Slash, p.2
Slash, page 2
“Dude, I was only joking. But we’re talking exceptional here. Like Zoe Saldana with Pam Grier’s body. Right up your alley. I’ll take a picture and send it to you.”
“You do that and I’ll kill you. Last thing I need is Ash seeing pictures of other women on my phone.” He realized then that Vince had had one beer too many. “Go back to your spreadsheet, settle up your tab and go to your hotel room to beat off.”
“You’re a wise man. Think I’ll keep my black dress socks on while I do it.” When Todd’s disgust couldn’t be contained, Vince chuckled and said, “Just wanted to leave you with that image.”
Todd hung up on Vince’s laughter, cutting off the engine as he parked in his driveway. All of the blinds were open as usual so Ashley could allow the maximum amount of sunlight in. He grabbed his lunch pail and wine and locked the car.
“Guess who’s home?” he called out, making sure to kick off his steel-toed boots in the vestibule. Elvira came trotting over, gave him a look and meowed before moving on. “Nice to see you too.”
Todd was more a dog than a cat person, but Ash had taken to Elvira immediately, so he’d had to suck it up. The cat was never going to be his best friend, but they had maintained a peaceful respect for one another. Plus, Elvira was downright ugly. He’d woken up several times to that battered, balding face and thought he’d fallen into a fresh nightmare.
“Hey Ash, I got that cabernet you wanted to try. It was cheap too. At least it doesn’t have a screw top.”
He went right to the kitchen, found the wine opener in the junk drawer and popped the cork. He didn’t know if ten-dollar wines needed to breathe, but he was determined not to be a heathen.
“Ash?”
Unbuttoning his stained work shirt, he tromped to the bedroom. Sometimes, when her anxiety really hit hard, she would pop a couple of Ativan and zonk out. She slept much better, much sounder, in the daytime, and the pills helped give her a reset when she needed it. He wished to hell he could make her fear of the dark go away, but he was smart enough to know it was out of his control. What he could do was provide a safe place for her and be there when she needed him. Any higher aspirations would just lead to frustration.
He did a double take when he saw the bed was empty.
It wasn’t like her to not be home. Her car was still in the driveway.
Maybe she’s with Claire, he thought. Claire Pozzo was recently divorced and had started a love affair with wine and younger men. She loved to regale Ash with her latest exploits. When Todd asked Ash why she liked Claire so much, she’d said, “I think it’s because she’s, well, light and airy. There’s no darkness or sadness there. Her marriage sucked, she got out with no reservations, and she’s happy. I like visiting her glow.”
Visiting her glow. That was such an Ashley thing to say.
Or it had been, before everything went to hell. The fact that Claire resurrected that small part of his fiancée made him like her too.
He checked his phone. No text.
Heading back to the kitchen and dining room, he looked around to see if he’d missed a note.
Ash never left to go anywhere without leaving a trail.
Where the hell was she?
Todd’s chest grew tight.
“Ashley?”
He was about to run outside and check the backyard when he saw the basement door was open a crack.
Of course.
The basement was so full of boxes and junk it was practically a soundproofed room. Ash had been threatening to bring order to the chaos down there for months. The second he opened the door all the way, Elvira dashed ahead of him, nearly causing him to fall headlong down the stairs.
“Your cat tried to kill me…again,” he said as he descended the creaky wood steps. “I may have to get a restraining order against her.”
Something smelled strange. It was a pungent combination of ammonia and shit. Just great. Now the cat was using the basement as a litter box. It was bad enough she liked to pee in the tub.
Sniffing, Todd made the turn into the main room. “I swear, Ash, this cat—”
Ashley’s blue face and bulging eyes turned lazily several feet off the basement floor.
“No!”
Todd sprinted across the room and grabbed her around her waist, shouldering her weight.
Her dead weight.
Blinded by tears, he struggled to extricate her from the noose. He reached up to feel her chest, to hope for signs of a beating heart. Her pungent excrement that had dripped down her legs stained his arms and shirt. He cried her name over and over until his throat was raw. He didn’t want to let her go. If there was any chance she was still alive, he had to prop her up, allow her to breathe. But he had to find a way to cut her down. She couldn’t remain trapped in the noose forever.
Todd held on tight, draining his tears into her cold, lifeless body.
Chapter Three
“Do you want something to eat?”
Heather Embry looked at Todd with the same pitying look every single person had given him over the past three days. They had left Ashley’s coffin at the cemetery four hours ago. He sat at the kitchen table, away from the crush of mourners that had flocked to his house – his and Ash’s home – after the funeral. He wondered if the coffin was still there, or if it had been lowered into the oblong grave?
Had they piled dirt onto it yet? Was she now truly gone? For some reason, as long as she was above the ground, he felt she was still here, still a part of his life. The moment his love was buried beneath clods of soft, heavy earth, she would be lost to him forever.
There was no rationality to the way he felt but he didn’t give a solitary shit. He stared into space, desperately seeking some kind of tether to Ash. Would he feel it in his heart, in his soul, the moment she was sealed away from him? Could anything penetrate the throbbing sorrow that was making him more and more numb by the second?
