* There are some mentions of torture within this chapter. I promise that this is the only chapter with such themes and the rest of the novel will not be as graphic. Please be advised. *

You let loose a laugh as the knife danced across the edge of your skin, red flowers blossoming from where the blade of steel laid its seeds. Long since had you become immune to the pain, the fury and growing stillness inside you as the first ounces of death seeded inside your mind. Sometimes Dust would slip up, make a longer gash than normal as he used the knife to carve you into a new person and there would be a fresh wave of pain.

But you were beginning to like that type of pain, the brief distractions from the icy coldness that was making home in your limbs, the way that you often felt light-headed and how every blink, every breath took great strain upon the meager reserves of energy that still pumped in your veins, as if every sigh that left your lungs would be your last.

Because pain was new, something different.

You began to appreciate the work and dedication that Dust was putting into you. At first when he had begun to dig the knife into your skin, you had been too busy screaming your head off to notice anything in particular. But when you had hardened your mind and heart to the pain of mortals, when you were immune to most inflictions upon your skin, then you began to notice the finer, more subtle details that went unnoticed at first.

For instance, there was a beauty in the way that you saw him hold the knife, where his bony fingers clasped the hilt of the knife with the right amount of pressure so that it would not slip from his grasp, the way he knew how to angle the tip of the blade against your flesh so that it would cut with ease as one might with an orange or some other fruit.

You began to wonder why you had even recoiled from the thought of torture in the first place, why you had been so afraid that the pain would remold you into a new person, how desperate you had been to avoid such a fate! But why should you fight against such a thing when it was so obviously destiny? The right steps in the right direction had led you to where you sat now, bound in chain as a knife slowly carved away your former self, leaving behind a new person entirely.

If anything, the torture had made you more alert, more aware of your surroundings. You had begun to notice things that you had never noticed before, like the way that you could make out the millions upon millions of heartbeats that festered within the city of New York a few blocks away. You thought that sometimes you would even catch a glimpse of a red scarf flapping around a floating head from time to time as well in the fits of your hysteria when the pain was especially intense, but then the vision fleeted and faded from existence.

Dust had not bothered speaking to you since he had begun work upon carving into you nor did you mind the silence. You liked sitting alone in your thoughts, sifting apart the new person that you were becoming, silent shivers of gratitude running through you at the thought of what he was doing to you. For he had been merciful, he had been kind to you. He had the opportunity to kill you, could do so any time he wanted. But instead Dust had put aside his own personal desires and took the time to carve into you, to remold your mind into something completely new.

There was a transfixed fascination as Dust worked the knife across your skin. Sometimes it was hard to tell if he was even cutting you at all for the pain had become a universal feeling, something that racked your entire being and thus you had grown immune to. There was a constant smile upon the comedian's features as he worked the knife into your skin as if he was just as aware as you of the person you were becoming, the way that the pain and the knife had reshaped your mind, corrupted the very foundation of your core into a new person entirely.

The truth was, you could remember little of your life before this. Every day felt as if it was a year, every second a month. For all you knew, this had been your life since the moment you had been born. From the birth to death of the night Dust worked into your skin, changed your mind with each passing hour. When the first rays of the sun touched the horizon did he place a cloth upon your mouth, hidden chemicals singing your brain to an eternal slumber.

And when the hours of the day had passed would he wake you up and the cycle would begin again.

As the days passed you began to understand things that Dust had once told you that your feeble and weak mind had not been able to grasp. Humans were a tumour, a foul disease across this planet that was far too noisy, far too polluted. You understood, you could hear everything around you from the flicker of the wings of a mosquito to the wailing of a child down the street because his mother had not purchased a video game for him. Your pain, your suffering, those had all made you aware of these things, heightened your senses to take in and understand things that had once before escaped your grasp.

Because would not the world be better without humans? Without the constant wailing of a million voices and the clutter of so many people at one time? You understood now Dust's desire to eradicate humans from the planet, to be the first one to push the domino that none wanted to, to collapse the false empire of the human race that had dominated this planet for far too long.

You did not think you were a human anymore. The pain, the gift that Dust had bestowed upon you these last few days had fused with the very core traits of your personality, imprinted upon you and left a mark that you think most humans did not have. If anything, you had arisen amongst the ranks of the mortals by chance and it was your duty to liberate their souls, to give the Earth a cleansing that it so badly needed.

