When I was woken up by the dark tendrils trying to reach into me, take control of me, I did not scream. Silent horror was the only thing I was able to muster.

My brain felt fractured, time passed so slowly I experienced every minute like it was a second, and every hour like it was a minute. Nothing made sense, the sensations of the shadow, the whispers in my head, everything a paradox of promises of glory and certainty of suffering.

It took an eternity for the LED lights to turn back on again. But when they did, it was a deliverance.

And with it quickly came the hope-shattering voice.

“Let us start phase 2. Subject 247 is a 29-year-old male, Caucasian, of Nordic descent. He is in good health and fits the criteria of the following experiments. Experiment One. Experiment Three. Experiment Five. Experiment Twenty-Seven…” When he reached the number three-hundred and five, I could finally see him arrive in front of me. He continued his audio logs for another minute, stopping at one thousand and four. “…to note that his FHM output and mental resilience is well above the normal mean for human males. This will be studied through experiments fifty-two to one hundred and two.”

He reached for something and pulled it in front of me. It was a sort of table with wheels. If it had not been covered with torture equipment, I would have almost felt teary-eyed at seeing something new in almost two weeks. But unfortunately, the different chirurgical tools mixed with knives, spiky balls and other things that should only have been seen in underground medieval museums stripped away any joy I could find in finally having something different to look at.

He pulled down at something from above me. I didn’t have time to think it could be the hellish stone, and fortunately, it wasn’t. I was looking in puzzlement at a weird dome filled with circular holes that reminded me of the exhaust tubes in industrial kitchens, and I had no idea what it was for. It was much larger than the kitchen appliance, like an oversized lamp in a dentist office.

“You’ll quickly be familiar with this, don’t worry. I may be a great doctor, but I need AI-assisted tools to create some of my best work, I don’t think I’ll need it today though. First…” He picked up a large knife, one that would not have been strange to see on a bad Rambo remake. He showed it to me in a cold and practiced manner.

It almost felt sadistic, as he did not move it away from my sight, letting me almost bask at all its details with my hungry for anything mind. But he didn’t gloat, he didn’t smile. His face was the perfect example of blankness.

“I’m going to shove this in your stomach.” Benedict announced.

“Wh…No you’re not. You can’t just kill me n…”

And then he did exactly what he announced.

I didn’t see the knife enter my belly, but I felt it. I was too much in shock to say anything, and once again I was unable to scream.

The pain only came later, and even then, my mouth stayed shut.

Inside, everything was fire. I heard my blood gush heavily on the ground, felt my belly lose the weight of my bowels, and so many other things I knew meant that I was dying. Such a large weapon was not supposed to leave living things behind.

But then I felt hands push back my intestines inside my body, and far too quickly for it to be possible, the pain stopped.

I finally realized I had shut my eyes, and I saw Benedict covered in blood drag a bottle of silver liquid at my face.

“Drink it all, it will let you recover your lost blood. If you don’t drink, I’ll have to tube you and do it forcefully, but you won’t be able to talk to me then, and I dislike that.” He said matter-of-factly.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“You…I’m dead.”

“No you’re not, I won’t kill you, nothing interesting in the dead. You’re not even hurt. Not anymore at least. Now drink.”

I squirmed as much as I could, stuck on my table, and grimaced with what I knew had to be the most hate-filled look I had ever given. What he said made no sense, but I felt fine. I knew he was somehow telling me the truth. Had I imagined the steel in my stomach? Had everything happened in my head? I had no idea.

Despite all my being wanting to tell him to go to hell, I opened my mouth and accepted the drink. It was almost freezing and tasted of metal, but at least it wasn’t a waterfall in my face.

“I will kill you.” I promised.

“Highly unlikely. Bonnie? Peak of FHM?”

“175 Benedict.”

“Note: First step of experiment one gave out a 175 FHM rating, twenty points above the mean.” He said as if I had stopped existing.

“So you’re trying to reach the biggest FHM rating ever, is that it? Fear, Horror and Madness, yeah? Your goal is to get in the Guiness Book as the cruellest human being in history?”

The mad scientist almost expressed a real smirk, almost. Something about his eyebrows still felt fake to me.

“With what I can do, that would be the most unambitious thing I could achieve. Something even you could not be satisfied with.”

“You don’t know a thing about…”

“I know everything there is to know about you.” He interrupted me. “Taking care of a sick child as a single parent was the most ambitious thing you ever undertook, and you failed at even that.” The disdain in his tone was real, but that only exacerbated the pure hatred I felt.

“You…you…” I tried to move. Anything, my hands to strangle him, my head to bite him. But nothing moved. There wasn’t even a groan in the metal.

“I told you my purpose already. To find the upper limit of the K world stone.” As he said that, he took the bloody knife again, and once more showed it to me.

“What? You’re going to stab me again?”

“Absolutely. Twenty-two more times, in fact. FHM has significant reduced gains after that.”

Despite everything that had happened already, I felt sick, and a terrified shiver shook my whole body.

“You can’t…no.” I did not want to beg anymore; I did not want to plead. I knew it was useless.

“Why? You said you were going to cut off my legs.” I tried instead.

He raised an eyebrow. “Impressive how you can still maintain cohesive thoughts and conversation, I think you’re going to go far. And yes, that is coming, I have not forgotten, not that I could with Bonnie here double checking my human mistakes.”

Then, without adding anything else, he stabbed me again.

Experiment One, as I understood from what he was telling me in between my disembowelments and when I was forced to drink the silver liquid, was the whole act of getting stabbed to death twenty-three times, and the anticipation of that pain and horror. My FHM peaked at 372, which apparently pleased him a lot.

The last stab was the worst, so bad in fact that I knew that nothing after it would ever matter. I was proved wrong as it was then and there that he concluded Experiment One and started Experiment Three. Which consisted in letting my head lose, so I could see him cutting off parts of my body.

It started with fingernails and teeth, then escalated quickly to my left hand, right arm, legs and ending with my genitals.

What horrified me the most was seeing the wounds close mere seconds after losing the parts of me. It was impossible, and I knew then that I had gone crazy, that nothing that was happening was true. Still, it all happened for me, and nothing I could do or say changed anything. Knowing that none of it was real didn’t make it any less real for my senses. He had stuck a tube down my throat in the middle of that experimentation, filling my stomach with unending litres of the silver liquid.

When the wound of what had been my penis closed, showing a perfect smooth surface of skin, that’s when I truly felt that I would never be the same. That Daniel Templier had broken and would be forever dead.

When Benedict concluded Experiment Three and left me in the dark, I truly felt nothing.

The computer would have proved me wrong, as it had told the mad scientist that I had reached over 500 FHM and had stayed there for most of the end of the torture.

The tendrils tried to grasp at something inside me, but there was nothing left to grasp.

Unfortunately for me, I could not die, not in body nor in my mind, as I started hallucinating again.

I felt a little hand enter my left one.

Even though my neck was in its metal grasps again and I could not look at the damage done to my body, I knew that my left hand had not regrown. I could still feel it missing like most of me. But although it was impossible, not real, a lie, I felt a little hand clench mine, reassuring me, comforting me.

Reviving me.

Nothing could have been crueller, but I was unable to feel anything else but gratefulness.

Just like that, I began crying.