Blood is on its hands, dripping from its fingertips, from the corner of its lips, sprayed over itself in tiny little beads. The red is smeared over its face, over its hardened skin and on the bars it grips. Taken from another, brutally ripped from its victim. Icked and sticky, bittersweet, horrible, so horrible you cannot look away. 

The scarlet coats the body also, left behind at the crime scene, like a young child’s doll with its stuffing pulled out, like beautiful red rose petals scattering the ground beneath an ugly thorny bush, the body’s kaleidoscope insides now decorating stained sandstone and splattered cloth.

There is a roar from the crowd, chains are pulled, a gate is opened. The killer is released, and the cheers grow louder and louder until the thirst for blood is deafening. The bars that held it grind against the prison roof, a horn blows, loud and true (but still quieter that the thirst), and the bloodshed begins.