Excerpt: Down the Garden Path

There was nothing so clean as a straight, precise cut. Nothing so easy to heal as simple slices, as clean amputations.

Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes;
And eyes and ears and mouth and nose
Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.
Neck, elbows, hips and feet, hips and feet
And thighs and rears and lips and teeth
Neck, elbows, lips and teeth, lips and teeth.

His focus was never so clear as it was when he was making those lines of brilliant red. He’d never been quite like this before – middling good at it, but never so fascinated. But now he’d been in the minds of people who could teach Fariel a few things, people who’d been obsessed with torture and its methods, and who, of course, felt the same way he had come to feel about those lines of brilliant, dripping red.