"Harder, you bastard. Pull. Pull like your fucking life depends on it", saghar growled at me. I wanted to sit down, curl up into a ball and whimper. How the fuck did it happen. How the fuck did it happen. How the……

A smack across the back of my head, hard enough to knock the living daylights out of me. Saghar grabbed me by the color and dragged me. I was on all fours. My legs were refusing to support me, struggling and kicking in the mud along with my hands, trying to find purchase and failing to do so. Before I could heroically get up and face my abuser, he pulled me up and slammed me against the tree.

Saghar stared at me with his haunted, bloodshot eyes. Perhaps the only part of him that was alive. Thunder roared in the sky, illuminating the vast, empty playground. Instead of destroying the shadows, the light gave them more sharpness and menace, and I could see monsters in every corner. But I was more scared of Saghar then I was of the shadows. His twisted expression, his bared teeth, he looked like Fenrir, the giant wolf from Norse mythology. Only he was very real, and he hit really hard.

"Listen, bitch boy. You're not about to pussy out on me. We have to get rid of it. Hey. Hey!" He slapped me hard on the face as my eyes were slipping out of focus.

"But… I can't…. I can't…" I pleaded. My expression was more pathetic than a lost puppy's. I searched for any sign of sympathy or understanding in Saghar's face. I felt I had cracked him. But then he started laughing. He laughed so hard that he fell back into the mud, and he laughed till he had no more breath left. Then he slowly struggled up, still chuckling, and looked me dead in the eyes

"Should've thought that before killing him, my love", he whispered. We stood there, staring at each other. Long and lanky Saghar, with his hunched shoulders and rickety stature, like a wooden house that was a product of bad engineering and should've fallen long ago. Me, Jalal, with my back pressed against the tree. I was a bit chubby all around, but quite stoutly built and shorter than Saghar. And between us, the limp form of Sir Iqbal, with his head smashed in.

Saghar reached into his pocket, and pulled out a weed filled cigarette. As he lit it with his lighter, I could see his hands trembling. He sucked on the cigarette like a newborn at his mother's teat, and blew out the smoke. And then he offered to it to me. I reached out, but my hand was trembling so much that he knocked it out of the way, and put the smoke in my mouth himself. "Pull", he ordered, and I drew in the smoke. It went into my lungs, and then to my brain, and then everything became more bright and numb at the same time.

Thunder crackled.

The first drops of rain had started to fall. 

" Well, it'll make digging easier", said Saghar. I got Sir's leg, and he picked up his arms, and we covered the last couple of meters and arrived at the corner of the ground where weeds had overgrown and made a little jungle of their own. There was a little spot in the middle, where there was enough space to dig. The rain was coming down hard now. We got down on our knees, and started digging with our hands.

The wind was strong, plowing through the tree leaves and the grass and the weeds.

And yet, over all this, I could hear Saghar humming the tune of city of stars.