Thanatomorphose.2012.dvdrip.x264-redblade

She reached out with her remaining arm. The clay. The untouched block of Italian marl waiting on the wheel.

He called the police. They called it a biohazard.

The Soft Escape

On it, a figure. A woman. Half-formed, mid-emergence, one hand reaching out of the muck as if to pull the rest of herself into the light.

The landlord knocked on day six. She didn’t answer. He would have seen her through the mail slot: a seated figure, torso still mostly intact, face a half-melted cameo, one eye still blinking—still thinking —as the lower jaw detached with a soft pop and slid down her chest like a tear. Thanatomorphose.2012.DVDRip.x264-RedBlade

She was a sculptor. She knew flesh. Or rather, she knew how to make stone and plaster pretend to be flesh. For fifteen years, she had chiseled cold breasts, sanded smooth marble buttocks, and lacquered the rigid perfection of women who would never sag, never weep, never rot. Her gallery called it “Neo-Classical Eternity.” Her critics called it “fear of the womb.” She called it Tuesday.

Now her own body was breaking its contract. She reached out with her remaining arm

She pressed her liquefying palm into the clay. The clay received her. No, it welcomed her. They traded textures. The last thing she saw, before her optic nerve dissolved into a pretty amber swirl, was the wheel spinning.

Not a body. Not a sculpture.

The landlord broke the door down on day ten. He found a fine, dark loam spread across the floor, a faintly sweet smell, and in the center, the clay wheel still spinning.