“Todd, honey, you should eat something.”
Heather wore a black dress with a white scarf. She’d taken it upon herself to handle the post-funeral dinner. Aluminum serving trays were scattered all throughout the kitchen and dining room. There was enough food to feed a football team and more.
For the first time, Todd noticed the house was quiet.
“Where is everyone?” he asked, his mouth so dry it hurt to talk.
“They left about a half an hour ago. Vince and I saw them all out. Everybody understands.” She squeezed his shoulder.
He had barely registered a word that had been said to him all day, so it was no surprise he didn’t even mark their leaving.
Heather held an empty plate. The thought of eating made him nauseous.
“I’m not hungry,” he said.
Heather sighed. “I can’t force you, but you haven’t had a bite in days.”
She was right. The last thing he’d put in his stomach had been his lunch the day he’d found Ash hanging in the basement. Two ham and cheese sandwiches, a pear and a bag of chips. His painfully empty stomach should have growled at the thought, but it was as dull and dead as the rest of him.
He was grateful Heather didn’t press him. Instead, she went about cleaning the kitchen. He heard Vince in the living room straightening things.
“Where’s my mother?” he asked. He was finding it hard to concentrate. Even his vision was blurred. Whether it was from tears or exhaustion he didn’t know or care.
“Henry drove her to the hotel. You don’t remember?”
He rubbed his eyes. His mother had said something to him, but was that today or yesterday? She hadn’t looked well. Ashley’s death had devastated her. It had wrecked them all.
To have survived what she had gone through only to go out at the end of a rope.
Why was that rope even there? He didn’t need it. It wasn’t as if he was one to tie things up or save people from the bottom of a well. Why in the fuck did he buy it? If it hadn’t been there….
“I’m going to call and check on her in a little bit,” Heather said, blissfully unaware of how much he hated himself. “Today was…too much for her.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “She needed to lie down. If I don’t keep busy, I’ll be just the same.”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and went back to spooning leftovers into plastic containers. Her stifled sob barely reached Todd’s ears. He knew he should get up and console her. She was Ash’s best friend – or had been since Sheri had been killed. He willed his legs to stand, but they wouldn’t obey.
Vince came in with a stack of plates. Todd caught his eye, and then turned away.
“I want to see Ash,” he said.
The plates rattled when Vince put them in the sink.
“What was that?”
Todd turned to stare at him. “I need you to take me to see Ash.”
Vince leaned against the counter. Heather put an arm around her husband, almost the same way Todd had wrapped his arms around Ash’s body as it dangled from the noose.
“You know you can’t do that, buddy,” Vince said. His eyes, like everyone’s the past couple of days, were red and raw.
The chair scraped against the floor when Todd stood, and banged against the wall. “I’m going.”
Vince grabbed his arm as he went for the car keys on the hook attached to the cabinet. “No. You’re in no shape to drive. I’ll take you.”
The sudden urge to go to Ash felt like the unleashing of a captured bolt of electricity in Todd’s core. He’d been sleepwalking without the benefit of sleep for the past few days. Now he had energy to burn. His finger thrummed against his thigh as he waited for Vince to part from Heather, the couple exchanging words that might as well have been spoken in a foreign language.
“Okay, let’s go, bud,” Vince said, his hand pressed to Todd’s back as they walked to the car.
Vince tried to help him into the car, but Todd shrugged free from his grasp. He wanted to get to the cemetery as quickly as possible. Before….
Before.
“It should be raining,” Todd said dreamily. Sunlight sprayed over the changing leaves. Ash loved the fall. Since her suicide – a stabbing pain creased his stomach every time he even thought of the word – the nights had been hit with an early frost. The leaves were morphing into their fall palette more and more each morning.
Vince took the entrance to the highway. “Why do you say that?”
“It always rains in the movies, doesn’t it? When you bury someone you love.”
Vince’s mouth retracted into a thin, almost imperceptible line. “Yeah, I guess it does.”
Heaven’s Passage Cemetery was only ten minutes away but it felt to Todd as if they were on a cross-country trip. He didn’t even wait for the car to stop before opening his door and clambering out.
“Todd, wait!”
She was still here!
Ashley’s coffin sat upon the contraption that would eventually lower her into the cold and hungry ground. Several men milled about, all heads snapping his way as he ran.
I knew you were still here!
“I can still feel you!” he shouted. Vince’s hurried footsteps ghosted him.
The men backed away as Todd draped his body over the coffin. Days of tears suddenly burst from the dam of his grief.
“I can still feel you.”
The wood was cold and slick. He pressed his face against the coffin, muttering her name over and over. When Vince went to touch him he lashed out. “Leave me alone!”
He knew, he knew, he knew. All along, he knew she hadn’t been buried yet. Her absence hadn’t felt…complete. Now that these men were here to take her good and fully away from him, the impending emptiness was too much to bear.
He didn’t know how long he stood there, his arms hugging her coffin, racking sobs making his ribs and spine sore.
“Come on,” Vince whispered close to his ear. “We have to go.”
Todd ignored him.
