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fandomweekly2019-01-26 07:51 pm
m_findlow) wrote in fandomweekly2019-01-26 07:51 pm
Entry tags:
[#004] SMALL VICTORIES (ORIGINAL)
Theme Prompt: #004 - Victory
Title: Small victories
Fandom: Original
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1,000 words
Summary: Ravaged by war, he finds a way to hide away the horrors he brought back with him.
I pause by the door of the workshop, feeling the waves of heat rolling out, the clang of tools and the sudden hiss as red hot metal is tempered in a bucket of water. For a moment, the heat triggers memories, nightmares that woke me in the hospital night after night, leaving me screaming. My face burning again, skin and bone engulfed in flame, whilst metal shrapnel tore away the melting flesh.
The coppersmith looks up from his work. He sets down his tools, unwraps his heavy leather apron and walks to the back of the workshop, extracting his work, wrapped carefully in calico cloth.
The mask is more intricate than anything I have ever laid my eyes on. The copper is beaten and shaped, engraved with designs that appear to move when you stare at them long enough. Delicate incurvatures are filled in with pearlescent enamel so the whole thing is smooth to the touch. It glows a gentle burnished gold, with just a single drop of violet blue, fashioned in the shape of a teardrop at the edge of where a filigree eye whorls around. I cannot disagree with the artist's choice to give it a melancholic touch. Anything else would render the wearer a frightening jester. Instead it is beautiful and sad. It belongs in a gallery or a palace, not attached to the face of some horrific creature.
I insisted that I could not afford such fine work, but the artisan refused to make another simpler version based on the specifications we discussed. He said he was simply glad to make something that would not be used in warfare. Four long years of fashioning officer's belt buckles, epaulets and buttons, handgrips for pistols and luxury cigarette cases. He showed me a box overflowing with broken and dented pocket watches, abandoned by their owners, their once beautiful casings gouged and dented. I felt rather like them, ugly and disfigured by the ravages of war. I belonged heaped in a box with the other broken men, though unlike the damaged timepieces, there was no one skilled enough to recondition us.
The coppersmith gently fits the mask, buckling the leather straps, holding it in place. It traces carefully around the nose and mouth, fitted surprisingly well to every contour. He had cast my face in plaster and created a mold from which to shape the item. The casting mold was so hideous that when he showed it to me and asked if I would like to keep the plaster bust, I quickly grasped it and smashed it on the stone floor. One monster was enough.
'What do you think?' he asks, holding up a small hand mirror. I consider the reflection for some time. The mask warms up against my skin, becoming fused - a merging of metallic and organic. Gone is the ugly scarring and the pursed hole where my eye had once sat, twisted in on itself in an attempt to heal. The shellfire that had ravaged my face had also removed my ear, though there was no mask that could hide that.
It seems strange to look at myself now and find that half of my face more beautiful than the other undamaged side. Would others admire it the same way, or would they fear the horror that lay hidden beneath? Surely nothing could be worse.
Even at the military hospital, men with lost limbs avoided glancing my way. They'd seen their share of atrocity on the faces of the dead, lying in fields of mud and razor wire. They didn't want reminding in the shape of a man that looked like death come to walk amongst them. Nurses there tutted and gave empty platitudes, whilst the doctor had seen so much that he barely blinked an eye at me, his expression as impassive and unfeeling as a scarecrow in a pasture.
'Not the worst you've seen?' I asked, desperately curious.
'Tense of thousands of boys returned home to live out their days broken and wasted. I don't know how we can call that victory. Bloody war.'
I say nothing but deep down I can't disagree. The fanfare at the docks when we'd disembarked, finally back on home soil, had felt like it was meant for everyone but me. What had I done, apart from survive against all odds? Once they cast their eyes on my face though, it was the gasps from women and children that made me wish I'd died instead. I'd brought the war back home with me. It feels very hollow indeed.
The army are done with me. That visit would be the last time they expend resources. One last medical examination before official discharge. There is no pension, no distribution of war reparations. The expectation is that we'll go back to our ordinary lives. As much chance of that for me as for a man with no legs to return to ploughing his fields.
I raise a hand to touch the mask, feeling its smoothness, like liquid gold, where my fingers have become accustomed to tracing over gnarled scar tissue, empty gouges dug right to the bone, angry and red. The mask is smoother even than the shaven, unblemished side of my face, still betraying the reasonably handsome man that had left these shores so many years ago. The blue eye staring back seems brighter than before, less haunted by the vision it sees. I try to imagine it with my hat on, the brim casting both metal and flesh into shadowy relief. Almost human again, I hope.
'It is very fine work,' remembering that I haven't yet replied to the question. Already I don't think I could remove it even if I wanted to. People will still point and stare, or exchange hushed whispers behind my back, that much I cannot change, but perhaps they'll find me a mere curiosity now, rather than a monstrous freak. The man with the golden face.
