Teeth wailed like a toddler once outside, his shovel cracking dirt, even as he unsituated the watch around his partner's wrist which didn't even fit around his own. Not that it mattered, he thought to himself, resetting the time to an hour before he had gone unconscious, and his partner was found beneath him with his eyes bulging out of his sockets.

By midnight, he was completely intoxicated, unable to wipe 8-Ball's glossed-over expression from his memory. There was still the side of his face etched into Teeth's gut like a red-hot branding, and nail-marks from where he'd tried to rangle his unconscious body off. To some, they would have been trophies; he was who walked away, victorious in light of their scuffle.

To Teeth though, it only added to his grief. Pouring himself another glass of whatever had been in 8-Ball's cabinet, he cried over his inherent misfortune; who was expected to pay off his late partner's debt, but the only other person who had been in on their little deal? Himself.

$30,000 was so, so much money.

Where the stress had originally laid on both of their shoulders, Teeth found himself pacing the living room, stepping over TV glass, feeling the full weight on his own. He couldn't be a one-man act, not when 8-Ball had been running the show. It was like flying a plane without a pilot.

Teeth only contemplated fleeing the country as much as he dared look outside. There was still 8-Ball's pant-leg peeking from the dirt, the oily brow of his head, and a needle's worth of his nose. Teeth had known working under him would mean getting mixed up with The Mob, but that had paled in comparison to the benefits at the time. He'd never thought to consider back-alley exits, not when his partner worked such a cozy little set-up in the USA. What a mistake; there was no escaping under a Cipher's watch.

A black Audi cruised down the ghost-road of their hide-out; a slow, observing pace at unpredictable hours. Sometimes, there were creaks on the roof, or the switching of branches, and Teeth went wild-eyed. There always seemed to be a presence just beyond his line of sight, with pen and paper, disposable camera, microphones; Teeth assured himself of these things without evidence.

There wasn't room to run. Even he knew that. Still, being the coward that he was, whimpered to himself that night, wondering why he was so entirely cursed with bad luck. (He could be an upstanding man when he felt like it.) He didn't want to die. He didn't deserve to. Not him. There were things and people that made up the bad in this world, and he toed the line closely, but surely wasn't a part of the whole.

When Teeth cried again, it was in fear of his life. He slurred crazily, slobbering and howling on all fours, remembering 8-Ball's stricken, dead face, petrified to imagine his own. Would his final moments be just as horrible? Would he be in pain? He checked the mirror and spoke hastily, "No! No dead men 'ere!" before blubbering like a baby.

The mirror stared back. "You're going to die," It said. Teeth ran from the bathroom.

He went outside to consult 8-Ball. With a shovel in hand, a bottle in the other, he slung away dirt, sing-songing "No dead men 'ere. No dead men 'ere." All until the hole was big enough to get stuck in. If he weren't quite so drunk, he might have realized 8-Ball's grave was several feet from where he'd dug.

He woke the next morning in the hole, and didn't bother filling it back in.

***

Light isn't something people think to miss, not unless they're living in Antarctica, or still wet the bed, or a sprinkle of both. It's an intangible, formless being, stored in glass bulbs, wires, and balls of flaming gas. Perhaps it's unpredictable in theory, but once understood, the process to gain rein over it becomes almost embarrassingly easy. Light is suddenly so physical. It's as three-dimensional as that vase on the kitchen table, or the television stand with old, rotting legs, or the bars that enclose Dipper's cage.

Light isn't something people think to miss, but he missed it still.

Dipper's eyes adjusted within the first hour of captivity with vague, whispery shadows as his guide. The environment looked flat without distinct lighting, instead substituted by varying hues of black, giving form to the space between cheek and forehead, where the eyes should be, and bends to suggest knees and elbows. The bars of his cage were black lines. The room, two-dimensional.

