Chapter 14
My god, he looked good in the morning.
Sun beams swirled over his hooded head making it appear as if he wore a halo. He did not. He wore his sunglasses and a disgruntled look as he tilted his head up to me.
He was bloody.
Though he wore dark clothes it was evident he was soaking in blood. His leather jacket and jeans had pockets of rips through them from being stabbed numerous times.
The blood was his.
This however did not seem to bother him.
He waved. “Hey.”
I waved back. “Good day to you.”
“How you going, Princess?”
“Very well, thank you, and yourself?”
“Great.”
“Lovely.”
“Any plans for today?” he asked.
“I’ll probably stay in.”
“When I tried to walk up the stairs to get to you, I almost fell into a pit with spears.”
“Yes, I think I’ll probably stay in.”
“You can come out if you want.” He cocked his head. “Are you in your underwear?”
“This is not underwear, this is Pearla lingerie.”
“Can you take it off?”
“How did you know where I was?”
He did not answer and wriggled two fingers in the air, and I swore I felt them stroking my clit. Heat climbed up my legs reminding me I was desperate to finish last night.
“I got a proposition for you,” he said. “I need you to sit on my face.”
“Are you trying to get me down there?”
“I’m trying to get suffocated.”
“Can you throw up your sunglasses to me?”
“Can you throw down your panties?”
I thought on this.
“I brought you some gifts.” Dig lifted up a basket bursting with wildflowers and oranges. “You like eating stuff high in vitamin C for your skin hydration.”
I did.
“Leave it there.” I waved to him. “I’ll accept it later.”
“You can let me up, and I’ll personally deliver it to you.” He seemed to calculate the side of the building and how far he would have to climb up to get to me. “Let down your hair.”
“What?”
“You’re a princess, aren’t you?”
“So?”
“You look like Rapunzel.”
“You look like a colander.”
“Oh shit!” Fred stubbed his toe on a chair as he fumbled at the window. “It’s Dig Graves!”
“Don’t worry.” I soothed Fred. “He brought oranges.”
Below, Dig lost his hilarity and skipped into a frown upon seeing Fred next to me, bare-chested and sex-haired. A growl emitted from Dig, a wild unhindered thing.
It curdled heat between my legs.
“Fi!” Fred called. “I gotta check the traps. Protect the bitch!”
Dig brought out a ladder—well, two ladders he had tied together with rope to make a single longer ladder and leaned it on the side of the building. Unquestionably not sturdy, but he climbed it anyway.
“I think he wants to come up here.” I sipped my coffee.
Fiona flung a rock at Dig’s head with her sling shot.
“Huh?” Dig swatted the air. “What the fuck was that?”
He looked up to find a second rock hurling towards his face. He moved to the side to dodge it. Fortunately, that made the ladder collapse.
Oh, shit. I lost my sunscreen.
The full day I sat along the windowsill, resting my head in the frame, checking my split ends as Dig fixed his ladder. Each time he climbed it, it did not work.
“Darling,” I called down to Dig. “I’m going to converse with Fred and Fiona. I’ll be right back.”
He waved. “Alright Princess, I’ll just keep going with this.”
“Don’t be too careful, hurt yourself a little.”
“Will do.”
The nice incest couple convened in the living area. They had the same nose.
“You need to find a boy called Tommy,” I said to Fiona and Fred. “That is important. We must save him. He should not be in here.”
Fred focused on sharpening a knife while Fiona counted pebbles and thumb tacks for her sling shot.
“Nah,” Fred said. “Your brother said we only have to keep you safe. No one else.”
“Then at least let me leave so that I can find him and bring him back here.”
“Nah.”
I went to bed about nine and in the morning, I woke up to find Dig outside again, cornered by five inmates.
Day three. I wiped sleep from my eyes and drank coffee while Dig groaned through a vicious stabbing and managed to eventually kill all five inmates with a single blade.
Holding onto his bleeding wound that was far too deep to heal without stitches, he waved to me. “I’ll be back in a sec, Princess.”
I waved and smiled. “Die, please.”
Now that Dig was away, we decided to trade.
Fiona and Fred had water, but we did not have food, which was not appealing, and Fred wanted more tools to keep his traps in working order. Fiona waved a white flag atop the building and not ten minutes later we received a response.
Trade was a serious business in the Execution Battles.
Inmates regarded white flags honourably, and no one dared harm each other when exchanging goods. It was just bad business. Gossip spread fast. If you injured someone no one would trade with you again.
“Oh! My best friend!” I smiled and waved at the panty snatcher. “How are you?”
When he saw me, he promptly turned and decided to do trade elsewhere.
A group of paedophiles answered our next call.
The trade was fruitful. We accepted cans of food, and they received bottles of water.
“Have you seen a young man called Tommy?” I asked them. “Out there? Green basketball t-shirt? Gangly arms? I am certain you would have noticed him. He is young. He would have caused you all erections.”
“Oh yeah, we saw the kid,” the leader of the group said. “The dumb shit grouped with the cannibals.”
Fuck.
Fuckity fuck.
Young first-timers who appeared weak and unskilled like Tommy had a difficult time finding comrades to team up with. The cannibals always accepted them, pretending they wanted them as a colleague… when really, they wanted them for dinner.
It was day three.
I raked my head trying to remember when they became hungry.
“Boots,” Fiona said. “We need boots for the bitch.”
This was true. The bitch needed boots.
Running bare foot in a death battle had not been kind to me and soon I would have to run to Tommy.
Wonderfully, the paedophiles had a pair of boots that would fit me good enough, but before I reached over to accept them, I paused.
“I will take the cigarettes.” I picked up the packet instead. “Thank you.”
“Ah. No.” Fiona swatted my hand. “Put them back. You need boots not cigarettes.”
“Oh no, I most certainly need cigarettes instead of boots.”
“This is not the time to smoke cigarettes.”
“Ew.” I wrinkled my nose. “I do not smoke cigarettes.”
“Put the cigarettes back!”
“I’ve lost my heels and my sunscreen and a chance at an incredible orgasm, let me have my cigarettes!”
I kept the cigarettes.
As the paedophiles left, Fred promptly set off a flare which burst high in the sky. We watched from our building as inmates ran to the beacon and viciously slaughtered the group of paedophiles.
Although trade was a serious law in the Battle, this did not apply to child molesters.
While Fiona and Fred were consumed with breeding a cousin/nephew I found a small satchel and packed it with a can of food, a water bottle, extra hair ties, a hunter’s blade and my cigarettes and kept it strapped over myself while I slept.
That night we awoke to smoke and the building on fire. Below, Dig’s laughter reverberated loud.
That took longer than expected.