“She tasted like Wagyu,” I say.
Landon is staring at me like he doesn’t trust me for some reason.
“She’s with the demons now,” I assure him. “They took her in with open arms. She bit a few on the way down.”
“I’m just like… do I laugh? Do I not?” Landon asks.
“You’ll encourage him to continue to make ridiculous choices if you laugh,” Ellison warns.
I pull Pocket Lint the Third, Esquire out of my pocket and toss her on Ellison’s bed. She goes from 0 to 100 in seconds as she arches her back and hops on over to fuck him up.
Ellison looks horrified that I’ve set this ferret loose on him. “I told you to get rid of the thing!”
“I tried! I went into Wendy’s wanting something to eat while I pondered and set her on some little girl’s tray, thinking she’d be ecstatic. She screamed and began sobbing and it was a whole thing.”
“You didn’t ask her? You just like tossed a rodent at her?” Landon asks.
“A ‘long cat,’ to be exact,” I say.
Ellison sighs, sounding oddly exasperated. “I want to go home. And then once we get there, we’ll figure something out.”
“Understandable. Landon, are you going with us?” I ask.
“I’m heading home. This place is freezing. I can’t fathom sitting on the bed in one of those gowns without any blankets on, it’s so cold in here,” he says as Ellison glowers at him from where he suffered because of Zacia.
Landon departs with a wave. “See ya, fuckers. Don’t have too much fun without me, ya hear?”
The nurse gets a wheelchair, which makes Ellison holler, but definitely not as much as he hollers when I ask if I can wheel him out. Then he seems to act like the perfect gentleman as he sitsprim and proper in his suit while he’s wheeled out the door and to my awaiting car.
“I really don’t need anyone to stay with me, so just drop me off at home,” Ellison says.
“Nonsense. What if someone comes for your head in the middle of the night? What are you going to do? Wallow around?”
“No one is coming for me.”
“Then who cut you open?”
“I don’t know. It was probably an accident.”
“I’m sure,” I say with much sarcasm.
Once he’s in the car, I begin driving toward his home.
“Don’t you need directions?” Ellison asks.
“You think that I don’t know where you live?”
“I should really be creeped out by that. Why do you know where I live?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I ask. “You don’t know where I live?”
“Of course not! I actually don’t envision you even living in a home. I just see you scurrying around and living in other people’s closets.”
“I’ve only done that around seven times. They have no idea I’m there when I’m invisible. This one family, they were so focused on their TV that I managed to eat off their plates during dinner when I lived with them. Oh, I miss them.”
Ellison looks concerned as Pocket Lint chills on my lap, little paws on the steering wheel so she can get a better look. “What… happened to them?”
“They moved away… or at least that’s what the reports say… I’m joking, they moved down to Florida to be with her family. It was a whole thing. I showed up to their going-away party and they were all, ‘Who are you?’ and… it was so sad, it was like I was a part of their family, but they didn’t even know me.”