By the first week, he was so accustomed to darkness, that when the lights did come on, instead of flooding down the staircase whenever Teeth delivered meals (A sorry assortment of peanut butter and bread, some water, half an apple, and a strange, yellowy paste that maintained the form of the spoon which had scooped it), Dipper's eyes dilated like whiplash, stabbing into the back of his brain.

There was a man, no more than 35, wearing an early 2000's T-shirt, baggy blue-jeans and a grey, over-worn hoodie with the figure of a stallion plastered on the back. A brownish-yellow complexion with curls of hair over either arm, long nails with green finger-paint on the thumbs, and (just like the man Dipper had vague, flashing memories of, hoisted overtop, dripping sweat and saliva) a nervous, jittery demeanor. He looked like the kind of guy to work a cash register, drive you from east-bay to downtown listening to Fleetwood Mac, or just someone you sat next to on the bus, who smelled a bit like plaster, but never enough to consider changing seats.

His voice was so dissolved of evil (not a raging, conspiring one, but something nasally and reserved), it shocked Dipper to his core; he might even be the kind of guy to work as a librarian, or an invisible but diligent janitor.

Teeth led him downstairs (the undersides of his eyes purple and fat with skin). He knocked on the tops of each cage (first Darwin's, then Kaleb's, then Dipper's), using vocabulary one chose for dog breeding.

Things about aggression. Tricks. Each child was a different species from the last; Kaleb was introduced as an older model of 16 or 17. Ebony. Nice, rough hands from pulling at those bars, and durable.

Darwin was the youngest of the group; a mere 13 or so. And, even being blind, he filled a special category for gingers, with dirty strings of orange like guitar wire. He was small, soft-spoken, dotted in freckles.

Dipper was new. Higher quality, with inky, full eyes, and hands that were only callasied by climbing rocks and trees, and not clinging bars. His price was more than double either of the two.

The man's face, hearing $500 come from Teeth's mouth, dropped like candle wax. His hand, originally settled possessively overtop Dipper's cage, a slight tent in his front zipper, hesitantly slid away.

There was something even more horrible than being trapped in a room that smelled like a hot cab. (Teeth slid a remote from his pocket, and so easily unlocked Kaleb's cage with the press of a button. A click, a twist, and the door came open automatically.) What really terrified Dipper was the routine way in which Kaleb crawled outside, the first he'd been in weeks, only to roll on his back where the mattress lay. He was a sedated, formless face. The man moved overtop, and aside from Kaleb's twisting expressions, did nothing to stop him.

Dipper curled himself tight, a raging gasp caught in his throat when he peaked between his fingers, unable to escape the sounds and smells, to find the man who could've been a cashier, or a librarian, or someone he'd see once and never again, take Kaleb. Dipper covered his mouth and bent his spine, hoping his cells would invert between one another; he wanted to fold up and disappear like a snake eating its own tail.

But, he was $500. For the moment, he was $500. It was like teetering the edge of a cliff; where Kaleb and Darwin were only hanging by the sprout root of a tree, Dipper was still above-ground, cautious of the sifting dirt below him. He was $500.

The man finished. He eyed Dipper with the same words in mind; the same price. When he pulled up his jeans, searched his wallet for $200 in ones, fives, and a torn ten, his expression was that of a window-shopper. Dipper was only a number.

***

Light became a source of panic. Two weeks rolled on, and even hearing the basement door open had Dipper shifting in his cage. It happened a second time at the end of the week, and lasted only half as long as the one before, but this time, it was Darwin's turn, and he was an entirely different person, start to finish. Where Kaleb had been stoic, Darwin never quite found peace.

This man had been married, or maybe just wore a gold band on his ring finger. Button-up collar. Stubble on the chin. He would've been handsome if he hadn't laughed when Darwin started murmuring an old nursery rhyme; a nervous habit, apparently.

