Her mind ran through the horror scenarios and disbelief refused to surrender.
This could not be happening to her.
It happened to people all the time.
True, but it could not be happening to her.
Ashley knew how she was and if she let thought continue to have its way with her it would rape her until she was a mixed up mess, no solutions, just more confusion and anger and useless hope. Instead, she let the How and the Why and visions of Henry destroying Montgomery with his bare hands go and began focusing on the physical.
If she could only break her bonds and get free she was positive she could escape. Even though she was petite, she could kick a man’s ass like nothing. And this wasn’t Ashley just acting tough or trying to make things feel better, she really could kick a man’s ass and had done it on three separate occasions. Each time her cocksure opponent went down bleeding with a broken nose or some missing teeth or a series of nasty scratches. If she could get these ropes undone, Montgomery was fucking in for it.
Working her hands and feet she tried to loosen the lashes. It was tough, given her limited mobility. The rope around her neck, the one that was basically securing her to the inner plumbing guts of the tub itself was a real bear.
The harder she worked her hands and feet the harder her brain fought for control. The little bastard wanted to think in the worst way. It wanted to analyze the situation and turn it inside out. It wanted to think about Heather and Henry and CHAOS and loss and sorrow and death and Montgomery’s wolfish smile. It wanted to fight with logic.
It wanted… too much, and Ashley continued to resist.
She refused to be an idiot victim that spent too much time rationalizing. The only chance she had here was to fight her way out and, other than processing motor control and combating pain, that required zero thought.
No thought, just work.
No thought, just work.
But Goddamn, the bonds were solid and rough and the harder she twisted her wrists and ankles the sharper the pain as the coarse rope bit into her soft flesh and rubbed away delicate skin.
Ashley ignored the sting and worked through it. She started to get a nice rhythm going, the rope moving a bit, new blood lubricating and slicking her struggling wrists and ankles. Agony rose in tandem with her efforts but before she made progress one way or another, passing out from pain and blood loss, or besting her bonds and earning hard earned freedom, the bathroom door knob turned and the door slowly opened.
She screamed and yelled and cried until her eyes hurt worse than anything.
Montgomery seemed crazier than ever. He just stood, back against the door, staring mutely. After a few moments he mumbled a little and then left.
Ashley’s brain finally got its way.
A cavalcade of thoughts unfurled.
The fight in her died and her body went limp. For the first time since regaining consciousness she was gaining total awareness.
The bathtub was cold on her lower back and butt cheeks. Which, of course, was the least of her problems, but still, the tub’s cool surface was hard and unforgiving and she was experiencing discomfort from every possible angle.
Her neck was sore as hell from the odd position the rope bent her into and the plumbing that she was so solidly tied to bit into the base of her skull if she tried to push her head back too far. Her hands were achy and when she strained to inspect them she saw that they were pretty beat up. The bonds that joined her wrists were tied off somewhere beneath her, and the towel was wedged between her arms and her abdomen so that it obstructed any view of what held her limbs fast. Whatever held her arms down allowed her to move them a few inches or so from her torso. It wasn’t much, she couldn’t brush the hair out of her face or try to bite through the rope or anything, but she was allotted just enough movement to angle and see that her fingertips were scraped and ragged as was the soft flesh of her palms.
A quick flash of intense memory, bright and searing and gone just as fast as it came, featured her hands and their savaged digits as they slammed down to the pavement when she was roughly pulled from the car.
Both sets of ribs pulsed with pain and her entire abdomen felt like it had been stepped on by an elephant. Every muscle group throbbed awfully, but what hurt the most was her face. Of course Ashley couldn’t see the damage, but it buzzed like hellfire. Her left cheek in particular rumbled and twinged with agonizing agony. So much so that it felt like her bones, her skin, her capillaries and her nerve endings alike had been smashed into a pulpy, screaming mess.
All of which (of course) were the least of her problems.
Discomfort be damned, she couldn’t give up on escaping the ropes, but her wrists and ankles were ablaze and the slightest movement ratcheted the slow burning tingling into an inferno that obliterated vision and threatened to turn everything inside into a silencing, brilliant white.
Trying to get out of the tub proved just as fruitless, she had been tied down securely and the pipes that the rope was wrapped around wouldn’t budge no matter how hard she thrashed.
Surveying the scene as much as her limited mobility would allow, Ashley wondered where the hell she was. Clearly she was in a bathroom and clearly Montgomery lived here (?), but the small room was in a state of such extreme disrepair she didn’t know how anyone could claim it as a restroom in a habitable home.
Was the rest of his house like this?
By all outward appearances he was a successful chef, well-adjusted, blessed with a bright future, swimming with the ebb and flow of society, could it be possible that on the inside he was a crazy, derelict, murdering freak who lived in squalor?
Did he kill Heather?
Despite the violence of her crying fit, Ashley distinctly heard him say, multiple times, ‘I am not going to kill you’ before he quietly left the bathroom.
