The floorboards above the man's head creaked as the heavy Russian approached the basement door. The man shuddered as the old door creaked open. The Russian man closed the door behind him and walked down the stone steps.
"Ivan…" the man said quietly,
"Good," the Russian man, Ivan, said while grinning, "you're learning." Ivan knelled down in front of the man, grasping his frail chin.
"What do you want, Ivan?" the man asked with tears in his eyes.
"What," Ivan said, "can't I just come down to visit?"
The man didn't respond for a long time. This seemed to displease Ivan, but he didn't say anything about it. Instead he looked over at some of the other people chained down in the cellar.
"How are you're friends doing? They don't seem very lively today…"
"That's because they're dead…" the man said with a few small tears in his eyes
"What? All of them? When did that happen?" Ivan teased the man while smiling.
"Don't smile like that, it's creepy,"
"You were the one who told me I should smile more, da?" Ivan smiled even wider before dropping it entirely. "Either way, that's not why I'm here."
Ivan stepped away from the man and walked to the back of the cellar. A few of the other men moaned as he passed them(apparently they weren't completely dead). Ivan opened the chest resting against the back wall of the basement and retrieved one of its items.
"I came here for two reasons, actually. First, I might be needing this sometime soon," Ivan said, holding the object he had taken from the chest, "Second, I would like to ask you a question. You will answer, da?"