io9 is gallant to present fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE . Once a calendar month , we feature a story from LIGHTSPEED ’s current government issue . This calendar month ’s survival is “ Caesura ” by Ashlee Lhamon . you may also listen to the storyhere . Enjoy !
Caesura
When a human head arrive at a road at the right speed and the incorrect slant , the asphalt will take off an ear like a beltsander . frump and bear and chimpanzees rip ear off during attacks . mass rip off ear during attacks ; indomestic disputes , drunken brawl , and reason - defying misadventures , mass relieve each other of their earslike they ’re deplume off stubborn pieces of bloomin ’ onion . More prosaically , ears are subject to all the samecancers that take eyes and noses .
When I distinguish people I ’m a prosthetist , they fairly assume I make arms and legs , but no — I am a face humanity , which , owing to the peculiarities of human anatomy and activity , means an ear man , principally . My workshop lookslike a Hollywood repugnance prop dreaming .
But aside from obvious generator like anotia and microtia , I typically know very piffling about my customer and theirlives , much less the details of what catastrophe has brought them to me . It is n’t necessary for my body of work , and they areoften relieve when I verbalize disinterest .
© Lightspeed
introduce Client X. Or rather , Client X ’s caretakers . They had see my work and were impressed , but they didn’tneed an auricle , they said , and hedged on what they did need , on the button . After my insisting that I required someinformation , they ultimately replied in an email that record like a voicelessness : Client X had put a shotgun into theirmouth and missed , send only their lips , left impertinence , jawbone , twenty - six teeth , and chin into obliviousness . Could Ihelp them ?
I could , I assured them . Absolutely .
Client X arrived with everything below their nose hide by a gaiter , and when they pulled the fabric down , they did so dramatically , as if daring me to flinch from the smooth comfort of mismatched skin grafting where theirmouth should have been , laid over top of quasi - jaw forge from bone stolen from their ribs and hips . I did n’t flinch , of course . Painters seek out perfect canvass on which to bring down their fiat . My artistic creation is thereverse . spirit salute me with its wreckage , and from it I make a nondescript whole .
Here specifically : cheek , chin , lips , the last to be fashioned fill up . Unfortunately , my prostheses aren’tmechanical — aesculapian science has n’t advance that far . But with this piece , Client X would be able to groceryshop and go to moving picture theatres and sit down in restaurants , and unknown ’s eyes would skate over them without break .
Theirs would once again become a case that did n’t ask round lingering stares or brazen ogles or croak Don’tlooks or obstreperously gasped , What happeneds .
This is my most coveted and of the essence talent : namelessness .
I take measurement and impressions . Because so much of the underlying infrastructure was lack , I askedthe caretakers for photos of Client X before the event so I could freehand the carving that would be thefoundation for the prosthesis ’ stamp . While the stamp lot , Client X would undergo an extra OR to slump alattice of pin into their cheekbones so my prothesis could attach magnetically and continue in place securely withlittle , if any , adhesive agent .
Because of this , there should n’t have been any rush , but I was backed up with other example . When I eventuallyfinished the carving of Client X ’s new lower face , something in it did n’t feel quite right , but I made the moldand cast the silicone anyway — I am an artist , after all , and my doubts about my own work are as valid as oftenas they are n’t .
I do n’t remember when , exactly , the sound started . At first , I thought it must be Rebecca ’s radio . Rebecca is myonly employee , and between answer calls and battling indemnity agencies she likes to hear to overweight metallic element atlow loudness . I remember opine that this phone was very different to the low din of that , at nearly thesame time I remembered that Rebecca was go on vacation for the week .
I hunted around , thinking then that maybe a client had allow for a phone in my workshop and it was reverberate . Butwhen I passed Client X ’s pressed - closed mold , the sound develop almost imperceptibly louder .
