And Steve's laughter bubbled up insanely again. The creature was wrong—not joy. Hysteria, more nearly. Unused to emotions, the creature could not tell them apart.
Something grabbed his arms and held it. A giant vise which could crush and twist. He saw nothing, realized that it was some mental trick—but thoroughly effective. His arm was being wrenched from its socket, slowly, terribly.
He clenched his teeth, groaned. From somewhere far off, the voice laughed calmly. "I like that. Oh yes, I do. I like your reaction to pain."
An intense loathing he had never before experienced took hold of him. At first he thought it was another trick, but he could sense alarm in the creature which shared him. The loathing, then, was his body's reaction to its parasite. Almost, he could feel the creature squirming, and he gave free reign to the emotion.
"Stop!" The voice was strident, alarmed.
I hate you, Steve thought intensely. I hate you.
"Stop! I warn you, you will kill us with that, or drive us insane."
Vertigo followed the loathing as the creature fought back. Steve was tired, suddenly more tired than he'd ever been. He sank back into blackness, knew even as his senses fled that his mind alone would sleep, not his body. With two minds, the body would not sleep at all—and in a matter of months it would perish of fatigue. But the creature within him feared his hatred, and that he must remember.
The days followed each other in a slow, tortuous procession. Nothing seemed to satiate the parasite, for each day it strove for new emotions, and after a time Steve learned he could frustrate it by regarding everything as unreal, imaginative, non-existent.