Hilu flicked her wrist, and a loud, booming beat started thumping through the affluent penthouse. Tim smirked and chuckled as he pulled out a bottle of wine and popped it open with an extraneous [skill] that allowed him to suck corks out of wine bottles with his mouth. He spat out the cork and laughed, patting Hilu on the shoulder. She shot him a dirty look through the living wood scrawled diagonally across her face up to her upper left cheek. Then, suddenly, she changed her tune a bit and shot him a smile.

Silash was, of course, terrified. But he could do nothing at all to free himself from this torment. He was being psychologically lambasted every step of the way. Here he was, frozen in time, locked in nothing, immobile, thoughtless, dauntless and unaware.

Silash wished he could at least scratch his itches. Sure, he was terrified, but there was also a small area of his thigh next to his crotch that was, at the present moment, extremely itchy. It felt like some sort of miniature, subdued fire had just erupted there, or perhaps like a colony of fire ants were crawling over said area. Thinking about it, of course, only exarcebated things - but how the Hell was Silash supposed to not think about it when this tiny little spot near his crotch was so itchy it might as well have been covered in microscopic brambles that were silently exploding like popcorn on a stovetop. Of course, Silash hated the fact that he was frozen, paralyzed, immobile against his wealthy captors. But it was hard to focus on that when he was presently in so much pain from the terrible, dread itchiness!

Hilu started to take off her top. It was taking a while, it was a halter top, and for whatever reason it kept getting stuck somewhere between her back and her shoulders and she just couldn't pull it off, which was kind of funny because she'd been trying to pull it off to the beat.

"Ugh! Titi!" It was stuck halfway over her head. "Get this, fuck, get this shit the fuck off of me before it rips my hair extensions out!!"

Tim rushed to attention, sighed, and struggled to pull the top off. Sure, her hair extensions were worth the salary of ten tradesmen, but Tim could always just use his [skill] to get some more money. Regardless, even with that knowledge, it was really on there. It was essentially suctioned halfway off of Hilu's head.

"UGH! This is so fucking ridiculous! It was supposed to be sexy! I wanted to be sexy, Titi!"

"I know, my sweet, I know-"

"Don't you fucking tell me what you fucking know! Just fix it!!"

All Silash could do was sit there and watch as Tim struggled, time and time again, to tear off Hilu's top.

"That's it," said Tim. "I'm getting the butter."

"WHAT?!" squawked Hilu, her thick lips pouting out of the deodorant-covered right armhole of her top.

Tim calmly walked over to his refrigeration wall and pressed on a small pentagon. It embedded in the wall, sending a light ripple through its surface, and then shot out with a fresh stick of the finest Blandian butter. Blandian butter was famous for how flavorful it was.

With a loud, satisfying squelching, Tim inked the butter around each stuck side of Hilu's head. She grimaced and groaned through this process, but he paid her no mind, and then, soon enough, she was unstuck.

"Thank the gods," said Hilu with a retch as she adjusted her bra strap. "That was fucking disgusting, having you rub that thick stick all over my face. Now my chin's all dripping with this white gunk."

"Just wipe it off with one of our silk kitchen towels, Hilu," said Tim.

"But it'll stain them, won't it? All the juices, or whatever?"

"It's just butter, Hilu. If anything it'd be oil, not juices."

On they squabbled, for far too long, all while this rhythmic clubhouse music was all but shaking the roof, and Silash was stuck there watching it all against his will. If only he could've at least closed his eyes, he thought... But of course that was not a possibility. His entire body was, in this moment, not his own.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Eventually, Hilu got the dribbles of white butter off her face, and that was when things got weird.

Tim and Hilu walked, in step, towards Silash. They were holding a cold, iron mask.

"Get ready, buddy." Tim smiled that awful, toothy grin that contorted his living wood so as he wrapped the mask around Silash's face.

