Lightspeed Quick Story: “Caesura” by Ashlee Lhamon

io9 is proud to current fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE. As soon as a month, we characteristic a narrative from LIGHTSPEED’s present challenge. This month’s choice is “Caesura” by Ashlee Lhamon. You too can hearken to the story here. Take pleasure in!

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Caesura

by Ashlee Lhamon

When a human head hits a highway on the proper pace and the improper angle, the asphalt will take off an ear like a belt
sander. Canines and bears and chimpanzees rip ears off throughout assaults. Folks rip off ears throughout assaults; in
home disputes, drunken brawls, and reason-defying misadventures, folks relieve one another of their ears
like they’re tearing off cussed items of bloomin’ onion. Extra prosaically, ears are topic to all the identical
cancers that take eyes and noses.

After I inform folks I’m a prosthetist, they pretty assume I make legs and arms, however no—I’m a face man, which,
owing to the peculiarities of human anatomy and exercise, means an ear man, principally. My workshop seems
like a Hollywood horror prop dream.

However apart from apparent sources like anotia and microtia, I usually know little or no about my shoppers and their
lives, a lot much less the small print of what tragedy has introduced them to me. It isn’t vital for my work, and they’re
typically relieved after I categorical disinterest.

Enter Shopper X. Or fairly, Shopper X’s caretakers. They’d seen my work and had been impressed, however they didn’t
want an ear, they stated, and hedged on what they did want, precisely. After my insistence that I required some
info, they lastly replied in an electronic mail that learn like a whisper: Shopper X had put a shotgun into their
mouth and missed, sending solely their lips, left cheek, jawbone, twenty-six tooth, and chin into oblivion. Might I
assist them?

I may, I assured them. Completely.

****

Shopper X arrived with every thing under their nostril hidden by a gaiter, and once they pulled the material down,
they did so dramatically, as if daring me to flinch from the graceful quilt of mismatched pores and skin grafts the place their
mouth ought to have been, laid over prime of quasi-jaw cast from bone stolen from their ribs and hips.
I didn’t flinch, in fact. Painters hunt down excellent canvases on which to impose their order. My artwork is the
reverse. Life presents me with its wreckage, and from it I create a nondescript entire.

Right here particularly: cheeks, chin, lips, the final to be customary closed. Sadly, my prostheses aren’t
mechanical—medical science hasn’t superior that far. However with this piece, Shopper X would have the ability to grocery
store and go to film theatres and sit in eating places, and stranger’s eyes would skate over them with out pausing.

Theirs would as soon as once more grow to be a face that didn’t invite lingering stares or brazen ogles or muttered Don’t
seems or loudly gasped, What happeneds.

That is my most coveted and important reward: anonymity.

****

I took measurements and impressions. As a result of a lot of the underlying infrastructure was lacking, I requested
the caretakers for images of Shopper X earlier than the occasion so I may freehand the sculpture that might be the
basis for the prosthesis’ mould. Whereas the mould set, Shopper X would endure an extra surgical procedure to sink a
lattice of pins into their cheekbones so my prothesis may connect magnetically and keep in place securely with
little, if any, adhesive.

Due to this, there shouldn’t have been any rush, however I used to be backed up with different instances. After I ultimately
completed the sculpture of Shopper X’s new decrease face, one thing in it didn’t really feel fairly proper, however I made the mould
and forged the silicone anyway—I’m an artist, in spite of everything, and my doubts about my very own work are as legitimate as typically
as they aren’t.

I don’t keep in mind when, precisely, the sound began. At first, I believed it should be Rebecca’s radio. Rebecca is my
solely worker, and between answering calls and battling insurance coverage companies she likes to hearken to heavy steel at
low quantity. I keep in mind considering that this sound was very totally different to the low cacophony of that, at almost the
identical time I remembered that Rebecca was gone on trip for the week.

I hunted round, considering then that possibly a shopper had left a cellphone in my workshop and it was ringing. However
after I handed Shopper X’s pressed-closed mould, the sound grew virtually imperceptibly louder.

I had heard city legends of previous tooth fillings choosing up radio transmissions, and within the void of logic that the
second introduced, I believed the prosthesis’ magnetic strips should be doing one thing comparable. Which wouldn’t
do, in fact. Anonymity isn’t any use in case your facial {hardware} is broadcasting garbled NPR.

Within the strategy of opening the mould, I unintentionally broke it. I’ll by no means forgive myself for that.

