Summary

“Last Breath” tells the story of a retired doctor named Alinger who runs a museum that he calls the museum of silence. He is visited one day by a family of three—a married couple with a young son. Alinger tells them that the museum is full of jars of people’s last breaths. Though the father and son are immediately interested, the mother is skeptical, and laughs at Alinger as he explains that he captures the breaths on people’s deathbeds with something called an aspirator.

When the skeptical mother asks about a particular jar, Alinger explains that it belonged to a former Miss Florida whose name was Carrie Mayfield. Carrie died in an awful car accident on the way to her career-making modeling performance and was partly burned. Alinger warns the mother not to listen to Carrie...