A person who hides from fire will still smell the smoke.

And I have smelled Marguerite.

We were there, not for any noble reason the crowd would later pretend to whisper about.

We came for her. For the impossible softness we imagined beneath her clothes. The trembling in her throat. The shiver of a body that has finally realized it has been chosen.

Her flesh curled at the edges like parchment. Too tender to even endure the flame.

Frischfleisch.

The kind that makes a crowd lean forward without admitting why.

Someone breathed her name—“Marguerite”—with reverence too intimate for a stranger.

Of course, no one would admit it. No one confesses to enjoying the warmth of another’s ruin.

Yet she was an event laid bare before a ravenous audience. Her name was repeated silently in thought.

Every stare was a blade. Fingernails bit into palms. Their restraint was a facade—a show of manners barely covering the hunger that had no language except breathlessness.

I remember how she stood, unyielding as soaked timber. But when the heat decided to take her away, it rolled across our skin—a delicate, trembling warmth seeping into pores.

The smoke tasted of burnt sugar that day—umber and thick, smothering itself. Slow. Sticky.

Around me, the crowd tried to pretend their knees weren’t trembling. Such polite little beasts.

Hands folded. Eyes wide.

Breaths shaking with excitement they would never dare name.

We filled in every detail the fire spared. Our minds did the cruelty our hands never would, and somehow that felt worse.

Beasts of prey touch nothing.

And then came the smell of human flesh rendering. It sizzles through the air, her panniculus stands as a dull comparison. It lives in the back of my throat still, a phantom sweetness that crawls up whenever memory decides to be cruel.

Some leaned forward so far their tendons strained, as if willing her closer, as if proximity alone could feed them.

Every breath gave it away.

Come and hang her! Witness her innocence rotting as she gives in!

We were never people at that moment. Not around poor Marguerite.

And when she refused to scream—oh, how the crowd adored her for it! Defiance is a rare delicacy.

“Frischfleisch.”

Their breaths grew shallow, jittery, restless. Drawn by heat and spectacle, we savored the illicit knowledge we weren’t supposed to enjoy.

But we did. God help us, we did.

And though we stood at a distance, the way eyes clung to her felt more invasive than touch. There is violence in witnessing someone who cannot look back.

It reveals how much of a vulture we are. Watchful creatures who measured their own morality against the heat of her suffering and found the scale disturbingly light.

The crowd sank into stillness. We savored the pleasure we pretended not to feel. Some looked away, but their eyes found her anyway.

Silence is seductive when it shouldn’t be.

Admitting it doesn’t absolve us. Denying it makes us liars and cowards both.

And we would do it all again.

In a heartbeat.

All we need is another Marguerite.