Brainwashed

At age twelve, walking through the woods behind his Connecticut house, Felix¹ discovers a dead fox with its midsection torn open. He kneels, fascinated, and pokes at the innards with his fingers. His heart races not with fear or sadness but with excitement. He carries the fox home, hoping his neuroscientist father will dissect it with him.

His mother screams when she sees the animal on her picnic table, calling Felix¹ strange. She buries the fox herself while Felix¹ watches in silence. That night, he overhears his parents arguing: his mother asks if Felix¹ killed the fox. His father says nothing. Lying in bed, Felix¹ imagines snapping its neck himself, slicing it open, blood on his fingers. He feels no pity. He falls asleep dreaming of blades.

Dr. Lemuel Love,² a thirty-seven-year-old psychiatrist in Atlanta, lives a controlled but hollow life. His girlfriend Gabrielle has just ended things, accusing him of being incapable of real connection. His family, all prestigious surgeons, dismiss his specialization in criminal psychology as glorified counseling.

One night, Lem² receives a call from Manuel Blanco,³ warden of a secret prison called Alabaster Penitentiary. Blanco³ has read Beneficial Brainwashing, a controversial book Lem² published under a pseudonym years ago.

He wants Lem² to study a specific inmate: Felix Darcey,¹ The Carver, who the world believes was killed during arrest but is very much alive. Lem,² who has dreamed of doing Mindhunter-style work since his own traumatic adolescence, accepts. Within a week, he has packed up his practice and flown to New York.

During his first summer alone in a Brooklyn Heights apartment, nineteen-year-old Felix¹ meets Emmanuel Pedroia¹² at a Manhattan gay club. He has been following Emmanuel¹² for two weeks, learning his routines from the shadows. When they finally connect, Emmanuel¹² comes home with Felix¹ for a weekend of sex and intimacy.

Felix¹ falls obsessively in love. On Sunday, Emmanuel¹² announces he is moving to Miami, calling Felix¹ too intense and too damaged. Something snaps. Felix¹ grabs Emmanuel¹² by the throat, struggles with him, then bashes his skull with a ten-pound weight.

Afterward, Felix¹ takes a kitchen knife and carves a smile onto Emmanuel¹²'s dead face, wanting him to look happy. He lies beside the body for hours, bathes it, dresses it, and sleeps with it for three days until the smell becomes unbearable. The Carver¹ is born.

Lem² arrives at Alabaster Penitentiary and is given Felix¹'s complete file, containing every detail of his crimes, his childhood, and his psychological profile. When Felix¹ is brought to Lem²'s office for their first session, shackled and straitjacketed, Lem² does not speak a single word. He simply reads the file, watches Felix¹ fidget, observes him selecting a book from the shelf: Beneficial Brainwashing, Lem²'s own pseudonymous work.

Felix¹ is unnerved by the silence, unused to being ignored. The second session is equally wordless until Felix¹ demands to know Lem²'s name. Lem² introduces himself with a handshake, then returns to silence. Felix,¹ craving recognition from this unreadable man, finds himself desperate to be seen.

Felix¹ asks to see O'Malley⁵'s file. Lem,² curious about what Felix¹ will do with freedom, hands him the keys to the entire East Wing. Felix¹ takes them, locates a butterfly knife in a storage cabinet, and enters O'Malley⁵'s cell. He taunts O'Malley,⁵ pushing him to confess.

O'Malley⁵ admits he drowned his brother Timmy, blaming the child for making him do it. Felix¹ laughs and stabs him repeatedly, then slices his throat from ear to ear. He carves a wide smile into O'Malley⁵'s face and cuts out his tongue. On his way back, Felix¹ finds Dash⁶ locked in a cell.

He cuts Dash⁶ free from his straitjacket, gives him the keys and his own shoes. Dash⁶ escapes into the night. Felix¹ returns to Lem²'s office covered in blood, tells Lem² what he did, and Lem,² rather than calling guards, takes Felix¹ to the showers, undresses him, and washes him clean, his arousal palpable in the steamy room.

Sessions between Felix¹ and Lem² grow increasingly charged. Felix¹ reads Lem²'s notebook and finds himself analyzed as someone who treats lovers as possessions and has never been truly sexually satisfied. Offended but aroused, Felix¹ challenges Lem²'s conclusions.

Lem² dares him to prove his prowess: a five-minute bet that Felix¹ cannot make him orgasm with a blowjob. Felix¹ drops to his knees, unbuckles Lem²'s belt, and succeeds. Lem² is shaken, his identity as a straight man disrupted.

In the following session, Lem² commands Felix¹ to masturbate while describing his kills. Felix¹ strokes himself as he narrates how he touched his victims' bodies post-mortem. Lem² calls him a sick little monster, and Felix¹ climaxes under his gaze. The line between doctor and lover has dissolved completely.

Lem² begins secretly bringing Felix¹ from his cell to the Ivory Mansion at night. In Lem²'s bedroom, they have sex repeatedly, exploring each other's bodies. Lem,² who has never been with a man, confesses his confusion but cannot stop himself.

Felix¹ bottoms for the first time, discovering a pleasure he never knew he wanted. They watch Mindhunter together, order Chinese food, and kiss leisurely. Lem² learns Felix¹ loves eighties music and shares that he loves it too.

One night, they fill a bathtub, and Felix¹ cuts Lem²'s chest with a straight razor, drawing blood. Lem² cuts Felix¹ back. They lick each other's blood and have sex in red water while Depeche Mode plays. After, Felix¹ realizes he has not once fantasized about killing Lem,² a first in his life.

