Then why would they turn to Joey? Because no one else would agree to do it?

Is it because he’s an outsider? Someone who has no social network? Someone who’s only going back inside to ultimately rot to death, as they see it, someone who will be of no use to them afterward? With his little two-week window before going to prison for the rest of his life, does that make Joey the perfect candidate? And Joey’s Asperger’s oddness (a lack of connection, the prison psychologist had tried to explain), they were never comfortable with that anyway. So is that somehow making him an ideal candidate too?

Yeah, something is different here. A big assignment, okay, but big how exactly? Do they figure that with Joey’s lack of connection, he won’t even realize something’s different? That he’ll just go along dumbly? He would have gone along dumb and unquestioning before. But all the interaction with that kid Zack has smartened him up a little. To things not being what they seem—like a phone dunked in coffee not being a dead phone, as it turned out. To there being another layer underneath. He credits the kid. Making him now pay a little more attention. Maybe just enough. Or maybe too much, he thinks gloomily.

Because Joey realizes he has to go along dumbly. He has to play dumb, for now. If he doesn’t, if he protests or complains or tries to dodge or escape it, they’ll just kill him. Right here. In this empty factory space. Maybe the real reason for being here, he realizes, is so they have that option, depending on Joey’s reaction.

Maybe Joey’s misreading it. Maybe being suddenly in Karloff’s presence is clouding his judgment, making him unduly fearful and anxious.

Even if, as Karloff says, he’s headed to prison for the rest of his life, prison is still a place where they feed and clothe you. Where you look forward to new episodes of the latest Netflix and HBO series. Where you hear the latest songs. Where there is a kind of life. A kind of life that Joey has come to know.

A place where, importantly, you are actually alive.

Karloff doesn’t get Joey. No one gets Joey. But Joey is finally starting to understand Joey.

And Joey is starting to understand that he’s in a corner. In a life of dark corners, maybe the darkest corner of his life.

“Welcome back, Joey,” Karloff says cheerfully, but only as an afterthought, it seems. Only because he knows he should say something like that. Joey can see that Karloff has already moved on to something else. Scribbling some new notes on his pad. Joey thinks of the cancer doctor again.