Chapter 5: The Family Affair
The cold, diffuse light of the display fixtures had become Malcolm’s new sun. Weeks had bled together since the collectors’ visit, each day a subtle erosion of the terror, replaced by a strange, humming acceptance. The sale, it seemed, was pending transport logistics. In the interim, Andrew was more attentive than ever, his touches both worshipful and proprietary, his whispers full of plans for Malcolm’s glorious future in a Zurich penthouse or a Tokyo atrium.
The new silence was shattered by the most mundane of sounds: the studio’s doorbell.
Andrew froze, a polishing cloth suspended over Malcolm’s thigh. They never had visitors unscheduled. A frown etched his brow. He glanced at Malcolm, placing a silencing finger to his own lips, a pointless, intimate gesture. He pulled a large dust sheet from a nearby shelf and, with a tenderness that was its own cruelty, draped it over Malcolm. The world went dark, muffled. Malcolm could still see slivers of light at the edges, could still breathe the faint, chalky scent of the cloth.
He heard the studio door open.
“Andrew? Hey. Sorry to just drop by.”
The voice was a seismic event. It was a voice from a tectonic plate of a previous life, one that had sheared away and sunk into the sea of memory. Bryant.
Malcolm’s mind, slowed by resin and ritual, spasmed. Bryant. His Bryant. From before Andrew. The co-parent. The amicable ex. The man who had known him as a man, not a monument.
“Bryant. This is a surprise.” Andrew’s voice was smooth, the perfect blend of warm welcome and slight inconvenience. “And Embry! Look at you.”
“Hey, Andrew.” A younger voice, deeper than Malcolm remembered. His son. Embry. Twenty years old. A physical pain, sharp and clear, lanced through the haze of Malcolm’s acceptance. It was a pain the resin eagerly amplified, making his heart stutter against its crystalline cage.
“We were in the neighborhood, driving back from campus,” Bryant said, his voice moving as he stepped inside. “Em needed some stuff from his old room at my place. We, uh… we tried calling Malcolm. For months, actually. His phone’s dead. His job said he took an indefinite sabbatical. We got worried.”
The dust sheet became a suffocation shroud. Malcolm wanted to scream, to shatter the resin, to vomit it out onto the floor. The mundane concern in Bryant’s voice was more violently deconstructing than any collector’s leer.
“Oh, right,” Andrew said, his tone shifting to one of apologetic concern. “He’s… he’s on an extended artist’s retreat. Up north. Very remote. No service. He asked me to hold down the fort. I’ve been so busy with this new series, I must have forgotten to forward his mail. I’m so sorry you were worried.”
The lie was effortless.
“An artist’s retreat?” Bryant’s skepticism was audible. “Since when does Malcolm paint?”
“He’s exploring new mediums,” Andrew said lightly. “But since you’re here, would you like to see what I’ve been working on? It’s my most ambitious piece.”
“Sure, yeah. Love to.” Bryant’s footsteps echoed on the concrete, coming closer. Embry’s quieter steps followed.
“It’s under the cloth still. Final stages.” Andrew’s hand gripped the edge of the sheet. “Prepare to be… challenged.”
He pulled the sheet away.
Light flooded Malcolm’s vision again. And there they were. Bryant, older, a little grayer at the temples, his kind face lined with a concern that hadn’t been there five years ago. And Embry. His boy. A man now, tall and lanky, with Malcolm’s own eyes and Bryant’s stubborn jaw. They were staring at him.
Bryant’s concerned frown deepened into confusion. He blinked, taking a step closer. “Andrew… this is… this is incredibly lifelike.”
“That’s the point,” Andrew smiled, but it was tight around the edges.
Embry walked a slow circle around the pedestal, his brow furrowed. “It’s… Dad?”
The word, unused for so long, hit Malcolm with the force of a physical blow. A fresh, hot trickle of milk escaped his nipple, trailing down the iridescent curve of his breast. The sound of the drop hitting the glass vessel was deafening in the stillness.
Bryant’s eyes snapped to the vessel, then to the clearly male, clearly full abdomen, then to the face. He leaned in, inches away, searching the glazed eyes. Malcolm stared back, screaming with every atom of his being. See me. See me.
“The detail…” Bryant whispered. He reached out, instinctively, not as a collector but as a sculptor himself, to feel the texture.
“Please don’t touch,” Andrew said, a fraction too quickly.
But Bryant’s fingers had already made contact with Malcolm’s forearm. The shock of recognition was not intellectual. It was cellular. It was the memory-code of a thousand embraces, a decade of shared skin. Bryant yanked his hand back as if burned.
“His skin,” Bryant breathed, horror dawning. “It’s warm. It’s… it gives. Andrew, what is this?”
