The Basement

The Basement

z119z

© 2014 by the author

I’m afraid of the basement. It terrifies me. There, I’ve admitted it. According to this website I found, “Acknowledging your fears is the first step on the path to owning your fears.” Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t really feel any less frightened. It’s silly, but even thinking about the basement is making my palms sweat and my heart beat faster. The site says that writing a detailed account of your fears helps you “understand the dimensions of your phobia.” Anyway, this is my attempt at understanding my fear of the basement and, with any luck, conquering it and purging it from my life.

I’d like to forget about the basement completely, just erase it from my mind, but the more I try to forget it, the more it forces itself into my consciousness. Sometimes it’s the only thing I can think about. It’s getting to be an obsession. It’s like I’m both attracted to the basement and repelled by it at the same time, almost like I’m enjoying my fear of it. I’m spending hours trying not to think about it. It’s interfering with my work, and when I come home, it monopolizes my thoughts. So I hope this works. If it doesn’t, I don’t know what I’m going to do.

The way things are now, I would avoid the basement completely if I could. I have to go down there because that’s where the laundry room is. If there were a laundromat nearby, I would use it. I’ve even been thinking about taking my dirty clothes to a dry cleaner. If I could afford to do that, that’s what I’d do. I know it’s crazy and irrational to feel this way. I tell myself it’s just a basement. I’ve been in basements before, and they never bothered me. It’s just insane for me to fear this particular basement. I know that, but I can’t help myself. The minute I think of the basement, I start shaking, my mouth gets dry, and my stomach starts churning.

Luckily, the laundry room is just opposite the elevator, and I can do what I have to do and leave quickly. Still I get nervous about washing my clothes—scared stiff, to be honest. I put it off until I can’t delay any longer. Then I get everything ready so that I don’t have to spend any more time than necessary in the basement. I double-check to make sure I have enough change for the machines and that I have the soap.

The weirdness starts as soon as the elevator doors open. The lights in the basement are on some sort of motion or noise detectors. When the doors open, the only illumination in the hallway is the light in the elevator, and that’s not too bright. You have to step into the hallway before the overhead light in the corridor outside the elevator comes on. It’s a fluorescent light—all the lights in the basement are—and there’s always a delay. There’s only a single fluorescent tube in each fixture, and they must be old because they flicker off and on for several seconds before they finally catch for good. Even then the light is weak, and they make this loud, annoying buzz. It’s almost painful it’s so loud. It grabs my attention and drives all the thoughts from my mind.

The laundry room light works the same way. You have to step into the room before it comes on. By the time I get my clothes into the machine, the light in the corridor has shut off. When I leave and punch the button for the elevator, the light in the laundry room goes off. It’s like being in a dim spotlight all the time. You can’t see down the hallway. There’s absolutely no light coming from outside, and the light from the ceiling fixtures doesn’t spill very far down the hallway. After a few feet, there’s just total blackness. But at least I don’t have to venture further than that down the corridor. It’s really the corridor more than the basement itself that bothers me.

I only had to go down the corridor once. When I moved in, the rental agent didn’t have a key for the mailbox, and she told me to get it from the super. There’s one of those intercoms in the lobby with a speaker attached to it for contacting the super. I pressed the call button and after a few seconds, there was a squawk from the speaker. I figured it was the super, or maybe his wife—you couldn’t guess the sex of the person speaking from the noise. Anyway, I press the talk button and tell the person on the other end what I needed. There’s more static in reply, but I hear “basement” and “end of corridor.” So I take the elevator to the basement—the stairwell is locked on the lobby side. I already know about the lights, because the rental agent showed me the laundry room.

What I’m not prepared for is how long the corridor is, or how long it seems. The elevator’s at one end. I get off and start walking down the hallway. The lights blink on. They’re about twenty feet apart, and I barely trip the next one in line when the one behind me shuts off. The hallway seems endless. I know it can’t be any longer than the hallway on my floor, but I swear it feels three-four times as long. Maybe it’s the weird lights going on and off that makes it seem longer. You just can’t see that far ahead, or back, and it’s like you’re walking down this endless corridor because you can’t tell how far you have to go to reach the end. It’s also much narrower than the hallways on the floors above. There are lots of pipes overhead and electrical conduits along the walls. All the doors are closed and look locked. Someone has stenciled things like “Boiler” and “Utilities” on some of the doors. I can hear machinery behind some of the doors, and there’s a sound of water running through pipes. There’s also that loud, annoying buzzing noise coming from the lights.