How could Vince be so eager to leave Ash? She was his friend too. Didn’t he love her? Didn’t he miss her?
Now his friend’s hands were on him, trying to gently tug him away. Todd’s muscles bunched, his feet digging into the upturned earth around the coffin.
“Ashley.”
They were going to take him away from her. Vince and these strangers would intervene, sooner rather than later. He knew it.
Your face. I need to see your beautiful face one more time.
He ignored the fact that the mortician couldn’t erase what death by slow strangulation had done to her. At the wake, Todd had found it near impossible to look inside the coffin. The few glimpses he did take showed him someone who looked like a plastic, distant relative to his fiancée. But it wasn’t her.
Would she be different, this close to leaving him forever? He had to see. He had to see and touch her one last time.
Todd struggled with the lid.
Men shouted around him.
The coffin lid wouldn’t budge. Why was it locked? Did they think she was alive and would try to get out? Were they conspiring to keep her from him?
Todd grunted and his fingers sought the seam, several nails breaking off as he tried to pry it open.
And then multiple hands and arms were on him, dragging him away. He was locked in their evil embrace as surely as Ash was locked in the coffin.
Todd shouted her name until black spots jittered and whooshed in his vision. Her coffin, his fiancée, grew smaller and smaller as he was pulled farther and farther from her, the inexorable tug of a black hole sucking him in until there was nothing but an icy, indifferent darkness.
Chapter Four
The flowers on his doorstep confused Todd when he went out to get the paper. His brain was still wrapped in a dull fog, the sleeping pill he’d taken the night before making him groggy. He hadn’t wanted to take the pill, but his mother had insisted. She’d even slept over to make sure he did.
It had been two weeks since the funeral. So many flowers had been sent to the funeral parlor and the house that first week, he thought he could open a florist shop. That was the way it was when someone young passed on. In Ashley’s case, there were ten times the typical allotment of sympathy bouquets because of her so-called celebrity status.
He stooped down to pluck the card from the little plastic holder sticking out amidst the pink carnations.
REST IN PEACE, FINAL GIRL. MAY GOD GIVE YOU STRENGTH AND COMFORT.
Todd crumpled the note and stuffed it in his robe pocket. He grabbed the flowers, walked purposefully to the side of the house and dropped them in the trash. He leaned on the lid for a few moments, blinded by his anger, waiting for the swell of sudden rage to be swept away.
“Hi Mr. Todd.”
It was Ronin, the boy next door, whose hair was a perpetual ragged mop. The kid was a bundle of energy, always on the move. Todd and Ash had once watched him do somersaults on his lawn for over an hour. They eventually had to turn away, feeling exhausted, and they hadn’t even moved a muscle.
Todd took a breath and put on a fake smile. “Hey Ronin. Where’s your sister?”
The twins were inseparable. At least his sister Ryder could sit still for periods of time.
Ronin shrugged his bony shoulders. “She’s sick or something. Mom said she can’t come outside today.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Todd was setting off to go back inside when Ronin said, “I miss Miss Ashley.”
The pure sincerity in the kid’s voice nearly stopped Todd’s heart. He fought against the beast that was his sorrow and said, “Yeah. Me too.”
“She was the only big person who liked to play with us.” There might have been an accusation there, but Todd couldn’t register it. He could only nod and hurry into the house so the boy didn’t see the tears that had sprung from his eyes.
He leaned against the door, using his sleeve to sop up the tears.
First anger. Now sadness. It was too early for this.
“They forget to deliver the paper?” his mother asked from the kitchen. He heard the scrape of the whisk in a plastic bowl, which meant she was whipping up her maple pancakes. She could see him through the mirror in the living room.
Todd looked at his empty hands. He’d forgotten the paper. He slipped outside, found it between the potted mums to the right of the porch, and dropped it on the dining room table. “I almost forgot.”
She came out carrying a bowl of lumpy batter. “Something wrong?”
There was no point trying to hide anything from her. She knew all his tells and was relentless.
“More flowers,” he said.
“Oh.”
“Another final girl weirdo. I threw them away.”
She leaned into him and put her arm across his shoulders. “Whoever it was, they meant well.”
He extracted the paper from the plastic bag and unfolded it. The headlines meant nothing to him. He’d fallen completely out of touch the past two weeks and no longer cared about politics or murders or the latest insipid celebrity gossip.
“All those well-meaning, anonymous assholes killed her,” he said, his strong hands crushing the edges of the newspaper.
His mother kept silent, kissing the top of his head and going back into the kitchen to put the pancakes on the griddle. She turned on the radio, and hit the seek button until she found the classic rock station. The sizzle of pancakes played under the thunderous beat of Cheap Trick.
Todd’s gaze drifted to the window looking out the side of the house. The trash cans were under that window.
Final girl.
The last thing Ashley ever wanted to be was a final girl. Who would? It was bad enough that she had to live with the memory of that night. To have to be reminded of it constantly was more than she, or anyone, could bear. How the hell was she supposed to ever heal and find some semblance of recovery when the world seemed bent on making her relive the horror day in and day out?
