“FUCK!” Dig hurled over, clutching his crotch.
I pinched his ear and tugged him to me. “I need help finding Tommy, I think he’s hurt.”
36
Dig offered me his hand to help me down from climbing over a stack of furniture that had been set across the road for a barricade.
I clasped his hand and was about to jump down when he seized my waist and set me on my feet himself.
We strolled through the road toward the suburbs, weaving between up-turned cars, a ribcage, a stuffed Winnie the Pooh bear and past brick alleyways with rockets graffitied for artwork. Ah, no, they were not rockets, they were circumcised penises.
Since Dig was a local, he knew the way to the suburbs and so I trusted his guidance.
“Do you think, if we both survive this, that we could share a prison cell together?” I looped my arm through his and rested my head on his bicep.
“You’re not going back to prison, I’m getting us out of here.”
“There is no way out of prison once you are deemed Soulless.”
He felt over his heart as he kicked a crate, making it clearer for me to walk alongside him. “I’m going to figure it out.”
I let his arm go and fluffed the end of my ponytail. “What do you do in your spare time, my Dear of Darkness, my Lover of Lament, my Sweetheart of Sin?”
“Huh?”
“Besides drawing myself, what hobbies keep you busy?
“Murder.”
“That’s your hobby in the Execution Battle. What was your main hobby before prison?”
“Stalking you.”
“Oh, that’s nice. I liked going to cafés.”
“Yeah, I was there too.”
“When we are in our prison cell together, we must find activities to keep ourselves occupied.”
“Fucking.”
“I do hope Tommy and Fiona are unharmed. I’m worried now about what Vil said about Tommy getting stabbed in the arm.”
“When we find Tim Tim and Uncle Sucker, we’ll bring them back to the apartment. I need to get back there anyway, make sure Harry’s been fed.”
“Harry?”
“The guy hanging upside down in my spare room. I’m starting to like him. He might need to come down soon.”
“Oh no, I think he’s fine.”
A whistle skimmed across the building tops and Dig immediately took out his blade and pushed me behind him, holding out his arm like a shield between myself and whoever the whistle belonged to.
The whistle had come from above, belonging to a woman wearing leopard pants and a t-shirt with a cartoon cat smoking a cigar. Her lips were purple. She crouched with a blade in her hand and smiled sharply, like a crow before devouring the feast of the mouse it had caught. “Hi, Diggy.”
Unpleased by her presence, Dig kept his arm locked in front of me, forming his hand into a fist, and angled his blade up to her. “What the fuck do you want?”
I tapped Dig on his shoulder. “Who is she?”