Given her situation, given the condition of the bathroom, what with its half tiled floor, walls with large holes and war zone aesthetic, she was hard pressed to believe him. Maybe he was telling the truth, but what happened next?
He couldn’t just let her go.
What if she were to run to the cops?
The more Ashley thought about it the more apparent it became that this could end in only one way.
The tears started to flow again. It was growing all the more obvious that she wouldn’t be able to escape the ropes. They were too tight and too solid. She had to fight off sticky emotion and start weighing out her options.
Sniffling and then stifling the amassing sobs she considered: it was a safe bet that Montgomery liked her. He had asked her out and then jumped on the opportunity to try again four months later when she called out of the blue. Ashley didn’t feel pretty or desirable, but men often found her so. She could see the interest in Montgomery’s eyes that day at CHAOS months back. Why else would he even bother accosting her?
Something inside him must have snapped and there was a good chance that this wasn’t the first time. Chances were that Heather was in this same predicament (yet she refused to let her thoughts go any deeper on the possibility). Regardless, attraction was attraction and it counted for something. Maybe she could try to sweet talk or (God, it sounded ridiculous) seduce him into letting her go. Then all she had to do was lull him into a vulnerable position, fuck him up, gather her clothes from the bathroom floor and run like hell.
Ashley almost giggled when she pictured her face, jacked up beyond belief, bleeding profusely, probably puffed up huge, as she squinted her eyes in a come hither stare and pursed her lips alluringly.
And if that didn’t work?
The almost giggle tried to get the upper hand and force more crying, but Ashley continued to resist despondence. She had to keep her mind strong and focused if she hoped to make it out alive.
Okay, sexy probably wasn’t going to work for her, not the way her face felt. Maybe this Montgomery freak was a pervert and she could just act all porno and dirty. If that was the case her face wouldn’t matter anyway. She could sh
ift the towel aside and try to let her body do the talking. All of the fashion magazines proclaimed that men were very visual when it came to sex. Could she use this idiot male handicap to her advantage?
She could, but she couldn’t.
Her body was there and as means for survival she was willing to use it if she had to, but she didn’t think her mind could give itself over so easily. Just thinking about trying to soften him up with dirty talk made her feel queasy.
She tried a practice run and whispered softly, “I wanna suck your cock.”
The negative response was immediate. She flushed with embarrassment from the inside out and then swallowed back a bit of bile. There was no way that was going to work.
When Montgomery told her ‘I am not going to kill you’ there was a convincing degree of sincerity emanating from his eyes. His demeanor and then his abrupt departure from the bathroom when she started freaking out suggested he was scared or reluctant. Maybe all she had to do was reason with him. Maybe he was under a lot of pressure or he had a psychotic upbringing and he was just modeling behaviors or something. Hell, if he was one to snap, he may be one to just as suddenly snap back. If Ashley could promise him that everything was going to be okay, no repercussions, no consequences, no cops, he might take the bait and let her go.
Or he might not.
And then what?
Death?
Was she going to die here in this Godforsaken bathtub, alone, cold, naked?
Her brain reminded: eventually everyone you love will die.
Her brain reminded: even you.
She never expected today to be the day.
All day long, all she could think about was her new life: marriage, domesticity, perhaps college. Henry smiled from a warm place in her brain as she planned their wedding and imagined what their kids might look like. The idea of Montgomery, the fact that she stood him up, that she played with a little fire, seeped in and darkened her thoughts some, but there were so many other things to think about that she didn’t dwell on it too seriously. It was a problem to be sure, but it was a problem that would be worked out eventually, a problem that could be cleared up with a simple phone call and a few explanations.
It was funny because as of late, what with Heather’s disappearance, Ashley had been thinking about death a whole lot. She had always been the morbid type, but this was different. This was too real and gothic fantasy had nothing to do with it. In these daydreams, death wasn’t cool or alluring or sexy, rather it was everywhere and it hated life and it was coming like a merciless beast to silence every last one of your hopes and dreams.
These deathly designs sprung on her when she least expected it.
While getting ready for work, thinking about nothing but getting ready for work, Ashley found herself wondering if this would be the last time, if at some point throughout her workday she would get in a random accident of some sort and pass on. It happened all of the time, daily, hourly, minutely, and it was an irrefutable truth that right now, somewhere in the world, at this very second, someone was dying away. What made her so special? Who was she to avoid one of these chance mishaps?
Sometimes while getting dressed, while selecting an outfit or putting on a particular piece of clothing, perhaps pulling on a stocking, the overwhelming thought that she would never have the pleasure of pulling on a stocking again interrupted all other matter-of-factly musings and ran through her body loud and unsettling, shuddering its way up and down her spine like nails upon a chalkboard.
The world around her became a soul sucking, death hungry vortex:
Car rides equaled car crashes.
Heartburn was sure to turn to a chronic case of heart disease.
