Case resumed filling the empty time with mundane activities. He carved the second tally-mark into the wall. He paced circles, talking nonsense to Gary the Rat. He read the labels on the new toiletries, memorizing the differences between invigorating citrus-mango and calming lavender. He unfurled the yoga mat, cycling through reps of crunches and knee-tucks and burpees and push-ups. Hell, he didn't need a mirror to recognize he was low on muscle mass as well as body fat. Arms and upper body strength was a definite area he needed to work on. He used the support rail on the underside of the stairs for pull ups; so far he could only lift himself forehead-high.

Good thing you've got all the time in the world to improve, mocked the voice.

Tremors ran through Case's straining muscles as he fought to lift his bodyweight. Exertion ripped through him as a scream-like grunt.

"What are you doing?" Sir's perplexed voice traveled down the stairs.

Realizing he was no longer alone, Case dropped to his feet. "Exercising," he panted. He paced in a circle, sweat beading in his hairline and his lungs on fire, as Sir came into view. Two visits in one day—how lucky. And just when Case thought he'd gotten the night off, too.

Surprisingly, Sir brought with him another plastic tub. No way, Case thought, awed yet catching his breath. "Please tell me you've got a deck of Uno cards in there."

"No, but that would'a been a good suggestion."

"Yeah, well, I'm not always good under pressure, am I?"

Sir chuckled. He bypassed Case, taking the new tub over to the bed.

Case's intrigue faltered, tumbling into apprehension. What if Sir had brought a weird sex game for them to play, like Naked Twister or Sexy Truth or Dare? Swallowing his nerves, Case dragged his feet to join Sir by the bed, his heartbeat pounding but not from exertion.

"Now, I know you're part of that iGen or Generation Z whatever, and some things may seem foreign to you. But please tell me you know what this is." Sir reached into the tub then pulled out a long and bulky handheld vacuum.

The nerves left Case's body as a fluttery sigh. "Uhh, yeah. I also know about dial-up and rotary phones, by the way."

"Do you know how to use it?" Sir's finger curled around the one switch, like curling around the trigger of a gun, and squeezed. The engine whirred to life, the tiny vent shooting out warm air that had the nostalgic, musty smell of radiator heaters during the winter.

"Seems pretty straightforward." Case stopped at Sir's side, peering into the tub at the rest of the items. Spray nozzle bottles, rubber gloves, baking soda, a new toilet brush and caddy, plus rough sponges. Definitely straightforward.

The engine fell silent, and Sir handed the Easy-Vac to Case. Sir then explained to him there was going to be an addition to their routine: at the start of each month, when Sir brought in his new supplies, they would also clean the basement. The plumbing fixtures would all be scrubbed clean. The single pillow would be swapped for a clean one, and taken upstairs into the laundry. And the mattress would be flipped and cleaned (to the best of Case's ability).

"Why can't I just have a bedsheet?" Case asked. "Like, wouldn't it be easier to change the bedding than do all this."

"Ahh," Sir replied sagely. "Yes, but a sheet could also double as a noose."

Case nodded slowly, allowing himself a pause to think. "What about a duvet or a comforter? Wouldn't they be too thick to tie properly?"

The smile was still on Sir's lips but the energy behind it dimmed, as if a sinister presence had lifted its veil.

Heedless to danger, Case pushed. "I mean, realistically, if I was really desperate to kill myself I could snap my neck on the stairs or drown myself in the toilet—"

Sir's focus seemed to sharpen, darken. "This isn't a discussion. This is a situation where I tell you what to do, and you listen."

"Right." Case hung his head, feigning interest in the handheld vacuum. "Sorry." He squeezed the trigger, the engine screaming at his touch.

Sir grabbed a bottle from the tub and forced it into Case's hand. "You wanna vacuum first, then spot clean the stains."

Case turned the bottle over in his hand. Bright magenta plastic, liquid sloshing inside. Stain remover, a red triangle warning TOXIC. "You don't trust me with bedding, but you trust me with chemicals?" He winced as fingers dug into the sensitive muscle in the crook of his neck. Hot breath tickled his profile, acrid with morning coffee instead of night-time whiskey.

