A young boy with the sleeves rolled up on his white dress shirt and a black tuxedo vest stood in a room of whirling cogs and gizmos. The smell of something akin to plastic and death wafted in from a burning furnace. A thin and mischievous smile spread across his face. The glow of the fire hit the brim of his tophat and cast a shadow over his eyes.

The top hat boy danced around, fit to burst with excitement as the furnace door opened with a cloud of steam and smoke. An iron grate slid out of the fire with a very special top hat on it. A hat with two blood-shot eyes bulging out of the felt. Their horrified gaze never left the cruel child.

"Neat," he placed the tophat on a bronze shelf with only one other hat made entirely of human skin, "but not perfect."

He ran his fingers over the back of his own seemingly normal tophat. The tiny callused fingers passed over a small flake of skin on the back. It was only a minor flaw, but it nearly sent the boy into a tantrum every time he thought of it.

Well oiled gears turn with disturbing efficiency behind the furnace. A conveyor belt slides a dark shape into the flames. Pumps and hydrologic machinery fails to drown out the screaming from the metal box.

The Top Hat boy was enraptured by the fire licking at the charred corpse. He pulled a lever and the inside of the furnace flipped over itself several times. The motion always blocked out the details of the furnace's work. It upset the tophat boy that there was no seeing through the metal, but when all was said and done it would be worth it. He just knew it! This was the time it worked perfectly!

Teeth protruded from the next hat. They were arranged slightly askew so that it seemed to smile, only without lips it was hard to tell. The hat let out a long and pained yell, so he tossed it back in the fire.

A struggling damsel inched down the conveyor belt and into the furnace never to be seen in her human form again. The light of the fire shined, glimmered on her porcelain skin in a way it never had before. Her mouth was gaged and tears ran down her cheeks. The furnace did it's job almost too smoothly; the absence of clunky-ness in the gears was unsettling.

Out of the steam and heat came a fuzzy black tophat complete with a beautiful peacock feather sticking in a blue band just over the rim.

"Hmm... Too small."