“I’m doing you a favor,” He said to me, as pain raked through my body. I lay bleeding and burned atop shards of broken glass and drops of my own blood, though where I was I did not know. Time, space and coherent thought were all beyond me now. All I knew was agony, and He.

His presence drew my eye. Superficially the most visually striking thing about him was just how completely and utterly forgettably average he looked. His hair was brown and medium length, his build was normal and his age was indeterminable. He wore jeans and a grey sweatshirt that bore the name of some college or another. But the sweatshirt was splattered with blood. My blood. And his face was contorted in madness; tooth drawing blood from lip in nervousness, eyes shining with tears, and his skin beet-red in fury. At his feet were scattered burnt matches, electrical tape, and a toaster that had been modified with sinister intent. I’d felt the sting of all of them, but he’d given up with those in lieu of the knife he now brandished.

I let out a new sob as the blade nipped my stomach, and a small drop of blood oozed out. Then he cut again, slightly deeper this time, and then deeper and deeper still, each time plunging through new layers of flesh and hemoglobin.

“You’re only as real as I make you, you know.” He said to me. “Every day, everything becomes less and less real. You know why? Because I’m the only one that’s really real. And I’m figuring it out. I’m figuring out that none of you, none of it, none of this place is real.” As he spoke, his voice grew more and more grief-stricken. He spoke with the sadness beyond that of a man who was seeing a loved one dying, to that of a man who was seeing everything dying. His every loved one, his world, and his every experience with those loved ones and those worlds.

As his grief grew, so did my pain. He was slicing deeper and deeper, leaving huge gouges. Dangerous gouges. I knew now this was beyond the torture from earlier. He was killing me now. This did not fill me with relief, I wasn’t glad to know that my pain was ending or anything of that sort. I was beyond any relief now; I’d had it all bled out of me. All I knew was fear.

“You know, this knife that I’m stabbing you with isn’t even really touching anything. Atoms are mostly empty space. Your atoms are empty space. Its atoms are empty space. Chances are, all you’re feeling right now is two empty spaces going through each other. All I’m feeling is the pressure of one empty space pressing against another. So I have to press harder.” I let out a howl as he slowly dragged the blade through my stomach, sawing through my viscera slowly. “I have to press harder and harder so that I can feel anything at all. And pretty soon, I won’t even be able to feel that. But you… You feel it, don’t you? You can feel me making you almost real. The pain I’m causing, it’s giving you meaning, isn’t it? It’s making you real. I can almost believe that you’re there when I do this. When I hurt you. When I taunt to you. Don’t you feel real?” The stench of fecal matter filled the air as the knife continued to wrench through me. He laughed as the horrid smell wafted into his nostrils.

“Yes!” He cried. “Yes, I can SMELL you! I can smell the SHIT pouring out of your guts! I’m making you real again! You exist!” He began to shake me vigorously, a look of pure joy on his face as he did so. The violent motion jostled my cuts and my spilled organs, increasing my agony. I let out a scream.

“Thank me, damn you! I made you real! I made you exist! You should be thanking me! We can exist now! Stop your damn screaming, you’re already as real as you need to be!!” He was getting angry now. My screaming was driving him to further madness. I didn’t want to make him angry, but I couldn’t stop my cries.

“You should be thanking me!” He screamed again, as he ripped the knife out of my stomach and plunged it into my chest. Blood spurt forth from my heart, flooding over me and filling my nostrils and mouth. I choked on it mid-scream, and started hacking violently. Blood started spraying everywhere as my body shook, and he continued to stab at me. “You miserable fucking cunt, why won’t you thank me!? For the love of God please thank me! Be real, dammit! Be glad you’re real!” I continued to hack, and finally he lifted his knife up and bellowing like a madman he plunged it into my forehead, screaming “THANK ME!!”

Whether it was the head wound, or asphyxiation, or blood loss that got me first I can’t know. All I know is that in moments, my world was done. He kneeled by my form, splattered in blood, before tossing me awkwardly to the side. Sobbing, he muttered to me. “You should have thanked me.”