99 Tiny Terrors by Seanan McGuire

Author:Seanan McGuire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pulse Publishing

Radar DeBoard is an analyst, an author, and a collector of b-movie schlock. He believes the best thing in life is the first bite into a particularly greasy burrito while being completely wasted. He lives in Kansas, USA with his lovely girlfriend. Visit him online: https://www.facebook.com/WriterRadarDeBoard/ or @Radarsteal1 on twitter.

52

Succession

Jenny M. Liu

There is asbestos in these walls, I’m sure, being shaken down by the clomping footsteps above. Thespians always walk rather than walk, and that cadence, heeltoeheeltoe, never changes. I don’t know where they think they’re going.

“Look up for me,” I murmur.

Bloodshot whites roll, sending pretty green irises half-hidden. I breathe in the sickly floral scent of setting powder, greasepaint, and anchor my pinky finger upon Nora’s warm, pudgy cheek. I drag an eyeliner pencil named ‘perversion’ along her bottom lash-line.

Back and forth. Back and forth along the pliant skin until it is buried beneath a black drawn thick and bold. Nora’s eyes flutter and twitch against the friction. In the corners I see the membrane, the conjunctiva, scrunch and release in jittery little waves. It would be so easy to pinch one at the crest with a pair of tweezers, pierce right through, and start peeling off the sclera like the skin off a grape.

But that isn’t my job today, and I feel someone watching me, peeking into the room from some darkened crevice. I take away the pencil, and her eyes turn forward in an instant, going still in their sockets. She projects her voice when she speaks, but these walls are too close for the sound to diffuse, and so she is simply loud.

It makes it easy to detect that touch of worry in, “Will it be exact?”

My own voice is soft and whispery, meek and reassuring. “It will,” I say, “and you will.” I’m sure it helps with the nerves until it doesn’t.

I open and reach into a deep steel drawer, fingers knocking against a yielding and softly oiled surface within. The discordant, dissatisfied sounds of the orchestra warming up above begins to reach our ears, and Nora lets out a quiet, impatient whine. She doesn’t like going on stage when she’s cold, and I can only sympathize.

With my hand gripped around a Styrofoam neck, I pull out a wig head draped in swaying, pulsing skin. It has been cut and shaped much like a nourishing sheet mask, ready to be smoothed upon a face. The underside is red and wet with patches of yellow fat. It looks fresh and smells of formaldehyde. To my nose, there is something sweet about it.

“She’s beautiful,” Nora says and reaches out with a finger to touch, but I seize her wrist quick.

“Don’t,” I say, suddenly stark with fear. The weight of the gaze on my back gets heavier. “It’s an antique.”

The skin is nearly five hundred years old, taken off the head of Mary Corey at her request when she lost her ability to speak and could no longer perform. It has been passed down in this theatre, actress to actress to actress, for the last three hundred years.

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