; THE MARIONETTIST.

She who was not a character in her tale, watched from the top of the grand staircase, watched with empty eye sockets as they trickled in, as her fingers bent and played those silent melodies, and the objects of her story did her will. Because she was the marionettist. She reigned over them all. She felt their grief, and she ached for them. She told their stories, because she was unable to tell her own.

And this was her tale of a thousand woes.

In the which an entity from the depths of your nightmares turns out to be human ; and though she cannot see, nor feel, nor speak, her characters play out the tragedies she felt in her own skin.