The mask was cold, so terribly cold, and it seemed to suck into it all sensation and worldly awareness. It was like, when the mask went over Silash's face, his living wood was almost... Asleep.

Having living wood on your face was almost like having a different organ on your face. Something apart from eyes, ears, nostrils, a mouth... Living wood was like another sensory item, all older adult taumans knew this all to well as when the plaster on their face hardened they too learned what it felt like. It allowed for a more nuanced perspective on the world, a heightening of other senses, and something else entirely. That something was, as explained by the best Nomachiattan scientists, a sense of aura.

Aura was explained in many different ways, but the most popular way to explain it was really quite boring, as the Phlagorgnick Principle postulates.

The Phlagorgnick Principle postulated that, for every amazing, miraculous thing about existence as a whole, there is an explanation that is to an equal degree to its manner of amazement banal, complicated, difficult to understand, and, worst of all, dreadfully boring to the point that miraculous things are, in general, not really all that miraculous at all - otherwise, how would they exist in the first place?

So was aura was, was, basically, very dull. It was a generative field that surrounded all life. A rock, unless of course that rock was alive, and of course some rocks were alive, but a non-alive, static rock would not have an aura. But, say, a fish would have an aura, unless of course that fish was non-alive, which generally only happened when said fish died, and even then dead things would often have what was considered a faint aura, trace leftovers of what had once been there, that what of course having been an aura which of course pertained to life.

So what was not so dull about the aura was that nobody knew for certain why exactly there was this generative field that surrounded all life. But, generally, it was still seen as dull and boring. Why? Well, there were a number of reasons.

One, was that they were talked about all the time when Nomachiattans were young. This was a normal part of curriculum, to inform people that auras existed and that nobody knew what their deal was. And, as everyone knew due to the Bhalgougi Principle, anything repeated over and over again to young people was doomed to be seen as boring and passe regardless of how mysterious it might initially sound.

So there was the Bhalgougi principle working against the concept of the aura, and that was all well and good. But, along with that, there was something else. There was the way in which it was explained to people. That isn't to say that just repeating the explanation is what made the concept of the aura seem so boring, but indeed, what is was was that the actual words and methods used for that explanation were themselves dense, obtuse, obscure, and altogether painful to experience.

There was a study done in Gifflenberg on a group of taumans of various age groups that found that the more technical and advanced something became, the less sense it made to everyone involved to the point that it reached something called an attention event horizon. That is to say, the less sense something made in general, the harder and harder it would become for them to comprehend, regardless of how difficult it actually was to comprehend, to the point wherein eventually the tauman mind would in effect shut down and start daydreaming about something else instead of paying any attention at all to what it was it was attempting to grasp comprehension of.

Regardless, the important thing to understand is that auras were a fact of life in more ways than one, and everybody in Nomachiato knew this like the back of their hand, regardless of whether said hand was covered in living wood or not.

But the really gripping thing was, when the cold, dark mask went on Silash's face, he could no longer feel the auras. He couldn't feel Tim's aura, or Hilu's. He couldn't even feel his own. It was as if literally all of his sense had receded into themselves, and left forever.

For a moment, it made Silash wonder if he had somehow died. He seemed to be in some sort of a deep, dark nothingness expanse. It was fearful and terrifying.

Suddenly, out of the corner of what had to be his eyes, Silash saw something. Something with long, swaying tentacles.

Hello there, Silash. I've been waiting for you, spoke a deep, booming voice that echoed through Silash's head.

And then, Silash opened his eyes. He could move!

And yet, he couldn't.

He was strapped to a gurney, his arms and legs restrained by overtightened belts. Above his face was a large, spinning drill that reeled and made the most dreadful noise at a horrible volume.

"Let's see what makes you so fucking smart, then, Silash," said Tim with a cackle as he rubbed his hands together and pulled on some knobs and gears next to a control panel.

As he did so, the drill near Silash's face spun faster, and advanced towards him.

So, Silash wasn't dead. But it seemed like he was about to be.