Chapter 15
Everything was on fire.
Ochre flames ate at the ceiling and the fourth floor turned into an instant furnace. Black smoke pillowed the air, choking my lungs.
Fred tied a rope to the ledge of a window and flung the rest of it over the side of the building. Fiona climbed down first. I went down next and planted my bare feet on the tarmac to find Dig already waiting.
He held Fiona in his arms, angling a knife across her throat as a tear crept from her eye.
I sighed. “Oh hello, good night, how are you?”
The fire cracked and spat. Cinders blew in the breeze. It smelled of hell.
Lucifer it seemed had arrived right on schedule with his black hooded head. In the reflection of his sunglasses, the flames flickered.
Judging by his cussing, Fred was already upset about the loss of their abode and when he saw Dig with his niece/lover a new strain of fury ripped into him.
“Let her go!” He flung out a blade.
“Ah, ah.” Dig laughed, lifting Fiona’s chin with his knife. “Now, I don’t necessarily give a shit about you two, all I want is my girl. Princess, come over here and I’ll let her go.”
I fixed my hair using the reflection of Dig’s sunglasses as a mirror and wondered if I should get highlights. “Okay.”
“Hold up!” Fred pulled on my shoulder. “I ain’t letting him take you. You’re my ticket to freedom.”
I swatted Fred. “Let me go or your niece/lover is going to die.”
Fred hitched with irritation and looked at Fiona, keeping his hand on me. “Nope. No trade.”
Fiona’s eyes widened.
I frowned looking at Fred. “Oh, I don’t like you anymore.”
“Shut up.” He angled his own blade to me.
Dig gritted his teeth. “If you touch my girl, I will torture you for the full ten days.”
“Ow!” I made a point of it as Fred grabbed my arm.
Dig growled.
Fred squeezed.
I kicked Fred in his crotch and elbowed his throat.
Dig let Fiona go and lunged for Fred.
I grabbed Fiona’s hand and together we ran down the street, allowing the others to sort out their differences.
The burning structure acted as a beacon to all and from out of the muck of night, inmates came weeding from buildings and streets, eyes wide on the clouds of smoke. Some who recognised each other toppled into instant fights while Fiona and I snuck into an alleyway.
Behind a stack of crates, I pushed Fiona up against a brick wall.
An ocean of emotion was raging behind her eyes.
Grief, I think, loss. Either for Fred or for perhaps who she had thought Fred was to her.
I wished that I could offer her proper comfort through endearing words and heartfelt emotion.
I wished I could see myself in her place and feel what she was feeling so that I could help her.
However, nothing came to me. I was blank and bland and nothing.
I was Soulless.
I could not offer her relief, but I could offer her everything else I had.
“Fiona, listen to me. Dig is after me. Not you.” I pulled the can of food and bottle of water out of my satchel and gave them to her. “Take these and run as far away from me as possible. You’re a highly capable woman. Far better at combat than myself, you will live extremely easy on your own.”
Her lower lip trembled. I hoped she wouldn’t cry. It would just make me envious, and she already had boots, food and water, none of which I had. Her ability to cry was just cruel.
“I tell you what darling.” I held her shoulders. “Find Tommy. An eighteen-year-old boy with a green basketball shirt and gangly arms. He’s off with the God damn cannibals. Find him and keep him safe and I promise you, oh, I so very promise you I will do my best to get you out of prison.”
“You’ll get me out of prison?”
“I can try to.”
Her throat bobbed. She woke up. “You know I murdered my family, right?”
They were probably assholes anyway. I winked to her. “So, you should be able to murder the cannibals.”
She agreed to my condition and brief relief coasted in my chest knowing that at least Tommy had a second person out there searching for him, this one who was damn good with a slingshot and blade.
I watched her skip away, very happily pulling back her slingshot when a man came to chase her, hitting him dead in his temples and knocking him out.
Tightening the satchel over my front, I checked I still had my cigarettes and blade and decided upon my next move. Hiding. Tonight, would be wild with observers for the fire which meant I needed to hide, and in the morning, I’d find Tom—
“Princess.”
“Freckles.” I twisted around.
“I’m going to tie you up,” Dig Graves said standing behind me. He brought out two different kinds of rope from his pocket. “Which kind do you want? Jute or polyester?”
“I’m feeling a little dizzy,” I said.
Dig had taken precautions this time. He had bound my wrists behind my back with rope and bound my ankles right after and heaved me up, throwing me over his shoulder. My head hung upside down. My legs dangled over his front, and he used one arm to lock around my waist.
He carried me as if I were completely weightless.
