Wax

There is a waxwork on the edge of town.

It is an old thing; a carcass of worm-eaten wood and corrugated steel. Workbenches were left with a fine gossamer sheen of long dried wax, tools were left seemingly forever bound in the miasma. The building had gone far beyond its remit of life, the spectre of dereliction clung to every support and wall of this place, long fingers of rot ready to withdraw their sickly embrace and let the building crumble to its long overdue grave. Yet this was not a place where things died, they simply sunk deeper into that yellowed tide of discarded wax.

It is not a place fit for work yet I remained. I kept the gas lamps burning low, I shut the windows against the tides of winter. I tried to form things from the wax; small, misshapen things to keep me company. Yes they were lifeless things but they were merely practice. The light in that place was odd. It bled through the windows involuntarily, as though it were forced into this lonely, forgotten place by a wound. As such it tried it’s hardest to illuminate as little as possible, I would often huddle in the small pools it allowed beneath the murky windows so that I could feel a fraction of the warmth it might’ve offered if it had not been cruelly induced to this place. 

I do not know when it was that I came here; it might’ve been aeons ago but then again it might’ve been but a few days ago. All remains the same, a perfect photograph of reality where this is the implication of progress towards an inevitable collapse that shall never come. I am not even permitted to tell the time by the decline of my own body for there is very little of ‘myself’ there at this point. 

I did not intend to forever be stuck within the photograph, I craved the motion and volatility that my deformed wax companions could never give me. At the heart of the workshop I dug. I carved my way through the thin wax layer that held everything within its embrace until I hit dirt. Old boilers were heated and that putrid yellow wax was melted to be poured into the pit. 

I remembered there was a time that I had been something different; whether it was less or more did not matter for I had once been able to change. I had been able to consign myself to the waxwork. The waxwork too had once been different too. The simple fact that entropy had taken it’s hold here implied that it could decay from something that was greater than itself, perhaps there had been a time before the fires had cooled and the waxen web had settled when all manner of things had been moulded by an artisan’s caring hand to be sent into the world; to be granted the privilege of becoming greater or lesser; the honour of potential. 

Though the sickly light never permitted me true knowledge of time I can only presume that my labours were long. I pooled the cold, dead wax into buckets and set about heating them until the substance writhed and boiled with life. I scoured and hacked at the stuff until I was sure there was enough, not a single element could be out of line if I were to leave successfully. 

All that I gathered went to the pit. Even before I gathered all that I needed it was a joyous sight to see something so… alive in this perpetual stasis. It was a painful and angry kind of life to be sure but still it struggled against the bonds of entropy. In those first steps I truly think that I envied it. 

Finally the work was done. My writhing child of molten wax boiled at the centre of the workshop, I kneeled close to it and whispered. I whispered words of things that had once been and could be again. I whispered to it of unceasing heartbeats bounding against a chest. I whispered words of a light that was not so sickly, not so hateful. And I pleaded. Very softly and very quietly, I pleaded. I prayed it understood. 

I flung myself into that boiling pool. The half-me that had lingered in that place evaporated, everything that clung to bone was torn away by hungry wax that longed to change and find the certainty of form that was within me. It was a detached kind of agony. I was remade as I was destroyed; I used the rudimentary limbs that formed around to aspire to even greater expressions of form, my tools were born with me as hands emerged at the end of my arms. I faintly wondered if those old artisans that once ruled this place would look upon my achievement with pride, I wondered if this was what the waxwork was always meant for. 

I could feel it beginning to leak into my mind; True light. It was glory manifest. With light came visions and memories, came the prospect of what lies beyond the waxwork. An ecstasy of possibility coursed through a forming body. I wished that I could simply stay there observing all those possible lives that stared back at me expectantly. The light in my mind grew greater and greater, an apotheosis drew near that would free me from this place.

I felt something go wrong inside of me.

I realised that my skin was wax.

I realised that the memories leaking into my head were not my own.

Too late. I tried to escape the waxen cocoon that had become my body. I tried to slough off the mocking prosthesis that were my hands. I pulled at the strands of memory that were entangling my mind, locking all that I was within a false embrace. All too late, for I was locked within a firmament of boiling, agonising wax.  

The flood of light found every wound within my mind that it could and forced it’s way through. It’s illumination was complete and I was undone. 

…

I sit at a table that is not mine, in a house where I am a stranger, staring at a woman I have never met before. I bought the table 5 years ago, I started renting the house at a similar time and the woman I stare at is my lover. I know that this is the truth of my life, that my memory shapes truth and as such this was the only life I had and yet as I stare down at my hands I see a gossamer sheen. 

I remember the waxwork less and less with each day as the new truth of my life settles itself yet the sheen of my skin does not vanish. My mind has bled into a body I did not desire, the truth of my existence forced into a story I did not wish told. Those whom my memory tells me are my friends and family attempt to reconcile me to this life but my gossamer body tells me otherwise; from within a false form how can I perceive anything differently than a reflection of my own lie. 

I sit back and wait for the entropy to take hold once more.