A simple staircase was a veritable death trap – one misplaced step and lights out.
This cold feeling, though at times lost to worldly distraction or powerful modifiers like drugs or sex, was ever-present. It made her swallow hard and kept her in a continual state of fear. A few days might pass without thinking about death, but not many. More often than not Ashley couldn’t even enjoy a TV show or movie without the dread creeping in. She could get caught up for a while, but there was always something directly or indirectly to trigger her morose fascination and within moments escapist entertainment became an afterthought, her mind off and running, a sickly lump in her throat rising to greet visions of loss and pangs of sorrow.
When she would meet new people or watch customers mill about at CHAOS she couldn’t help thinking that each one of them was bound for the soil or the furnace. A populous of ignorant corpses, already dead, but living unaware.
Ashley pictured rotting cadavers, life to shit and maggots. She pictured her own face, warm and vital, torn asunder, cracked like ancient parchment, leaking away into the earth to mingle with the dirt upon which humanity built their fruitless dreams. And it was amazing to think back through the ages and consider how many people have died from the dawn of man up through the present. Ashley thought about their antediluvian bones, about their blood and guts and skin and how the dead make the world go round, their remnants found in layer upon layer of terrestrial strata.
The utter insignificance of it all put her on edge.
It made her brain scream: “I don’t want to die!”
It made her heart ache: “I don’t want to join in and fade away!”
Why this torturous existence?
Why this fucked up knowledge of our mortality?
It sucked to think that we all die and that in time every single person we know will find themselves upon that precipice that divides life from death. Ashley was teetering and she could hardly believe it. Though it was in her face every day, taunting her every day, grinning its cool, everlasting smile and wrapping its icy claws around her throat, it still didn’t feel real.
In her lifetime she had only been to two funerals, and both had creeped her out tremendously. Each time the two different (but basically the same) mortuaries gave her Phantasm flashbacks and she kept looking over her shoulder for tall men or flying orbs of death. The worst part of each experience though had to be that persistent, unreal feeling. Like the victim was pranking everyone and was going to come waltzing in at any moment with a hidden camera crew.
Worst of all, were the pictures. They heightened that surreal feeling to the breaking point and rubbed her face in death, death, death.
She could envision thousands of them glued to science project folding boards and arranged into little mini altars at the funeral home and then at the homes of the bereaved.
Here we have the deceased smiling, riding a jet ski.
Here we have the ubiquitous high school graduation picture.
Oh look, there’s the dead guest of honor’s wedding picture.
And there, do you see, there’s a handful of candid shots: the dead smiling, the dead looking contemplative, the dead holding someone dear.
Ashley had trouble looking at them and couldn’t understand why people were okay with it. The living snapshots only reinforced and hammered home the cold reality that their subject was no longer amongst the living and was either rotting away in some box or being burnt to ash in an oven.
She forced her brain to accept fate, to accept moldering stills, to welcome eventualities and inevitabilities and invite the demon in.
Death. Death. Death.
But then what?
Dirt?
But then what?
Light?
Was there an afterlife?
Would she see Heather again?
Would she see Henry again?
Would there be some magical place where her mom and dad weren’t divorced and they could be the sitcom family they were supposed to be before indifference and forward thinking shredded the concept of a nuclear family?
Ashley hoped until hope hurt, but she stopped believing in such a long time ago. It all reeked too much of fairy tale nonsense.
There were just too many ridiculous questions.
Did dead kids have to remain kids for all
eternity? Like vampires?
What about sex? Did people reproduce in heaven? Could they have sex for fun or was that considered dirty?
None of it made any sense and even now, going partially crazy, trapped, perhaps soon-to-be-dead; Ashley couldn’t find solace in such empty promises. She always figured that when the time came she would find the faith she had been missing her entire life. Deathbed revelations or something, the hand of God, divine wisdom, instead, it felt all the more preposterous to entrust her soul to doctrines put in to place thousands of years ago.
Screw death and screw heaven, all that mattered now was survival.
Her brain kept on: “I don’t want to die!”
Not like this.
Not bound and naked and bleeding.
Not victimized.
Not a statistic.
There was no telling what time it was. She got off work at six and Henry was expecting her home for their celebratory engagement dinner. Montgomery had not made a repeat appearance since his brief emergence and Ashley, among a host of other volatile feelings, was getting antsy.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
She called out a few more times.
Still nothing.
Each shout was nerve racking to say the least.
Who knew what was in the house beyond this demolished bathroom?
Who knew what she was bringing down upon her head?
The volume of her voice, which she tried to keep at a decent level, not too loud, but not so low where it couldn’t be heard in an adjoining room, seemed to bounce off of each and every surface and reach earth rattling proportions. Letting loose the series of cries felt like dropping books in a silent classroom or lighting off fireworks in a church and Ashley had to give it a rest for fear she would have a heart attack from the worrisome silence that punctuated each call.
As Fate Would Have It Page 20
