As Ragdoll worked, he hummed along to the piano music, his needle dancing delicately across the fabric of the stuffed man.

A baby doll was playing the piano beautifully. The little girl was one of his first victims, and she was his finest doll. Piano music always helped Ragdoll focus on his tailoring, and as much as he loved the sound of the piano, he hated other sounds that would distract him.

A stuffed old man was under his hands and needles. The old ones are always tricky, with loose skins full of wrinkles and weak bones, which he usually had to replace with strong, sour cherry or walnut tree wood. Still, as long as the skull was undamaged, Ragdoll could make a doll out of any living being, and a master should never back down from a challenge, so he kept calm and continued sewing the old dead man’s skin with absolute finesse.

The sound of a hard baton banging on the old wooden door of the house made the little doll stop playing the piano, and Ragdoll grabbed his scissors and walked with light steps with his plastic feet, almost as if he were floating across the room. Whoever dared to disturb him would be his next doll, and it would need more than a few stitches to be a doll; it wouldn’t be his masterpiece but would make a perfect abomination like all the other victims who disturbed Ragdoll or fooled around his house.

Ragdoll opened the door with scissors above his head, ready to kill.

“Howdy, toy boy.”

Ragdoll was terrified. The scissors dropped from his hand onto the wooden floor.

“Seems like you forgot how to treat a man-of-law toy boy,” the sheriff said with his vile, threatening grin showing his perfect white teeth.

Ragdoll opened the door respectfully, inviting the sheriff to his house; otherwise, God knew what the sheriff would do unrespectfully.

“Wow, this place looks like a piece of sh*t toy boy,” Sheriff said with a strong, manly voice yet always managed to have a tone of uneasy humor in his words, making it hard to understand whether he was joking or being serious.

“Can’t you order your toys to clean this place up? Put them to some good work? Instead of releasing them out of your territory to hunt for you,”

The Sheriff sounded almost serious, a bad sign for any demon or survivor who disobeyed the law.

The sheriff walked around and saw the little girl doll on the chair next to the piano.

“Well now, look at this beautiful thing,” he said, slowly getting close to the doll and bent to her height to look at her closely.

She wore a necklace with her name on it: ‘Bel’ Her eyes were out of marble, just like the rest of Ragdoll’s creations, but hers was pink, a rare color for a pair of marbles, and she looked very familiar to the sheriff. ‘Did they used to be in his own Ragdoll’s empty eye socket?’ He thought briefly.

“Bel must mean the world to you, toy boy,” the sheriff said. I got up and looked at Ragdoll; he was a doll with no face impression, but Sheriff found it. His weak spot was his beard, and he smiled broadly.

Ragdoll was nervous; he was a doll, but all demons had feelings that might differ from humans, but certainly emotions were there, carved deep inside them.

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“OK, toy boy,” you know the fuss. The sheriff fixed his belt, moving it left and right, and dragged his jeans up a bit. “Bring her out; she would do.”

Ragdoll was furious and full of hate, but he knew there was nothing he could do about the sheriff but listen and obey. He was standing still like a lifeless doll for moments, staring at Bel with empty eye sockets. He needed no eyes to see perfection in Bel.

He could never create something as beautiful as her again. She was the one and only Bel for him; there would be nothing like her.

“Come on, toy boy, you should have thought of it before you released your toys out of your territory to hunt the humans like savages.”

The sheriff had no problem with how cruel or savage demons were, but those agonies and terrors had a territory for each demon. “Law is law, and it must be obeyed.” The sheriff continued

Ragdoll touched Bel’s blond, shiny hair and, for the last time, looked at her pink marble eyes before he gouged them out slowly without ruining her perfect face.

Ragdoll put the pink marbles in his black long coat’s pockets, hugged Bel gently, and took her outside on the massive field all around the house, where the ground was covered with dead yellow short grasses. The house was surrounded by pine trees and one old, narrow country road that connected his house to the main road of HP.

The grass field had no place for anyone to hide from him; it was an open hunting ground for Ragdoll.

Fifty feet away from the old wooden house of his Ragdoll, he put down Bel on the dust and waited for the sheriff’s next orders.

“I rarely like to give away the pleasure of torturing the ones who disobeyed the law, but this time I’m going to let you have the punch line of yours. So keep this for me for a few moments, toy boy.”

Sheriff threw a small can of gasoline for Ragdoll to catch, and he took out his black baton and, with a pleasing smile, started bashing Bel nonstop until she was deformed and broken.

Ragdoll got on his knees, witnessing his masterpiece getting crushed under endless baton hits. With each hit, Ragdoll remembered how he created her—days and nights with no one to disturb him. It was just silence, Ragdoll and his infinite love and passion to create Bel, and months of teaching her to play the piano, change her clothes on her own, or clean Ragdoll’s tools every night. But the most amazing thing about Bel was her ability to sing, which happened rarely. Ragdoll could never create a doll that could talk or sing, but something extraordinary made her sing. And to this very moment, Ragdoll didn’t know what made Bel sing those lovely songs. It was ironic for a creator to not understand his creation.

“OK, I guess she had enough.” The sheriff inhaled deeply and continued, “Now, if you may, light her up.” He pointed his hand at Bel, or what was left of her.

“P…Ple…Please” The word hardly came out of Ragdoll’s mouth, as if he were throwing them up.

“S…S…TOP”

The sheriff had that devilish smile that he usually wore. “N…N…NOOOO,” he said, mimicking Ragdoll’s scratchy sound and laughing.

“Damn, I didn’t know you could talk to a toy boy, but seriously, go ahead. LIT HER UP.” He looked amused at ordering Ragdoll around.

Ragdoll got up on his feet, his knees clinched and shook, and slowly walked to Bel’s broken body and, with shaking hands, poured down the gasoline on her.

The sheriff threw him away with a push, and he fell. “I don’t have all day for this crap.” He quickly lit a match and burned Bel’s broken body.

The scent of burning cured human skin and hair filled the sheriff’s nose, and a small black smoke rose to a bloody red sky.

The sheriff was heading to his old cop car, but after a few steps, he paused and looked back.

“You know, all demons are hated by humans outside, but I’m hated by demons.” The sheriff looked tired of his situation.

“But you kill them, torture them—I mean, you give them all the reasons that make their hate logical—and how about me? I’m just doing what I’m supposed to do to keep you fucking idiot demons off of each other’s asses, and this last decade was really bothering me because sooner or later these humans are going to travel further and find more demons of higher ranks, and god knows how many of you I have to kill and torture.”

The sheriff chuckled in disappointment and exhaustion. “So why should I not give you all a good reason to hate me?”

The sheriff walked aggressively toward Ragdoll and bashed his jaw with a heavy blow of his baton. Ragdoll’s facial structure cracked and threw Ragdoll’s light body in the air for moments, and he landed on his face and did not move anymore.

“I hated your voice, toy boy; I had to make sure no one ever heard it again.” The sheriff spit on Ragdoll. He got in his car, started the engine, and made a heavy dust trail behind his car as he got far away.