"That's why I'm supervising," Sir growled low in his ear. His grip tightened, a different kind of warning, then he let go, headed to haunt his usual stoop.

"You're not . . . helping?"

"Why?" Sir asked, taking a seat and lighting himself a cigarette. "It's your mess."

Splotches like red-dried-brown rose petals. Flaky, white snail trails Discolored, yellowing shapes like sickly clouds. His blood. Sir's semen. Their sweat. Knowing he'd already pushed his luck, Case knelt beside the mattress and got to work. When he was done, thankfully Sir helped him flip the mattress over but resumed supervising as Case sprinkled baking soda over the surface. While the powder settled, Sir instructed Case to clean the shower. Soap scum had collected in the corners of the ceramic base. The grime was usually obscured by the dim yellow light and thick steam. But up close, on his hands and knees, Case was disgusted to realize he'd been showering surrounded by the sepia-toned grot. He scrubbed, noxious bleach fumes making his eyes sting.

"So, how long have you been a surgeon?"

Sir had moved from the stairs, now supervising Case while leaning against the wooden frame of the corrugated iron half-wall. He regarded Case with half-lidded interest. "I've been practicing medicine for 25 years."

Case paused scrubbing for a moment to throw Sir a smile over his shoulder. "Oh, damn. That's . . . ha, longer than my brother's been alive." He waited for the obligatory follow-up question: how old is your brother? But the pause stretched into a dead end. "Does that mean you were about my age when you started?"

"That's not how it works."

"How does it work?"

Sir scowled, straightening his posture. "Why are you asking so many questions?"

"Because," this time Case actually stopped. He sat back on his heels, turning and taking Sir's attention so he knew this was serious. "I'm not going anywhere. Right? I mean, you said so yourself: there's only one-way outta here, and I'm too weak for suicide. So, I'm stuck here. And I'm lonely. All I have is me, who most of the time I hate, and you. And . . . and I don't like sleeping with people I don't know. And, yeah, I'm not going to ask any stupid questions like what's your name or what's the fucked up trauma that made you start kidnapping people but I want to get to know you—"

"Medical school starts four years after college." Sir stood tall, arms akimbo and his focus locked onto Case with laser precision. "That's another four years. You then have residency for a few more years, depending on skill and what field you're in, before becoming an accredited physician. I went into Orthopedic Surgery when I was 28."

"Oh." Case blinked, reeling. "Oh, wow."

"Mind you," Sir waved his finger, his countenance suddenly becoming less severe, "not every yahoo makes it through residency. More than 50% failure rate. And even then, not many achieve so much at such a young age. I was very good—prodigal, even." At this point, Sir may have been staring at Case, but it was clear he was seeing something else entirely. Something nostalgic and sparking inner-bliss. "Could've been on the Forbes 30 Under 30 if they were ten years earlier."

Realization dawned on Case. His nerves spiked with excitement, his breath jolting with the eagerness to speak.

Careful, the voice warned. Don't run your mouth. Choose your words carefully.

Right. Be smart. He put down the scrubbing brush, settling himself to sit proper and devote all his attention to Sir. "Is orthopedics the hardest type of surgery?"

Sir scrunched his face, shaking his head. "Child's play. I wasn't being challenged enough, so I specialized in Trauma Surgery when I was about 30." He leaned forward now, bracing himself with his elbows on the wooden frame, leaning into Case's space. "The difference is Ortho is the broad umbrella term for the musculoskeletal system: broken bones, ligaments, tendons, remedial stuff. Trauma Surgery deals with the patients in critical condition: car wrecks, chemical burns, severed limbs or assault victims. In fact, one case during my fellowship, I worked on a girl who came in missing her right arm and breast—that's called avulsion."

Case's imagination defaulted to something out of a Saw movie, limbs hanging by tendons and spurting blood, and his stomach turned. "What . . . what happened to the girl?"

