Cages & Those Who Hold the Keys

by Gary A Braunbeck

  —she covered it with her hands, hands that seemed to be folded in prayer, or were clamping down to rip this thing off her face so she could stand here and watch her old one grow back, and for a moment the image struck her as funny but she didn't laugh—

  —she whirled around and went out into the hall and yanked open the door of the linen closet, looking up at the jar—

  —her old eyes had company.

  Slamming the door, her heart triphammering against her ribs, she ran downstairs and grabbed her purse and dumped its contents onto the kitchen table, frantically sifting through the debris until she found her small phone number/address book, then quickly looked up Sandy's home phone number, grabbed the receiver off the wall, and dialed the number.

  A voice—not Sandy's—answered on the third ring.

  "H-HELLO?" Whoever it was sounded nervous and panicked, damn near hysterical.

  "Is...May I speak with Sandy, please?"

  Amanda heard two other voices in the background, one of them Sandy's, the other an older man's, probably Sandy's father because she still lived with her parents, didn't she, she was only twenty and why in God's name was she wailing like that?

  "There's b-b-been an accident," said Sandy's mother, her voice breaking. "Please call back tomorrow."

  Click.

  Amanda pulled the receiver away from her ear, stared at it for a moment, then slowly started to hang up—

  —and saw her hands.

  Slender, with long, loving fingers; artist's fingers.

  She remembered the woman who'd been sitting on a bench in the small park behind the Altman museum downtown a few days ago, sketching that incredible sculpture of those grieving women that was attracting so much attention lately. Several people had gathered to watch what this artist was doing. She'd been in her early thirties, with strawberry-blonde hair, lovely in a hardened, earthy way. Amanda had stood unnoticed among the admirers—mostly men—staring at first the woman s face, then her thick but not unattractive neck, and, finally, her hands.

  Her strong yet supple, smooth hands....

  Amanda fell against the kitchen table shuddering, the contents of her stomach churning, and tried very, very hard not to imagine what was—or rather, wasn't—dangling from the ends of that woman's arms right this second.

  Back in the bathroom, she looked at her face again.

  The lips this time, full and moist and red and alluring as hell.

  Jesus Christ, whose lips are they?

  Numbed, she checked the jar.

  Getting pretty crowded in there.

  She filled a portable cooler with ice and water and rubbing alcohol, pried the hands out of the jar and tossed them into the cooler; they hit the ice with a sickening, dead plop! and lay there like desiccated starfish.

  She slammed closed the lid, then vomited.

  Over the next two hours, it only got worse.

  Her legs were next, model's legs, long and slender and shiny, with extraordinarily subtle muscle tone. Amanda wondered who she'd seen them on, and where, and what the woman must look like now.

  Wondered, then wept.

  As she did with everything else:

  Breasts, full and firm, even perky, with tan aureoles so precisely rounded they seemed painted on, nipples so pink and pointy, and nowhere were there any blue veins visible on their surface, only a few clusters of strategically placed freckles that fanned outward from the center of her chest, creating teasing shadows of cleavage; then her hips were next, not the too-wide, too-sharp hips she'd been born with, not the hips that made it almost impossible for her to find blue jeans that fit comfortably, but hard, rounded hips, not wide at all but not too small, either, lovely hips, girlish hips, God-you-don't-look-your-age hips and a now-size-8 waist—

  —the cooler filled up quickly and she had to go to the bathtub, adding water, ice, and alcohol to keep everything moist and sanitary—

  —next was the stomach, not the slightly sagging thing she'd been carrying around for the last ten years but a deliciously flattened tummy, its taut, aerobicized, Twenty—Minute-Workout muscles forming a dramatically titillating diamond that actually undulated when she moved, a bikini stomach if ever there was one, abs of steel; then came her jaw, elegant and chiseled, the jaw of a princess, Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday; her neck became slightly longer, thinner, sculpted, losing the threat of a double chin that had been hovering for the last couple of years, the muscles flowing down toward the sharp, perfect “V” in the center of her collarbone, something she'd always thought was unbearably sexy—

  —the bathtub was quickly filling but that was all right, there couldn't be too much left at this point—

  —then, after a while, her bone structure began to change: ribs not so thick, shoulders not so wide or bony, knees not so awkward and knobby—

  —the rest of her body began altering itself with each new addition, her features and limbs molding themselves to each other like sculptor's clay, an organic symbiosis, her forced evolution, heading toward physical perfection until, at last, her skin itself blossomed unwrinkled and creamy, sealing around everything like a sheet of cellophane.

  Amanda was sitting on her bed when she felt the last of it take place, then rose very slowly—the pain of each change had grown more and more intense, the last few minutes becoming almost unbearable—and looked at herself in the full-length mirror hanging on the inside of her closet door, not sure whether to smile or simply die.

  She had become both her own Galatea and Pygmalion.

  No other woman she'd ever met or seen could compare with what stared back at her from the mirror.

  She was completed, breathtaking, beautiful.

  More than beautiful; she was Beauty.

  And Beauty always has her way.

  She told herself not to think about it, then went into the bathroom and pulled a bottle of prescription painkillers from the medicine chest, downing two of them before turning to face everything.

