A bref double, using one of Turco’s identified forms. This was based on a short story I’d written in China.
Clacks and Clatters
Foreign matter clatters hard on the floor. Sleep is broken in a crashing instant-- --listening to waking, nakedly prone… It's just the cat, strutting her distemper. But there's something else: silence, a knock I stumbled to, and answering the door I found a bare-boned, calcite skeleton clacking his jaw, and waiting to enter. I offered it a chair, left it alone returned with tea, but poured out slick, dull clay. Clack. He said. So I applied and shaped it, fleshing a clay mask out from the center. My own was mirrored in the face it wore; I tore at my hair but found only bone.
