* jaw agape, pause of silence, the applause *
Once more you have orchestrated an amazing piece of fiction. Thank you for sharing, Steelclaw!
As well as being appropriately horrifying for this season's holiday, your writing is exquisite in its details.
But your genius suffers the same problem of all great writers wrapped up in their creations: No clear ending. You present a scenario, snag the heart with the emotions at play, add a twist that will undo all that has been created... then forget to show what happens after Armageddon. Everything has lead to the climax, but then the show cuts off abruptly, the end an uncertainty.
Oh, that I could read the other 90% of the plot that your stories started!
It wasn't so much a "forget to show" what happens situation.
My short stories tend to follow one of two methods of madness. The first is the "twist" ending; like a Twilight Zone-esque story where everything seems pretty normal right up until the end where we take a sudden left turn off a cliff. These kinds of stories are complete, but are meant to leave the reader shaking their heads with a stunned expression on their face.
The other type I write is more like a Creative Writing 101 homework assignment than a true short story. If I have a character (or, in this case, characters) in mind and just want to write a short blurb to get their personalities and what drives them more firmly entrenched in my mind. I guess you could say this one was more like an artist's character study. They fill a page (or 10) with rough sketches of the same face with different expressions or the body in various poses. They're getting their hands used to drawing that character. In my case I'm getting my words used to describing them.
The Surgeon and his Canvas are characters I've played off and on in the game for a while now. The above story was a way of getting straight in my mind the relationship parameters they have... and their individual personalities as well.
As far as "What happens next, you fool?!"... Who knows? The story I had in mind was more about Canvas's willingness to do anything for her master... even if it meant losing him... and herself... in the process. Perhaps, if I feel inspired, I may continue this story at some point.
My mind wanders so often you've probably seen its picture on milk cartons. - Me... the first person version of the third person Steelclaw
Even having a page or ten from the artist's notebook and knowing that was the extent of the exercise doesn't stop me from desiring to watch an entire animated feature. Forgive me, it's human nature to want the sparkly gem and the entire kingdom it came from, too. 
Once more, bravo! I look forward to the future written treasures you compose, exercise snippets and cliff-jumpers both.
This is why I keep trying to work on my humor writing. Not that this piece has anything to do with comedy other than that Steelclaw has written both, but it still made me renew my commitment.
Why? Because it reminds me of a fact that I've seen time and again: those people who truly and consistently evoke laughter in their audience are just as facile with other emotions. Bravo sir, bravo.
(also, your later post reminded me {actually, now that I think of it, the story itself too...} that one sketch or even one page isn't enough to necessarily discover the essence of a character. I should probably take some of my characters and get to writing...)
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" Adam Savage from Mythbusters
She once had a name, though it had long since faded from her mind. The one whom she adored referred to her as His Canvas and that was good enough for her. Others who worked for her Master called her Canvas, but she simply thought of herself as His.
She was his, body and soul. At one time she might have been fully human, but his art had been painted upon her, his chisel reshaping her, his brush improving and refining her into a living masterpiece. She could barely remember not being his Canvas. She was sure that once shed had skin that covered her entire body instead of just patches. Her eyes had not always been this obsidian chip color; she had a hazy memory of the blue of the sky. Her blood now was yellow and thick; not the rich and fast crimson that splashed from her victims veins.
Indeed, there were times when she wondered if she truly even qualified as a she any longer. Surely she had evolved well past any definable gender by this point. But she had been born a female; it was one of those memories of her prior life to which she had adamantly held fast. And, even if one could not fully remember the past, one should at least pay homage to it in some way. So, though it was so very small a victory, Canvas steadfastly maintained her she-hood.
She loved him. She loved him with every changing, twisted fiber of her being. Every surgery. Every agony. Every new birth before the mirror, looking into the newest face that was her own. She endured it all; thrived upon it all all for him.
She didnt know his name; none of them did, neither his servants nor his pieces dart. To them and the police he was simply known as The Surgeon.
He walked down the antiseptic white tile hallway precisely ten feet in front of her. The harsh fluorescent lighting was painful in her newly altered eyes. She craved darkness and silence. The laboratory was too bright and busy for her heightened senses. Any time spent there at all frayed and worried at her nerves until she felt ready to scream.
Not that she COULD scream right now; another recent improvement.
Now, my dear, The Surgeon said, his voice cultured and urbane, always held under the strictest control. No matter how dire the situation, he never allowed it to affect diction or enunciation. Id like to show you my latest little project.
He held the door open for her. Her nose, which spanned the entire middle of her face like a thin chasm, caught his scent as she passed, drinking it deeply. The reality of him swept through her in pleasurable little ripples. Had she still possessed some form of the tail it occasionally took his fancy to provide her, she would have wagged it furiously.