***

Despite the grimness of the situation, it wasn't all bad. Or, more so, it wasn't all torture. The boys were teens, and being at that stage in life, would've considered each other too young or old to interact with, had they met outside of their cages. Inside, they were friendly, speaking in whispers, conspiring in theory, but not actuality. Whereas Dipper made note of every little thing he saw (The make of their cages, the time-intervals in which he assumed their meals ranged from, the frequency of men, etc. etc.), Kaleb and Darwin did everything in their power to dissolve their surroundings.

Kaleb was a masterful game-enthusiast. Long car rides from Idaho to Arkansa meant passing the time with Triple Threat, Picnic, and 20 questions; he and his two sisters in the back, his dad or mom at the wheel. He was a whizz at memory games like "Zoo" (Armadillo, Bandicoot, Capybara; he liked the trickier words). The games often lasted hours, in between long intervals of silence, of which no one said a thing.

There was always something to play, whether it be guessing celebrities, or naming the song of the tune he'd hummed, or every movie off the top of their heads that began with "R." It always started out fun. (Kaleb recited all 26 picnic-foods in alphabetical order. Dipper knew the answer before asking all of 20 questions. Darwin recalled the song's name, the artist, and its date of release.)

It petered out around the third hour, when the stretch of their voices bounced like islands apart. Things felt remarkably clustered and tight-knit at the start, but by the end, someone said something (everyone laughed) and the silence that filled after led down long, endless roads that drove into the sea.

***

Dipper lost track of his mental calendar near the end of the first month; Teeth had been an important factor in tallying the days with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but as it went, the schedule eventually fell apart. There wasn't a sure-fire way of marking the days if his only sense of time came barreling down the steps, drunk as a skunk, at an hour even he could tell was far into the night.

It became even more apparent, the days Teeth didn't show up at all; the scary part being, if Dipper's stomach didn't react so negatively to lengthy intervals without food, he probably wouldn't be able to tell how far apart his meals were. What had started as a shaky, more-or-less reliable reference of time, became questions on the importance of keeping track in the first place. There didn't seem to be reason, aside from his daunting fear of losing a sense of progression, and forgetting the life he intended on returning to; inevitably crawling out, and lying on his back.

What's more, Dipper began to worry for Teeth, who ran out of breath ascending the stairs and could hardly stand on his own two legs after a bottle of gin. He was a means of self-disregard. Say he got a little too drunk and slipped in the bathtub, or found himself at the tailend of a wreck. He'd die, his body slowly withering away two floors up, and Dipper's would eventually do the same, two floors down. Hours turning to days, stomachs growling, throats itching, the lights off.

His dad told him once, people could go months without food, but water; that's less than a week.

Dipper double-checked, as he did most days, but his cage was still void of a keyhole.

***

48 bars situated by a remote-controlled lock-system; that was the problem. Dipper could wedge his shoulder through the gaps in his cage. His arm bent far enough outside to smooth over the center-top of his roof if he really pushed himself, though it often resulted in a sensation close to dislocating his limb.

Dipper could lay flat without hitting his head on anything. He could sit up straight without grazing the ceiling. He got as far as locking his legs in place before running out of room to stand, catching him at an odd bow. Where he was situated, his cage was closest to the steps that led upstairs; if he leaned far enough, and his nails were long enough, he could almost touch the wooden banister.

The basement was void of anything but a metal fold-out chair, a lightbulb hanging like a chandelier from a single wire, and the mattress, which was in the far-left corner. Dipper had a blurred image of where everything sat in the room; the lights were only on every week or so, and no more than twenty minutes. That, in of itself, was information he chose to store away, along with everything else he'd gathered. He just wasn't sure what the information was good for.

***

Dipper had never had so much rest in his life; If he wasn't sifting through darkness, bouncing ideas off the barren walls of that basement, he was asleep. His day consisted (at first) of one drawn out nap, which never quite reached REM. It evolved to a point in which sleep broke into pieces, and instead of getting his rest over the course of a cycle, he received it from nine-to-twelve naps a day. While his body was exhausted from stress and malnourishment, his mind was hot-wired with fear.

