They came with pitchforks. Torches. From the parapets, he watched them come. He pictured children’s toy soldiers moved across the floor by God’s hand.

He saw one man, caught up in bloodlust, trip over a tree branch. His torch’s flames lit the back of the shirt of the man before him. Fire traveled down the line.

Flaming men toppled like dominoes. He smiled, clapped with glee. Countless childhoods sewn up and shocked to life within and without his patchwork body didn’t tell him any different.

He wondered whose skin, whose flesh he’d wear next. Someone knocked at the castle gates.