Sometimes when the pain was really intense did you lose your mind in a fit of hysteria and babbling, mind retreating into the confines of your brain and surrounded itself with memories.

During these times your mind was very confused, playing out memories in the midst of your hysteria of lives you were certain you had never lived before. One time you were walking in a field of snow with a knife in your hand, you thought that you would have liked the knife in your memories, the way it fell snug in your hand, the way it seemed to be nothing more than an extension of your arm as you slaughtered entire towns and villages.

Sometimes there were memories of you living in a world of monsters. Sometimes you would be in a house with a very energetic skeleton that looked a bit like how Dust did now with an older brother who was very fond of sleeping.

Sometimes your mind would play memories for you of a world of stars where you would get lost amongst the galaxies. Memories like these you were not fond of, the recollections of peacefulness that seemed to great a bore.

Sometimes there were memories that played inside your head that you did like, though you weren't sure if they were memories or delusions that your mind had cooked up in the midst of the pain. Sometimes you would be walking in the forest of the dead in the dark of night, hiding in the shadows as creatures of night stalked around you. One creature had a very large crack in their skull and a single glowing red eye. You liked the visions with universes such as these, the way the horror chilled your blood, made your mouth run dry.

Because chaos is such a beautiful thing, is it not?

This cycle repeated for a very long time or maybe it had only been for a few days. You weren't sure for it was hard to tell the passing of the days when you only spent your world in darkness and had never seen the sun in forever. You weren't even sure what the sun looked like anymore, only that you were glad it was dark. Light hurt your eyes a lot.

Eventually, the knife stopped and the chains fell from your wrists.

You were surprised when Dust had done such a thing, to let you stand from the chair of your own free will and walk around the corners of the rundown apartment that had now become your home rather than your own personal torture chamber. There was a look of dawning apprehension upon his features, as if the skeleton still believed that you would try to run. Perhaps the former version of yourself would have bolted for the door, even though it was obvious that the comedian would have stopped you the second you offered the slightest indication of your intentions.

Besides, running was for the weak and you were no longer weak. Your mind was different, the whole of your being was different. The knife, the torture, had not only broken the surface of your skin but also cut your mind in a different way that one thought imaginable. You giggled a the thought, not surprised the slightest by the hysteria that was ripping through the manifesting insanity in your mind. It was funny because the blade of a knife cut deeper than the flesh, it touched the consciousness, the personality of someone as well.

You walked around the room for a moment, taking in the beauty of the dust that coated the furniture, the way it remained undisturbed despite the chaos of the world that ravaged around it. For dust did not care about the woes of the living for dust was eternal, something that had existed since the dawn of creation and would continue to exist thousands upon thousands of years after the fall of mankind.

"You're not running." The comedian inclined his head slightly. There was no offer of surprise in his words, as if he understood the weight of what he had done to your mind, how he had twisted you to the point of near insanity and forced you into submission.

You did not reply for there was no need to reply. You didn't think you liked conversation. Conversation was boring now that you thought about it, just the mere exchange of words between one person and another. What was the point of wasting your breath when you could be doing something more with your time, something better?

The dust on the counters started to speak. A lot of things had begun to talk to you ever since the knife cut into your flesh, since your sanity had been carved away. You were not even bothered the slightest by the gore of your flesh nor did you bother looking at it. Appearances were nothing more than the concerns of people who were engulfed in the false world they lived in, wasting away in the delusion of becoming something better than themselves, something more. But you were better than that, sharpened, focused on the true parts of life. You could see that now.

"We like you," the dust spoke to you, voices ranging in all different pitches and volumes. "We didn't like the old you at first. All you did was scream and scream."

That had been true. You had screamed a lot as the old version of yourself had fought for survival, screamed into the dark as the knife slowly tore away at your flesh, cut away the fabrics of your old personality until there was a raw bleeding mass as the sole remnant, a lump of clay ready to be molded at the slightest touch. And you had been molded under the knife, to the point where you no longer screamed into the dark as the dark screamed back but rather laughed at the feeling of fire and ice that danced in your veins when the blade met your skin.