Kaleb suggested pretending to be someplace else. Sometimes, he said, if he concentrated, he could transport to the edge of his old Youth Center's pool, where the tiles were wet and it smelled like chlorine and piss. He said on really good days, he could actually feel the water on his skin. Darwin concurred; he once found himself in the nose-bleed of an opera, four countries over.

This caught Dipper's interest for only a moment; the thought of closing his eyes to find himself on the front porch of the Mystery Shack once again, lounging in a wicker chair, telling his sister anything and everything that came to mind, was tempting, and he definitely tried, but his visions were always smeared; diluted. The front porch warped to look either ten miles long, or small enough to fit through a needle hole. The trees were off-color and drizzly. No matter how hard he worked to reconstruct Mabel's features, his mind only got as far as the chin before cracking like an egg-shell into the shaded man who violated him.

Still, when Dipper was too tired to scheme, and too awake to sleep, he often found himself lying on his side with his shoulder pressed to his ear, imagining his head rested against Mabel's. In those moments, he gave himself five minutes to wallow, before either passing out or finding inspiration to think. If the tears came, they came, but only in those five minutes. He made it so sadness never moved beyond the cage; he contorted his head between his legs like an intense prayer, his shoulder blades sharpening the skin of his back when he heaved, arms thrown to cradle the top of his skull, hiding away the brunt of his panic.

His composer would finally crack, come three weeks after.

A man in his mid-to-late fifties, with jade rings on his fingers. Three gold teeth at the back of his mouth. He smelled like tire-marks, smoke, and Dalmore. For this reason, Dipper couldn't just refer to him as "One of Those Men;" he was pretentious enough to introduce himself to Teeth as "Mr. Dewey-Abram," with a laugh that came out the nose and a smile of white teeth, so perfect, so level, it made them look artificial; something like Jim Carrey in The Mask (The outfit Mr. Dewey-Abram wore that day attributed to this image, but it was more homage to ridiculous figures like Money Mike and A Pimp Named Slickback.)

Unlike the other consumers who'd come before him, Mr. Dewey-Abram just short of danced downstairs, a peppy rhythm under his feet. He was a tall, thin man, wearing the most outrageous, outdated pants with vertical stripes. The hair on his chest was on full-display, as well as the way he so smuggly twirled them around his index, pulling off and leaving them curly. He couldn't go five seconds without running his tongue over those stripped-white, flat-wide teeth.

Dipper trailed him as well as he could, gaze scorching from almost two weeks without light. Mr. Dewey-Abram had one of those old-looking hats with a flat top, wide brimmed with hot-orange tiger-print; he really did look ridiculous. There would've been grounds for mockery, if the shameless way he waggled his dick, already half-erect, hadn't pushed "hilarious" into "mortifying" territory. When Teeth gave him the run-down on prices, Mr. Dewey-Abram looked almost insulted to hear. Ridiculous-looking or not, money was no object to him.

He had a distinct Georgia accent. When he twirled around the room, getting an eye-full of "The pretties," as he called them, Dipper couldn't help but feel he was on the tailend of a bad performance. Mr. Dewey-Abram was borderline theatrical, looking over Kaleb, Darwin and Dipper like some startling new discoveries; he couldn't contain his excitement.

Mr. Dewey-Abram wore insultingly orange gloves made from wool-satin, and when he rubbed his hands together they made a weird, carpet-y sound. Dipper would be ashamed to admit the sense of relief that washed over him, the way Mr. Dewey-Abram dutifully eyed the others. He relaxed a little too much when the man circled Darwin's cage, a fist shoved under his chin as though observing complex architecture. It was one thing to dread his own vulnerability. Something else entirely to feel secure at someone else's expense.

Perhaps then, Dipper thought, he deserved what came next.

