Against a backdrop tinged with red, a dark fairy tale tells Emma’s story. After killing, in self-defence, the man who raped her and branded her skin with a cigarette, the girl becomes convinced that she is a vigilante: every man who smokes appears to her as a threat to be eliminated, and she keeps a cigarette from each of them as a ritual trophy. She is convinced she is performing a sacred act of purification and justice to protect other women – a piaculum, in other words. But during her final murder, her mask as a protector crumbles, revealing the abyss of blind madness.