Years after Cameron¹¹ and Cassie Kline disappeared from Felix¹'s life, he encounters their father, Tom Kline, in a Brooklyn park attempting to assault a young man. Felix¹ recognizes him immediately, the rosary tattoo on his forearm unmistakable.

He intervenes, then lures Tom back to his apartment by feigning sexual interest. Once there, Felix¹ confronts Tom about the abuse that drove Cameron¹¹ away. He tells Tom he is doing this for Cameron.¹¹ Then he pulls a plastic bag over Tom's head and suffocates him.

Tom Kline becomes Felix¹'s first hated victim, the first he kills not to keep but to destroy. Felix¹ poses Tom's body at an elementary school, a message about the age of Tom's victims. After this kill, Felix¹'s methods diverge: some victims are lovers he wants to preserve, others are predators he wants to punish.

Felix¹ asks Lem² about the scars on his throat and wrists. For the first time, Lem² tells someone his story. When he was fourteen, his uncle Stephen Love¹⁴ drugged him and abducted him to an abandoned house. Lem² woke up in a basement, suspended by ropes around his neck and wrists, the suspension cutting into his flesh.

Stephen¹⁴ entered and sexually assaulted him. But the ropes were loose enough that Lem² fought, stretching them despite the pain, and when Stephen¹⁴ approached, Lem² kicked him in the groin and ran. He escaped, went to the police.

But his family, all respected doctors, used their connections to cover it up. Stephen¹⁴ spent only one year in a facility, then walked free. Lem²'s family has never discussed it since, treating his trauma as an inconvenience. Felix,¹ for the first time, feels empathy for another person.

After weeks of nightly visits and deepening intimacy, Felix¹ tells Lem² he loves him. He explains that Lem² is different from all his previous lovers, who were substitutes for Cameron.¹¹ Lem² is not a substitute.

He is Felix¹'s Want, the real version of the mannequin Felix¹ used to talk to in his apartment, the ideal companion he never believed could exist in flesh and blood. Lem,² who has never been in love, struggles with the words but eventually admits he loves Felix¹ too.

They discuss what this means: Felix¹ is serving a life sentence; Lem² has a career and life in Atlanta. Lem² tells Felix¹ he is not leaving. He has discovered that his entire adult life, his study of darkness in others, was preparation for finding the person whose darkness complements his own.

Manuel Blanco³ summons Lem.² He has learned that Lem²'s former patient Trevel Fenwick,¹⁰ who killed four men as a teenager after being raped, has killed again while under the care of Lem²'s colleague. Blanco³ wants Trevel¹⁰ added to his collection of inmates at Alabaster. He orders Lem² to leave the island immediately, retrieve Trevel,¹⁰ and bring him back.

The subtext is clear: Blanco³ is separating Lem² from Felix¹ intentionally, perhaps as a test, perhaps as punishment for Lem²'s growing attachment. Lem² is not given time to say goodbye to Felix.¹ He flies to Atlanta, liquidates his assets, sells his practice and penthouse, and visits his parents one last time to tell them he is done with them and their decades of denial. Then he travels to Chicago.

With Lem² gone, Dr. Templeton⁴ and a new doctor, Hassan, seize control of Felix.¹ They strip him, muzzle him, cuff his wrists to a drainpipe so he dangles with his toes barely touching the ground, and blindfold him.

For two days, Felix¹ hangs there, starved, in agony, his wrists raw and bleeding. Templeton⁴ returns with Hassan and a camera. He pulls down Felix¹'s pants, photographs his naked body, then rapes him while Hassan takes pictures. Felix,¹ helpless, tries to choke on his own vomit to escape.

He cries, something he rarely does, and prays for death. This violation is different from his willing submissions to Lem.² This is the helplessness of the victim, and Felix,¹ for the first time, understands what his own victims felt in their final moments.

Lem² bursts into the room, having returned earlier than expected after killing his uncle Stephen¹⁴ in Chicago. He sees Felix¹ hanging, Templeton⁴ inside him, Hassan with the camera. Lem² attacks both men, knocking Hassan unconscious and beating Templeton⁴ bloody. He cuts Felix¹ down, holds him, promises he will never leave again. Then Lem² asks Felix¹ what he wants to do.

Over days, Felix¹ tortures Templeton⁴ with Lem²'s help. He cuts off one of Templeton⁴'s feet, slices flesh, carves him. Lem² takes a pair of shears and cuts off Templeton⁴'s penis, telling him he stole something that belonged to Lem.² They keep Templeton⁴ alive with an IV for weeks, prolonging his suffering. The guards Joy,⁸ Velle,⁷ and Rook help dispose of what remains.

Months after Templeton⁴'s death, their life has settled into a routine. Lem² lives permanently at the mansion, visiting Felix¹ in his newly renovated cell that locks from the inside. Felix¹ has made friends among the other inmates: Luthor, Ren, even Kang, who hated him for killing O'Malley,⁵ has softened. One rainy afternoon, Lem² brings Felix¹ to their spot in the garden, a stone alcove surrounded by yellow Dahlias.

They kiss among the flowers. Felix,¹ remembering Dash⁶'s joy about his own engagement, asks Lem² to marry him. Lem² drops to one knee in the wet grass and asks Felix¹ instead. Felix¹ says yes. Lightning strikes nearby. They kiss in the storm, two monsters who have found home in each other in the most unlikely place on Earth.