I AM THE MONSTER IN YOUR HEAD [CLOSED]

[greymatter]

WHO| Dr. Grey & Aunamee
WHAT| Aunamee tortures a captive Grey.
WHEN| Week 2
WHERE| Fantasyland
WARNINGS| Physical and psychological torture.

He's slow to come around this time, forehead pressed to the wood, and all he's aware of is the intense throbbing, the waves of pain that seem to wash over his brain like an ocean tide. That, and the nausea. He lifts his head just enough to dry retch, shuddering. There's nothing to bring up. He finished his food supply a day ago. He can't hear anything over the ringing in his ears but his thoughts. Even before he finds them, dread begins to coil in the the pit of his stomach. They unfold as his mind clears enough to allow them through.

Aunamee.

Comments

[marcato]

The name of the building is "Mickey's PhilharMagic" and it has a stage. This is what drew Aunamee to the building in the first place: that rotten wood, those tattered red chairs, those spotlights. Like most of the things in this park, the whole building has softer edges than its real life counterpart. Plastic statues replace marble. The chairs have smoothed arms.

Aunamee sits in one of those chairs right now. With all the other broken chairs around him, he looks like a king sitting on a throne of ruins.

“Good morning,” he says.

Grey is on the stage.

[greymatter]

A chill runs the length of his spine, his head jerking up at the voice. He regrets it immediately, groaning as he sets it back down against the wood. Everything seems too loud, too bright. It's when he tries to move that he realizes his bindings, the rope around his wrists and ankles. Panic threatens to overtake him. "...Untie me." Even his voice seems too loud.

[marcato]

“It makes you feel like one of your victims, doesn’t it?” he says, leaning back in the chair. It squeaks behind him, the sound not unlike a whining dog. “Bound and helpless. Waiting for the scapel.”

He gets up out of the chair (another high-pitched tone, another cry of agony) and approaches the foot of the stage. The scarred wood. The shattered lights.

He bends over and picks up a piece of glass between his thumb and forefinger.

“It must be difficult.”

[greymatter]

Even bound and helpless he can't empathize with his victims. Won't. They are nothing to him. He lifts his head more slowly, catching the flash of light that cuts it's way through the broken roof of the building and reflects off of the sharp edge of the glass in Aunamee's hand. It makes him squint his eyes, cuts to the back of his skull like a knife.

"You think I'm afraid of pain?" He asks with a sound that might be a laugh. Pain, no. But Aunamee was another story.

Get out,
get out,
get out,
get out.

[marcato]

"No," he says simply, and he lets the glass clatter to the ground. With his hand still raised, he turns to look at Grey. "I know how you think."

It's matter of fact. Nonchalant. He's been keeping his psychic abilities hush-hush, but it's precious moments like these where he risks it. He needs to risk it. How many more times will he have an opportunity like this?

"Mostly," he adds a beat later, although there's no effort put behind the lie. He leans back against the stage, several feet away from Grey's prone body. "I only want to talk with you."

[greymatter]

The words draw a visible flinch from him.

He places his head back down for a moment, sweat trickling down his temples. "You're a terrible liar." He says. He's been trying to scramble his thoughts since he woke, trying to throw Aunamee off even a little bit.

Talk.

Anywhere but here.

[marcato]

He hears the words before Grey says them, you're a terrible liar. It's like it has a physical presence, this little insult, like a cool washcloth across his face. The flinch he feels even more so. So sudden. So harmless. Like a dying fish.

No, he thinks, and a smile flickers across his face. Only I scramble your thoughts.

"Maybe it's because I'm an honest man," he says, raising his eyebrows almost comically. He lounges.

The next words come easily, almost lazily.

"Do you think you inherited your psychosis from your father?"

[greymatter]

He starts to laugh humorlessly at the idea of Aunamee being 'honest' but then his breath stops for several seconds. Silence. His arms suddenly strain in the bindings, muscles defined with the sheer effort, mindless of the way the rope burns and cuts into his wrists. "Aunamee." He hisses.

His father was dead, everything about him was dead, he'd made so very sure of that. Aunamee would not pull him back up from his grave.