The oddest thing is the smell. It gets stronger and stronger the further I go down the corridor. It’s a heavy sweet smell with lots of spicy overtones as if someone was burning incense. I realize that I’ve smelled it elsewhere in the building—in the elevator and the hallway, even in my apartment. But it’s a lot stronger down in the basement. If I had to breathe that for long, I would get dizzy.

When I get to the end of the hallway, a door opens even before I can knock and a man steps out. “You the guy looking for a key?”

“Yeah. I’m Brad Wilkins. I’ve just moved into 1414.” I hold out my hand.

The man looks at it for a moment and then shakes his head. “Sorry, I’ve just been working on some plumbing. Haven’t had a chance to wash my hands yet. I’m Vincent. Mr. Vincent. Let’s get your key.”

Mr. Vincent steps out into the hallway. He’s not a small man. I’m five-seven, and he’s only a couple of inches taller, but he’s huge. He’s wearing an old sweatshirt. The arms bulge. It looks like the sleeves of the sweatshirt have been inflated. He’s so wide across the shoulders that he has to step sideways through the door. The neck of the sweatshirt has been ripped open to expose the first few inches of his chest. The line between his pecs must be three inches deep. He’s the kind of guy you would expect to be covered with a thick pelt of fur, but his head is shaved and what I can see of his flesh is hairless. I feel even smaller than I usually do when confronted by someone that big. I have to step back so that he can get past me. He doesn’t push me out of the way or anything—not physically at least. But it’s like there’s a wave of pressure emanating from his body that shoves me back against the wall of the corridor. It’s cold and damp in the basement, but I can feel the heat coming from his body. You know when you sit in front of a fire and the side of your body facing the fire gets so hot. It’s like that.

My heart kind of lurches, and I can suddenly hear the blood pulsing in my ears. My tongue feels too big for my mouth. My reaction confuses me. I have to fight down an impulse to run back to the elevator. It’s not that this guy Mr. Vincent is threatening me or anything like that. It’s just that something feels off about him. When I think about it later, it occurs to me that it may have been not only his size but his odd way of introducing himself as “Mr. Vincent.” Most guys introduce themselves as Joe or maybe Joe Smith—I mean, who tells someone else to call him “mister”? Maybe a school teacher talking to kids, but it’s not the way an adult introduces himself to another adult, is it? That and his refusal to shake hands. That was odd. When he said his hands were dirty, I looked at them. That’s sort of an automatic response, isn’t it? I mean, a guy tells you his hands are dirty—you look. But his hands weren’t dirty. If anything, they look scrubbed. The man could do surgery with those hands.

Mr. Vincent didn’t threaten me or attempt to dominate me. It was more like my body and mind responded to him at a very primal level. The reptile mind catalogued him as a danger, and for a second or so I felt this instinctual prompting to flee and get the hell away from him. Yet I also felt attracted to him, like I would be safe with him. Another part of my mind identified him as the leader, and I felt this urge to follow him.

This makes it sound like I devoted a lot of time to thinking about Mr. Vincent, but it all took just a couple of seconds. I’m just trying to reconstruct what happened and how I felt about it to understand the source of my fears about the basement.

Anyway, Mr. Vincent’s got one of those metal key rings that’s attached to a wire that coils inside a small box he wears on his belt, and as he walks past me, he pulls it out and selects a key from among the dozens on the ring.

“I’ve got what you need in my workroom.” He leads me back down the corridor to the third door on the right and unlocks it. The light flickers on. It appears to be the room where he stores his tools and equipment. There’s a beat-up workbench along the wall to the right of the door. Above it on the wall a collection of tools hangs from hooks inserted into the holes of a peg board. Someone has painted silhouettes of the tools in black on the board. Opposite the door are several metal shelving units containing jugs of cleaning stuff and paint cans and things like that. Mr. Vincent pulls open a drawer and takes out a small manila envelope. He opens the flap and shakes the envelope until a tiny key falls into the palm of his hand. “Here.” He holds it out to me. “While I’ve got you down here, let’s have you fill out the contact form—so I can reach you if I need to.” He attaches a piece of paper to a clipboard and hands it to me along with a pen.

