Please sirs, don't! Don't kill me, please! I know that my master did some terrible, terrible things, and that I helped him do them, but you know not what you do! Please sirs, just let me explain myself a bit. It's not for my life that I fear, you see, but for my soul!

pause Oh, thank you! Thank you very much sirs! Oh, but where to begin?

It's my Master, you see. He's not... Well, he's not really ALIVE in the same sense that you or I happen to be. He was, once, before I'd ever met him. But when I first came upon him, he was stone cold dead- nothing but a pile of spare parts, strewn about on the floor. The events leading to my being in the room where I found him are a blur to me. All I remember is what happened next. I remember, an itching in my hands, and this painful tugging at my soul. I'm a tailor by profession, and a rather good one by all accounts, and all I wanted at that moment was to stitch him back together, to make him whole.

The longer I stalled, the more the need to sew him back together yanked at my spirit, until I finally broke down and started to stitch. I threaded my needle and stitched together the flesh, not paying no attention to the grease of rot and the old, congealed blood that was washing over my fingers. I stitched for days upon days, not stopping for food or water or sleep, just stitching and stitching, my madness compelling me to sew. Finally, I tied the last knot, and passed out on top of him. As I did, though, I heard him draw his first breath.

When I finally woke up, I saw my master there. He stood, 8 feet tall and grinning like a madman; on account the head I used didn't have no flesh around the mouth, you see. And his eyes wasn't quite right. I'd had to make due, you see... Putting him back together with what I had had. I hadn't realized it when I was stitching, but the eyes didn't match. One was blue like ice, and beady. The other was large and yellow, too large for the socket, and the pupil was a slit like a cat's. He towered over me, stinking like death and talking to someone in a rhaspy voice, and it was then that I noticed the other man standing near me.

The man was... peculiar. He looked normal, a bit charming even. He dressed very well- the sort of garments I would have been proud to have called my own work. His hair was neatly trimmed and styled, and his maneurisms were light and confident- he held his hands in front of him in a very polite, casual way. He had a sort of tight-lipped half smiling expression on his face. But there was something about him... Something I can't explain or identify that just seemed wrong. Something that told me that this man had more devil than person inside of him.

When I woke up, the man who'd soon be my Master said to the Devil "Well, it seems that your little present has finally roused himself." The Devil, he just looked at me out of the corner of his eye, and nodded slightly. Then my Master, he turned to me and said "You hear that you little pile of dung? You're mine, now. Whatever I say, you do. You follow me, and you stitch me up when I get a nick. Do you understand?" And sirs, believe me when I said I protested as much as my lungs would allow. I cried, I sobbed, and I bellowed. I threw myself at his feet, and begged for mercy. I told him there were a thousand tailors out there as good as I. I told him my younger brother Joshua was a cobbler's apprentice, and that he'd be more used to working with leather than I. I pleaded harder than I ever had before that he'd just take Joshua instead of me. And he just laughed. He said he didn't WANT my brother Joshua. He said my little brother Joshua wouldn't make the same funny little squeaking noises when he cried. And then he kicked me, and he turned to the Devil again. And he said "Now, the bloody runt WILL keep me all sewn up, right?"

And the Devil replied. He didn't reply with his mouth or with gestures. He didn't speak to me in my ears or in my brain. He spoke to me in my BONES. He wormed his will into my marrow and he said "Yes." He said "Yes, this filthy tramp will be your servant, your slave."

And next is where it gets pertinent, sirs. You see, for next... Next my Master asked him "And what if he should die? Where will I be then?" And the Devil turned to me. And for the first time during this entire exchange I saw his teeth. Blue, they were. A deep, oceany shade of blue that they couldn't have been dyed gnawing on anything, animal or vegetable, that I've ever encountered. And they were thin. Not like a blade is thin or a piece of grass. No, they was thin like hairs is thin. And there was millions of them, all curved and gnarly and pointed. And they was smiling, sirs. They was smiling a wicked smile that should never be smiled. And I don't know exactly what that smile meant, sirs. But I do know that whatever it is, neither you nor I want to find out.