Embry was staring at the face, his own pale. “Dad?” he said again, voice trembling. He looked at the abdominal swell, the lactating breasts, the utter, profound stillness. “What did you do?”
Andrew’s kindly facade dissolved. It didn’t crack; it evaporated. His expression settled into one of cold, irritated ownership. “I gave him what he wanted. He asked to surrender. To be my masterpiece. He is Maternal Source. And you are interrupting his preparation.”
Bryant made a sound, a raw, wounded animal noise. He lunged not at Andrew, but toward the pedestal, his hands going to Malcolm’s face. “Malcolm! Malcolm, can you hear me? Blink if you can hear me!”
The touch of his ex-husband’s hands, frantic with love and terror, was a different kind of violation. The resin, reacting to the tsunami of Malcolm’s panic, grief, and a grotesque, reflexive arousal at being known by this man from his past, began to heat. A low vibration started in the frame.
“Stop it!” Embry shouted, trying to pull Bryant back. “We have to call the police!”
“You won’t,” Andrew said, his voice now quiet, almost conversational. “Look at him. Really look. Is he in pain?”
Bryant stared, his hands cradling Malcolm’s face. And he saw it. The eyes held terror, yes, but also a depth of reception, a passive rapture. The body, though trapped, was vibrantly, obscenely alive. The vibration from the frame intensified, a rhythmic pulse that matched the frantic beating of three hearts in the room.
A new voice filled the air. It was not Andrew’s. It was resonant, metallic, and sweet, like honey dripping on a bronze bell. It came from everywhere and nowhere, from the very air around the pedestal.
"He is at peace. He is complete. He is wanted."
Bryant and Embry staggered back, eyes wide. “What is that?” Embry whispered.
"I am the whisper in the resin. The memory of the brushstroke. The will of the frame," the Voice crooned. "He belongs to the art now. But you… you are disruption. You are frayed edges."
Andrew watched, a devout spectator at his own miracle.
"Malcolm," the Voice whispered, now intimately inside Malcolm’s own skull, a lover’s kiss. "These ghosts from your before-life wound you. They pull at your seams. We can make them stop. We can make them silent. We can make them… still."
An image flowered in Malcolm’s mind, horrific and exquisite: Bryant and Embry, side-by-side on identical pedestals, their forms sealed in gleaming amber resin, their faces frozen in expressions of tranquil surrender. A diptych. Paternal Sources. A complete set.
"Or," the Voice sighed, "you can choose freedom. One word from you, a true word from the deep place, and the polymer will release you. It will crack. You will be flesh again, weak, aching, ordinary. You will go with them. And I will be silent forever."
The choice hung in the vibrating air. Freedom. The smell of hospitals, of explanations, of his son’s devastated face, of Bryant’s pity. The burden of a body that could walk away, that would be scarred, emptied, lesser.
Or this. Perfection. Peace. An end to longing. And his family, preserved forever, safe inside the beauty, where they could never leave, never worry, never grow old or disappointed. He would never be alone again.
Bryant was crying, pleading. “Fight it, Malcolm! Whatever it is, fight it!”
Embry was on his phone, his hands shaking too badly to dial.
Malcolm looked past them, to Andrew. Andrew gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod. It was a permission. A blessing.
The answer was not in Malcolm’s mouth. It was in his bones. It was in the deep, shameful well of his surrender that had yearned for this very totality. The resin had not captured a victim. It had fulfilled a supplicant.
He made his choice.
He focused every ounce of his will, not on moving, but on feeling. He embraced the vibration, the warmth, the full, aching pressure in his breasts. He poured his consent, his desperate desire for stasis and possession, back into the resin.
The frame understood.
The vibration surged, not in a chaotic pulse, but in a specific, targeted frequency. A wave of palpable force, sweet-scented with turpentine and honey, emanated from Malcolm’s pedestal. It washed over Bryant and Embry.
They froze in mid-motion. Bryant’s mouth open in a cry. Embry’s thumb hovering over his phone screen. A look of sudden, impossible peace smoothed the terror from their features.
From the floor, tendrils of liquid polymer, gold and shimmering, crept up their legs. It moved fast, weaving around their jeans, their shoes, solidifying as it climbed. It was gentle. It was loving. It was absolute.
Malcolm watched, his silent scream finally quieted. A profound, terrifying serenity filled him. The last thing he saw before the resin sealed over their faces, capturing their blissful, empty smiles, was Andrew stepping forward, a fresh brush in his hand, ready to begin the new work.
The drip of Malcolm’s milk into the glass was the only sound in the studio, a steady, rhythmic measure of the new, permanent quiet.