To fill in the form, I have to step into the room. That’s when I notice this battered wooden door in the wall along the left-hand wall. There are traces of different layers of paint on the door—the top layer is white, but the paint is chipped and flaking and patches of red, green, and blue show through. The rest of the room and the walls of the corridor are all painted gray. That makes the door in the wall stand out even more. All the other doors along the corridor are made of metal and have regular locks, but this door is made of old wooden slats with cracks between them and is held shut by a large padlock threaded through a hasp.

I have to set the clipboard down on the workbench to fill it in. It’s the only flat open surface in the room. Mr. Vincent stands next to me on my left and reads what I’m putting down as I write it. Admittedly the room is small and there’s nowhere else he could stand, but it feels like he’s closer than he needs to be—too close for my comfort anyway. I swear there are goosebumps on the left side of my body. Again I feel the heat coming from his body. That side of my body is hotter than the other side. He just looms over me. I want to step away from him, but there’s no room.

The form asks for my cell phone number and my number at work and my email, as well as the address and phone number of my next-of-kin. I put down my parents’ information. He glances at the form and says, “You from California?”

“It’s where my parents live. I haven’t lived there since I came to Boston four years ago.”

I expect the usual questions about Do I miss California? and How I am surviving the snow and cold weather? Everybody in Boston acts like I have to be crazy to have left Pasadena and that I must be running around in shorts and a T-shirt during blizzards, but he just nods and asks, “Everything all right with your apartment?” He takes the clipboard from me and detaches the form. His hand brushes mine. I think he means for that to happen. He still standing close to me, and he looks me right in the eye. It’s like a form of pressure pushing against me, making me smaller.

I have to clear my throat before I can speak. It’s so stupid. It’s like I’m a kid again called up to the front of the class to be reprimanded by the teacher.

I tell him about the drip in the shower, and he says he’ll get to it the next day. He’s as good as his word. When I get back from the office the next day, there’s a note on my door saying that he’s replaced the washer in the shower and installed a better shower head.

I didn’t need the note to tell me that he had been in my apartment. That day in the basement I identified the source of the smell that permeates the building. It’s his aftershave. He must use a ton of it. He dowses himself in it.

You can always tell when Mr. Vincent’s been in the elevator recently or in the hallway on my floor from the lingering smell of his aftershave. Oddly enough, I never see him, but his handiwork is much in evidence. The public areas are always spotless and polished. It makes sense that I never see him—I’m at work during the day, which is probably when he does most of his work around the building. But then I never see anyone else either. I’m on the top floor—the fourteenth (it’s actually the thirteenth, but the numbers skip from twelve to fourteen). So you’d think I would see other people in the elevator or the lobby, but I never do. If I didn’t know better, I might think that I was the only tenant in the building. I’m not even sure Mr. Vincent lives here. Maybe he just comes in during the day.

I almost never hear anyone else either. In most apartment buildings, you can hear the sound from TVs and music through the doors or water running through the pipes, but here you never do. The only time I hear anyone is late at night. Then it’s only a distant sound of voices, like from a TV or a radio. I suppose the sound is coming from the unit below mine or next door. It might even be from the street, although the windows keep most noise out. It’s almost comforting to hear someone else talking as I go to sleep. Whoever it is must stay up late. No matter what time I wake up during the night, I can always hear the sound. Maybe the person listens to talk radio late at night.

The basement didn’t bother me at first. That’s another odd thing. The automatic lights struck me as strange, but cheapskate landlords aren’t unusual. If Vega Properties wants to save pennies on the electricity, it’s none of my business. I lived here for about six months before I noticed the first symptoms. I was headed down in the elevator to the laundry room one night, and I felt uneasy. Sort of tense and apprehensive, you know? I didn’t connect it with the basement. The feelings weren’t that strong, and I just shrugged them off. I put my clothes in the washing machine and headed back upstairs.

As I’m coming back down a half-hour later to put the clothes in the dryer, the feeling is stronger. I have a panic attack in the elevator. I don’t know what the matter is. When the doors open, I just can’t make myself get out. I push myself back into a corner and stare out at the black hallway. The washing machine has stopped, but other noises come from down the hall—a rhythmic pulsing sound and a high-pitched whine. There is an irregular knocking noise, the kind that steam radiators make when there’s an air bubble in the pipes—except that our building doesn’t have steam radiators. The smell of Mr. Vincent’s aftershave is especially strong, and the odor combined with the noise and the darkness alarms me even more.

