Sometimes Nightmare Are Real.

"Please…" came the softly whispered plea.

"Why?" jerking the knots tighter and moving to the next.

"You aren't like this."

"Oh, but I am. I am just like this and worse."

"No, you are just angry, you aren't cruel like this."

A sharp bark of laughter, "you have no idea what I am truly like, no one does. Everyone sees what they want, quiet, average, smiling… the hero they think they have shaped to their purpose." Another line of knots and the skin starts to swell and darken to a furious red.

Whimpers and tugging, trying to win freedom from what awaits. "Please!"

"Shut up." I say calmly enough, before I back hand the face in front of me, snapping it to the side. "Pleading will get you nothing but more pain, darker pain," a calm punch to the opposite side of the head, snapping it the other direction. "Did you know that you can peel the skin from a living human without it killing them, if you take enough care?"

"STOP PLEASE!"

Fingers of iron pry open the jaw and grab a hold of that stupidly pleading tongue and rip it out to its full length, and with a quick slash of silver, it leaves the body. "I'm pretty sure I warned you about that," floated on the air before the screaming started.

Thin curls of skin started to pile around my feet as gurgling screams rent the air.

Smiling and absentmindedly licking my fingers, I flipped another curl to the side and moved over to find another beckoning expanse of untouched flesh.

"Yes, they only think they know what I am like."

Another victim of the war, left on the street as a warning, one they just don't know comes from an unexpected corner, a hero's slap in the face to the un-expecting, the unprepared.

"They only think they know what I am like."

Feral laughter ripples in the morning twilight.