Day 2,127

Nobody knows exactly what they used to preserve him but he's as lifelike as the day he died two hundred years ago. He was only seven when he fell out of his favourite climbing tree and broke his neck, dying instantly - small mercies, as they say. This did nothing to comfort his parents.

Grief does strange things to the mind, it can so easily turn into obsessions over the most miniscule aspects of the deceased and in the child's case it became the notion that he should never rot. To have him decompose meant accepting his death and they were not prepared to do this.

For the rest of their lives he sat in a cradle inside a glass case, overshadowing his living siblings all their lives and now almost six generations later he's still just as perfect as his final day. Cheeks almost rosy, hair in neat curls and hands delicately folded over his cherished stuffed dog.

The only thing that spoils the otherwise staged sleep is that his skin is so pale you can still see his eyes through the lids. Those deep brown eyes, almost black until the midday sun hits and they become strikingly golden toned, following you around the room dedicated to his brief life and famous afterlife.

For some reason his parents never fully closed his eyes either, wanted him to be able to look out still. A sweet thought but less sweet when you're close enough to notice that the whites of his eyes still glisten and haven't decomposed at all. As if he's just blinked and you missed it.

To make matters worse, the security cameras installed by a late descendant managed to capture him moving. Not the movements you'd expect from a decaying corpse, not a trick of the light either. His hands flexed and adjusted their position about the neck of the stuffed dog, his nose crinkled like he was about to sneeze and then he was still again.