The dust began to scream at you and it was very loud. You weren't sure why the dust was screaming but you did not like it. In order to make the dust stop screaming, you started screaming at the dust until your voices intermingled into a chorus of the damned, the songs of hell ringing throughout the abandoned apartment complex. All the while the comedian watched as you screamed at the dust, his head tilted to the side as he watched you struggle to cope with the growing insanity inside your mind.

Your voice finally hitched as a brief realization dawned upon you. The dust hadn't been speaking or screaming at all, you had been the one talking this entire time. "I'm going insane," you whispered, a glimmer of your former self shining through the veil of insanity that purged your mind for a brief second. You whipped around to face Dust, struggling to keep your resolve, your mind together to form a coherent thought. "What the hell did you do to me!"

"I'm creating something new," Dust whispered gently and before you could move, before you could even run, he had teleported by your side. His touch was gentle as he guided you back to the seat, you obeying blindly despite the fear and hatred that welled inside you for all that he had done to you, the way he had so easily cut the sanity away from your mind. All the resolve had drained from you in an instant. "Though it seems that I was a little too early in allowing to wander free, a shard of your mind is still wrapped up in the delusion that you're going to get out of here, that your race, your species still cares for you."

He leaned in closer, a demonic grin plastered on his features. "But no one is coming, do you understand? It's just me and you for the rest of time, trapped inside this room with the knife and the cold and the dust." You shivered underneath his gaze, fear coursing through you at the thought of how close you were to becoming just like him, how close you were to finally snapping and falling off the brink.

And then that brief little moment of sanity was gone as the tidal wave of pain and madness washed over you, drowning out your senses, bringing you back to the world of insanity as the chains were wrapped around your wrists, binding you to the chair. The knife started cutting at the base of your neck and you gasped at the coldness of the steel and how easily your skin succumbed to it. Humans portrayed themselves as giants when really, they were nothing more than small insignificant animals that could easily meet the embraces of death should a vein be cut the wrong way.

You began to sing to yourself as the ordeal continued, allowing yourself to be lost in thought, having no care for the world around you. Inside your mind you began to imagine all sorts of things. Your mind was your quiet place, the little world you could retreat to when things weren't so pleasant outside. You became vaguely aware that you were screaming the lyrics to the song, reflecting the agony of the moment no matter how much your insanity dulled you to the pain of the blade.

"Ring around the rosy," your voice warbled through the dark of night, trying to drown out the knife, the dust on the counters that was starting to talk and scream again which was very annoying. Somewhere in the distance, you were aware of a loud crash that echoed throughout the room of the apartment.

"Pockets full of posies," you continued to sing, ignoring what was going on around you. You were slightly offended by al the shouting going on and you wished that the dust would stop yelling.

You were immediately thrown off as a harsh shaft of light shone in your eyes, painfully bright when you had spent so much of your time shrouded in darkness. You became aware of several police officers that surrounded you while three others managed to restrain Dust and hold him to the floor. There were several startled exclamations upon their realization that Dust was in fact a skeleton and not a human being, but they managed to subdue him with a blow to the back of the skull, rendering him unconscious.

You snarled against the restraints, hating these men in uniform, hating them for coming in and ruining your song, for making the dust angry. "You're making them scream!" you wailed as the chains around your hands were unfastened, exposing your wrists that had been rubbed raw from the days you had spent tied down. "The dust doesn't like this!"

The police officers exchanged nervous glances and moved to pacify you when you seized the opportunity, growling in the back of your throat as you flung yourself onto one of them. "Stop screaming!" you yelled back at the dust who screamed only harder and made your ears hurt. You pressed your nails against the throat of the man you were on top of, fascinated by how your very hands could draw blood from another living creature.

Before there was any chance to inflict serious damage upon him, however, you began aware of a piercing sensation within your neck as a metal syringe was inserted into your skin. You felt suddenly very tired and the screaming of the dust was beginning to dim out as you stumbled, fatigue washing over you.

"Stop screaming," you mumbled one last time before slumping over.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!

The reason why this chapter was so strange and twisted was because it represents (Y/n) slowly losing their sanity as they're tortured on a constant basis. A lot of this - like the dust screaming - isn't actually real, it's just a figment of their insanity.