By Frampton Jones

There are some people whose lives you watch with a feeling of morbid unease. Mirco was one such – a tinkerer by nature whose fondness for messing about with devices seemed likely to prove fatal. The risk of attracting a demon into a warm, comfortable device is one I wish more people would take seriously. But, I shall not use Mirco’s untimely death as a reason to lecture on the dangers of demonic infestations.

Not least because I am fairly certain demons were not to blame on this occasion.

In recent weeks, Mirco’s workshop had ever more figures in it. I’ve been seeing more of these little figures around town for a while now – at first I thought they were amusing sculptures made of rubbish. Then, having seen a few of them move, I assumed them to be clever automata. Now, I am unsure and uneasy. Those figures, with their vegetable and bucket heads, their whimsical anatomies do not seem so innocent now.

Mirco was found propped outside the workshop, having been reassembled to resemble one of these creatures. I am no longer sure what to call them. Where Mirco’s actual head went, no one knows. About half of the available body parts are missing, according to Doc Willoughby. All of the automata, sculptures, creatures… whatever they were, they have all gone. Not a one remains in the workshop, and I have not seen one about town for a few days. I am afraid we will start finding parts of Mirco in other assemblies of parts made to resemble a person.

Reverend Davies will be performing the funeral rites for a percentage of a person, where the unburied parts are assumed to have taken on some kind of unwholesome second life. It will be an unsettling service, these forms always are, but we can hope it will bring some relief to the departed.