Because he had not given me time to tie up my hair, it dripped down his legs and my nose bounced into his lower back as he walked.
On occasion, as he stepped over a ditch, a corpse, a tyre, his leather jacket lifted and exposed a sliver of his skin between his belt and black t-shirt.
Taut back muscles. He must be good at pullups.
I dug my nose into his skin and inhaled. God. He smelled like blood and fresh laundry.
He stalked away from the burning building and the horde of inmates going toward it and slipped through alleyways and back streets.
Through the broken glass windows in the building above, a shadow followed us.
“Where are we going?” I asked him. “I need to find the cannibals. Do we happen to be going that way?”
“No.”
“Oh, but I want to go that way.”
“We’re not going that way.”
“Oh, where are you taking me?”
“Home.”
“Oh, this isn’t the way to my home.”
“No, I’m taking you to my home.”
“Oh, I don’t want to go to your home.”
“You need to be quiet.”
“You need to smack me.”
“You're going to draw attention.”
“Oh, but I plan on drawing much atten—ah!”
He smacked my ass hard enough to cause me to jolt. The sting of the smack lingered long after on my skin.
I was instantly wet.
Squirming over his shoulder, I rubbed my thighs together as the spark of the single smack ignited a rush of bliss to rupture.
That unfinished orgasm was still berating me.
I was beginning to have the same taste in men as police.
“I’m going to scream,” I told him.
Another smack.
I smiled into his back.
“Again!” I demanded.
A third smack.
“More!”
A fourth.
“Harder!”
“Fuck’s sake.”
“Hit me!”
“Shut up!”
Glass crunched and metal tinged.
A pack of boots and joggers came sweeping out from behind the next building. Difficult to see how many, Dig’s back was in the way. I assumed it was a decent amount of people because he halted, and his body went tight.
“Fuck,” he groaned.
“I’m not sorry,” I whispered.
Whoever they were I did not think they were friendly as Dig promptly pulled something out of his belt, I guessed a weapon. As the boots crunched nearer, he twisted probably making sense of the situation and reluctantly heaved me off his shoulder and set me down.
Lying on the tarmac on my side I blew and spat to clear the hair over my face and looked through the strands.
Four figures, they all held weapons and sinister looks focused on Dig.
“You stay there.” Dig pointed a finger down at me and held a blade out in front of him. “Don’t you move. If I have to hunt you down again, I’m going to—”
“Can you hurry up and kill them? My dress is getting dirty. I just washed it.”
They tumbled into a fight.
Blades were flung and stabbed. Blood sprayed in the air. Mouths lost whines and moans. Noses were broken.
Honestly, it was very dull.
Appreciatively Dig had forgotten to remove my satchel from around my waist and after quick manoeuvring I was able to retrieve the blade within it and contorted my hands to saw through the rope he had bound around my wrists. After I cut my legs free, I left him to play with his friends.
I ran until morning.
My eyes hung from my head, my feet bruised and bled. As the sun crested the dome blue sky, I realised I was no longer running but walking very sluggishly. Blood dribbled from my feet; I shouldn’t have been ignoring the pain as I usually did.
I needed shoes.
Any kind of footwear would do at this point.
It had taken Dig under an hour to find me all the other times.
Yet hours waned and he did not show himself.
Running it seemed, was my only way of ridding of him. He had an incredible habit of finding me if I stayed still.
Satisfied with this accomplishment I stalked down rows of store fronts, looking for one that might have shoes. All of them had been ransacked long ago, their front windows now mouths with shards of glass for teeth, their faded signs indistinguishable.
I searched for anything: shoes, water, food, sanity, new clothing, that unfinished orgasm, Tommy, the cannibals or anyone who could point me in the direction of any of those.
Wonderfully, however, I stumbled across something else.
“Oh! Sunscreen!” I claimed my prize that sat idly in the middle of the road.
The tube was practically brand new and still in date. My heart swelled with victory, and I shoved my greatest treasure into my satchel.
“Oh!” I stalked forward and leaned down, scooping up more fortune.
A Vitamin C facemask. Perfect. After the night without sleep I was certain my skin would be puffy—oh freckles, lip balm!
Further along I collected my next good find, strawberry lip balm.
Just across the road there laid another item I was in desperate need for: vanilla and honey moisturiser. I popped that in my bag next.
“Where are these things coming from?” I looked around with a smile, washing away all my tiredness. “This is just brilliant. Oh!”
I strode over and collected a loofa and—
“Ah!” A net suddenly moved under my feet and caged me up inside of it. I hung in the air, losing a gasp, cocooned in the trap. “What just happened?”