So I took Tom's suggestion to do a torture scene, and it's turned out to be quite sadistically beautiful. Only I got stuck, and had to turn to him again. "How do I get *out* of a torture scene???"
"Well, you could strangle him, or..."

Apparently there's no way out of it but to kill the torturee, anything less would leave loose ends and be a chickening out, and, really, I need to show how nonchalantly dismissive my character is of human life.

Goddamnit I hate when he's right and it's something icky. But things like this, I trust his judgement. He is the guru of movies and plot. Also he's a boy, and a gamer boy at that, so he's much more familiar with violent things than I am. Good lord his freaking *normal* dreams are far more disturbing than any Phisto I've ever written. (He's woken up with his chest honestly sore, from having been shot in his dreams. It's quite unsettling, and I don't even want to know what it says about his subconscious.)

Luckily, after being stuck in a bloody little mess, I found some beauty in it, which my Phisto is reveling in, and I just figured out how to combine murder with art and make it all quite lovely.

...I really do understand why C.S. Lewis refused to go back to Screwtape after writing the one book, he was right, it really is terrifying to see where such characters can take you.