19. Ash

Chapter Nineteen

ASH

I was not, in fact, ready.

I expected the headaches, the dry mouth, and the dizzy spells. Expected that half my time would be spent with my head in the toilet bowl. Expected the constant feeling of irritation by any sound, touch, or smell.

I must have begged for pain relief, vomited every mouthful of water I was forced to drink, and bit Mint’s head off for just breathing about a dozen times.

But there was one thing I had overlooked, the one thing a detox boiled down to.

Waiting.

Waiting until you no longer want a drink, or your body falls apart—whichever came first. Currently, with my raging headache, stomach acid burning my mouth and nose, and a murderous rage that could not be fulfilled or quelled, I was hoping the latter would happen sooner rather than later.

I was not patient by nature, and sitting through over a hundred hours with nothing to do except suffer had long since lost its appeal. We had tried all distractions—the TV was too loud, my headache was too intense to read, and getting out of bed was an overall struggle.

To make matters dire, that was not even the worst bit.

On the outside, I was struggling—my body had become allergic to the world, and my mind wanted nothing to do with it. So, I did the only thing I seemed able to do. The one thing I wished would go away but, contrary to my wishes, had gotten more intense.

My thoughts.

My childhood loomed in the darkness, clawing and slinking its way closer, out from the regresses I had pushed it into long ago. While attempting to thwart its progress, I had latched onto something else instead.

Lamb.

From his confession, to using me as bait, to his admittance about his lack of emotion, to his every action to tend to my wounds and indulgence with my every request. Except for alcohol, drugs, or an execution—those were off the table, apparently.

I lay in a trembling ball on the floor, the carpet swaying like a boat beneath me, out of sync with the throbbing drum ricocheting through my skull. My eyes pincered so tightly shut in a pitch-black room out of a single, improbable fear that a stray beam of light might catch my gaze despite every window being blacked out and every door gap taped over. No phones, no lamps, no light of any kind.

I was both present in pain, but also so far away and distant that I could almost see myself from a third perspective; an outsider looking in. I could not tell whether it was a psychotic break or a coping mechanism, but I took the relief all the same.

But alas, it was only temporary.

The darkness began to gain weight. It pushed on my chest, and I sank into the endless void. Suffocation clung to my throat as water filled my lungs, my gasping breaths turning to gurgles as I fought and clawed desperately to breathe. Just a single breath. Anything.

Instead, fire burst over my skin like I had shoved my face into a blazing flame. It sizzled and burned, and I wanted to scream in agony, but the fire flooded deeper into my chest and lungs. I was being burnt from the inside out, and no matter how I fought, the pain only reached deeper and deeper and—I couldn’t differentiate the pain that zapped across my scalp as my hair snapped taut and my bones cracked as I was torn back.

I could not breathe.

It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.

I cannot breathe. I cannot breathe. I cannot—

A sharp piercing noise burst through my ears, darkness swallowing me whole. I fought through the water, wading and struggling, but the noise only got louder and louder. It was insufferable, and my lungs gasped into the water.

Except it was not water any longer. It was air.

And I was screaming.

“ASH!” a deep voice bellowed, a hard violent force slamming into my chest.

I gasped, my throat on fire and my head pounding. I forced my eyes apart, the darkness drawing back inch by inch until my vision cleared and a familiar voice shouted at me.

“Ash!”

Realisation quaked through my brain like a tidal wave and, in a matter of seconds, every piece fell together. I was here, in Lamb’s house. It had all been a dream.

“Calm down, sweetheart.” I felt a pressure on my arm and turned to see soft, pastel green eyes holding steady on mine. Seeing my returning gaze, I watched the intensity soften and a breath rushed from Mint’s lips. “You’re back. You’re here, with us. You are safe.”

I realised I had stopped screaming, the sharp piercing noise melting into a soft ringing in the distance. My jaw hung agape, and I struggled to swallow, my mouth turning into a sandpit.

I took a deep, shaking breath, flickering my eyes away from Mint’s before catching and anchoring onto Lamb’s. His big brown eyes were wide and flickering a mile a minute, his skin pale and clammy, veins threatening to burst from his neck. I wondered how loud I had been screaming to have incited such a reaction.

I reached for my voice to speak, but before I could, my wrought hands sprang in pain. My taut muscles snapped, and I looked down just in time to see them jerk back from Lamb’s arm, five bloodied marks trickling blood down his arm.

“Oh my God,” I gasped, jerking my hands back to my chest, trying to lunge away. Lamb’s own arms were clamped like a vice around mine, holding me firmly, but not doing the same damage that I had done. He did not allow me to move more than an inch away. But instead of looking at him, all I could do was stare at the blood seeping from his skin, dripping and darkening his grey pants. “I am so sorry, I am—”

Violent nausea rocked my world, and the sharp sting of acid rocketed up my throat. Fortunately, Lamb and Mint had learned to read at least that much from me as Lamb flinched and Mint reflectively leapt from the bed.