That in itself would be something of a victory.
Title: Small victories
Fandom: Original
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1,000 words
Summary: Ravaged by war, he finds a way to hide away the horrors he brought back with him.
I pause by the door of the workshop, feeling the waves of heat rolling out, the clang of tools and the sudden hiss as red hot metal is tempered in a bucket of water. For a moment, the heat triggers memories, nightmares that woke me in the hospital night after night, leaving me screaming. My face burning again, skin and bone engulfed in flame, whilst metal shrapnel tore away the melting flesh.
The coppersmith looks up from his work. He sets down his tools, unwraps his heavy leather apron and walks to the back of the workshop, extracting his work, wrapped carefully in calico cloth.
The mask is more intricate than anything I have ever laid my eyes on. The copper is beaten and shaped, engraved with designs that appear to move when you stare at them long enough. Delicate incurvatures are filled in with pearlescent enamel so the whole thing is smooth to the touch. It glows a gentle burnished gold, with just a single drop of violet blue, fashioned in the shape of a teardrop at the edge of where a filigree eye whorls around. I cannot disagree with the artist's choice to give it a melancholic touch. Anything else would render the wearer a frightening jester. Instead it is beautiful and sad. It belongs in a gallery or a palace, not attached to the face of some horrific creature.
I insisted that I could not afford such fine work, but the artisan refused to make another simpler version based on the specifications we discussed. He said he was simply glad to make something that would not be used in warfare. Four long years of fashioning officer's belt buckles, epaulets and buttons, handgrips for pistols and luxury cigarette cases. He showed me a box overflowing with broken and dented pocket watches, abandoned by their owners, their once beautiful casings gouged and dented. I felt rather like them, ugly and disfigured by the ravages of war. I belonged heaped in a box with the other broken men, though unlike the damaged timepieces, there was no one skilled enough to recondition us.
The coppersmith gently fits the mask, buckling the leather straps, holding it in place. It traces carefully around the nose and mouth, fitted surprisingly well to every contour. He had cast my face in plaster and created a mold from which to shape the item. The casting mold was so hideous that when he showed it to me and asked if I would like to keep the plaster bust, I quickly grasped it and smashed it on the stone floor. One monster was enough.
'What do you think?' he asks, holding up a small hand mirror. I consider the reflection for some time. The mask warms up against my skin, becoming fused - a merging of metallic and organic. Gone is the ugly scarring and the pursed hole where my eye had once sat, twisted in on itself in an attempt to heal. The shellfire that had ravaged my face had also removed my ear, though there was no mask that could hide that.
It seems strange to look at myself now and find that half of my face more beautiful than the other undamaged side. Would others admire it the same way, or would they fear the horror that lay hidden beneath? Surely nothing could be worse.
Even at the military hospital, men with lost limbs avoided glancing my way. They'd seen their share of atrocity on the faces of the dead, lying in fields of mud and razor wire. They didn't want reminding in the shape of a man that looked like death come to walk amongst them. Nurses there tutted and gave empty platitudes, whilst the doctor had seen so much that he barely blinked an eye at me, his expression as impassive and unfeeling as a scarecrow in a pasture.
'Not the worst you've seen?' I asked, desperately curious.
'Tense of thousands of boys returned home to live out their days broken and wasted. I don't know how we can call that victory. Bloody war.'
I say nothing but deep down I can't disagree. The fanfare at the docks when we'd disembarked, finally back on home soil, had felt like it was meant for everyone but me. What had I done, apart from survive against all odds? Once they cast their eyes on my face though, it was the gasps from women and children that made me wish I'd died instead. I'd brought the war back home with me. It feels very hollow indeed.
The army are done with me. That visit would be the last time they expend resources. One last medical examination before official discharge. There is no pension, no distribution of war reparations. The expectation is that we'll go back to our ordinary lives. As much chance of that for me as for a man with no legs to return to ploughing his fields.
I raise a hand to touch the mask, feeling its smoothness, like liquid gold, where my fingers have become accustomed to tracing over gnarled scar tissue, empty gouges dug right to the bone, angry and red. The mask is smoother even than the shaven, unblemished side of my face, still betraying the reasonably handsome man that had left these shores so many years ago. The blue eye staring back seems brighter than before, less haunted by the vision it sees. I try to imagine it with my hat on, the brim casting both metal and flesh into shadowy relief. Almost human again, I hope.
'It is very fine work,' remembering that I haven't yet replied to the question. Already I don't think I could remove it even if I wanted to. People will still point and stare, or exchange hushed whispers behind my back, that much I cannot change, but perhaps they'll find me a mere curiosity now, rather than a monstrous freak. The man with the golden face.
That in itself would be something of a victory.