  The remnants of Old Amanda.

  There was arranging to be done.

  By the time she finished there were four full Mason jars, as well as a full bathtub, sink, cooler, and toilet tank. The bones went into the laundry hamper along with several wet towels, and the skin, well-soaked, was draped over the shower curtain rod. She nodded, thinking to herself that it all looked very tidy, indeed.

  She suspected that her mind would crumble soon—how could it not, after all this?—but hopefully the painkillers would kick in and she'd be nicely loopy before it got too bad.

  She looked once more at her reflection in the mirror and thought, Why not enjoy it while you can?

  Then it hit her: How in hell was she going to explain this at work on Monday?

  Like my new clothes? I think they make me look like a new person, don't you?

  She rubbed her temples, realizing that she had chosen to keep her own hair.

  She liked that very much; liked it right down to the ground.

  The pleasant, seductive numbness of the painkillers began to pour over her body, and she decided to go lie down for a little while.

  She was just putting her head onto the pillow when she noticed that all six matryoshkas were displayed across the top of her dresser. She tried to remember when she'd taken them apart and arranged them this way.

  She stared at them, noting after a few seconds that their shapes were now oddly uniform, all like gourds growing progressively smaller, right down to the baby who was no longer a baby but Amanda as she'd been at four years old; the next showed her as she'd been this morning; the next, as she'd been a few hours ago; the others, so silent and still, illustrated the rest of the stages of her transformation, the last and largest of them a sublime reflection of the woman who now lay across the room staring at it.

  She felt so soft...

  ...In the room the women come and go...

  ...and it was so good to feel this soft, and sexy...

  ...Talking of Michelangelo...

  ...no guard now, no
hardness, my sisters, I understand how you feel...

  ...a breath, a sigh, then—drained and exhausted—she felt herself falling asleep—

  —in the room the women come and go—

  —and was startled back to wakefulness by sounds in the upstairs hallway; slow, soft, almost imperceptible sounds; tiptoeing sounds.

  She breathed slowly, watching her breasts rise and fall in the shadows, imagining some lover passionately kissing them, tonguing the nipples—

  —the front door opened, then closed.

  She sat up, holding her breath.

  Looking around the room, she saw that her closet door was now closed; it had been open when she’d fallen asleep, and her bedroom door, closed before, was now standing wide open.

  Jesus Christ, she hadn’t been out for very long, just a few seconds, wasn’t it? Just a moment or two but the time didn’t really matter a damn, ten minutes or ten seconds because someone had been in here while she was asleep!

  She jumped off the bed and ran into the hall, saw that the bathroom light was on, and kicked open the door.

  No one was inside—

  —but the sink was empty.

  Just like the bathtub.

  And the laundry hamper.

  And the toilet tank and the portable cooler and all of the mason jars.

  She stormed back into her bedroom and snapped on the overhead light, then flung open her closet door.

  She stared at her wardrobe and knew instinctively that something was missing; she couldn’t say what, specifically, had been taken, but she knew that the whole didn’t match up quite right.

  She sat down on the bed and stared at her reflection in the mirror hanging on the inside of the closet door.

  Damn if she wasn’t still a stunner.

  Then she saw the matryoshka dolls behind her. No longer uniform in shape, they had returned to their original, disparate forms—a gourd, a pyramid, an oval, a pear, an egg, a seashell—but each of them now had one thing in common, one characteristic they hadn’t shared before:

  None of them had a face.

  Amanda took a deep breath, then checked the clock.

  It was only twelve-thirty. The clubs didn’t close for another two hours and she wanted to be seen, to be admired, to feel pretty and wanted on this night.

  It was nice to actually have the option for once.

  She thought she knew what was happening, maybe. Maybe it would only be a matter of time, less than a few hours, and maybe she had all the time in the world and would be this gorgeous for the rest of her life, but either way she was going to make this evening count, goddammit!

  She dressed quickly, purposefully choosing a pair of old jeans and a blouse that she knew she’d outgrown over a year ago.

  Both fit wonderfully, hugging her form tightly, accentuating every wonderful curve. She threw an old vest on as well—which did wonders for emphasizing her bust—then unbuttoned not one, not two, but (for the first time in her life) three top buttons of her blouse, showing just enough of her freckles and cleavage and the slope of her breasts to make anyone want to see more.

  She checked her face in the bathroom mirror, under the harsh, unforgiving glow of the fluorescent light.

  No wrinkles, no bags, no blemishes; she needed no makeup.

  She looked...delicious.

  That made her smile, and brought a sparkle to her eyes.

  “What say we go out there and win one for the Gipper, eh?”

  She giggled, then Sparkle Eyes Amanda flowed out into the night.

  6. The Water Doesn’t Know

  Taking a shortcut through town in order to get to her pub before it closed, Amanda was driving down the side street which served as the location of the Altman Museum when she thought she heard someone scream—

  —and knew she saw a figure running from behind the museum.

  Later, she would remember feeling frightened yet oddly detached from herself—much like the state she’d been in after fleeing the church earlier.

