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Without a doubt, Eto’s torture was effective. It was exactly the kind of thing Amon read about in true-crime novels as a child. His pre-reading didn’t prepare him for this kind, of course.
A sound would repeat, giving an indication of time, but it would always be slightly off. Worse, it always sounded like a clock. Somehow, that made the warped sense of time feel so much more like a betrayal.
Sensations would reach him when his eyes were covered. They too, were never right. They always felt like an alien had been given a description of a cozy home and then recreated it.
There was plush carpet under his bare feet, but it was also unnaturally cold. Sometimes it was damp. The springiness of it was akin to grass instead of synthetic fibre.
There were windows, but the cheery scenes painted onto them only grew more eerily threatening with time. Eto was an accomplished artist. However, there was always something…off.
The fridge was always full of food he couldn’t eat. It was usually his favourites, though once she loaded it with mild curry (mocking the time he thought she was human).
The furniture was mildewed. He didn’t like to sit on it. He almost preferred the sterile room she would hurt him in.
Honestly, her hurting him was the only thing that didn’t feel off.
“You were never loved.”
She would say at first, sinuous and sweet. Amon would think of all the women in the office who had smiled at him and shy gaze of one boy at church when he was 13.
“No, I wasn’t.”
He would agree at first, trying not to squirm as tendrils of her kagune attempted to thread underneath the Arata armour that stubbornly clung to his skin.
“You never had a family.”
Had been her followup. This was also true, though he had once had an illusion of one (Donato in the dusty sunlight, his hands running lovingly over a handwritten yellowing page).
“No, I didn’t.”
He had told her truthfully.
“You killed innocents.”
She’d pushed forward, taunting, and her kagune opened an eerie mouth, releasing a whistling breath into his face.
“I did.”
He was aware of the sin he carried. He would not put it down until he paid his penance.
“You can never undo what you have done. No penance is enough.”
She whispered, her piercing eyes looking straight through him. It felt wrong. Everything she did felt wrong (like something was lacking).
However, with the many heads, arms, mouths, and eyes on her kagune, she looked enough like an avenging angel that he asked no questions.
That eventually changed.
“You never loved another person.”
She told him, taking a knife cheerily to the metal wrapping around his upper arm and making him wish his mouth was open to scream. Instead of giving a verbal agreement, Amon let his eyes slide shut in concession.
He didn’t know of any emotions as strong as love. He’d give anything for anyone. No one was…
“Are you going to stop lying at some point?”
Eto hissed, digging the knife in deeper and leaving it there.
The door slammed shut behind her.
“You think I was loved.”
Amon spoke the moment he felt her enter the room (someone had blindfolded him but by now he could feel her).
“You don’t even know what love is.”
He mused aloud, listening to the door slam shut again as she left.
“You were loved, weren’t you?”
He asked the next time his mouth was uncovered (almost a month later).
“You were loved, but it wasn’t enough. Love alone is never enough.”
She sealed his mouth with wire through his jaw the next time.
Sometimes he saw things that weren’t there and would scratch at his damaged hand (the only properly exposed part of him other than his face). It was hard to keep himself present past the pain. His dreams were a sweeter lull than any of Eto’s words.
He supposed it was good that she didn’t speak to him lately. He wouldn’t want her to know how to properly break him.
Amon’s hallucinations offered him an altar to pray at. Eto’s perverse drawings would shimmer into stained glass and he would marvel at the patterns.
It gave him peace from physical pain. The bodies on the altar gave him strength when peace wasn’t enough.
When Eto finally began to speak again, the priest heard him confess his sins and told him his absolution would come from work.
When Eto began to call him a failure, something terrible in her voice (the first thing that sounded right, sounded real), the priest smiled benignly (familiarly) at him. An altar boy stepped around the priest and presented Amon with the finger of a saint.
It was one of the ones Amon was missing. It was his own.
The altar boy’s leather mask stretched into a red-gummed grin,
“You have nearly paid one of your debts.”
He said in a morose tone that didn’t match his face. It sounded right on him though, not like Eto’s promises, threats, or advice.
“I haven’t done anything.”
Amon stated, confusedly reaching for the finger. It was pulled just out of reach by the still smiling altar boy, who went on to say,
“The Devil exists to tempt and punish you. You could say that she judges you.”
The old priest stepped forward, chuckling darkly.
“You have been judged, son.”
He said, his benign smile warping so that his canines showed.
“You are a failure.”
For days, he stewed in that thought. Eto peeled the metal from his bones and watched in a rare show of fury as it grew back.
It grew slowly.
Painfully slowly.
She cut off his hand and watched it grow back wrong. She climbed into his lap and cut the scarred side of his face, tracing her tongue over the misshapen marks that refused to fade.
Her curious, childlike intent, her burning frustration…he could see them in these moments (through the pain). She didn’t want him to break, but she didn’t want to be unable to break things. If she broke him, he’d be in Hell.
She had judged him a failure.
With her thighs pressed against his and her breath warm on his bloodstained cheek, he hated her almost enough to love her.
“So Koutarou, should I kill you? I believe there’s nothing left for you to do.”
She circled his chair, using shattered pieces of herself to pin him in place.
“You’re too weak to escape. You failed to achieve anything in life before capture. You’ll never learn.”
Her words were taunting. However, a sharp longing made their smooth edges jagged. Easy to catch and hold onto.
“I kill useless things. So, shall I kill you?”
She didn’t want him dead. She wanted him in Hell. She wanted him to fall.
“Yes.”
He responded, finding the truth in her statements and echoing it back to her. She should kill things that were useless to her organization. It was in her nature.
He just wasn’t useless. Not quite.
She rounded on him so fast that he couldn’t even flinch before her hand closed around his throat. Her ghoulish eyes burned with honest fury.
“Do I have to get on my hands and knees and beg?”
Amon croaked, meeting her gaze head on and tilting his chin upwards, giving her better access to his windpipe.
Her laughter resounded inside his head for days afterword.
“Your penance will not gift you a seat next to God.”
The altar boy’s voice was strangely disembodied in the dark room. Amon usually saw him in the church delusion, but here he was, lurking in Amon’s cell.
“God and Satan are one and the same. I do not want to sit next to her.”
He replied, recalling scripture about something too great and terrible to name. The altar boy hummed softly, a song for morning mass in his childhood, and cloth rustled. The boy knelt on Amon’s bed.
“That’s exactly why she wants you. You want her too.”
He whispered, tapping at the cross embedded into the metal at Amon’s chest.
“In another life, you’d be her demon. In yet another, an avenging angel.”
The altar boy sighed unhappily, getting up from the bed.
“In this one, you’re just a man. You have free will.”
The voice drifted to the window, covered in locks that maybe…just maybe…Amon could break.
“Do with it what you will.”