Mr. Dewey-Abram only spent a fraction of time observing Darwin before growing bored; he wasn't much for red-heads. For there, just a cage away, was the underweight physique of a boy with ribs like a xylophone. Such a slight thing, even more than the other two, who weren't quite as home-sick, and managed to eat that yellow-y paste without bailing out in paranoia.

Waves of penny-brown, done up in a wild mess that made the boy look ferocious. The unhealthy paleness of his skin only amplified the cute pink of his nose, and with pretty lips like his; what really did him in were the eyes. They sucked him in like the tight vacuum of a black hole, making it so (the second their gazes crossed) he was practically tranced. Enrapturing Mr. Dewey-Abram with just how deep those eyes bore, calculative and contemplative. It was love at first sight.

Dipper felt the earth beneath his feet shift at the sight of his cage popping open. It was like free-falling into the bottomless pit; Teeth knocked at the top of his prison, like spooking a pig out of its pen and into the slaughterhouse. Mr. Dewey-Abram had his fingers wound around the side-bars, peering down at Dipper, who seemed far-off, deaf to Teeth's instructions to crawl out. There was a disconnect. While his eyes scanned the man before him, laden in gaudy chains and a silk shirt, his brain froze over.

Teeth prodded him with the sharp-front of his shoe; hissed to get a move on. Dipper didn't budge. The cords of his knees had been cut. His fingers dangled like senseless nerves. The airways through his body popped to bits, like blockage in the pipes. Dipper's heart played triple-speed all throughout his veins, hearing Teeth's commands, seeing Mr. Dewey-Abram, and feeling the cage around him contort into a tight, twisted snake digesting him whole.

When it was made apparent Dipper was too shocked to move, Mr. Dewey-Abram discarded his ridiculous hat, removed his jade rings, took off his gaudy chains, his silk shirt, his insultingly orange gloves, his outrageous pants, and, with a smile, stalked Dipper into the cage.

Everything looked bigger once it entered the cage. It was limited space being taken up by Dipper's thin frame, Mr. Dewey-Abram's prick, and the ugliest dress shoes known to man, which Mr. Dewey-Abram had been happy to keep on. When everything looked so much bigger, it didn't leave much room to fight. Not that he could; by the time the man's frighteningly cold hand wrapped around his ankle, effectively clawing Dipper from the dark recession of his mind, he was too frazzled to counter any of his follow-up advances.

Dipper couldn't contain his wet sobs, his anguished whimpers, choking on hiccups like poison. His legs weren't built to have a man between them, not when he was so much smaller. Mr. Dewey-Abram smelled less like tire-marks, more like a blown fuse, farther and farther he went. The sensation inside him; what had once been considered the worst pain he'd ever endured, drugged on that mattress, was only a sliver of the sober version. Dipper felt, whole-heartedly, this man was wrapped in barbed wire and slitting hair-thin scars inside him.

His blood felt like rusty nails carding through the system. Dipper clenched his teeth, trying to breath through the stretch, only for pain like four knuckles digging into his stomach to startle something between a shriek and a bawl. Copper flooding his mouth, his fingers numb from their tight grip around the bars behind his head. Mr. Dewey-Abram laughed, spit, and reached for Dipper's unattended organ. His breath hitched-.

The Mystery Shack's front porch. Sweltering heat. A water in one hand, cool against his palm. A book in the other. Mabel asked if he needed anything from the kitchen. He was fine. He was just enjoying the peace.

***

Dissociation was a word he only ever heard from his mother, who worked as a school psychologist. He had a vague idea.

It was small things, like enjoying a book, or spacing out in class. Big things, like completely derailing his mind from his body, to the point of waking an hour after he'd been vandalized for the second time in his life, and feeling like he didn't exist, would never exist, had never existed, and wasn't supposed to have these memories that any living being would have. It was feeling completely unhuman.

