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.