After a few seconds, the elevator door closes. The elevator doesn’t move. I know that I should press the button to open the doors and walk across the hall and put my clothes in the dryer, but I’m shaking so hard that I can’t. I want to crouch down in a corner and hide. It’s that feeling that finally gets me to move. It strikes me as ridiculous. I’m still nervous, but I eventually calm down enough to laugh at myself for being foolish. I finally get out of the elevator and tend to my washing.

The next day I chalked it up to some sort of glitch in my mind. Something had triggered a memory of a dark place from my childhood, and I had overreacted.

It was about that time that the dream started—or at least when I became conscious of it. When I first noticed it, I had a strong impression that I had been having the dream for some time and had only now become aware of it. At first I had the dream a couple of times a week, but now I have it every night. It’s not the same every night, but several elements are always present.

It starts with a phone call. I’m in bed asleep, and my cell buzzes. At first I try to ignore it, but it won’t stop. And it doesn’t matter where I leave my phone. One night I even put it my briefcase and left the briefcase in the hall closet, which is as far away from my bed as I can get in my apartment, but I could still hear the phone. The longer the phone rings, the greater my need to answer it. That must sound funny, but if I try to resist answering, the tension builds up inside me until I jump out of bed and get the phone. I don’t want to answer it, but I need to answer it, if that makes any sense.

The message is always the same. “Come to the basement.” You would think with my feelings about the basement that the prospect of going to the basement would fill me with dread, but in the dream I really want to go to the basement. It’s more than a want actually. It’s like the phone. When it rings, I have this overwhelming need to answer it, and once I’m summoned, I have this overwhelming need to go to the basement. I can’t resist. I don’t even stop to get dressed. I’m in such a hurry that I don’t even bother to close the door. I just rush out into the hallway naked and run to the elevator. I’m not worried about meeting anybody.

When I get to the basement, I turn to the left and start walking down the corridor. The overhead lights switch on and off, like they were spotlights tracking my progress down the hallway. The smell of Mr. Vincent’s aftershave is really strong. It makes me feel lightheaded, like I’m buzzed from alcohol or drugs.

Now if I did any of this while I was awake, I’d be terrified. All the elements that frighten me are present—the basement, the crazy lights with their irritating buzz, Mr. Vincent’s aftershave, the mechanical noises coming from behind the doors and the pipes. Plus, I’m naked. But I’m not at all tense or frightened. In fact, I’m aroused. Yeah, I’ve got an erection. And the further I walk down the hallway, the more aroused I become. By the time I reach the door to Mr. Vincent’s workroom, my cock is throbbing, and I’m dripping pre-cum.

Mr. Vincent’s workroom is open, and a dim light spills into the hallway from it. I walk into the room and find that the door in the wall is open. Now I only saw that door the one time, and I don’t know what’s on the other side of it. So far, in my dream, everything has been like it is in real life—my apartment, the elevator, the basement corridor. But the room on the other side of the door has to come from my imagination. That’s another thing that’s upsetting me. I don’t know what dark corners of my mind are responsible for this room.

The walls of the rest of the basement—the corridors, the laundry room, Mr. Vincent’s workroom, and what little I saw of his apartment are made of concrete blocks, painted gray. But the room behind the wooden door is different. It looks much older. The walls are covered with cracked and broken plaster. In some places the plaster has fallen away, exposing walls of old brick. The mortar between the bricks is crumbling. The ceiling is two or three feet lower than in the rest of the basement. Wooden beams, black with age, are barely visible in the dim light from the naked bulbs that hang beneath two round metal fixtures. The floor is made of concrete broken into uneven segments. Rivers of patches snake across it. Unlike the floor in the hallway, the floor in the room is covered with grit and it’s really cold. My first few steps into the room leave my feet feeling dirty and icy. The room is about fifteen feet wide by twenty feet long. The smell of Mr. Vincent’s aftershave is strong, but even it doesn’t completely mask an odor of dank mildew and long-standing water.

The room is empty except for an old metal bed pushed against the wall opposite the door. There’s no headboard. Each leg is topped with a knob that extends a couple of inches above the mattress. Metal rods run between the legs to form the frame. The mattress is old and thin and rests on a platform of interlocking springs. There is no sheet, and the cloth covering the mattress is torn in places.