Dipper had to shake himself out of it. Kaleb and Darwin were calling for him in worried, sympathetic voices. The static in his teeth translated into his fingers and toes, so when he sat up, he felt like kinetic energy fizzing through the air. Dipper was like empty space rearranging itself into a compact example of mass; before, he had only been individual particles, associated, but completely separate from one another.

The pain was numb at first, but as he sat up, it leaked through the cracks in his mind on high alert, the dragging of hot nails between his thighs. Only minutes before, he'd been on a dirt road, headed for the unknown with a map that led nowhere in his hands. Now, he was back in his body, feeling the damage that had been done while he was out of it.

He explained his experience to the other captives, who didn't seem surprised by his confusing description of the sensation; floating face-down in a pool, with the low trill of Frederic Chopin playing up the melodies as his body sank in-tune. It was a potent drug among them apparently, closest to astral projecting. One, Darwin said, they experienced more-often than not, and with the last sliver of pleasure they knew to be genuine.

Here, Dipper realized, was the only reason the other captives appeared complacent in their circumstances, despite the hopelessness of it all. What was the difference between walking outside of a cage, and walking through the streets of the mind? Dipper's body was just a vessel, after all. The only real sensations existed within the brain, and as long as that was intact, it didn't really matter where the muscles and bones were-.

A pleasant feeling. The first real sleep in a long time. Waking up to bars and cold floors... Pretending to be somewhere else would be so much easier. Pretending to exist only within the configuration of his mind's loose borders, to the point of forgetting where he actually was. To be present was to be in pain.

Still, to be absent was to crawl out, and onto his back.

He couldn't do that again. Ever.

***

While the rest of the world was tearing down Halloween decorations in preparation for Christmas, the basement had its heater replaced for a third time. Of the five men who came after, three were able to pay the added "Virgin" tax.

Dipper became $200.

***

Apparently, Teeth wasn't just around for delivering meals, collecting cash, carding off children like favors. He was also maintenance; when the basement's lightbulb finally gave out, he ascended the tall, rickety ladder, before accidentally dropping the box of new bulbs in his scramble to sustain balance. All but one shattered. Teeth picked it up from the shards of thin glass, climbed the ladder again, and screwed it in such a way that the bulb tilted just a smidge.

Whenever the lights came on thereafter, they flickered. It wasn't a washed-out orange like the one before. This one was clear-crystal white, making the odd flash of lighting like a camera lens. Hitting the switch had Dipper's entire existence wiped before his eyes, the bulb overhead chasing away even a semblance of shape. Now, when the lights came on, he felt as blind as when he'd first been in darkness.

Teeth had a knack for fixing things, at least as he put it one evening, just as he came around, eyeing Darwin's cage, to find one of his bars loose. He welded it back in place that same evening; Darwin didn't seem to care, or feel it would have made a difference, had he noticed it sooner.

He fixed the basement's door, too. The one that got itself blown off its hinges, at the climax of 8-Ball's final moments. The replacement was red instead of white, with a lock that twisted from the knob, and not a separate key. That being the case, the lock itself didn't work anymore; though the new door had a latch, as well as a functional latch-assembly, the space it was supposed to slide into (A compartment carved into the wall) had been turned into a large trench, when the original door's lock dislodged itself at the full-force of Teeth's body. It was a hole the size of a woman's fist that Teeth couldn't be bothered to mend.

He was also a barber. Not a very good one.

When the boy's hair got too long, and messy finely toed ratty, he rolled up his sleeves. Sedating them was easy as could be for all but Dipper, who was hesitant to even look at the thing of strawberries Teeth had laid out; his meals before had been all the same, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But, Kaleb and Darwin didn't seem to doubt it, and they'd been there the longest. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had something sweet.

When the sedatives took full effect, Teeth went about unlocking their cages one by one, clippers in hand, a tarp laid out below them, and another around their necks. How many inches of hair off the head?