He would not allow it.

[marcato]

"When did you first realize he was a monster?" he asks, maintaining that lazy tone even while the other man struggles and writhes. He doesn't even bother to hide the smile that is forming on his lips.

He doesn't bother to hide the pleasure in his eyes.

"Tell me."

[greymatter]

He was a week and a half short of three.

His father had ventured up from the basement on rare occasion, sleep deprived, set straight for the pot of coffee his mother always had available. It'd long gone cold. The man had hardly noticed the curious toddler pull the scalpel from his lab coat pocket, but his mother had, quick to remove the sharp tool from her son's hands and check him over for injuries. There had been tears.

A coffee mug shatters against the kitchen floor as his father grips him by the front of his shirt and he screams as he's jerked forward. "Fear, crying, things like that are for the lowest of the low." The man snarls. "Stop crying!" For a moment, it looks like the man is going to hit him.

The memory ends with his mother yelling something, a fearful plea, and lifting him into her arms.

"GET OUT!" He shouts, eyes wild as he tries to work his hands free. His right wrist is being rubbed raw, blood beginning to stain the rope. "I'll kill you." He laughs, sharp and full of instability. "I'll kill you again."

[marcato]

"But you always want to kill me," he says, his voice low enough to be a purr. "That's why you're in this mess."

He pushes himself off the stage, turns, and then leans forward. He rests his chin on the stage, his eyes level with Grey's. He bathes in this, this control. He snagged Grey's mind with his teeth, and now he's turning it over with his tongue, playing with it, tasting it.

"What do you want me to get out of, Grey?"

[greymatter]

The scientist jerks back when Aunamee's eyes fall level with his own, something broken and unhinged in his, like gears that no longer line up. With effort, he pulls himself up onto his knees. His mangled right hand is useless but his left picks at the knots in the rope around his ankles.

"You know exactly what I mean." He hisses. And then his expression falters, because Aunamee does know exactly what he means. Exactly.

[marcato]

"I don't."

It's a private taunt. A private torture. That is what Aunamee enjoys about all this, how most people would see him asking simple questions and making simple observations, but for Grey, it's like needles digging under his fingernails.

"I worry about your delusions, you know. You're not a well man."

[greymatter]

So this was how he was going to play it. Did anyone else know of Aunamee's abilities? If not, he'd be playing right into the man's hands by saying anything more. He bares his teeth at his captor. "If you're going to kill me, get on with it."

[marcato]

"I don't want to kill you," he says, and he stretches his arm across the stage, his fingernails hissing against the wood before making it to Grey's shoulder. He brushes his hand up against it gently, softly, his fingers tracing a mark that only Grey knows is there.

Only Grey, and now Aunamee.

"I want you to know that hurting people I care about is off limits."

[greymatter]

It's just the discomfort of being touched at first, and he's just beginning to pull away when he realizes what Aunamee's tracing. He flings himself back away from Aunamee, head spinning with the sudden movement. "Don't touch me!" He shrieks, the ringing in his ears growing with the volume of his own voice.

He struggles onto his side, desperately trying to work himself free again. "Get away from me!" There's panic in his voice. "If you aren't going to kill me... get away from me!"

[marcato]

He lets his hand hang in the space Grey once occupied like a hook without a painting.

"I want to hear you say the words," he says. His voice is a knife. "I want to hear you say that the people I care about are off-limits."

[greymatter]

He stares wide-eyed at Aunamee for several seconds before giving a laugh filled with hysteria. "Fuck you." He spits.

[marcato]

He shuts his eyes as though the words were a particularly bright light, his mouth twisting into a barely concealed sneer. He says nothing to the insult. Instead, as silent as can be, he throws himself onto the stage, stands up, then aims a kick at Grey's stomach.

"Maybe you can't be fixed," he says, drawing his leg back. "Maybe your father recognized you for the broken thing you are."

[greymatter]

He curls around the blow sharply with a gasp, coughing as he tries to pull himself out of range of the next. "Doesn't much matter what he thought, he's long dead." The scientist glares. "You should know all about it." It should serve as a warning.