In the dream I enter the room and sit down on the bed. It sags beneath my weight, and the springs creak and protest. After a minute or so, the door closes and I hear the padlock snap shut. I’m locked in. Then the lights in the room go out. The only illumination comes through the cracks between the boards in the wooden door. I can hear someone moving about in the outer room. I think it’s Mr. Vincent. Whoever it is, his shadow blocks the light from time to time. Eventually he leaves. He turns out the light in the work room and closes the door. I’m in complete darkness.

It’s cold and it’s damp. I start shaking. I know something awful is about to happen. Sometimes I think I’ll be forgotten and left to die in the room. Other times I’m sure I’m about to be raped. I get more and more frightened. And excited. That’s the odd thing about the dream. My need to enter the room is overwhelming, even though I know I’m going to be locked in and left in the dark. I rush into the room. I know that something will eventually happen to me in the room, and I worried about that, but I’m also aroused. It’s like I enjoy being imprisoned and threatened. Eventually I wake up, in my own bed, but the fright and the excitement lingers on. It’s usually about four in the morning by that time. I can’t get back to sleep. I’m so disturbed. So I get up. I’m not getting enough sleep, and I think that’s contributing to the way I feel.

There are lots of things I find disturbing about the dream. I don’t understand why I have it every night. I don’t understand why I obey the command to go to the basement or why I’m so happy to do so. Another thing that disturbs me is that it’s my mind that’s creating the dream. I’ve never thought much about imprisonment—of course, it would be horrible to be in prison. We all know that, but I don’t have a phobia about it. At least, I don’t think I do. I’m not worried that I’m going to be put in jail, yet every night I get locked in the room. No, that’s wrong. I’m avoiding saying what really happens. Every night I lock myself in the room. This dungeon apparently comes from my psyche. No, not apparently. “Apparently” is another weasel word. I’m trying to deny my responsibility for the dream. This exercise in confronting my phobia isn’t going to work if I don’t face up to the fact that it’s my mind that’s creating the dream. The dungeon comes from my mind. The room and its contents come from my mind. What happens comes from my mind. It’s all in my mind. Even the word “dungeon.” It’s not a dungeon. It’s not. It’s just a room, A room with an old metal bed. Nothing more.

Lately the dream has been getting worse. The first time I dreamed about the room—the first time I can remember—I walked down the hallway calmly. I knew nothing of what awaited me at the end of my stroll, and I hadn’t as yet learned to fear. It’s more like I’m curious.

I walk down the hallway. I can see a faint light coming from the door to Mr. Vincent’s workroom. I know he’s been around recently because the smell of his aftershave is so strong. I step carefully, putting my feet down so that I don’t make a sound. I don’t quite know why. I just have this feeling that I shouldn’t let anyone know that I’m there. I’m trespassing, and I don’t want to be caught.

I’m very aware of how my body feels. I’m holding my breath and creeping down the hallway. My muscles are sort of tense from trying to be quiet. I’m really aware of the movement of my muscles. I walk next to the left-hand wall of the corridor, in the half-shadows outside the light coming from above. I can feel my cock swaying from side to side, the way it does when I’m not wearing briefs. Oddly enough, I’m more worried about Mr. Vincent discovering me in his basement than in his finding me naked and aroused.

When I reach the door to the workroom, I stop and peek around the corner of the door frame. The light’s not coming from the overhead light, but from the room behind the wooden door. The wooden door is only about half open and the light is very dim. I listen carefully for a minute. But Mr. Vincent’s not in the room. Somehow I know that. So I step into his workroom and walk over to the wooden door. That’s when I see it for the first time. I stand there for five-ten minutes taking stock of what’s in it. Then I go in and walk around. I’m touching the bed, the walls.

I can’t make much sense of the room. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything like it. Why would anyone put an old bed in a room like that? What purpose does the room serve? It’s just wasted space. Mr. Vincent could use it for a storeroom. It would give him more space in his work room.

So that was the dream in the beginning. Just me wandering around the room behind the wooden door and touching things. I don’t know how long I kept having this version of the dream—a couple of weeks maybe. As I said before, I think I was having the dream long before I became consciously aware that I was having the dream every night.

