With bloody hands the tired man worked. Needle and thread held steady even as his vision blurred with bloodshot eyes hardly working. How many days had he worked upon this masterpiece? How many months? How many years even?

The question was not worth asking now....

with a slow motion he tightened another minute thread and pulled taught waxen skin with a wet squish. Another followed up and a in quick succession he had finished attaching yet another glorious piece. Vaguely he wondered how much of the blood upon his hands was his own? He shook the notion from his mind and reached for a nearby burlap sack covered in thick dirty clumps.

Something whispered in his ear as he pulled forth the next piece to his triumph. Slowly he moved his joints aching from sitting before a chair hunched over fro hours after hour. Like an old man though only a mere thirty he moved to a nearby vat of something steaming a rancid smelling.

A concoction of his own creation or perhaps someone elses...he forgot. It bubbled evilly as he donned protective gloves and plunged the gruesome piece deep into the fluid. For a brief moment it hissed and popped with an utterly terrible sound. As he pulled it out a layer after layer peeled away revealing a his prize. Carefully he moved back to his work place and began to attach it to his art.

As his hands moved with timed precision he could not help but to wonder how far had he come? Once a mere doll maker of immense skill he had toiled away at this useless craft till she had visited him in his dreams. So perfect that he could not look upon her directly she had told him of secret arts and of how he squandered his skills. That next day he had left his home and set to work.

Since then he had began the work of a true master. Something so awe inspiring that it spoke directly to the soul. Even now he could feel her there. His dream time muse guiding his hands with such precision and accuracy that no common eye would ever be able to tell he had placed stitches upon the perfectly colored and textured form. With a sigh of delight he pulled forth a sheet of something thin and pliable. Gently he set it to the new aspect of his work fitting it so that it looked like it had belonged there all along...

A knock upon the door above his.

Ignoring he works away sewing the sheet so that it fits perfectly.

Another knock louder this time and voices.

He swears and stands from his spot he stumped up the stairs and shut the door tight behind him. He carefully opened the door that the knocking had come from.

“Yes...” he asked his voice hoarse from to many night around toxins.”Can....I. Help you?”

Before him stands a man tall and burly dressed in the clothes of a man of authority.

“We are here for you sir.” He says slowly. “You are a suspect in the abdu-”

The door slams shut and a bolt is thrown. Quickly the man races away from it trying to hide the stairwell to his workshop.

Riotous noise and crashes sound as the door is bashed down by axes. And men. Yelling ensues as the they grab hold of the man dragging away the rug that hid the stairwell...

fighting ensues the man is killed by accident as an axe hits him in the thigh.

The constable investigates.

Stepping down creaking stairs his nose wrinkles at the foul smells of rot and something unnatural. In dim light he finds a horror filled scene.

Stacked against the walls bags upon bags of body parts severed from their owners and many flensed of skin leaving only raw muscle.

Terror fills the man's empty stomach

A workbench littered with butchers tools and a small gas lamp providing a dim light to see by still is soaked with blood and gore. Next to it a foul vat of something unknown.

Horror fills his face.

And within the center of it all sitting upon a throne crafted of blood soaked wood it sat. A horrid rotted thing. A mess of body parts shaped to the effigy Of a woman dressed in regal clothes. A crown of wicker, rotted eyes and fingers entwined within.

Fear shakes his very body.

Without another word he orders the building burned to the ground. It's contents never revealed to the world. Thick smoke oozes into the night sky.

Screams of agony issue from the house.