"Bah, I think she'd been caught cheating by the boyfriend, so he took to her with a machete from his hunting shed. But everyone said replantation wasn't amenable, too high a risk for infection or necrosis of the tissue." Sir moved into the shower cubicle, so enraptured by his own gospel that his words had to be spoken in a low voice, and he had to be intimately close to Case for him to hear their significance. "But I trimmed the shattered bone, and stitched together all the severed arteries, veins, nerves, muscles, like it was fine silk and I was weaving an intricate web. I was the only one with the right skill and mental stamina to make that surgery a success, and I did."

Case took in Sir's near-manic aura, and wondered if he'd opened a Pandora's Box of unstable psyches. This side of Sir scared Case but, deep down, it also captivated him. "And you've done that kind of stuff for 25 years?"

Sir chuckled. And then, as if he'd woken from a dream or snapped from a spell, Sir slipped back into his affable, charming Southern persona. "Oh, no, why I'm not quite that old." Through his smile, visible through sharp white canines, was a slice of pink tongue; the sight of it struck Case in his core like a bolt of lightning, charging him with arousal.

Case inhaled, steadying himself. "How old are you?" he asked, scarcely above a whisper.

"I'll be 48 come November."

That's older than my dad. "What date?" he asked, not because he had a calendar or any real interest; he asked because it was an unconscious reflex, and being this close to Sir, the real Sir, he'd lost his senses. So when Sir answered the 22nd, it caught him further by surprise. "Huh," he said, allowing himself the pause for quick math. Realization came with a sickening drop in his stomach. Sir's birthday was 11-22-71.

"When's yours?" Sir asked, apparently oblivious to the changing gears in Case's mind.

Case was an October baby. Hannah called him a Libra-Scorpio cusp (whatever the hell that meant): 10.22.01—not only was Sir almost exactly 30 years older than him, but there was an eeriness in the similarity of their birthdays. Two digits of separation. A closeness like that seemed kismet, as if they shared some great connection and were meant to meet.

Don't spiral down this hole, he told himself. Reasonably, he knew he was reading into meaningless details. He knew this was the unrealistic, idealistic side of him.

You don't believe that, the voice told him. You believe what you feel. And this feels like fate. You were always meant to be in this basement.

Anger prickled at his tear ducts. Frustration and confusion bubbled inside him, and he didn't know why. Suddenly, Case felt incredibly overwhelmed and powerless—like he was a plaything to a cruel, divine entity. He turned away, resuming to clean the shower floor.

"Why? Do I get a birthday cake even though candles are a fire hazard?"

Sir didn't say anything, but Case could sense him watching. He continued to scrub, the bristles flicking grimy soap suds up his bare arms.

"Ask me something." Sir scooted closer, sitting cross-legged and bopping his shoulder against Case's. "I know you haven't finished high school. You like that trashy skate-punk racket and horror movies. You're a middle child, probably overlooked at home and lacking the love and attention you deserved. You had a girlfriend, some pretty little thing, but I'd wager it ended ugly. You look down when you smile and chew your bottom lip when you're thinking. You wanted to get to know each other, right? So, even the playing field. Ask me something."

Case's grip tightened around the brush. The cleaner chemicals burned his skin, and his heart panged with the gratitude of being seen. Sir wanted them to bond; he wanted them to have a more meaningful connection. Finally, Case had found someone who wanted to form a real connection with him.

Maybe this was meant to be, the voice conceded. I told you, he does care. He does like you.

Do I want him to like me? Case quietly questioned the voice. Then, to himself, Do I like him?

Case didn't want to ask something too big or personal, not something that would get him hurt or killed. But he didn't want to ask something small either.

"Do you like me?"

Sir's presence beside Case stiffened; but when he answered it was with an audible smirk. "More than I should."

"That's a strange way of saying yes."

"Yes. I like you, Casey." Sir brought his hand to the nape of Case's neck, toying with a lone curl. "Do you like me, too?"

Something low in Case's abdomen ached. Desire or discomfort, he couldn't tell. Instinct told him to lean into the touch, to indulge in this pleasure. But he collected himself, reigning his smile into a barely constrained smirk, and he resumed scrubbing the shower floor. "I'll tell you when the playing field is even."