“Your mind is a myth your nervous system tells itself. What you call ‘me’ is a post-hoc justification of your reactions to your history, environment, and the stimulus you’re currently experiencing.” A familiar arc of mind-searing electric pain coursed from the base of my skull to the ends of my toes. My muscles would convulse if I had any control over them. “Mostly the stimulus, honestly.” My captor used the tone of voice that told me to unfocus, to let it guide my thoughts. It had never told me this, but its actions made it clear what was expected of me.

My vision fading from red-white-gray static to black was the only indication I had to know that my vision had returned. My captor had kept my cell nearly light-less when it tormented me. On occasion, I caught glimpses of reflections coming from it. Slivers of light shifting in the dark. There was a time I had thought it was reflections from its clothing - some sociopath clad in too-polished latex - or objects - such as the scalpels it occasionally played across my skin.

“Not just your mind, really. Every single person exists like this. You’re not particularly stimulus-driven.” It sounded disdainful, the tone it used when it told me I wasn’t unique or special. It only reinforced the way I felt, the way it told me to feel. I let its words flow through me, kept my eyes blank and unfocused. I could feel the effect they had on my self esteem, on my self worth, but I was punished if it picked up that I was thinking over its words. “You’re just particularly devoid of context at the moment. Vulnerable.”

Now I could only perceive the reflections as eyes. Far too many eyes, unevenly spaced, floating. The thought was illogical, but I had abandoned logic what felt like days ago. I was suspended in a dark room, but I felt no harness. It controlled whether I could move my arms and legs. It delivered pain without a single touch, when it wished. It seemed to know what I was thinking, and it punished my transgressions. Logic only ended in punishment. Best to just perceive, take everything at face value. Even trying not to think was too much sometimes, so I had become good at just not.

“Is that a little too much for you right now?” I could hear it smirk. Voice like insects buzzing at just the right cadence, modulated to avoid identifying features while still maintaining its tone and cadence. “I’ll start at the beginning. You were a psych major, right? You’ll follow along.” My life existed in cycles. Training was the easiest, because its expectations for me were made clear. “Let’s use me as an example.” It would tell me to perform, and I would perform. If I didn’t, I was punished. The instructions were explicit at first - instructions to crawl, to bark, to beg for food. They grew far more implicit over time - wordless expectations, to behave like a dog, to communicate as one. Humiliating, but easy. I could behave as it expected me to.

“When I woke up this morning, I kissed my partner. I love her, I genuinely do.” Then there were its monologues. It would talk. Sometimes about the training, about the expectations. Sometimes it would simply berate me. Sometimes about the nature of the world. “She doesn’t know what I do for a living, you know. She thinks I work in finance. I slipped out of bed, I cooked breakfast for her and our kids. Made sure everybody started their day right.” They tended to meander, but it spoke with a tone and with the right rhythm to keep some part of me engaged. It sucked me into its stories - even the ones it claimed were about me. When it finished its monologues it would go back to training me.

“In the context of my home life, I’m a different person than I am now. There’s some part of me that’s the same, of course.” I could hear amusement in its voice. “I still have the same skills, the same long-term goals. But my wife sees me as gentle and kind.” It paused for a moment. It always seemed to know when to pause, to let my mind catch up to its words, instead of letting them fall into the background. “Would you describe me as kind?”

It took a moment to register that it wanted a response from me. Something deep inside me told me I should lie, but I shook my head from side to side. I could barely lift my head to do that, and I didn’t want to focus enough to make the action dignified. I couldn’t even focus enough to lie to it. Focus - self-directed focus at least - brought an end to the monologues, and into the hardest part of my cycles. It would hurt me, and not with whatever it did to the base of my skull. It brought out scalplels, claws, batons. It burned me on one occasion. There was nothing I could do to cause it to end. It would harm me, scar me, make me scream until I broke, and then drop me to the floor. Turn on the lights, leave me to patch up my wounds with whatever first-aid tools it deigned to leave me with. When it returned, it began the cycle all over again.

Best to look undignified, then. Best to tell the truth.

“You wound me.” It spoke with mock pain. “But I can’t really blame you. I wouldn’t describe myself as gentle with you, either. But I am gentle, given that context.” Something sharp dragged itself down my sternum, causing me to let out a shocked yelp. “But here? At work? I barely resemble the person I am at home.” The blade stopped at my belly button, and traced the line back up to my collarbone. “Context. Masks. Stimulus. Reaction.” It kept that blade tracing along that line. I didn’t feel any blood, but I could almost feel my skin split. A paradox I simply had to live with, lest it make things worse for me.

