Free Wax by Gina Damico

Come.”
    She beckoned her guest farther into the studio, and Poppy had no time to dissect the woman’s eccentric wording because it was at this point that the theater geek in Poppy went all-out berserk.
    The costumes! The props! The stagecraft!
    Buckets and cans covered every surface. Many contained paint, judging by the multicolored drippings down their sides; others held startling snippets of anatomy​—​a jar of fingernails, a tin of teeth, a crock of eyeballs. Hair was also in abundance, with a pegboard of various beards and goatee designs, plus a chorus line of Styrofoam heads sporting wigs of every color and style​—​wigs that Poppy was sure were made from human hair.
    It kind of reminded her of the Gaudy Auditorium slop room​—​if the Gaudy Auditorium slop room had been pumped full of steroids and sequins and eerie, unblinking glass eyes.
    Bolts of fabric​—​from happy checkered pinks to gritty, threadbare grays​—​puckered out of shelves behind an ancient sewing machine that Poppy had to physically cross her arms to refrain from caressing. A massive workbench stored drills, chisels, and other tools that would not have been out of place at a dentist’s office. The bitter scent of lacquer stung the air, but it wasn’t altogether unpleasant​—​it smelled of dedication, talent, and a lifetime of hard work.
    Madame Grosholtz circled the work in progress at the center of the room, a large, muscular man wearing armored pants and holding an ax. A Viking.
    Poppy’s eyes bulged at his rippling biceps, his rock-hard abs. The word
“huminahuminahumina”
came to mind. Yet despite his fierceness, he had a kindness around his eyes, the same kindness she often observed in Mr. Crawford.
    â€œLa cire vivante,”
Madame Grosholtz whispered.
    Poppy was too distracted by the cleft in SexyFace’s chin to fully hear what Madame Grosholtz was saying. She gazed into the man’s eyes, cool, inviting pools of blue that she wanted to dive into and not come up for air and maybe squeeze his butt a little. Only when she started to envision herself crumpling his fur loincloth into a wad did she snap her eyes shut and take a step back. “What?”
    â€œLa cire vivante,”
Madame Grosholtz repeated.
    â€œI’m sorry, I don’t speak French.”
    Madame Grosholtz gave her an amused look but said nothing.
    Poppy opened her mouth to defuse the silence, but something made her pause. A shift in the room’s atmosphere, a subtle dislocation​—​as if she’d had one eye closed since the moment she’d entered the studio and had just now opened it.
    â€œWould you like to know what it means?” Madame Grosholtz said in a slanted tone.
    Poppy resolved to keep her breath even, but her heart skipped a bit faster. She stared up at the Viking, at that face that looked more real than the one that looked back at her in the mirror every day. “Yes.”
    Madame Grosholtz’s face was indescribable, her eyes flickering like fire. She leaned in and spoke at a whisper.
    â€œThe living wax.”
    In an instant, everything in Poppy’s body, mind, and soul shrieked at her to flee. Something dark and wrong and
heavy
had seeped into the room​—​a profound sense of
there is something unnatural going on here
that Poppy knew she should run away from​—​but couldn’t.
    She blinked once more at the Viking.
    And the Viking blinked back.

6
Lose grip on reality
    POPPY GASPED AND STAGGERED BACKWARDS AS IF SHE’D BEEN SHOT. Her legs went rubbery, all the blood rushing out of her feet and turning them numb. A panicked pounding filled her ears, her heart making it plainly obvious that if she had any desire to keep it beating, she needed to get out of there.
    But she ignored the advice of her organs. Madame Grosholtz was watching her with a curious expression, while the