Page 84 of Discordant Cultivation

A TENS unit. He’s attached fucking TENS units to me.

“Don’t.” Vale’s voice cut through Kieran’s gasping as his hands moved instinctively toward the adhesive pads. “If you take them off now, with so little time before Eliza arrives, you won’t like what I use in their place.”

Kieran’s hands froze. Terror kept them motionless as his mind supplied helpful images of what Vale might consider adequate replacements.

“Pick up the guitar,” Vale said, his voice as gentle as a kiss. “Play until I tell you to stop.”

Kieran’s fingers found the strings again as he began the rhythmic foundation of ‘Library Card’. The notes came clean despite his shaking hands. Vale began walking around him in slow circles, footsteps keeping time with the guitar’s rhythm. A predator circling prey. When he spoke, his voice carried the cadence of someone reading aloud:

“‘As someone with epilepsy, this pisses me off. Don’t fake seizures for views.’” Internet strangers’ comments emerging from Vale’s mouth as he continued that slow orbit around Kieran.

Kieran’s playing faltered, missing a transition as the comment sank in.

The electrical pulse hit every pad simultaneously.

Chest, abdomen, back—his entire torso became a lightning storm. Pain arched his spine backward, then forward, musclescontracting in ways they weren’t meant to move. He screamed, the sound echoing off the basement walls and coming back at him like mockery.

“Keep playing,” Vale said calmly as the current stopped. “The song doesn’t pause for discomfort.”

Kieran gasped for air, still somehow gripping the guitar. Through sheer will, his fingers found the progression even though his muscles felt torn apart and badly stitched back together.

Vale continued his recitation: “‘The timing is too convenient. Right at the end?’”

This time Kieran anticipated the jolt, gritted his teeth and maintained the rhythm even as electricity turned his muscles into foreign things that barely belonged to him. Spasming, contracting, his body at war with itself while his fingers kept playing because stopping would mean worse.

How dare they. How fucking dare they question what my brain does to me.

The current hit just his chest pads with localized agony that stole his breath and the taste of metal filled his mouth. But his fingers found the next chord change.

And the next.

And the next.

I hate them. I hate every single person who thinks they know what happens inside my skull.

The anger built, real fury cutting through fear and pain as Vale’s voice continued reading strangers’ casual dismissal of his suffering. People who’d never lived in a body that could betray consciousness without warning. Who’d never woken up with blood in their mouth and no memory of falling.

They had no right.

“‘This is 100% a publicity stunt. Seizures don’t work like movie seizures.’”

His entire torso was being torn apart. He screamed, hunching inward as he tried to find some relief from every pad contracting his muscles at the same time. He was dying. He was certain of that.

But his hands stayed on the guitar. He kept playing.

The current stopped and left him gasping and shaking but still playing. Still channeling weeks of cruelty into music that felt sharp enough to draw blood.

“Incredible,” Vale murmured, close enough now that Kieran could feel his breath against his ear. “That’s exactly the fire the song needs, Kier. That’s the honesty they don’t deserve but they’re going to get anyway.”

Let them question this. Let them try to call this performance when they hear exactly how much I hate every single one of them.

“Again,” Vale said, stepping back to resume his circling. “From the beginning. Show me that beautiful rage again.”

Kieran began the song again. His fingers found the notes while his chest burned with residual electrical echoes and his throat tasted like screaming. But underneath the pain, something darker and more honest awakened. He hated it.

Vale was right.

He needed this.