bamboo doesn't grow in dark spaces. [80K Words / Complete]

chapter nineteen.

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."