Unwilling to let me go and escape, Lamb was in the splash zone as I hurled hot, acidic stomach bile all over him.

“I am sorry,” I choked out, trying to swallow and stop anything else from escaping. It stung in the back of my nose, and fresh tears rolled down my cheeks. My trembling hand wavered in the air above it, unsure what to do to fix it or make it better. “I am sorry, I—”

“It’s fine,” Lamb growled, his hand clamping shut over my mouth. “Stop apologising.” His eyes had not left mine for even a second. Not even as I had spewed all over his shirt and lap. His hands stayed fastened in the same place they had been before, their warm grip like hot iron around my cold, shivering skin.

“Lamb, brother.” Mint reached over to put a strong hand over his undefiled shoulder. “Go get washed up. I’ll stay with her.”

Lamb did not move at first, but when Mint gave him a gentle squeeze, Lamb relinquished his grip. It was slow, one finger at a time, as he fought to pry himself away. His fingers lingered across my skin, skimming past my elbows and forearms until his fingertips and mine dragged apart.

He hesitated once, his eyes boring deeply into mine for a moment that felt far longer than the few seconds it must have been before he broke eye contact and turned away.

“Let’s get you cleaned up, shall we?” Mint crouched in front of me, to where I now realised I was folded between the side table and the corner of the wall, the side lamp laying crumpled on the floor beside me. Fortunately, it was not broken, but that shade was an interesting degree of cock-eyed.

“I killed her … my stepmother,” I whispered, my voice so quiet I wondered if Mint could hear me at all. Apart of my brain screamed to be quiet, but another let the words drip from my tongue one word at a time, out into the air, like a leaky tap echoing in an empty house. “She would torture me whenever my father was away from home. Lock me in the freezer. Shove my face into scalding water. Force me to drink alcohol until I threw up or passed out. Things that would not leave marks.” I felt them all, the years of pain, and misery, and desperation. As if each new inventive way she would take me to hell happened only yesterday. “Then, one day, she took me to this factory. She tied me to a chair and put this cloth over my eyes … It burned. It hurt so bad. I could not see, and I screamed and screamed, but she would not take it off.” My throat tightened, the memory sinking through my chest like the knife, the same one I’d used years ago, sinking inch by inch through my sternum, bone and muscle and sinew cracking beneath my weight. “So, I killed her. I shoved a knife through her chest and listened to her choke as she bled to death.”

I stared at the shattered piece of the broken lamp, unable to pull my eyes away from each little fragment, so broken it could not be fixed. “I thought it was over,” I whispered, “but it never is. It’s never over.”

“Your eyes …” Mint murmured, and I could see his own searching my face, the missing puzzle pieces now fitting together in his mind. I couldn’t look at him, the reflection of myself haunting those pale green eyes. But it was not me now, but the me with blood soaked under my nails, blindfolded and exhausted. The murderer that lived inside me.

My eyes burned with a mix of pain fragmented from the past. But stronger still, the frustration chewing away at my heart and mind. “I hate this,” I whispered, the horrible swell of defeat and pure misery strangling my voice. “I hate it all.”

“You’re in the worst of it right now.” Mint’s voice was soft and reassuring. “But it’s going to get better. I promise.”

The words I had heard so many times only felt like fuel on the fire; they inspired a bitter hatred and wallowing misery that dragged themselves out from the dredges of my soul. I had spent years in suffering, in pain, and in misery. I had survived time and time again only to go through more and more. To sink lower and lower into a dark tar of pain that I was never going to escape from.

“It never gets better,” I breathed, the thought of my future pressing against my throat. It was like the boiling water down my gullet again, my chest pained with each swell, and my body fought to breathe. “It never has gotten better … It never will.”

Never to find relief in death or freedom in life. I was born to suffer. Destined to despair.

I watched Mint lift my hand, not feeling it, nor reacting to it. It was as if it was happening to someone else. He inspected the back of my hand with a frown, and a thick droplet of blood slithered down over my skinny, bony hands. It must have been from the IV. I must have torn it out during my episode.

“Stay there.” Mint scanned me over, lingering for a long time. He was hesitant to leave, but his priorities outweighed his reluctance. “I’m going to get another needle and something to cover that up.” Mint stalked across the room, and a rustling of papers, plastic, and other things filled the air.

