{trigger warning: graphic depiction of violence, torture, sensory deprivation, and anxiety}

Days didn't exist anymore. Not even with Tyler counting how many times the sun has set on the bottom of the chair's arm with his broken fingernails. He'd lost track after his fingers were left bloody stumps, courtesy of Brendon.

When he wasn't passing out from the exhaustion and pain, Tyler teetered a line between agonizing psychosis and dissociating numbness, sobbing and shouting strings of threats until his voice gave out.

The last experiment Tyler remembered was him walking on a treadmill covered in broken glass. The speed slowly picked up until Tyler was sprinting, his wrists tied with wire so he couldn't do anything except for run or fall into a pit of glass.

Eventually, he just collapsed in the glass when his legs gave out beneath him, blacking out long enough for Brendon to untie him and chain him to the wall.

Prior to that, Tyler had managed to break the legs off the chair and tried to unsuccessfully escape, resulting in... a punishment so meticulous and indescribable that not even Tyler with his expanded vocabulary could fathom to put it into words.

Needless to say, he didn't try to escape again.

After Tyler recovered from that, he started with the needles. God, the needles were horrific. Each meticulous prick Brendon made on his body grew into hundreds, maybe thousands of bleeding specks on his body, his skin itching and screaming.

Tyler read a couple books during a weekend about the Salem Witch Trials, and he couldn't recall exactly where he'd read the fact, but he remembered how the townspeople would stick the girls with needles to see if they were witches. He couldn't remember why needles.

Tyler, up until then, didn't have enough energy to scream or think properly anymore, for the IV in his arm was laced with the same drug Brendon knocked him out with. But it didn't matter, because the drugs lessened the pain.

They gained a routine fairly quickly, though Tyler was just trying his best to survive. He would answer whatever questions Brendon tested him with and in exchange, Brendon would give him food.

At that point, Tyler had hardly eaten anything beside the bag of fluids plugged to him to like a lifeline, so he was becoming delirious and desperate. Each little piece he received was a necessity for survival.

Brendon had covered up the window with black tarp and set up blinding white photography lights all around the room, so he never slept. Tyler didn't know when it was day or night anymore. He could've been told he'd been down there for a year and he would've believed it.

Tyler woke up this time around after collapsing a third time when Brendon ties him back on the treadmill, his feet and legs bandaged halfway up his calves. The bandages on his face had been replaced with fresh ones. Brendon was sitting nearly face to face with him, writing something down on a notepad. He had glasses on, and his clothes were the clean of blood.

Tyler gasped, a cool, earthy smell that wasn't there before filling his lungs. His legs were numb. He tried to flex his toes, but nothing below his waist would respond to his metal commands. The small black holes from the cattle prod has scabbed over, almost completely healed.

It must've been what, one week since he was taken? Two? Tyler could only guess from how fast he'd healed, but he wasn't afraid of asking, even if he wouldn't get a straight answer.

Eventually, Brendon noticed he was awake and smiled, setting his clipboard down on his lap. "How are you feeling?"

"How long has it been since you've trapped me in this hell?" Tyler spat, forcing his voice to sound irritable rather than engulfed in pain.

He earned another smile, this one wider but more sincere than the last. "Two months. Though maybe I shouldn't tell you that, as sensory deprivation helps with expanding one's mental capacity."

Tyler wasn't expecting an honest answer, but that didn't make him any less enraged. "Fuck you."

"Hey, now. Don't be rude. No changes in behavior or vocabulary use since beginning, although subject has begun using more vulgar language." Brendon wrote that down. "I wonder if there's a way to take that away without damaging your brain."

"No, no, no, no..." Tyler started to jerk, trying desperately to free himself. "Please, you don't have to do this. There's gotta be another way for you to do the experiment."

"If there was, I would've found it. Now, what else should we do? Cattle prod, needles, or glass on the treadmill?  Oh, maybe something new. The others didn't seem to do anything, so many the stimulus isn't electrical currents or sharp pains."

