled back to the security room. Mac was already snoring, head cricked at an unnatural angle, jaw drooping. The antihistamine capsules she’d emptied in his coffee had worked like a dream. She allowed herself a faint smile. 

She moved quickly to her locker and pulled on her coat. Took the stairs to the second floor and stopped on a stairwell out of camera view. She removed the roll of canvas from the coat lining, the wooden stretcher pieces, the stapler. She snapped together the stretcher and stapled the canvas onto it, as she’d practiced. Then she assembled the sides of the ornate gilt frame into a rectangle and fit the canvas inside it, bending small nails she’d hammered into each flank to hold it. After donning a Salvador Dali mask, turning her coat inside out and flipping up her hood, she tucked the artwork under her coat and entered the gallery. 

The open spot on the wall lay between a Kandinsky and a Klimt was occupied by a humidity gauge. She hammered in a nail and hung Adrian’s canvas over the device. Then she took out the label card she’d stolen, now filled in with the authoritative description she’d written after studying the pretentious writing style of museums. She had it printed so the font matched. She peeled off the backing and pressed it onto the wall beside the vibrant abstract.

Lila stood back and took a deep breath. She’d be caught, arrested on some charge or other, but she didn’t care. She felt Adrian’s smile. That was all that mattered.

​© 2025 Christina Hoag

​About the author:

Christina Hoag's short crime fiction has appeared in Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Mystery Tribune, Shotgun Honey, and is forthcoming in anthologies from Crimeucopia and Black Beacon. A former journalist and foreign correspondent, she lives in Los Angeles where she has taught creative writing in a maximum-security prison. https:/christinahoag.com.