I stared down at my hands, feeling alien as I watched the blood trickle over my skin. I expected it to at least feel warm, but I felt nothing. It was not a big enough wound to cause any true harm. Quite literally just a pinprick. If it had been somewhere else, somewhere higher and more vulnerable, then it would justify the concern. The wound to my hand would do little to take me away from it all. To free me the way I always wanted.

Even so, the needle hole was bigger than I had expected. It was the first time I realised the harm a catheter needle could do.

The revelation was like ice. Cold, cold ice pouring down over my back, sharp, electric shocks of cold alighting every nerve. My eyes were lead weights as they moved so slowly towards the bed where the red-tipped edge of the abandoned metal needle poked over the side of the mattress.

Gravity moved my body, no a thought or question slipping through the haze. My blood thickened in my veins, my feet growing heavy like lead pooling in my soles, and my heartbeat like a war drum, steady and loud, pounding in my ears.

I did not dare look away. Did not dare look in Mint’s direction where he could possibly have seen and could already be moving to stop me.

The needle was a searing iron in my hand as my fingers clasped around its thin, lightweight shaft. It felt delicate, like it would snap between my fingers if I pressed too hard, and my hands shook as I struggled to hold it still. My arms felt strained as if I was pushing through layers of resistance as I brought it towards me.

This time …

I can finally …

Finally , be free.

The needle burnt as it pierced my skin. A flash of fiery adrenaline burst like a dam as the first trickle slid down my skin and pooled against my collarbone. It hurt. Even with the medication and the withdrawal burning my nerves, the pain remained.

But it did not stop me.

It urged me forward.

I just wanted it to be over. Please, let it be—

A train slammed into my chest. Air ejected from my lungs, the metal tearing from my throat, my shoulder and arm screaming as it was lashed far from my torso. The needle flung from my fingers, disappearing into who knew where?

A hand snapped around my neck, crushing my windpipe as my body was lifted weightlessly into the air before the wall struck my back, my skull cracking against the hard concrete.

I could not even mutter a single syllable of his name as I processed the face I recognised. The face of the man choking the life out of me with pure, unadulterated rage.

“LAMB!” Mint bellowed from across the room.

I doubted I had ever seen anything more than a trickle of true emotion on Lamb’s face, but as I saw him now, emotion was all I could see.

“ How could you ?” Lamb growled, his iron arm vibrating against my throat as darkness danced around the corners of my vision. I wrapped my own hands tightly around his wrist, fighting, struggling for even an inch of room to breathe, but Lamb gave up none.

His brief words were enough time for Mint to barrel across the room. He slammed into Lamb’s side, the slender man bound to go down against the wide bulk of Mint’s body. Lamb did not even allow an atom of space, as he not only held still but managed to throw Mint straight over his back, slamming him down into the side table and lamp as they shattered into a million pieces.

“Your life belongs to me,” Lamb growled, dark, burnt eyes on me, furious and consuming. Whatever little breath I had was stolen by that look. That look that threatened to consume the earth in its entirety. “If you try anything stupid like that again, I’ll chain you down and make it so you can’t even shit without my permission.”

“LAMB!” Mint roared again, this time going for his arm.

I saw the struggle between the narrowing dark of my vision and could faintly feel the shake of his arm pinning me against the wall slacken. Darkness touched me for a moment, and I floated in it.

Until the ground came up against me without warning, my legs crumpling beneath my body, oxygen flooding back into my lungs. My chest screamed in agony, my throat struggling to relax as I fought to draw in each painful breath.

I heard a slam behind me, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mint on the floor once again, his body slumped against the broken armchair he had been relaxing in a few hours prior.

“You were supposed to be watching her,” Lamb growled, his voice no longer a raging bellow but a deep, threatening rumble.

Mint stiffened against the debris, and I turned to get a better look. His mouth tightened into a harsh line, but he didn’t argue. His heckles were up, his shoulders bunched as he picked himself off the floor, ready for the fight.

Mint’s green eyes flickered to mine with a flash of concern before turning back to Lamb, who stood between us like an unmovable wall. “I need to treat her.” Mint gestured over to me with a flick of his chin, his eyes never leaving Lamb.

Lamb glanced back to me, cataloguing and scanning every inch of my body like he always did. Something in him relinquished its hold, and I could see the fight settle to a simmer beneath the surface. His shoulders slackened, and he hesitantly stepped aside.

Mint moved carefully around him, giving him a wide berth as he made his way over to me. Once in front of me, his back turned to his brother, his focus fell onto my neck, scanning the blood still dripping down my skin. Then he poked and prodded at the tender marks that would blacken and add to my collection of nasty bruises over the next few hours.

During his examination, I watched Lamb stalk to the other side of the room, posting up within a dark shadow in the corner.

He never left me alone again.