“Do you know where this is going yet?” I didn’t dare answer. I didn’t dare to think enough to know what it meant. “No? You’ll get there.” There was pity in its voice - mocking, disdainful, but pitying nonetheless. “Let’s use you as an example, then.” The blade flitted along its path uninterrupted. “You worked a pretty awful job as a barista, but you thrived in it by all accounts.” It knew where I worked? “Always peppy, helpful to your colleagues, a pretty face and voice for the drive-through. The shy chubby one had a crush on you, you know.” Maisie? “Maisie, I think her name was?”

I hadn’t realized it was stalking me before this. It knew where I worked? My mind started racing, running through customer’s faces, trying to pick out a face to put to my captor’s speech patterns.

“I saw that.” I fell from whatever mechanism it used to hold me in the air, sprawling on the ground. It spoke harshly, pointed. “You fucked up, mutt.” It spoke harshly, pointed. The blade that was at my chest found itself at my collarbone and pressed in, just a little. No no no no fuck no please I twisted my body, wrapped my arms over my face and screamed, waiting for the pain to come, waiting for the hurt, the blade to twist. I felt tears streaking down my cheeks. I held my breath. My mind was frozen in fear.

Nothing came.

“I’ll let it slide.” It paused. “For now. I’m enjoying our conversation. And it’s important for you to hear.” The blade flitted up, under my chin. “Thank me for being so nice.”

I tried to say it - it was impossible to make the right sound. It had removed my tongue from my mouth very early. Instead, I just made dumb, meaningless noise. I think the ‘o’ in ‘you’ came out. I was rewarded with a stab of mind-wrenching, body-clenching, vision-blanking electricity from the base of my skull. Pain - but familiar, and safe. Or at least, I wouldn’t need to stitch myself up afterwards - a better result than I’d expected. I corrected my stance the moment I could control myself again, putting myself on my hands and knees and wiggling my ass like a dog would wiggle its tail. I panted, instead of vocalizing.

“Good dog.” The blade pulled away from my chin. “Maisie thinks you quit. Didn’t even get sad about it, really. It wasn’t that big of a crush.” It paused. “You didn’t think I didn’t know everything about your life before taking you here, did you?” It laughed, cruelty and amusement mingling in a familiar sound that told me I was about to have a tough time.

I let out a whine, as close to a sad dogs’ as I could.

“My daughter actually knows you, apparently. Not well, but she got a shock when someone in her friend circle went missing. I should have done a little more stalking, maybe.” It paused. “Should I hurt you for making my daughter worried?” I froze, staring vaguely upwards into the darkness. It waited a few beats before speaking again. “I might, if you weren’t commission work.”

It spoke of me as ‘commission work’ frequently. I wasn’t someone it was personally interested in, I was meant for some sick client.

“You thrived at your shitty service job where others shrank and died inside. Where they experienced pain, you were happy.” Its cadence shifted towards melody and rhythm, and my mind followed along. It didn’t matter what it said, it had trained my mind to follow along purely with tone. “Because it was a hobby for you. You were doing well in school, you had a path towards graduate school, good grades, everything figured out. It was temporary for you. A hobby. The people who shriveled didn’t have that, not all of it.” It spoke quickly.

Fingernails scraped the skin of my scalp, grabbed my hair and pulled back, sending tingling-shivering shock and pain through me. I kept myself together enough to whine, to whimper, instead of yelling in shock. I was on the ground - I was expected to behave as a dog would. “Here, you’re not exactly thriving, are you?” I whined. I didn’t shake my head. “You don’t really resemble the thing I plucked from its happy little life at all. You’re a completely different person, if you can even be called that.” Its words rang true. I could remember the person I was - happy enough, friendly. It was all so distant though. I hadn’t been here for that long, a week or two at most.

“Context.”

“You’ve picked up what I’m doing to you, right? You’re not stupid. You’ll never be stupid, really. Even as a dog, you’re a smart dog.” It released my hair, shoving me forwards onto the ground. I scrambled back to my hands and knees, facing where I thought it was standing, letting out a whine. It wanted the whine. It wanted me to behave like a beaten dog would. “The client wants a person that used to be a pretty, popular, and happy girl. And they want that pretty, popular, and happy girl to be reduced to a hound. A pretty tough ask, you might think, but it really isn’t.” Its hand ran over my scalp, petting me.

It felt good. I hated that it felt good. I hated where this monologue was going. I hated myself. It was disorienting, following its words, staying unfocused, and behaving as it expected me to. The edges of the cycle were blurring - the monologue mixed with the training, the lack of punishment for a slip in my focus. It took a little work, but it wasn’t too hard - focusing and behaving properly.