Darwin had flat, tough hair that reached around the shoulders. Well, hair was his main appeal, so Teeth only cut away maybe two or three inches. Kaleb was trickier, with tiny curls so close-knit, he couldn't even run a comb through it. He wasn't sure how to go about this, and therefore snipped and buzzed the entirety of his head. Dipper's hair was soft by nature, but acquired split-ends in times of immense stress. After all that time, it grew from above the eyebrows, all the way to the mid-bridge of his nose; Teeth cut six inches down to two.

***

Dipper didn't get off easy if he stalled; those men were impatient. Cawing threats, insults, strong hands pulling him out by the feet and throwing him to the mattress. Fighting was heavily discouraged; the men weren't above venting their frustrations out on the same children they took advantage of. Hands often wrapped around Dipper's throat, before or during, and on terrifying, confusing occasions, after, with a whispered promise to return. Hands pressed so hard into his stomach, the bruises kneaded into weak muscle. Swollen cheeks and bloody mouths were treated with warm rags and water.

While Kaleb and Darwin tried tuning out their predicament (transported to the outer-hull of a spacecraft or the side of a cruise ship), Dipper actively resisted.

Every now and then, when he laid on that mattress, his head became light. His eyes unfocused, and his skin couldn't feel the sharp scrape of facial hair or tongue or teeth. For a few fleeting moments, Dipper felt unreal. Most of the time, he resisted, forced his hand into the fire and cried with anguish. Other days, he slipped between the sheets, and was forced to destroy his fantasy from the inside-out; his mind was warped enough to sabotage its own coping.

He couldn't stand the thought of finding escape metaphorically. It was drug needles in a bad relationship. Cake at a funeral. He talked to the other boys about breaking out, but that was all it ever really amounted to. Where he sat, he was on a sinking ship, dead-sober, while the rest of the crew cracked open another thing of Brandy.

***

Were the cages copper, iron, or steel? Did the answer matter? Dipper tried not to entertain the possibility that, no, it didn't. Instead, he pushed his legs out as hard as he could, braised against the bars behind him, trying to overpower the sheer density of his prison. His knees buckled- tilted- before faltering with a slip. Dipper hissed at the tender skin of his heels, sensitive from the pressure, the pushing, the consistency, but continued.

Repositioning his feet, this time curling his hands overhead, his face contorted with exertion, the soles of his feet stinging with the force he put below them. His chest puffed, once again applying pressure to the bars opposite him; they were as motionless as Moai.

Dipper cursed after several attempts, the muscles of his legs jittery and spent far too quickly; he had always been thin, but now, if it weren't for his head, he might have been able to just slip through the bars entirely. That wasn't an option, of course. He pulled his right foot into his lap, kneading silently with his thumb, wincing at tiny welts and open skin.

He was tired. A lot more tired than the kind of person who slept as much as he did; his dreams were filled with empty space. White walls, obscure shapes, voices attached to impossible faces. The ones people weren't supposed to remember, aside from rapid, muddled colors and a mute desperation to flee. Loose nightmares, but frightening regardless. Oddly enough, despite how eager he was to return home, Dipper almost never dreamt of his family.

Perhaps it was best he didn't. Once, he fell into a trance just as he'd been eating a small thing of yellow-y paste, and saw all too clearly the face of his mother. In that, he saw Mabel, who unraveled like a rose to display Stan, who became Ford, who became Dipper himself, emulating waves of contentment, unrecognisable. It was too much; he'd still been nursing the internal wounds inflicted on him by a man with eyes like a sleazy politician.

Guilt wasn't the word, but it was entirely too close. Maybe shame.

***

Dipper compared; if anyone were to experience this, they'd be like him, if not worse. So really, he was doing so much better than everyone else, even on the day he dislocated his shoulder. His head had been empty, his skin fuzzed, and it was all he could do to hold onto the feeling of cold metal, wanting so desperately, so truly to escape, but not at the cost of his own sanity.

If he'd done it on purpose, he would never admit to it.

