Tobi's journal:

Emilio certainly was unexpected. I hadn't anticipated being in a relationship anytime soon. I never hoped for one— hadn't allowed myself to.

It's nice, I'll admit, but with these feelings comes an acute sense of paranoia that I'm no stranger to.

I despise not knowing exactly what he's thinking. There are so many things that could go wrong.

Edburt, of course, is fully aware of all of this.

I found myself in the hospital.

Odd, I think. This certainly was different from everything I had dreamt before. Dreams had either been in the room or had some connection to the church and my family. The hospital had been a haven of sorts. My family never visited and I didn't have to go to work or class. I failed to see how this would be torture.

I surveyed the room and startled slightly when I noticed Emilio standing in the corner with his purple notebook, distanced from the hospital bed I was lying in.

Strapped to, I realized.

It was one of those beds you saw more in the psychiatric ward with brown leather straps at the wrists, ankles, and across the chest.

I watched Dream Emilio nervously, remembering the last time Mr. Edburt had controlled the voice of someone I cared about. Dream Mattias's words still stick with me, even if real Mattias has assured me repeatedly that he doesn't think that way.

But Dream Emilio didn't move toward me. He didn't give any sign that he was interested by my presence. I would have assumed he didn't know I was 'awake' or however it works in dreams, but I could feel his violet eyes boring into me, even if the reflection of his glasses blocked them from my sight.

"What's happening?" I ask, more nervous for what Dream Emilio might say to me than for whatever torture Edburt had lined up for me. My trust issues already made it hard enough to open up, I don't need my brain to make it harder.

Dream Emilio moved to the corner slightly closer to the bed. The light no longer glinted off of his glasses and I could see his eyes. In the waking world, they're usually filled with curiosity and affection. When I made eye contact with Dream Emilio, none of this was present. There was an indifference that made me feel insecure.

"What's happening?" I asked again.

Dream Emilio returned to his notebook and wrote something down.

Typical.

Seeing that Dream Emilio wasn't going to answer me, I focused my efforts on Edburt. "What do you have planned this time?" I shouted at the ceiling because I wasn't sure where exactly he was.

A voice from the doorway startled me. "If I told you then it wouldn't be a surprise."

I whipped my head around to the best of my abilities, considering I was strapped down, to see Mr. Edburt walking into the hospital room. He looked significantly more human than normal. His skin, though pale, was no longer an ashen-gray color and his eyes no longer glowed. He pushed in a cart on which sat several different medical tools, sharp and caked with dry blood.

"You have to sanitize those," I snarked, knowing that whatever procedure I was about to undergo, Edburt would ensure that it was as far from safe and painless as possible.

I looked over at Dream Emilio, even though I knew he was being controlled by Edburt and held no sympathy for me. If anything, I was nothing more than an interesting specimen to him, meant only to be dissected and discarded once he was satisfied with the information he received.

Perhaps this is what real Emilio thinks as well. Maybe I am an experiment to collect data from and he doesn't feel any kind of attraction to me. It would make sense. No one had ever shown interest in me before, and he does keep those notes. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I'm too odd to be with without some ulterior motive.

But maybe Emilio is a bit odd, too. Maybe he does really like me and I'm just spiralling exactly how Edburt wanted. Like my stupid, broken brain wants.

My mind doesn't allow me to be happy. There's always this paranoia that tells me nothing is as good as it seems. It's important I remember to separate these dreams from reality.

I considered for a moment that personifying Edburt is what gave him his power. I continued to view him as a separate entity instead of myself. Edburt was not in control of Dream Emilio, I was. Which meant that I could get him to do what I wanted.

Release me, I willed him, attempting to aim my thoughts.

Edburt let out a shrill cackle at this. "He won't do anything for you."

I ignored Edburt until I heard him pick up one of the blood-stained scalpels.

"I take it I won't be getting an anesthetic," I mumbled dryly.

"Now where would be the fun in that?"

He turned the scalpel in his hand, the light glinting off of the clean parts of it.

"Have you heard of Lingchi?"

Of course I had. 'Slow slicing' or 'death by a thousand cuts'. Painful, slow, right up Edburt's alley. It was an ancient Chinese torture and execution method that had piqued my interests. It involved the condemned person's skin being sliced off until they either died or lost consciousness before being completely dismembered. It was outlawed in 1905.

I pulled at my restraints.

Usually it involved being tied to wooden posts, but it seemed Edburt was performing a modified version.

Edburt took the scalpel and lowered it to my arm. The blade dug into my skin and was angled to slice at my flesh. I bit back a cry of pain as Edburt dragged out the first slice. I glared at him and hissed as he begun the second cut.

Slow route it was.

I watched as slice after slice was made and the skin was cut off my right arm, unable to do much else.

The first cut on my left arm was deep and bled profusely.

Between blood loss and pain, I was close to passing out. The sooner I lost consciousness, the sooner I was done with the dream.

But Edburt had other ideas because I was still awake and could feel every second of the torture.

The pain was overwhelming every never ending and clouding my mind.

I met Dream Emilio's eyes. Every part of my wanted to call out to him. Edburt begun slicing skin off of my legs. How many cuts until I died?

He's not really Emilio, the logical part of my brain reasoned, he's controlled by Edburt. He won't help you.

Maybe it was because I wasn't thinking straight from the pain, but I found myself calling to him anyways.

"Emilio, please." My voice sounded broken from pain.

Dream Emilio didn't reply. He merely wrote something in his notebook. He didn't care. As I expected, but it still struck too close to my insecurities.

Eventually the pain became so great that I found myself desensitized to it. I watched as patch after patch of my flesh was peeled off my limbs by that bloody scalpel, feeling numb and nauseous.

I stopped fighting and Edburt must have decided that tormenting me was no longer fun because I closed my eyes and found myself in the waking world.

I sat up and promptly vomited.

A/N Happy Thursday! I'm so, so sorry this is late. I wanted to get it up on time, but I had really bad writer's block and Tuesday wasn't a good day for me mental health-wise and it's best if I don't write dream chapters while already feeling self-destructive. But I'm here now and I've given you a slightly longer chapter than normal and you can expect next week's update on time. I assume I don't have to tell you what song the chapter title is from anymore. Doing research on this torture method was actually a lot of fun and really interesting. I definitely did not do it around a bunch of children instead of monitoring them because that would have been irresponsible of me. See you Wednesday, promise.