Voiceless

The kiss of death was still wet on his lips, and he raised his hand slowly to wipe it clean off, only to find that a firm mask had settled where his mouth once stood. It had been carefully brushed on, its edges almost seamless with the lines of his face, and its texture so close to flesh that only a close inspection, the slight change in texture, its lack of moisture where the rest of his face was running thick with sweat, the slight discoloration where his real skin had turned white, where the blood had stopped flowing, only the smallest changes, the slightest hints would reveal that the flesh that stretched thick between his chin and his nose actually hid a mouth, that the muffled noises coming from behind it were the flurry of a tongue and the rasp of vocal chords and not the gears of his head churning and cranking his eyes to move, his brain to form thoughts. But the thoughts that passed through it, that formed from the synapses and flashed across its surfaces, wound through the coding and the wiring between the line breaks and under the syntax and through the circuitry from contact to contact until somewhere, indistinct but definite, coming to light cohesively, the thoughts which made him, the thoughts which bound him, the thoughts that called him from the darkness of corporeality and into the realm of the ethereal...his thoughts were muddied and broken, terrified and incoherent, the frantic dribble of words that would have left in sharp cries were it not for the simple fact that where his mouth once was he had only skin, a false film that was quickly becoming much less false, much more flesh. He felt his veins, his dry and bloodless veins, branching empty like the roots of a withering tree, creeping out of his lips and into this new skin, tearing their way from his body and welcoming their new host as one of their own. His eyes darted as his hands clawed at the skin which was now sweating just as viciously as his brow. His jaw locked, a quick and sharp movement, and the joint building up and solidifying until it was no longer a joint, just a solid mass of bone that held his mouth in an eternal clamp, his imperfect teeth locked together as best they could. His tongue remained mobile behind them, trapped behind a cage of teeth, locked eternally (or at least as long as it continued to exist, which in this point after death could very well be an eternity) at what was now nothing more than the terminal end of the throat.
He glanced around at the cold, unforgiving stone that surrounded him. The walls were rough and ancient, hand-built it would seem, mortared together close and jagged. the room wasn’t cramped, but it wasn’t large. He was sitting on a bench, likely as old as the walls, a single slab of gray stone, unremarkable but flat and stable enough. His back was against the wall, and the far wall looked to be about 10 steps away. The room seemed to be roughly square, he didn’t have the motivation to do any precise measurements. The floor was a thick, dark dirt, and the ceiling hung a good 10 feet above it. All boundaries were sturdy, and all were definite. There were no doors in this cell, only featureless walls. No lights hung, yet the room remained illuminated. Not brightly illuminated, but illuminated nonetheless. This puzzled him, that a room could have light without a source. Of course, the whole matter of his being alive despite his death was confusing in and of itself, and the lack of his mouth was both confusing and troubling, but the scientific part of him knew that while those were already established events that couldn’t be traced or analyzed, there had to be some sort of sign of exactly what sort of light this was. He twisted his head around and saw his shadow on the wall. A light must have a source to cast a shadow. He sat and puzzled and the light grew in intensity, his shadow wavered. Hours passed, perhaps only minutes, perhaps days, but mental fatigue set in. The bench wasn’t much of a bed, but it was flat, so he lay down on it, only to find that even before closing his eyes the lights subsided. The moment he noticed this, a wisp of light passed through the air. In noticing it and marveling at it, another shot through, light and smoky but illuminating nonetheless. As his thoughts grew more constant and coherent the light grew, until again he was surrounded by a dull glow. His mind, his thoughts, gave light to his prison.
Just as he lay his head back again to rest, he heard a voice. Muffled, yes, merely the inflections of a voice, a sound which could have been unremarkable save for the absolute silence that had surrounded him, which was not discernibly any sort of language but which was undoubtedly a voice talking. He followed it through the room and found its location or, more accurately, the location of his closest proximity to it. The voice was quite obviously on the other side of whatever wall he was on. What was once muffled was, once located, increasingly clear.
“...not really what I had in mind. I was hoping for something a bit more...I mean, it’s very lovely, don’t get me wrong, I just don’t think he would like it is all and...well, it doesn’t really fit, you know? Not to be disrespectful to the...well, you know, but he wasn’t a saint and he wasn’t an optimist. I just think it would be ironic, you know, to attach something like that to him. And right now we’re all so shaken that...yes, I understand that they need it soon but I think that, given the circumstances...yes, I know that the circumstances aren’t necessarily special to them, but they are to us and I mean well...oh I don’t know it’s...it’s strange isn’t it? To think that something this sudden and, well, tragic, isn’t really so unremarkable? I just...listen, I’ll call you back, I need some time to stop and think...I...bye.”
The choked tears that followed were heartbreaking. How he would respond, had he only the chance...that his wife, in the face of such a tragedy, was worrying about such insignificant things as epitaphs. He would give every word of comfort, every consolation, tell her he didn’t care what was on his epitaph to matter how cliche it may be. Trapped in a cage only feet away from all he had left behind, unable to speak, only to listen.

The Blessing

It was a blessing, and it was lovely. The gift of heaven, as it was taken to be called, had appeared on the doorstep, unwanted, snuggled softly within a womb of pristine blankets. It wasn’t the answer to any prayers but its sweetness was undeniable and, besides, its new owners couldn’t easily leave it outside. They lifted the heavy crib that had been left for them and, struggling, lifting, pushing until they were red in the face and short of breath, brought it inside with the gift of heaven in it. They set it in the spare room they had hoped to rent out and retreated to the adjacent room to rest. Still sleeping, it spread its long arms out and retrieved the wallets from both of them, emptying the contents into its gullet before returning them to their rightful pockets. They noticed. How could they not? But there was nothing to be done; the blessing had to be fed.
Its arms reached out again, its face still serene, and spun forward the hands on the clock. The day was over with nothing done, their pockets emptied to its healthy appetite, exhausted by the circles it spun them in. They retreated to bed and closed their eyes, but it lifted itself, crawled through the ears into their heads, and stole the sleep from their minds. It would push them to the ground every few hours, and only by standing over its peaceful crib and pleading, begging with the gift of heaven could they return. It watched them through the bars, looking from within the outside into their own prison.
They woke in the morning and the routine continued. The blessing demanded more, and they were obliged to comply. Its arms reached again for the clock and turned it, tentacles sprouting from its perfect smooth back and wrapping around their lives, pinching off the phone lines and holding the doors shut. Every evening they would bring offerings of money to its whitewashed shrine, and it would tilt back its soft head as they dropped their meager coins down its throat, shredding the bills with its razor teeth. The room was adorned with animals, the exotic pets of a noble god-king, as it sat within its heavy throne.
It grew, and so did its demands. The nightly offerings strained the budget of the two, and what little they could keep for food needed to be safely hidden. After every offering its tentacles would search their pockets for any change withheld, intentionally or otherwise. They grew in number and reached throughout the house, holding everything in its intricate web. The time was still its own, and it fed on their sleep with no satisfaction.
One evening its tentacles lashed out tenfold and wrapped around the necks of its caretakers, traveled down their waning throats and scraped their stomachs clean of food. They didn’t sleep that night, but they didn’t awaken that morning. The blessing had taken everything and lay at wait within its shrine. Time passed but no money came to feed its hunger. It waited, but soon lost all patience. The gift of heaven returned to heaven, its tentacles reaching up and hoisting itself through the sky. The shell it left behind was the body of a sweet baby, devoid of tentacles and razor teeth, eyes closed but not asleep, not awake either.