He screamed bloody-murder at the sickening, wet pop of his shoulder jamming back into place; Dipper repositioned it by wedging his arm between bars and turning his torso slowly, fist clenched, until something clicked, forcing his eyes to roll into the back of his head. (He had reset Grunkle Stan's shoulder enough times to remember the process.)

It wasn't really like hurting himself, Dipper rationed. If anything, it was like biting his tongue before something bad came out of his mouth. It was pinching his own thigh to stay awake, or disinfecting a wound. Inflicting pain wasn't the same as hurting for no reason. There was a means to an end in the suffering. That, he could assure.

The day he dislocated his shoulder, something awful happened. Uncontrollable. Not externally, but internal, from the touch of one of those men, which forced his body to react in a way it never had over the duration of his stay. Something just smacked inside him, and suddenly it was cold and hot and nauseating when his blood ran south, not out of arousal, but a primal setting in his bones. It challenged Dipper to cover his own face in shame, the confusion of it so intense, he spiralled into a corner of his mind; so deep within his head, the sockets of his eyes looked like tiny windows in the distance from where he sat at the back of his brain.

The guilt. The guilt was unbearable. The guilt was suffocating. Once his reaction became known, the man was quick about trying to accommodate him, which was so terrifying the slight erection Dipper's body had been sporting mercifully died away. That didn't mean his conscience was clear by any means.

Did Dipper, then, like being touched by those men? Even a little? What did the body know? What did it want, to spring up as it had? Had Dipper forced that? Was he the reason it happened? Did he trigger it somehow, his erection, because it felt good to him? He'd had them before (more than enough times to be familiar), but never there in that basement. Was it supposed to mean something if his body was starting to react a certain way, or was it more that he'd become so used to it, he was relaxed enough to feel pleasure?

He just fell on his shoulder wrong. That was all it was. His shoulder popped out of place. It hurt. It hurt too much to think of anything but the pain, and not the aching, gnawing guilt. Fingers pointing, heart clenched, repulsed at how it had felt in that moment; Good. It wasn't supposed to feel good. That wasn't normal. When Dipper's shoulder dislocated, he rolled on it sideways for good measure.

***

There was a boy once, with straight black hair and red shoes. Or, maybe they were brown. (Dipper wasn't sure. He hadn't gotten a good look at him while his clothes were on.) It happened on a particularly cold afternoon; the heater needed fixing for a fourth time, and aside from the felt-blankets Teeth provided, it was amazingly cold.

He had probably been on his way home from school; the grey sweater-vest, the pleated twill pants, the collared shirt, all screamed private school. The way Teeth just barely contained the boy's thrashing body, captured between his thick arms, made it look like he'd just plucked the boy at random. (Hadn't Dipper been drugged? Hadn't he at least been stalked first?)

Dipper never did get a good look at him.

Teeth tried bringing him downstairs like a feral, wild street-cat. Much like a street-cat, the boy didn't hesitate to sink his claws into the layers of his assaulter's arms, even as the man carted him downstairs. It was strange, hearing a voice that wasn't one of the other captives or a middle-aged man. Even stranger, a sudden rush of excitement, seeing the boy wrestle free of Teeth's grip.

A startling shout from Dipper's mouth. A shrill "Go! Run!" as the boy sprinted up the steps, scared shitless with Teeth on his trail. His legs were short, but quick. He made it all the way up the stairs, rounding the corner before his abductor could so much as reach a hand out.

It didn't matter in the end; Teeth's hideout was the only thing for miles.

An hour passed, and back came Teeth with the boy in-tow. His arm was pointed awkwardly, as were his feet. Blood on the sleeve of his shirt. A busted lip, and hand-prints around the throat. For whatever reason, Teeth still bothered to stick the boy in a cage, even though his head lulled to one side, and his breaths were shallow and pained. He didn't last more than half a day; dying in a cage looked like agony.

An odd, numb sensation rolled over him in waves, and for a moment, Dipper felt himself slip.