Elias moved in that night. By midnight, the honeymoon phase ended. It started with a wet, dragging sound in the hallway— thump, slide, thump, slide. When Elias peered through the crack in his door, he saw Arthur dragging a heavy, plastic-wrapped bundle into the bathroom.
Arthur finally looked him in the eye. A slow, jagged grin spread across his face. "The previous tenant left them. He didn’t need them where he was going."
"The room is upstairs," Arthur whispered, his eyes never quite meeting Elias’s. "Rules are simple: No guests. No loud music. And never, under any circumstances, touch 'The Captain.'" "The Captain?" Elias asked.
The next morning, Elias went to the kitchen for coffee and found his roommate meticulously organizing a collection of human teeth in a velvet-lined egg carton.
