Ashley's Asylum (3)

19 | Ashleys Asylum

Ashley stood back, breathing heavily from the exertion it took to knock someone like Michael out. She glanced at Sam on the ground who, despite coughing violently, appeared relieved she had stepped in to rescue him. That is until she raised the freezer door a third time above his head.

"Wait, wait!" He cried out, shaking his hands at her urgently until she thwacked him square in the face like a whack-a-mole.

Her arms slumped down and she dropped the door with a subtle cry catching in the back of her throat. Sucking in a deep breath until her lungs could expand no more, Ashley exhaled a slow, shaky breath in an attempt to control all the emotions threatening to burst from her seams. She couldn't spiral, she had to stay calm. Sam wasn't unconscious, in fact, he had his hands wrapped around his face, releasing long, muffled wails into his palms. Although she'd like to think he would be out of business for a while, experience told her that Sam wouldn't be down for long and neither would Michael. She needed to act quickly.

Stalking over to the car, she lifted the broken boot up above her head and felt around inside, having to use her hands to suss out what hid inside the darkness of the vehicle. After a few moments of rummaging, she located a couple of cord-like shapes and pulled them out for closer inspection. Her eyes focused in on a couple of brightly coloured bungee cords and she clasped them gratefully in her two fists.

Making as if to walk back over to where the boys lay, she thought better and returned to the car to locate the misplaced gun which ended up being lodged in the footwell of the backseat. She returned to where Sam was rolling around in the dirt still drowsily holding his mouth. The cold metal of the gun bit into her skin from the back of her waistband as she ignored the severely injured blond and crouched down beside Michael who was beginning to twitch and stir.

Quickly she tied up his wrists with one of the cords, sensing he was the biggest threat out of the two boys. She only had 3 cord's and after wrapping the first around his wrists in what she hoped was a painfully tight bind, she coiled the other around his calves in the hopes of successfully immobilising him.

Next came the challenge of Sam. He still appeared to be struggling to shake off the latest assault on his body and she straddled him in his moment of weakness with the similar caution of one straddling a bull. He glared up at her in exasperation and lowered his hands away from his mouth. "You knocked my tooth out!" he spluttered, his mouth bloody and missing a top molar.

"Put your wrists together" Ashley instructed, her voice quaking horribly despite her best efforts to appear calm.

She received an unfriendly look from Sam at the command but did her best to detach herself from the threat behind his loaded glare. He refused to do as he was told until she leant forth and pressed her thumb into the bloody mess that was his shoulder. It gained her a feral snarl and a few moments of heady submission from him. She speedily wrapped the last cord around his wrists with great difficulty, panicky in her movements as she sensed the docile moment she'd brought herself was about to cease.

Sure enough, no sooner had she knotted the cord, Sam violently crocodile rolled. He hooked his bound hands behind her neck and crushed her to his chest before his weight rolled on top of her. Ashley simultaneously reached for the gun in the back of her knickers and jabbed it into his fleshy side. His weight mashed her body into the dirt and earnt a horrendous groan from her as he compressed the air from her lungs. She pushed the barrel of the gun as deeply into his ribs as she could manage as payback. 

"You won't shoot me" he mumbled through the saliva and blood washing around inside his mouth.

"Try me" Ashley managed to wheeze out from beneath him. It was a little too easy to shoot him from this position and it was an effort to keep her finger off the trigger.

Sam refused to move for what felt like an age, his physical mass easily defeated her without trouble but the blonde eventually spat a mouthful of gob to the side before he relented and eased off of her. Ashley squirmed out from underneath his body, sucking in some much-needed air as her chest ached from the compression. She locked eyes with Sam once she was safely away from him. His expression was laced with betrayal and his eyes burnt with indignation. It was safe to say she'd lost an ally tonight.

She jumped as Michael suddenly made an attempt to prop himself up. He failed and flopped back down onto the ground, his eyes rolling slightly as he regained consciousness. Two knockouts in such a short period of time could not be good for his head. Alarmed that she'd been brought to a pause, Ashley turned back to Sam and directed the gun at him.

"I'm in charge now" she declared boldly, "So get up and help me move that monster to the car. Or I'll leave you both tied up here for the police to find."

The darkness of the night had begun to merge with the murky light of day as Ashley drove with heavy-lidded eyes. She still only had her provisional drivers license but that seemed a trivial matter in the light of being a wanted criminal and murderer. Even if she did have a license, she could hardly explain away the two battered and tied up males in the back seat if she were to be pulled over.

They hadn't been on the road for very long at all but Ashley was already painfully aware that she had no destination planned and the police were potentially scouring all over the area for the three of them. If she didn't think of something soon, she was going to be in big trouble especially since the petrol dial was slowly edging towards empty. Everything was working against her but if she forced herself to look on the bright side, she was no longer a captive?

A fierce tussle in the back drew Ashley's attention from the road to the back seat. Michael was fully alert again and it appeared he didn't agree with the newest addition to his look. Ashley thought he looked quite agreeable tied up in lime green. He shifted in his seat, wrestling his wrists in an attempt to get free and Ashley watched him anxiously to see if her knots would hold him. They did and the frustration was evident on his bruised features.

Michael abruptly jerked his head to look at Sam and without pause began to lay into the blond with his bound wrists. "I'll fucking get you-" he grizzled out through gritted teeth, bringing his bound legs up to kick out at Sam.

"Bring it on you fuck- you stupid fuck" Sam snarled back, flapping his elbows like an awkward chicken in an attempt to land a blow on Michael.

They grunted and growled at one another, lashing out in the confined space of the backseat with their restrained limbs like children. It didn't help that Ashley had put their seat belts on and Michael was somewhat strangling himself just to get closer to his enemy.

"Are you serious?" Ashley exclaimed, her eyebrows furrowed in sheer exasperation. Even now, when they were both in such a position they still found the room to fight.  They were so aggravating it was mind-blowing. After a few kicks to the back of her seat, Ashley slammed on the breaks. They all jolted forwards, though Michael and Sam smacked into the front seats with a chorus of moans.

Satisfied she'd brought their bickering to a halt, Ashley continued driving to a new unnerving silence. She looked in the rearview mirror to see both sets of eyes fixated on her. It sent a chill up her spine. She wasn't the one tied up in the back seat, yet she didn't feel in control. From the way they looked at her, they didn't seem to think she was in control either.

Sam looked as feral as ever, a combination of blood, sweat and dirt sticking his thick hair up in tufts. She managed to tie Michael's belt around his shoulder in an attempt to stem the bleeding from his shoulder wound but he looked pale and unwell. Michael's face was screwed up in absolute contempt, no doubt with a bump the size of a rock on the back of his head.

"Oh, Ashley-" Michael murmured in warm sympathy. A quaint smile, sharper than a knife's edge quirked at the corner of his lips. 

He didn't add to the statement, and so Ashley's mind unhelpfully leapt to fill in the blanks.

It wasn't hard to imagine. His eyes said it all.

'Oh, Ashley- you're fucking dead.'