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Gillian

T here’s movement on the monitor. He’s stirring.

I tap the intercom. “Rise and shine.”

He jerks awake like a startled dog, tries the door, realizes, and freezes.

Good.

I let the silence stretch.

He doesn’t speak at first. Probably thinks this is still a prank. A misstep. A misunderstanding. He always misjudges what someone will do when you take away every other option.

I press the intercom again.

“Do you remember the first time you watched me cry in this room?”

He says something. It cuts out mid-syllable. He’s trying the intercom from inside.

“It was after the procedure,” I continue. “You leaned against the door while I screamed. Do you remember what you said?”

I already know he doesn’t. Men like Ellis never remember the things they say when they feel powerful. But I do. I remember every syllable. Every breath. Every time I tried to be good.

I switch tracks.

There’s a delay—then the audio kicks in.

“Stop crying.”

“You’re lucky we kept your face intact.”

“Next time, we won’t.”

His voice. From the archive.

I loop it into the room. Layered over white noise and a heartbeat sample pulled from one of his own stress tests.

Then I turn the heater all the way up.

PsychLink runs on patterns. So do breakdowns.

He sleeps in short, shallow loops now. Ten minutes, maybe less. The kind of sleep your body takes without permission. He wakes choking, always. Dreams of drowning, maybe. His throat is raw. Eyes bloodshot. He’s covered in his own sweat, piss, vomit. He smells like a person who’s been forgotten. And maybe, in some ways, he has.

Day Nine begins before he knows it.

I adjust the lighting—blinding, clinical, flickering on a cycle I programmed to change every ninety seconds. He can’t adjust. There’s no pattern. No day. No night. No rhythm for his body to hold onto. Just stuttered flashes that break his sense of time like glass under a heel.

He’s thinner now, his face drawn, his cheeks hollow. His skin has taken on a strange sheen—slick in some places, cracked in others. Sweat, blood, and vomit cling to him, dried in layers. His breathing is shallow, uneven. His mouth hangs open when he sleeps, like his body’s forgotten how to close it.

I don’t speak to him at first. I let the silence swell. When he leans over the tray and looks at the pliers again, I know he’s deciding. He hasn’t moved the first tooth. It’s still there, half-dried, pale at the root. I hope he replays the way it felt pulling it out every time he closes his eyes.

The second tooth takes even longer.

He braces himself against the wall, mouth open, hand shaking as he positions the metal. He’s crying. Quietly. Not from fear. From the humiliation of it. From the animalistic simplicity of the act. I see the moment it slips—when the pliers twist too fast, crack too deep. Blood floods his mouth and he doesn’t spit. He swallows.

He doesn’t scream this time.

I think he knows it doesn’t matter.

When he drops the second tooth in the tray, I slide down a straw. It’s taped to a juice box. Orange, too acidic for open wounds. I watch him hesitate, then drink anyway. The way his face contorts, the way he coughs halfway through—it’s not the pain that gets me. It’s how quickly he goes back for the second sip. Blood and orange juice don’t mix.

Ask me how I know.

I give him two hours.

Then I send the next item.

It’s a mirror.

Not full-size. Not reflective glass. Polished metal. Medical-grade. The kind they use when you need to see the damage without actually facing yourself.

He stares at it for a long time. Turns it. Tilts it. Looks at the blood on his teeth. The empty socket. The way his lips are swollen, his jaw slack and wet and ruined.

He whispers something to himself, small, rhythmic.

I kill the lights.

Then I turn on the sound.

This time it’s not his voice. It’s hers.

His mother.

From an old home movie.

Soft. Southern. Saying his name.

“Elliot, baby. You all right?”

Then static.

Then the voice again.

“Elliot. You come home right now, you hear?”

Then silence.

He claws at the wall. Bangs his head against it once, twice, like he’s trying to shake the memory out. I let him.

I record it—the sound of him breaking.

I want to see what happens when you take the thing someone loved most—not the woman, but the innocence of being loved—and weaponize it.

When the lights come back on, I speak. “Two more.”

He doesn’t cry this time. Doesn’t move. But he takes the pliers again. And for the first time since I started, I think he’s starting to believe he’s going to die here.

And he’s right. He just doesn’t know how slowly.