The room beyond the door was, like most of the rooms in the facility, a combination of enameled white and steel. Computers cowered against the outer wall, beeping nervously and spitting out numbers and data upon their screens in spasms of computational terror. From each of the terminals thin wires sprouted, linking them to the object which dominated the center of the room. Huge and made entirely of steel, Canvas could not determine whether it was a huge tub or a post-modern version of a sarcophagus. There was no decoration upon the surface of the monstrosity; The Surgeon felt the decoration of his artists tools to be sacrilegious. The wires climbed the steep steel sides of the basin and over its lip, disappearing into the open maw.
At her masters gesture of permission, Canvas walked to the side of the container. The wires disappeared into the still surface of some kind of liquid. Much thicker than water, some kind of viscous oil that had the appearance of mother of pearl with the lightest of blue sheen to it. No ripple disturbed the placid menace of its surface. No bubbles gave hint to what living, or nearly living, thing might lay beneath it; connected to those wires that had sent the computers to their numeric regurgitation.
Your last errand was the key, my cherished one, he said as he approached behind her. She willed him to touch her; a simple caress, even an absent minded patting of her shoulder. He did not. The Surgeon was averse to casual touching and always took pains to wear gloves in social situations that might require it. The information you retrieved from Crey Industries has proven invaluable. Their research into genetic manipulation was even further along than I had anticipated and has allowed me to accelerate my own plans accordingly.
She preened under his praise. As her heart rate accelerated she noticed the pain caused by the harsh glare of the overhead lighting increased sharply. She made a mental note to include the occurrence in her daily journal entry. The Surgeon insisted on such documentation following each of the changes he made within her. He had said hed tied her senses more intimately into her adrenal and cardiopulmonary systems; perhaps this was a side effect?
It is nearly complete, he murmured, running a hand lightly over the edge of the containment unit, agile fingers nimbly skipping and hopping over the wires that bowed here and there. My newest, and perhaps most ambitious, effort. Will you be a masterpiece like my lovely most cherished? Or shall you end in failure? He extended his hand until it hovered a breath above the still, shimmering pale blue surface, careful not to touch the fluid. He held it there for a long moment, then withdrew it.
You havent been aware of it, my cherished one, he said after a period of self-rumination, but without you this work would never have existed in the first place. You retrieved all the items and ingredients I needed to get this far.
As he spoke of what she had contributed, Canvas let her mind drift back over each mission, each acquisition. She had kidnapped one of the meat doctors from the barely sane cyber-punk gang called the Freakshow. A trip into dark, silent caves had resulted in a single vial of blood, drained from a less-than-willing donor of the Circle of Thorns. Another kidnapping; this time a high ranking member of the splinter group known as the Knives of Artemis. Rikti technology, ancient items of arcane power, information and research, she had stolen them all at the behest of her paramour, of her creator. She never questioned why.
On one notable occasion she had nearly died. She had been sent to bring back a flesh sample from the mentally unstable man known as Malaise. Though her body was altered and improved, her mind had proven susceptible to Malaises powers. She had seen visions of her beloved being murdered before her again and again. She had collapsed under the weight of the horrors Malaises illusions had revealed to her. The only thing that had saved her life was her targets curiosity. He simply HAD to know who she was and why she had targeted him. The moment he dropped the illusions that held her captive she struck.
The Surgeon had found it delightfully ironic that of all the body parts she could have retrieved; she had brought him the artist Malaises ear. Canvas had not gotten the joke and her master had not bothered to explain it to her.
This bath now contains an element of each of your victories, my cherished one, The Surgeon said, now looking at her from his thin, sharp featured face. Eyes the color of flawed emeralds looked out at her from under fiercely black eyebrows. The blood of Mu, the genetic x-factor of a powerful mutant, as well as certain chemical compounds and a fascinating stem-cell-stew provided by Crey Industries are the main ingredients for the liquid you see before you. Inside the tub itself are two fabricated arms. One of those arms is an interesting hybrid of Rikti and Nemesis technology. The other was created from texts stolen from the Midnighters, Circle of Thorns and the Legacy Chain. I had it crafted by a poor, disillusioned child of a Midnighter. She was willing to do anything for me for just the promise that I could sculpt her features into a semblance that her unrequited paramour would find appealing
Strong emotion was never allowed to disturb the calm features of his face, but for a moment The Surgeon paused and some shadow seemed to rise just below the surface of his eyes, to send only the slightest of ripples across his expression, before falling back into the cold depths of his mind. He waved a hand in absent minded dismissal.
Pity she found the results of her surgery less than satisfactory, he said. The meat doctor provided her knowledge of how to graft artificial limbs to body and mind. The mercenary of Artemis was a positive well-spring of tactical and combat training, though Im afraid stripping that knowledge from her mind left her shall we say a shadow of her former, formidable self.
He paused then and braced his surgeons hands upon the steel lip of the containment unit. For the first time in her memory, her beloved master seemed hesitant, at odds with himself somehow. He stared into the unmoving pale blue liquid as though hoping to see the future reflected in its surface. As though answers to maddening questions might somehow linger in their uncaring depths.
