The man lay flat, strapped onto a wobbly table with no strength to resist. 

"Why didn't you tie him properly?" Tristan spoke his mind before considering his place in this relationship. 

She lined up her tools with the precision of a surgeon, her setup more suitable for a slaughterhouse.

The corners of Amara's lips were quickly lifted back up by a smile as her eyes focused on the unusable left hand, her mark on the man.

"I don't have to tie them properly, do I? You'll catch them for me if they escape," a haunting pride flashed across her expression, a sense of accomplishment. 

Tristan avoided her piercing gaze. She patted his head fondly, praising him like one would a dog. He twitched slightly at the sudden touch. She lifted her hand bitterly. Noticing her expression, Tristan grabbed her hand, gently guiding it back on his head. 

"I can catch them every day if it's for you," he locked eyes with her, his voice soothing her doubts.

Amara giggled lightheartedly before turning to the defenseless man. 

"What is his name?" Tristan whispered hesitantly. She looked over her tools, pondering which one was the best introduction to her principles, before answering bleakly. "Michael."

"And its meaning?" 

Amara smirked as she picked up a drill. "It means who is like God."

Tristan shivered as he heard the powerful meaning the name held.

She started the drill, enjoying the horrors she could evoke in Michael.

"Maybe I should give him a quick lobotomy first." She wondered aloud. The table shook as Michael attempted to break free.

Tristan turned away as the drill met the man's skull - a scream, a barbaric yelp louder than any he had ever heard, pierced his eardrums. The sole reason he hated the basement surfaced again.

The drill passed through the hard skull with nauseating ease, stirring directly into his brain. His frontal lobe suffered first, the metal easily mushing the brain as it pushed its way deeper. His body convulsed, his brain unable to control its movement. The sound resembling drilling into a hard-shelled coconut was replaced by almost watery sounds as if his wife attacked a chicken breast with this unfit tool.

Tristan gulped down his liquid dinner, threatening to escape. His eyes searched for a distraction, anything that could make him oblivious to the horrors unraveling behind his back.

As his eyes ticked back and forth, a woman neatly dressed in black appeared in front of him, mere inches away.

"Why are you here again? This is not a good place. You only had to stay upstairs. Why couldn't you do that?"

The woman he called his therapist dropped her pen, flipping madly through her notebook. 

She stopped and cited her notes. "The basement is my grave. Keep Amara satisfied. I could be next. What if she gets bored?" As she read aloud, her appearance shifted, and her body morphed. "Never let her think too much. Be careful. Avoid her at all costs." One of her arms seemingly melted off, leaving a bare bone underneath. It was her left hand. However, that couldn't stop her from reading further. "She drugs me when I misbehave. I can't eat food she cooks - poison." Her scalp peeled back, eyes almost popped out of their place as she read on. "Why did she kill you? Why can't you talk suddenly?! Answer me!" The therapist read the last line in her notebook. The last feeling Tristan shared with her left her mouth in the form of a poisonous reminder. A lone tear welled on her cheek before she dissolved into a thin air. Tristan's left hand limply dropped by his side.

Tristan bit the inside of his cheek as a strange, indescribable feeling unraveled from his core. His mind blocked out any noise with a high-pitched ringing. He couldn't think. He couldn't pay attention to the woman behind him, his wife, playing God.