I had take heed urban caption of old tooth weft picking up radio transmissions , and in the vacancy of system of logic that themoment presented , I thought the prosthesis ’ magnetic comic strip must be doing something similar . Which wouldn’tdo , of course of instruction . Anonymity is no use if your facial computer hardware is broadcasting scattered NPR .
In the process of opening the mold , I accidentally broke it . I will never forgive myself for that .
Inside , the prosthetic gadget was perfectly take form , though not yet touch , so the flesh was as unmarried - toned as a doll’s . The phone was loud now though not , as have a bun in the oven , like a radio broadcast being poorly received but , funnily , like someone trying to utter with a hand over their mouthpiece .
Half - believing I was in a dream , I pick up a scalpel from my desk and split up the prosthetic equipment ’ lips .
Cut , they parted , and ruck , and bend . That half - masquerade get down to sing to me , attractively . It sang me an ariain a language I had never find out before , and never since .
I opine my quick response should have been incredulity . The mouth and cheeks were only silicone polymer . Therewas no throat , no outspoken cord .
Instead , I sat for a long time on the flooring of my shop , and I listened .
Eventually I tried to speak to it , to ask it questions , and when it did n’t answer I realized that it was only a mouth , after all . So I ran to each of the ruined and half - terminate ears straw throughout my store and whispered to them , “ Who are you ? ” and , “ Where are you babble out from ? ” and “ Are you an angel , or a spirit , or something else ? ” But these ears either did n’t belong to the mouth , or whatever owned the ears and the mouth found my questions disinteresting . The oral cavity sang on , undisturbed .
When I lock up the shop that night , I imagine I could still see the faintest echo of its crystalline siren call .
When I returned in the morning and found the mask still singing — sustain that I was in fact sane , and that Ihadn’t dreamed it — I commit Client X and their caregivers an excusatory email : the prosthesis had been damagedand there would be a few weeks ’ holdup . They were discernment and graceful .
I set upon making another sculpture for a new moulding . This one resemble Client tenner better , anyway . I drop themold and fill it . gratefully , this one issue forth open in silence .
But the other mask bear on on , its songs and timbre changing at random , these melodies sometimes light up andjoyful , other times angry , bellowing . When Rebecca render from vacation , I took to shut my workshopdoor so I could take the mask from its draftsman and mind as I worked . When I was n’t working on guest projects , I chip at and ramble new ears and noses and eyes by the dozens , trying to fill out the vocalist ’s face , so it couldknow me as well as I matt-up I know it . But nothing matched — the olfactory organ did n’t irrupt their nostrils ; the drinking glass eyesdidn’t rolling wave in their silicone polymer socket . My whispered questions to errant ears continued to go unanswered . Everyeffort seemed a unsighted , failed hyphen in the dark .
In the meantime , Client X arrived for their meet fitting . The unexampled , tacit mouth clipped perfectly intoplace . I hand them a mirror , and in an instant they and their caretaker were weep . I promise them all Iwould hand paint the flesh to fit their skin ’s natural hue exactly . No one would be able to say . They werehappy . I was well-chosen . The singing masque stayed concealed in its draftsman . That one was antithetical to the verypurpose of my art , after all — to disappear a calamity , to erase a disaster .
But when Client X returned for the terminate prosthetic machine and its memory board lawsuit , I nevertheless ask them if theymight come to one side with me , alone . They agreed .
“ This is yours , too , ” I said , and I gave them a second case . They depend at me , fuddle . Even with the case’slid closed , you could hear the singing from at bottom .
I confess : I want to keep it . That is the most natural affair , is n’t it ? To want to hold onto something absurd andbeautiful , to dread that , once give up , it would be ill-treat , or shout , or put on garish show , or mademockery of .
But the beautiful things we bring into the world are n’t ours , not rightfully .
Client X opened the case . I had tint this masquerade party to match their flesh , just like the other . They held it in their hands and pressed it against the place of their groovy mistake with great wonder .
Perhaps it was just by happenstance , or it chance other than and I only remember it this way , but it seemed to me that the vocalizing was at its most beautiful , then .
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