The silence spun out; lengthening and drawing tauter and tauter with each passing second. Canvas felt it on her nerves like sandpaper, until she wished she had voice to give some release to tension building inside her. She took a step towards her master, reaching out a hand towards his shoulder. The hand paused as she remembered his aversion to such contact. Still, she ached to touch him, to make that connection with him and glory in the sharing, if only for the briefest of moments.
Her hand fell away, claws digging into her own thigh to relieve the frustration that gnawed away inside her.
Only one ingredient remains, he said at last. He did not turn to look at her. He remained where he stood, staring into the abyss. Ive spoken to you before of the great masters for whom Ive always held the highest admiration, yes?
Though he didnt look around to see her response, she nodded.
Leonardo da Vinci, for example, was a genius beyond our understanding of the term, he continued. But many of his earlier works were lost to us. He was poor, you see. Many of the great masters did not have the funds to buy a new canvas every time they were inspired. They would simply paint over an existing piece of work. How many masterworks have been lost to history for such reasons? Could the greatest of their efforts, the purest examples of their genius, be buried under brush strokes of some newer, less deserving, work?
He shook his head in gentle regret. And yet, he whispered, as though to himself. And yet I find myself faced with the same decision. The same quandary.
He straightened, took a steadying breath and turned to face her. Though his features were schooled with steely discipline to bland immobility, his eyes were swirling maelstroms of powerful emotion and ambition.
You are my greatest work of art to date, my cherished one, he said.
To Canvass ultimate surprise, The Surgeons skilled hands rose to clasp, flesh to flesh, around her upper arms. Shock and exultation surged through her in equal measure as she fought to listen, to comprehend what was happening in this small, sterile room.
But I find myself on the edge of wiping clean my cherished Canvas, he went on, to prepare it for what might be an even greater work of art.
He kept her gaze captured with his own. An intimacy in that touch, in that shared look, that was so soul-wrenching in its power that she wept. Her weeping was not one of tears, for she was physically incapable of such a thing, but instead showed itself in the shaking of her shoulders, the hitching of her breath and the strong, galloping thunder of her heart.
I have created and recreated you so many times in these past years for this very day, for this very purpose. He spoke softly, and she could feel the breath of his words on her face, like the individual kisses of rain drops. No other is possible, or I would not risk you. You are my masterwork. You are the most cherished, the most wondrous, of my creations but
He did not remove his hands from her flesh, but cut the lock of their stare to look upon the pool beside them. She felt that severing like a blade of ice to her heart.
Science, technology, magic and mutation, he whispered. All in the same body. All in the same moment of creation. Combining to form the ultimate being the pinnacle of potential. Your body has been engineered no has been sculpted to absorb the fluid and alter you at a genetic level. The arms of technology and magic will replace your own, grinding away the ones you have now and grafting themselves to your body. A probe is ready to pierce the fault line of your cranial suture to the center of your brain. Your memory shall be wiped clean and reprogrammed with all the training and tactics of the worlds best para-military organizations. If this surgery is successful if the procedure is successful
you will be glorious you will be the realization of every artistic aspiration of which I have ever conceived you will be my opus and the reason I was born
He stopped, the words choked off by some emotion stronger than his will to resist. He looked back to her then and, to her continuing shock, his eyes were swimming with unshed tears.
But all you have come to be all you are the Canvas I have known these past many years will be gone buried beneath the oils and paints of the newer work lost to history
She looked at him, this incredible and complex man she had come to love and further, to worship, as far back as her memory permitted. She reached up her own hand and laid it over her heart. She pressed it there a moment, then let it flow upwards, fingertips daring to touch, daring to linger, upon his lips.
She took a step back. He released his grip on her shoulders with a small, animal sound of anguish.
For the first time in so very long a time, she felt at peace. The lights no longer seemed to pain her eyes, but glowed in lovely tones of white luminescence. She walked with slow grace to the side of the tub. She had no clothing to remove, since her form had long since lost any need for false modesty, so she didnt hesitate in the slightest as she climbed lithely over its side.
She held his face in her gaze as she positioned herself. Her eyes focusing on the single crystal tear that tracked down one well-loved cheek. It was the last thing she saw, the only thing she took with her down into the darkness, as the opaque blue liquid closed over her head.
For him anything. For him everything.
The words repeated again and again as the pain infused her. His face in that last moment of pure emotion held fast in her memory, to sustain her through this last, final transformation. Until that, too, was taken from her when the process reached its terminus.
In the last moment the final second before her mind was wiped by the probe deep within it she had a moment of sharp clarity
Maggie my name was IS Maggie
Nothingness.
My mind wanders so often you've probably seen its picture on milk cartons. - Me... the first person version of the third person Steelclaw