The Bell Palimpsest — a prompted fiction exercise

The following is written from another fiction prompt from Jolene (Chico’s Mom). On-the-fly, off-the-cuff and keeping edits to a minimum (my personal rules). The required included elements from her prompt are:

Doctor Eliot Thorne was not a patient man in the best of times. And he was losing what patience he had as he waited for Miss Clara Bell in the candlelit library of her ancestral home in the wealthy end of town. He had thought to ask for more lighting, and had turned to the butler to ask for the lighting to be increased, but Gunter, her manservant, was already through the double-hung doors before he could think to ask.

He abhorred shadows and dark places: they were prone to hiding the imperfections of the world, and he specialized in excising imperfections. And his clientele typically gave him free reign to do as he pleased to perfect their appearances in his back-alley clinic provided that he altered their appearances so that they were unidentifiable even to their closest kin. Doctor Thorne may have worked from the shadows but needed light to exact the perfection he wrought on the faces he sculpted.

How Miss Clara Bell had come in possession of Thorne’s name remained a mystery to him. He had worked very hard at becoming an unsung, unknown master of his art, limiting his clientele to those who might navigate a complex series of referrals — for his own privacy as well as theirs — and his work did not come cheap as a result.

Miss Bell had the means but had not come through his normal gauntlet of barriers. Instead, she had walked right into the bookstore he used to disguise his services on Fourth Avenue and through the nondescript door in the back of the store holding an old doctor’s bag and handed him an aged photo.

“I hear you are the best at what you do,” she said. “Prove it and make me look like her.”

He quickly examined the old black and white photo, possibly as old as to be a tintype or ambrotype photo by his untrained eye. There were flaws, cracks and scratches on its surface, and untold hands had handled it over the years. Part of the woman’s jaw in the photo was worn completely away, but the main of the facial structures were still in good enough condition.

Miss Bell watched as he examined and posed for him as he looked at the canvas which he was to work his art upon. The photo appeared to be a an ancestor of hers; her features resembled those of the woman in the photo, but less refined and not quite as noble.

“Well,” she said, “Are you as good as they say you are?”

“It depends on who ‘they’ are and how good they say I am.”

“Does it really matter?”

He shook his head, “I don’t suppose it does. You should know that my work will cost you.”

She sat the doctor’s bag down on the patient chair in the middle of his workplace. “So I have heard. Open it and let me know if it is enough to cover your services.”

He unsnapped the bag and looked inside. Neat stacks of hundred dollar billed filled the bag to the top. He raised an eyebrow as he looked up at her.

“Fifty-thousand, if you must know. I assume cash is acceptable. I will instruct my people to pay you an additional twenty-thousand if you begin operating immediately.”

Thorne decided that it was the kind of decision that was no decision at all. He picked up the bag and set it off to the side before gesturing to the reclined operating chair.

“I don’t see why not. Please have a seat. I will wash up and we can begin.”

That had been just over three years ago. Since then, Miss Bell had visited him over a dozen times to have him make adjustments to his work and refine her looks to appear more and more like the woman in that picture as she discovered minor elements not captured in the photo, or obscured by flaws in its quality. As he worked on her, he realized that she must have known the woman in the photo extremely well, although it was hard to see how that was possible, considering the apparent age of the photo contrasted against Miss Bell’s apparent age. She seemed hardly old enough to have known someone intimately from so long ago.

But Miss Bell was obsessed to the point where he wondered if he could ethically change her face any further. To do much more work without a significant period of healing before anything more risked a catastrophic collapse of the hard work he had put into attempting to perfect the look she desired.

As he waited for her to arrive, he contemplated how he would tell her this. He had brought his instruments as she had directed but thought about refusing to do any more work for at least another year. Longer, if he could talk her into it.

“Doctor,” she said as she walked into the candlelit alcove of the library. “I’m sorry I’m late to our session but I had something that needed to take care of before we met.”

“Miss Bell,” he said nodding to her. His work on her was as close to perfect as he had ever come and he admired her beauty in the dim light. Had his romantic interests not been more inclined towards men, he would have called her ravishing, a blossom in full bloom.

“I have something I need to show you,” she said, walking behind the high backed chair in which he was sitting. “I found her.”

“You found who?”

“A photo of Josephine Bernice Bell, my great-great grandmother whose face you have been giving me. An older one in better condition than the one we have been using.”

Thorne turned to her as she reached inside a false panel on bordering the library shelves. From it, she removed gingerly a frame of the woman Thorne had been attempting to sculpt these past few years. There was almost no wear or imperfections in the daguerreotype of a younger version of the woman who stood holding the picture before him. His own living canvas’s beauty paled in comparison and he found his mouth had gone slack as he examined every line and curve of the woman’s face.

“I knew we must have had this picture still. Mother would never have sold it or given it away. She had promised it would be mine. Promised. But then her accident and…”

“My gods,” said Thorne. “Whyever would she hide this from the world?”

Miss Bell smirked. “She was insanely jealous of how much I worshipped Josephine. She said I had grown too obsessed with the woman when I was still a teen and hid the picture from me. I raged endlessly that summer, breaking her things, demanding she let me have this picture back. She said that I could have it back when she was dead, but no one knew where she had hidden it. But now, it’s back.”

She pointed to the jawline.

“Doctor, see? We need to adjust my jaw to fit where the other picture was flawed. I’m hoping you can do it tonight.”

“But this is not my operating room and…”

“Make it yours. I must be whole tonight.”

“But you haven’t fully healed from the last operation, Miss Be—”

She turned to him and, in a near feral growl she replied, “I. Will. Not. Be. Denied. Doctor.”

“I’m afraid of what may happen if we—”

“Do it, or so help me god I will have Gunter break every fucking finger you have and you will never operate on anyone again. Do you understand? You will fix my jawline tonight.”

Doctor Eliot Thorne sighed and looked and the newly discovered daguerreotype of Josephine Bell closer. If he was very careful he could probably make an incision, just below the…

“Have Gunter turn up the lights in this damned library so I can see what I’m doing. I’ll need some boiled water and clean towels. The rest of what I need I have with my tools, and—”

~1400 words, 60 minutes writing time.