In her former life, deprived of human touch, she would sometimes walk into the kitchen and touch the walls, to convince herself that the world around her was not an illusion. It still felt like an illusion: to others a kitchen, only she knew it was a torture chamber. She used to hack away at her forearms with not-sharp-enough knives, hold her hand above the boiling water for pasta and fail to plunge it in, pour antifreeze into a paper cup and sit staring at it for an hour before finally throwing it away, a losing battle with her body's impulses. Her body wanted to be free from pain and mutilation, and above all to keep on living. What her body wanted was not the same as what she wanted. Meanwhile winter turned to summer and back again as she put her body through its endless robotic paces: shower, work, laundry, bills.
When her torturers don't appear, she is free to explore the labyrinth that is her new home. Its alien geometries inspire no horror. The labyrinth, at least, feels real to her.