Porcelain Angels

[4] A Solid Internal Armature

Kelly Ann Matthews figured that if she was going to have to split her time between her parents, she was going to get something out of it, and thanks to her fathers desperation to get her to like him more than her mother, he was willing to do anything she wanted. And what Kelly Ann Matthews wanted more than anything else? To take taxidermy lessons at the local community center. Her father, Eric, had learnt to be a seamstress by his grandmothers hand when he was a little boy, and kept up with it all the way into adulthood, so he sort of saw taxidermy as a somewhat morbid offshoot of an a similar interest, and he immediately latched onto that. Together, every other weekend, they started attending the class, and learning all the skills and terminology.

The first thing they were doing together was a sparrow, birds being the primary starter animal because of their simplicity.

"You can do the incision either in the back or the chest, but chest is usually a better bet. You'll find, if you separate the feathers, that there is a bald line in the chest, you can cut there," their instructor said as they stood at the front of the class, showing them with their own specimen, adding, "Be sure to wet your fingers in your bowl of water as to not stick to the inside of the skin but try not to wet the feathers. You can wear the gloves I've provided if you want, but that may limit your movements, especially if the skin is delicate as with small birds. Keep in mind that, if by accident you poke a hole in the skin, do not worry, you can sew it up."

"Are you sure you're coordinated to do this?" Kelly asked, and Eric smiled weakly.

"You'd be surprised at the things my hands are capable of," he replied.

"Ew, dad, gross," Kelly mumbled.

Kelly had always been interested in dead things, spooky things. When she was a little girl riding in the car with her parents, if they saw roadkill on their drive, she'd beg them to stop - if they could manage it, of course - so she could use her disposable camera to take a picture. She would then create scrapbooks of all these animals in various states of crushing decomposition, and admire them for hours, even going so far as to one time bringing it in for show and tell before being promptly excused from the classroom, much to the other childrens delight. But Kelly didn't care. She liked what she liked. She liked dark synth and rock music, she dressed in a wardrobe that would've put an 80s goth girl to shame, and she loved reading old grim literature from Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" to poems by Edgar Allen Poe. She was, in essence, almost the quintissential cliche of what one expects an edgy teenager to be, but in all earnestness.

And now, here she was, doing taxidermy.

"I found," the instructor continued, "that separating the skin from the muscle without breaking the skin is easier if you leave a little fat. You can scrape it out afterwards. As for legs and wings, you will cut the bone as to leave the inside of the legs and wings intact, and, because of the small amount of fat inside, it will dry out nicely. Now, keep in mind that solid foam is great for sculpting the smaller bodies and it's easy to find. You might cut a preliminary shape and then adjust when the skin is ready. Run a metal wire thru the legs and wings and skull, attaching them to the body sculpt to keep them in place. The wire should stick out of the legs so you can use for posing. This is called an armature. It's actually similiar, in many ways, to how they produce the puppets for stop motion animation."

After the class adjourned for the day, Kelly and her father went to a nearby fast food restaurant for lunch. Sitting in the bustling restaurant, surrounded by her peers with whom she shared nothing of interest with, she couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed. Here she was, with her soon to be divorced father of all people, eating the biggest burger she could find on the menu while other girls her age were counting every calorie they could. She sighed then took an enormous bite with her oversized front teeth, chewing for a bit before speaking.