Mouth of Truth
They say Sissitrix never painted the same face twice. They are wrong. One was painted five times—each, iteration rubbed out of pitch-dark ground with chalk and desperation, each one a little wider at the mouth than the last.
Act 1, Jonah Voss
A Boston PI takes a missing-persons case that leads him to a Sissitrix canvas in a derelict cannery. The painting’s mouth is warm. It yields like skin. By dawn, Jonah isn’t looking for the woman anymore. He’s found what his own mouth was always trying to say.