Inside, the prosthesis was completely fashioned, although not but tinted, so the flesh was as single-toned as a doll’s.
The sound was louder now although not, as anticipated, like a radio broadcast being poorly obtained however, surprisingly,
like somebody making an attempt to talk with a hand over their mouth.

Half-believing I used to be in a dream, I picked up a scalpel from my desk and separated the prosthesis’ lips.

Reduce, they parted, and puckered, and bowed. That half-mask started to sing to me, fantastically. It sang me an aria
in a language I had by no means heard earlier than, and by no means since.

****

I suppose my rapid response ought to have been disbelief. The mouth and cheeks had been solely silicone. There
was no throat, no vocal cords.

As an alternative, I sat for a very long time on the ground of my workshop, and I listened.

Finally I attempted to talk to it, to ask it questions, and when it didn’t reply I spotted that it was solely a mouth, in spite of everything. So I ran to every of the completed and half-finished ears strewn all through my store and whispered to them, “Who’re you?” and, “The place are you singing from?” and “Are you an angel, or a spirit, or one thing else?” However these ears both didn’t belong to the mouth, or no matter owned the ears and the mouth discovered my questions disinteresting. The mouth sang on, undisturbed.

After I locked up the workshop that evening, I imagined I may nonetheless hear the faintest echo of its crystalline siren name.

After I returned within the morning and located the masks nonetheless singing—confirming that I used to be in reality sane, and that I
hadn’t dreamed it—I despatched Shopper X and their caregivers an apologetic electronic mail: the prosthesis had been broken
and there can be a number of weeks’ delay. They had been understanding and swish.

I set upon making one other sculpture for a brand new mould. This one resembled Shopper X higher, anyway. I forged the
mould and crammed it. Fortunately, this one got here open in silence.

However the different masks continued on, its songs and timbre altering at random, these melodies typically gentle and
joyful, different instances offended, bellowing. When Rebecca returned from trip, I took to shutting my workshop
door so I may take the masks from its drawer and hear as I labored. After I wasn’t engaged on shopper initiatives,
I carved and forged new ears and noses and eyes by the handfuls, making an attempt to finish the singer’s face, so it may
know me in addition to I felt I knew it. However nothing matched—the noses didn’t flare their nostrils; the glass eyes
didn’t roll of their silicone sockets. My whispered inquiries to errant ears continued to go unanswered. Each
effort appeared a blind, failed sprint at the hours of darkness.

****

Within the meantime, Shopper X arrived for his or her becoming appointment. The brand new, silent mouth clipped completely into
place. I handed them a mirror, and immediately they and their caretakers had been weeping. I assured all of them I
would hand paint the flesh to match their pores and skin’s pure hue precisely. Nobody would have the ability to inform. They had been
glad. I used to be glad. The singing masks stayed hid in its drawer. That one was antithetical to the very
function of my artwork, in spite of everything—to vanish a catastrophe, to erase a tragedy.

However when Shopper X returned for the completed prosthesis and its storage case, I nonetheless requested them in the event that they
may come to 1 facet with me, alone. They agreed.

“That is yours, too,” I stated, and I gave them a second case. They checked out me, confused. Even with the case’s
lid closed, you possibly can hear the singing from inside.

I confess: I needed to maintain it. That’s the most pure factor, isn’t it? To need to maintain onto one thing absurd and
stunning, to worry that, as soon as surrendered, it will be mistreated, or abused, or placed on tawdry show, or made
mockery of.

However the stunning issues we deliver into the world aren’t ours, not really.

Shopper X opened the case. I had tinted this masks to match their flesh, similar to the opposite. They held it of their palms and pressed it towards the place of their biggest mistake with nice surprise.

Maybe it was simply by coincidence, or it occurred in a different way and I solely keep in mind it this manner, nevertheless it appeared to me that the singing was at its most stunning, then.

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In regards to the Writer
Ashlee Lhamon lives within the Bay Space with a powerful lunchbox assortment, a tuxedo cat named Gumshoe,
and a model new tiny human. Her different work seems in Nightmare, Starvation Mountain, MetaStellar,
Salamander Journal, Radon Journal, and extra. Discover her at ashleelhamon.com.

Please go to LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE to learn extra nice science fiction and fantasy. This story first
appeared within the October 2024 challenge, which additionally options work by Patrick Hurley, Ai Jiang, Kenneth Schneyer,
P.A. Cornell, Russell Nichols, Philip Gelatt, JT Petty, Lyndsie Manusos, and extra. You possibly can watch for this
month’s contents to be serialized on-line, or you should purchase the entire challenge proper now in handy e-book format
for simply $3.99, or subscribe to the e-book version here.

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