If the dream had never amounted to more than that, it would have been just a curiosity. But then it changed. That’s when I began sitting down on the bed and being locked in. Then the man appears. One night I pound on the door to get the man’s attention, begging him to let me out. He doesn’t say anything. I look through the cracks in the door, but they’re so narrow that I can only catch glimpses of bits of his body. It’s Mr. Vincent. I’m sure of that. I call him by name, but he doesn’t respond. He’s naked—at least in the parts I can see, he’s not wearing any clothes. His body, at least what I can see of it, is really well-muscled and smooth. He’s doing something at the work bench, making something. Somehow I know it’s meant for me. He’s making something of metal. I can tell because of the sound it makes as he’s working on it. He works for about an hour or so every night and then he leaves, turning out the lights in the work room and locking the outer door. I’m really curious about what he’s making for me. I don’t know how I know that the object he’s making is for me. I just do.

In the dream, I’m fascinated by the brief glimpses I see of Mr. Vincent’s body. He is so muscular and strong. I can never see all of his body at once, just bits and pieces of it. One night as I’m peering through the cracks between the slats of the door, he’s standing so that I can see his cock. His groin is completely hairless. That might be why his cock looks so large. He’s uncut, and the tip of the head protrudes from the foreskin. He’s got really low-hanging balls, and they swing back and forth as he works. Every night now I hope I get to see his cock and balls. I have these fantasies about lying on the bed and having him kneel over my face and slowly let his balls drape themselves across my nose and over my eyes. Then he feeds me his cock and I suck on it slowly. Or he rubs his cock over my face and body. I kneel at the door, twisting my head to get the best view I can of Mr. Vincent. My hands are playing with my nipples and my cock as I dream about him. Sometime he moves close to the door, and I can feel the heat from his body assaulting me through the cracks.

I do not know how long the dream continues. As always, I wake up from the dream in my own bed. I never dream about leaving the room behind the wooden door and returning to my apartment. The dream dissipates, and I slowly awake to the need to have an orgasm. I’m scared and my heart is racing, but I have this overwhelming need to have an orgasm. It takes only a few strokes of my hand to cum.

Last Friday I met Mr. Vincent in the elevator. That’s the first time I’ve seen him in person since the day I moved in and went down to the basement to get a key to my mailbox. That’s another odd thing. Like I said earlier, I know he’s in the building because I can see the results of his work and smell his aftershave, but I never see him. So last Friday, I’m coming home from work. When the elevator arrives, Mr. Vincent is inside. A tool box is on the floor next to him. He nods at me and says, “Brad.”

My heart skips a beat, and I step away from the elevator. I’m sort of taken aback when I see him. I think I even gasp. Like I said, I never encounter anyone else in the building. There’s never anyone in the elevator. There’s never anyone using the laundry room when I’m there. I never see another person in the lobby or the hallways. I’ve kind of gotten used to being the only person around. Anyway, Mr. Vincent gives me this odd look and moves over. He must sense my surprise. “It’s all right,” he says. “I’m just going to the seventh floor.” And then he makes this motion with his left hand, like he’s inviting me to step in.

So I get in. But then I do an odd thing. You know how when you get in an elevator, you usually stand as far away from the other passengers as you can. But I don’t want to do that. I stand right next to Mr. Vincent. I can feel the heat from his body, and it makes me feel warm and good. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I picture the molecules of his aftershave entering my lungs and then spreading throughout my entire body. I want him to . . . well, I want him to put his arms around me. I want that so much that I can almost feel his arms around my shoulders. And then the elevator stops at the seventh floor. Mr. Vincent bends over and picks up his toolbox. “See ya,” he says and leaves.

The doors close, and the elevator starts moving up again. I’m left with this feeling of emptiness.

But that’s not all. When the elevator doors opened and I saw Mr. Vincent standing there, my eyes immediately focused on his groin. He was wearing tight jeans, and there’s this big bulge over his cock and balls. When I’m standing beside him, I’m looking down at that bulge. When he gets off, it’s his ass that grabs my attention. His jeans are so tight, I can see his glutes rise and fall as he walks. By the time the doors close, I’ve got a hard-on. I can’t think about anything but Mr. Vincent. I start rubbing myself. I can’t help it. Even before I reach the door to my apartment, I’m unzipping my pants and reaching for my cock. When I get inside, I close the door and drop my briefcase. Then I grab my cock with both hands and jerk off. I come within a few seconds and let out this big shout.

