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and body parts of ferocious beasts. Each of the sundered
creatures were entirely undressed of their skins. Moments
after the water had been all but replaced with blood and
bodies, the Skinner drew up to me, seeming much deflated,
as if he’d lost a considerable amount of his vaunted mass.
When the once massive killer spoke, it was in a much
different voice. “You’ve chosen a poor place to hide, Family
Man. Magic within a dream is so much stronger than beneath
the sun—or even the moon, for that matter.” The Prince of
Smoke stood before me, from the bottom of a Red Dream,
from behind the poached dream-skin of a massive serial
killer.
The Prince laughed as my body was overcome with a
thousand points of pain. Suddenly I was awake, covered
with the dead and drooling wolves I had slain earlier. I threw
them from me, crushing out what life had been smuggled
into them by the unclean magics of the Prince. I saw a
familiar mist gathering at the mouth of the cavern, giddy
from its most recent assault upon me.
“You are a fine opponent, Family Man,” said the Prince,
“and I now feel that if I’d continued to dangle you out as
bait, I would have denied myself some of the grandest fun
I’ve ever known. Most importantly, you seem to have a
unique appreciation for my craft. I can tell by the way your
eyes retreat from the world as you marvel at my tricks. And
unlike so many, you never seek to look behind my apparent
chicanery. You stare into my mystery with the wide eyes of
a child, accepting everything and questioning nothing. As
a magician, I can prize nothing so highly as your ceaseless
wonder. For that, I must thank you.”
It was a sincere gesture, and I received it in the intended
spirit. But this would not stop me from tearing him limb
from magical limb, trickster from triplet. I would not relent
until all of them were so much indecipherable ruin, their true
magic left to fend for itself in a world of two-way mirrors,

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