Brendon left his pencil and clipboard on his chair and picked up a drill, humming to himself. He pushed in the largest drill bit on the wall, blood caked on the tip. Dread pooled in Tyler's stomach as he plugged the drill in, the metallic whirring sending him into a panic.

"Please, no!" He screamed, unable to move as Brendon grabbed him by his hair, holding his head still.

"Scream all you want," Brendon chuckled, tasing his voice as he shouted, "nobody's going to here you here! I made sure of it!"

He started to laugh, low and imperceptible at first, then it rose to a maniacal cackling, like he was high on laughing gas. Tyler's mind flickered to the sadistic dentist from Little Shop of Horrors, one go his favorite movies. What was the dentist's name again? He couldn't remember.

Slowly, Brendon pushed the drill into the backs of his hands just between the bones; boiling hot flames ran through Tyler's body as he felt the spinning metal go straight through his hand, tearing at his flesh. Tears streamed down his face, and he took deep, heavy breaths just to keep himself conscious. As much as he wanted to scream, he didn't want to give the sadistic bastard the satisfaction of hearing him.

"You can scream, Dr. Joseph. It helps with my experiment," Brendon said, letting go of Tyler's head. It dropped down to his chest, Tyler too weak to hold it up anymore. "Hmm. Interesting."

"My- my team... they're going to find you," Tyler sputtered, tasting the strong tang of metal in the back of his throat. "And I'm going to watch as they fill you with bullets."

"If they find me. Which they won't. I have eyes in the police department, they won't get close to me."

Tyler spit, seeing a blotch of red. "What about Josh? Did you kill him?"

"Oh, your fiancé? A bullet to the forehead will do that to you." Brendon laughed as the blood drained from Tyler's face, fear tinging the remaining ounce of defiance he had. "Don't worry, that means nobody will come after us. Maybe now I can finally finish my experiment."

Brendon grabbed Tyler's head again, beginning to drill down on his other hand. Tyler couldn't hold in his screams this time, his throat going raw after what felt like hours. Once Brendon was finished, Tyler was panting, sweat pouring down his face despite the chill in the air.

He was in and out of consciousness for a while, seeing flashes of black before the whirring began again. Brendon asked him questions every now and then, cataloguing his answers. Tyler couldn't answer them, the pain clouding his mind enough that he couldn't say a proper sentence. His screams were accompanied by Brendon's malicious laughter.

There were three holes in each hand, each about half an inch deep. Blood poured from the dark red caverns between his knuckles, running and pooling at his feet. Tyler was almost unconscious when the feeling in his legs returned.

He pushed them forward. The legs of the chair squeaked, but not enough to grab Brendon's attention from where he sat down.

"No improvement," Brendon mumbled, scribbling something down. "This isn't working. Why are you resisting? I'm trying to help you."

"Why are you trying to help me?" Tyler asked. If he couldn't threaten him, he could feed into his psychosis. "What- what makes me special enough to be this lucky?"

Brendon looked back and smiled. "You're coming around, huh?"

"I can see why you do this, I understand now."

"Finally. Someone who understands. I'll show you why I chose you," Brendon said, a lilt I'd satisfaction in his voice.

Tyler blinked hard and saw Brendon directly in front of him with a curved, wickedly sharp knife. He tried to scream, but only a strangled gasp escaped.

"I- I can tell you why you're like this!"

Brendon stopped as he angled the knife's point against Tyler's throat. He lowered it, head tilting to the side. "What do you mean?"

"I know tell you why you kill. Why you think you're expanding minds when you're not. Why you're classified as a sexual sadist serial killer and get off on seeing others in pain. I can do that. But only if you untie me, just for a couple minutes. Please."

He must've caught his attention, because Brendon dropped the knife, grabbed his chair, and dragged it so he sat in front of Tyler.

"Alright, then. Tell me why I am what I am."