  She knew this wasn’t the safest area of the city, even during the day, but she nonetheless watched from a place outside her body as Sparkle Eyes pulled into a parking space beside the museum, got out of the car, and walked toward the small plat at the back of the museum that served as an ersatz-park where artists whose work was too big for indoor exhibition often displayed their pieces.

  Sparkle Eyes walked up to a bench that sat near the park’s entrance.

  Sparkled Eyes looked down at the thick sketch pad that was lying face-down in the grass.

  Sparkle Eyes kicked the pad over with her foot to see what the artist had been sketching—

  —and that’s when Amanda found herself firmly reunited with her new body, because the pages facing her were covered not with drawings but with wide slashes of blood—as if whoever had been sketching had suddenly had their throat cut—

  —or lost their hands, she thought.

  She looked around, nervous, and only then realized that the sculpture of the grieving women that had been such a crowd-drawing showpiece for the Altman was gone.

  In its place, a new bas-relief piece had been incorporated into the museum’s outside back wall.

  Looking once more at the blood-drenched sketch pad lying at her feet, Amanda approached this new piece.

  For a moment she forgot to breathe, she was so stunned by what she saw.

  A massive curtain of bluish-gray flowstone hung before her, its surface shimmering and shifting like sand beneath incoming waves at high tide. She had no choice but to think of it in terms of liquid, for everything about the image embedded in the curtain seemed to ripple.

  The piece was of a woman, lying on her back, naked from the center of her chest upward, her hair cascading to the left as if draped over a pillow. Her arms were crossed over her center, the right slightly higher than the left, and her hands, their fingers slightly bent as if about to clutch at something unseen, unknown, were pressing down against the rest of her body, which was hidden underneath a wide sheet.

  She stepped forward, peering, and saw that the sheet was composed of smaller stones and slates and sculpted shapes of uncountable fossils: toads, lizards, prehistoric arachnid crustaceans the likes of which she’d never seen, praying mantises, eels and serpents slithering over faded, ancient symbols and primeval drawings.

  Even the skin of the woman in its center was not as she first perceived it to be: thin and transparent, misted with a fine scintillance like lavender spiderwebs, it allowed the viewer to see through the woman’s surface to the millions of swarming, teeming, multiplying cells and legions of bacteria-like clumps within. There was an odd, damaged beauty to the sight, a vague impression of transcendence, of the human becoming the elemental, then the infinitesimal, and Amanda found herself drawn toward it but, at the moment of communion, something in the image seemed to pull back and become cold, alien, unreachable, leaving her to stare into exhausted eyes too much like her own, eyes that were balanced atop dark crescents. They were lifeless eyes, lightless and unfocused, beyond caring. They were her own eyes. The woman, she realized then, was herself as she used to be, Old Amanda, not Sparkle Eyes, and her mouth was curved downward, trapped somewhere between a pout and a groan, but as she moved a little to the side a parallax effect—aided in part by the small spotlights the museum had installed to help night viewing—took place; viewed from the right, this image of her was a sad, dark, twisted thing, but viewed from the left, she appeared to be beckoning a lover to her bed, her mouth teasing, her eyes filled with promise.

  She reached out to touch her flowstone face and suddenly the upper portion of the curtain erupted with other faces, some angry, some gloomy, others insane-looking or hideously deformed, and a few that were not even close to being human; with mandibles clacking or antennae twisting in the air, these last faces, the inhuman ones, were in too-close proximity to that of her own image, threatening to fall on it and chew away her features. Far above them, their not-quite-formed eyes looking down, more f
aces moved in the deepening shadows, their fossilized skin covered in cracks and swarming with tiny things she couldn't bring herself to look at too closely.

  She stumbled backward, the curtain of liquid stone rising higher, revealing more sick-making details: One of the faces near her own—this one little more than a skull with an impossibly large cranium encircled by two serpents—had a carving of a rose on its side, a most delicate rose, and its ghostly beauty rather than being out of place seemed right and proper, buried as it is in the terrible image, soft hints of red trickling outward into her hair, tingeing it in blood.

  She touched the rose, then pulled her hand away and saw that it was, indeed, blood.

  She looked back to the bench where the sketch pad lay on the ground.

  She looked at her new hands, and knew who’d been screaming, and why.

  She looked back; all of the faces—her own included—opened their mouths and began to speak, words that she herself had said before, or thought, or heard others speak, others that she has thought of as her sisters, the plain-faced who are simply left alone:

  "...he calls me out of the kitchen to admire a lovely actress on the television, then points to a Miss America-type and says she's a little too fat, you know, and her face isn't as pretty as it ought to be, and he never once thinks about how that makes me feel..."

  She was aware of shadows moving from the darkness toward her.

  "...I can't stand to look at my whole face, so if I'm combing my hair, it's only my hair that I see; if I use a mirror to put on lipstick, I hold it so close that I don't have to see my cheeks..."

  The voices were coming from both the sculpture and from those shadowy figures slowly surrounding her.

  "...never look at my naked body, and I'd rather walk out of the house without checking my clothes than look at myself in a full-length mirror because there's always that face on top, making a mockery out of the pretty clothes below it..."