Bakumera

It did not look like a real thing. It looked as though the hide of a crocodile had been stretched across the skinned body of a lion and mounted badly in place. Pins and stitches and large metal staples protruded visibly where the seems of the hide met, blood and clear liquids bubbled from between the seems when the thing moved. Where lions have a tail, the thing had a huge long eyeless serpent with a gaping maw filling with teeth like jagged scavenged glass. Where lions have a head, the thing had a brass mask in the shape of a human face, a seem running vertically down the middle which abruptly split open, each half swinging away to reveal the skull of an adult human with the face of a human infant pinned across the front. From the open mouth and vacant eye sockets three serpents, identical to the serpent serving as the thing’s tail, extended from the cavity behind the skull and barred their glass shard teeth and hissed a serpentine choir.