Chapter 23
Fresh laundered sheets.
There was no better smell in the world, no better soft touch than crisp laundered sheets.
I rolled into the pillow, yawning out sleep and awoke in a neat bedroom.
Dark maple wood bedhead, a king-sized mattress dressed in a powder blue sheet set, the matching bedside tables had twin lamps, a well-stocked bookshelf, buttery light willowed in from the window.
I was freshly bathed, my hair washed and dried, my skin moisturised. Donning new cotton underwear and an oversized men’s black t-shirt. Fresh bandaging coated over both of my wounds which were healing.
A glass of water sat waiting for me on the bedside table, including a pair of pink fluffy slippers on the floor.
From under the door crack came a waft of classical music.
Oh, yes, I was dead.
It was an apartment. Like a show home. Everything matched.
The paintings were meaningless, but the apartment was clean in shades of warm white and smooth grey and drops of blue accents.
It seemed recently built except for something that gave away its age.
There was a soft scent, like dead, stale air.
As if this place had been in incubation.
Bits of dust hung in the corners, the furniture half-faded from a window that had stayed open perhaps for too many years.
“Hello?” There was no blood, no screaming.
Had I been rescued from the Battle?
Me and my fluffy pink slippers followed the classical music to a door. It was not Mozart behind it, but a man.
He hung naked, upside down from the ceiling, his cries muffled by a gag in his mouth, his wrists tied. Tears dribbled down his forehead along with his blood which oozed into a children’s plastic pool underneath him.
Dig Graves judiciously needled sewing pins into the man’s testicles.
Ah, nope. Still here. Still in the Execution Battle.
The floor creaked under my next footstep.
Dig Graves jerked and spun around.
He wore a pair of slutty grey sweatpants hanging low down his hips, letting all the world know he was without underwear, and a plain white singlet stretched taunt against his muscles.
Holy freckles, he had muscles. The singlet arced into the fine definition across his chest and abdominals, and his naked arms rolled with the gentle hills of muscle.
Tattoos sprinkled over his arms and up onto his shoulders.
A tapestry inked onto him. And scars. Oh, a constellation of scars marked into his arms and shoulders from seven years of fighting for his chance to continue living.
Now that he was without a jumper or jacket and hoodless, I was able to see his hair.
Black hair, like fine silk. A little messy, as if he had been running his hand through it. Long enough to flick under his chin. I could imagine hair like this breezing back on a motorcycle or on a ship chopping through perilous waves.
He wore his heart-shaped sunglasses and for once, disappointment hit me.
I had hoped to see his eyes.
I was about to map out the rest of his face when he moved too quick and twisted and hunched down, as if trying to hide. He snatched a grey jumper off a chair and tugged it on, pulling the hood over his head and promptly turned back around.
He became Dig Graves again.
A man who hid his face in shadow, who wore a permanent glower like a predator always on the hunt. His shoulders arched back, his chin a little high.
Holding onto the wound on my side, I was about to take another step forward when he promptly lunged for me.
“Stop right there, Princess. You shouldn’t be walking around.”
When he scooped me up in his arms I winced as was my only instinct. I had thought he was about to push me, punch me, kill me. There were hundreds of people attempting to do so just before.
I grabbed onto the collar of his jumper for balance, bunching it up in my hands, squished into anguish. The faces of the people standing on the other side of the red line hit me down in memory.
I had never been so close to death before.
The taste of it still lingered.
Dig looked down at me as he held me against his chest. One arm around my back, the other under my legs. I think he was expecting me to say something, maybe give a scoff or a response but all I did was look up at him, glassy eyed.
I shook.
He felt it.
He frowned.
He set me carefully on the chair next to the man bleeding into the kiddie pool.
“What…what happened?” My hands were shivering and I didn’t know why.
I was suddenly very aware that I was in the middle of an Execution Battle, that there was a stab wound on my side and my arm, both of which had nearly bled me out.
That the man who had come to kidnap me towered over with incredible strength.
I had witnessed the might and ferocity of Dig Graves, he could squeeze my head like a grape if he wanted. Any desire was his to fulfill.
“I came and got you.” The shadow of his hood brushed against his jaw line.
“The motorbike…”
“Outta fuel now.” He strolled to a dresser, snatching a glass of water. “I found it in my first year. Took four years to siphon enough fuel just for that one trip. I was saving it for an emergency.”
“Where are we?”
“Home.”
“Your home? You made yourself a home in the Battle arena?”
“A few years back I got some carpentry equipment from an old warehouse and built a fake wall and front door.” He pointed outside the door, towards the inner of the apartment.
“People try to get in through the wrong door which leads them back to the apartment next door. We’re practically invisible in here.
And I soundproofed it.” He leaned down, his scent of leather and fresh laundry curling across my nose.
A smirk stamped into him. “You can scream as loud as you want now, no one’s going to hear you.
And I’m going to make you scream until your fucking lungs give out. ”
I looked up at him with an open mouth, my mind foggy. “That’s…nice.”
“Drink.” He pressed the glass of water into my hand.
I accepted the glass, looking down, feeling like I was about to drown into it.
The upside-down bloody man next to me muffled through his gag. Fresh tears sprouted in his eyes.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Just a guest.”
I waved to the man. “Hello, good day. How are you?”
Dig Graves ripped the gag from out of the man’s mouth. “Say ‘hello.’”
The man immediately dumped into excessive crying.
“She said ‘hello!’” Dig punched the man in the stomach. “Say ‘hello,’ back!” He pulled out a small knife from his pocket and angled it under the man’s throat. “Be fucking polite.”
After feeling the sharp metal, the upside-down man sucked in a gasp. His red veined eyes drew to me. “H—h—hello.”
Dig deepened his voice. “Ask her how she’s going.”
“H—how—how—are you?”
I pursed my lips and swirled my water, thinking on this. “Not so good. I’m having a particularly bad day. My nails are jagged. How are you going?”
“Help me.”
“With what?”
Dig pulled the man’s gag back up. “So, this was the guy?”
“Hm?” I sipped my water.
“The guy.” He kicked the man’s back. “The guy who touched you when you got out of the hospital?”
“Hm? Oh.” I cocked my head. “No. That’s not him. I don’t know who that is.”
Dig scrunched up his nose and bent down to the man, ripping the gag from his mouth again. “You’re not the guy who touched her?”
“Please!” The man sobbed uncontrolled. “I never touched nobody! Please! I’ll do anything—”
“Shut up.” Dig put the gag back in.
“Did you wash me?” I asked, tangling my fingers through my hair. It smelled like eucalyptus.
“Just your face and the wounds so they wouldn’t get infected.”
“What else did you do to me while I lay unconscious?”
“I brushed a knot out of your hair and kept the loose strands.” He patted his pocket. “So I can smell them whenever the fuck I want.”
“Ew.”
“Oh, sorry. Do you want them back?”
“Can I leave?”
“No.”
“I’m not allowed to leave the apartment?”
“You’re not allowed to leave me.”
“That’s very possessive of you.”
“Well, it's just until the Battle is over. When it's safe, you can go where you want.”
“I rather go out and die.”
“I don't support suicide.”
I twisted my lips together.
“We’ve got three days left,” he said. “You and I are spending it here, and you’re not leaving my sight.”
He made pasta.