IJ study archive

Gately, the wraith, and the figurants (p. 830)

quote

all he could seem to do was pant real hard, as if the air was like totally missing his vocal box, or like his vocal box was totally demapped from nerve-damage in his shoulder and now just sort of hung there all withered and dry like an old hornet nest while air rushed out Gately’s throat all around it.

Context

Gately's voicelessness rendered as a deformity: a body part "demapped from nerve-damage," withered and dry, hanging useless — the book's deformity diction turned on the temporarily disabled Gately, whose whole convalescence is a crash course in being a body that doesn't work.

In anthology