As soon as I’m finished, I’m thinking about Mr. Vincent again. I’m still hard. I maneuver my arms out of my suit jacket and kick off my shoes and pants. I pull off my tie and nearly tear the buttons on my shirt off in my hurry to get naked. Then I kneel down on the hallway floor and start jerking off again. All I can think about is those hard glutes clenching and unclenching as he thrusts his big cock into me. When I finally cum, I pitch forward onto the floor and lie there. My muscles were so tensed up and taut by the time I came that it feels like I’ve torn a few ligaments. But I don’t care. I can feel a pool of wet sticky cum beneath my groin, and I rub my cock in it.

I lie there imagining myself sucking Mr. Vincent off. He pulls out at the last moment and shoots his cum all over my face. It drips down my chest. I scoop it up with my fingers and lick them clean. I want to be covered in Mr. Vincent’s cum.

That night I finally see what the man in the workroom is making. Usually his body blocks my view of the work bench, but that night he moved out of the way for a few seconds. Whatever he’s working on gleams in the light. By moving my head back and forth, I was able to see most of it through the cracks in the door. He’s attaching metal cuffs to the ends of a chain. The chain isn’t very long, maybe eighteen inches at most, but the links are thick and heavy. The cuffs are three-four inches in diameter, and about an inch high. The chain and the cuffs are coated with chrome. There is a vertical band of white in the chrome, and I realize it’s a reflection of the white wooden door. The man leaves the workroom and turns out the lights. I’m left in darkness again.

The next night the cuffs are lying on the bed when I arrive in the room. There are two sets of chains and cuffs. Each set is stretched out to its full length. I pick one set of cuffs up. The weight surprises me. It is very heavy. And cold. I put it back on the bed and arrange it as before. I stare at the cuffs. I know they are for me. I know that I am supposed to put them on. I don’t know how long I stand there staring at them. It’s like the sight of them is draining my mind of all thoughts except my growing need to put them on.

I sit down on the bed and cross my right ankle over my left knee. I pull one of the chains over and wrap a cuff around my ankle. The metal is cold and heavy. I snap the cuff shut. I put my foot on the floor and the cuff slides down to the knobs of the ankle bones. I bend over and attach the other cuff to my left ankle. I put the other set of cuffs around my wrists. Then I lie back on the bed and close my eyes. The chain connecting the wrist cuffs lies across my stomach. I breathe in and out slowly, savoring the weight of the chain. The door to the inner room is still open. I know that Mr. Vincent is standing in the workroom watching me through the open door.

That thought comforts me. I don’t know why. It’s like the whys and the wherefores are no longer my concern. I don’t have to worry about them. I’ve given up control. What’s going to happen will happen. I don’t have a choice. That loss of freedom is strangely liberating. By taking on the weight of the chains and the cuffs, I have cast off the weight of responsibility. I have surrendered.

The dream has been the same for the past four days. I get the phone call. I go to the basement. I walk down the hallway. The workroom door is open. I go into the inner room. I sit down on the bed and put on the chains. I lie back and close my eyes and give myself up to Mr. Vincent.

The chains aren’t an S&M thing. It’s more like they’re symbols of my acceptance of the situation, like I’ve surrendered to Mr. Vincent, like I want him to be my keeper.

I’m so passive and accepting. That worries me. I haven’t been able to go to work this week. I’ve called in sick. I couldn’t get any work done if I did go in. All I can think about is the dream. I’m thinking of quitting and leaving Boston to get away from the dream and Mr. Vincent. But I’m also fascinated by the dream and by Mr. Vincent. I don’t want it but I do, if you get what I mean. He’s all that I can think about. I need him.

That’s all I wrote in my attempt to deal with my fear of the basement. I don’t think I own my fears. I don’t know that I want to own my fears.

I’m doing my laundry now. At least that’s why I came to the basement. Writing about my phobia helped a bit. I’m still frightened, but it’s not so bad tonight.

When I get off the elevator, I look down the hallway and see that the door to the workroom is open. There’s a faint light coming through the open doorway. The smell of Mr. Vincent’s aftershave is very strong tonight. It’s like my dream.

I set my laundry basket on the table in the laundry room. I’m wearing a T-shirt and a pair of old sweatpants. They were practically the only clean clothes I had left. It’s been almost a month since I last came down to the basement to do my laundry.

I pull the T-shirt over my head and throw it in the laundry basket. I take off the sweatpants and my briefs and drop them on the floor. I step out of my flip-flops. The cement floor is cold beneath my feet.

My cock stirs.

I walk out of the laundry room, naked. As I move down the corridor, I can hear Mr. Vincent in the workroom. I walk faster.