“You take that girl. You pluck her from her happy life. You separate her from her friends, her job, from anything looking like her former life. You can’t get someone who is into this kind of kink, because they have a context for it, a mask they can put on. So you make sure the pretty, popular, happy girl isn’t a pet-play freak. Meanwhile, to cover your tracks, you find a lookalike. Slit her throat, throw her in a river. Body gets found in her clothes, with her ID, and suddenly nobody is looking for it. You have all the time in the world to work. You take that girl, and you slap her around a bit.” It gently cupped my cheek. I rubbed my face into the hand. It wanted me to. “Tell it to act like a dog. Do some basic fucking cult shit, like restricting its food. Punish it for something arbitrary, constantly. Really fucking traumatize it, you know?”

You break it.

My blood started to run cold. Goosebumps ran up my arms.

“Basic brainwashing tactics, and you really only need the basics. There are ways to do this more slowly, without kidnapping and cult tactics, but it takes time and technique and I’m on the clock, you know? I want to get paid. Feed my family. So the client gets the quick and dirty tactic. You set expectations, and you enforce it.”

And then you expand the context for the expectations. It was making this me larger by enforcing the behavior while I was on the ground, while it was training me. It was so fucking basic, and it was working. It established a pattern, broke the pattern, expanded the pattern.

“I can see the realization in your eyes, mutt.” Its grin was in its voice. “Said you were a smart dog, didn’t I?” It pet my hair more. I started shaking, my teeth started chattering together. I felt cold in a way warmth wouldn’t cure. Everything inside me was ice. Its methods were working, I could feel them working. “You mold its mask in the context vacuum you created. Then you just keep it in that context, for as long as you want the desired behavior.” It paused.

The lights turned on, and I got my first look at my captor. It wore a loose-fitting jumpsuit, blood-slicked black gloves, black boots, contrasting against the concrete-gray walls. A fox-like mask covered its face. Perfectly androgynous, perfectly unidentifiable, except maybe by body type. It held a wooden stick in one of its hands. “Which is for the rest of your life, if you haven’t figured it out. You’re never going back.” The mask modulated its voice. It was just a person. I had been convinced it couldn’t be, after all this time.

It threw the stick across the room.

Tears started streaming down my cheeks. I had given up on surviving this room, but I hadn’t really considered surviving it, only to live my life like this. I had given up on fighting. I couldn’t go back to it. I was only hoping that my captor would kill me, eventually. Now that I could feel it working - I ran across the room, scrambling as fast as I could on my hands and knees, grasped the stick in my mouth, and brought it back to my captor.

“Now, I’m telling you all of this for a reason, mutt.” It knelt down in front of me, ran its dirty gloves through my hair - my chest was bleeding after all - and gripped the back of my head by my hair. “You’ve been very good about not fighting me on this. That was smart. Too much difficulty, and it would’ve been you in the river.” The fox mask’s voice changer was less effective when it was so close, but it was loud enough to still just mask my captor’s voice.

“When my client gets you, he’s going to be expecting a dog. And he’s going to see when you’re not a dog, inside. He’s very particular in his tastes, and he knows when a mutt is just pretending.” It paused for a moment, letting those fox eyes look into mine for just a moment too long. “The last dog I sent to him - of course you’re not the first, don’t look so fucking suprised - was a lot less invested in its own well-being than you are. It didn’t cooperate with me, and I had to take the dog back.” My captor gripped my hair tighter. I whined, as it expected.

“If I have to take back a product, I have to make some return on my investment, you get me? And this process, turning you into this, it doesn’t leave the kind of human that I can resell to just anybody. You’re not some nubile fuck-puppet when I’m done with you, you’re a mutt with a broken brain and an even more broken body.” I whined, loudly. “Yeah. Exactly.” It spoke with mock sympathy. “The kinds of sick fucks that buy things like that don’t have your best interests in mind. Highest bidder on that mutt chased it through the woods. Hunted it for sport.” Tears kept streaking down my cheeks. I wanted to sob, I wanted to sob so fucking much, but dogs didn’t sob. “It was slow.”

“All of this is to say, just accepting what’s happening isn’t going to be enough for you going forward.” It caressed my cheek again. “I need you to work with me, do you understand? Help me make sure there’s nothing left of that girl I stole, so that something of you can survive. The myth of you. The skills, the history. I think you owe that to the girl I stole, don’t you?” I almost nodded. I caught myself just a moment before I acted like a person.

I opened my mouth and panted. I wiggled my ass. I stood on my hind legs.

“Good dog.” It snapped its fingers, and I was pulled into the air by some unknown force. The lights turned black. My limbs went limp. “Now for your punishment for thinking too much.” I froze. I whimpered. I didn’t scream. “You didn’t think you wouldn’t be punished, did you?” It laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m still being nice. This was going to happen one way or another. You should thank me for making it your punishment, really.”

“The client wants your limbs shortened. You know, to make you more like a dog.”