Ash's Darling | ✔

Chapter 17

~Esther~

"Dalloway." The chief of police nodded to greet Ash as we walked in the building. "Thanks for coming. My normal interrogators are busy right now otherwise I wouldn't have called you in."

"Yeah, let's just get this over with." Ash grumbled back to him. "I want her to stay behind the double sided mirror while I'm in there unless she needs me. If she does, for any reason, I'd like for you or another one of your men to come get me."

"Alrighty." The chief nodded at Ash once more and turned to me. "Ma'am, come with me." He turned and walked down a hallway, expecting me to follow.

I looked back to Ash, not knowing if I should trust the man or not but Ash nodded and nudged his head in the chief's direction, silently telling me to follow him. I turned towards the hallway and walked away from Ash and followed the chief of police to the second to last door at the end of the hallway. I assumed the last door was the interrogation room and as I walked through the door I realized I was correct. A large glass window took up the whole wall on the right side of the room, showing the interrogation room behind the glass.

The room had two small dark brown wooden chairs with red cushions in the middle of the small room with a miniature wooden side table in-between them which was almost orange from the wood stain that was added to it. I'm not going to lie, the colors did not suit each other.

I was thrown out of my thoughts when the chief spoke up. "I'll be outside the door in case you need anything, ma'am."

I thanked him and he walked out of the room. Only a few seconds later, my attention was drawn to the room behind the glass when the guy who was going to be interrogated entered the room in front of me with his hands cuffed behind his back and dressed in an orange jumpsuit that all prisoners wore.

His face was beaten up, probably because he and the other prisoners got into a fight. Even with the beat up face I still recognized him in less than ten seconds. It was the one face I thought I would never see again in my life. He was sitting right in front of me and it seemed like he was staring straight at me even though I knew he couldn't see me through the double sided mirror.

Flashbacks of the worst four nights of my life flooded my mind. Him staring down at me with excitement in his eyes while I was tied up in a chair and forced to look back up at him. Being whipped over and over until I passed out and he finally stopped. Being choked until I was almost unconscious. Him and his sick friends all taking turns torturing me for their enjoyment. Slapping, kicking, punching and even pulling my hair. He pulled out almost all my hair within the four days because he and his friends loved hearing me scream.

He let me starve the whole time and wouldn't give me clean clothes to replace my blood soaked ones after he stabbed my calf because I wasn't cooperating. Anything and everything you can think of he and his friends did to me. I was forced to sleep on the hard concrete of the warehouse he held me in and the only thing they gave me was a bucket to go to the bathroom in.

"Dalloway!" I faintly heard the chief yell. I couldn't hear much and the only thing I knew was that I was having a panic attack. I couldn't take my eyes off of the man in the room in front of me. It was almost as if I was in a daze. "Dalloway! Get your ass in here, goddammit!"

Images of the man sitting in front of me, cleaning off his knife after pulling it out of my calf and throwing it into the wall behind my head when I angered him, clouded my vision as I slid down the wall behind me and hugged my knees to my chest.

It was like a movie playing again and again in my head but I couldn't stop it. I was too busy trying to block out the memories to notice that Ash had come in the room and was now holding me and trying to calm me down. "Mae, what's going on? What's happening?"

I couldn't get any words to come out of my mouth no matter how hard I tried. A memory I had forgotten about came to the forefront of my mind, making me lose all sense of reality and slip into the details of the night I didn't want to remember.

"What a pretty little thing you are, Sunshine." The man dragged the small knife lightly up my leg and to my thigh where my shorts started. I was only dressed in small blue jean shorts and a plain black oversized shirt as I planned to have a movie day with Indi today at her house since my family was driving me crazy.

I never made it to Indi's house though. I had been walking to her house when I noticed the man was following me. I tried to turn a corner to get away from him but his friend was waiting for me when I turned down the road, he threw a cloth over my mouth with some kind of chemical on it and the next thing I knew I woke up in a warehouse on the cold hard floor with no clue of how I got here.

I looked down at my leg to see that the cut from his knife wasn't deep enough to scar it was just enough to hurt me. "Fuck off." I spat. I didn't know how long I was going to be here but I really hoped it wasn't long.

My reply seemed to anger him but he kept a fake smile on his face as he pulled my hair, making my head jerk back and hit the concrete wall behind me. "Such dirty words from such a pretty mouth, don't you think?"

I couldn't answer this time as I tried to control the pounding in my head. The man scoffed at the state my body was in after only a few hours of his torture. He turned around and walked out of the room, likely to go get something else to torture me with until I lost consciousness and maybe even longer than that.

"Esther." Someone gently shook me as they talked. "Esther, baby, you're safe. It's okay. I'm here." I looked at the person who was holding me to their chest while we sat on the floor rocking back and forth. It was Ash. My Ash.

I laid my head on his firm chest and took a deep breath, taking in his woody scented cologne and trying to calm myself down enough to be able to talk. "Mae, you're safe. It's okay." Ash repeated as he combed his finger through my hair, trying to soothe me. "What happened, darling?"

"I'm sorry." I whispered so softly it was barely audible. I wrapped my arms around Ash's torso and held onto him like I never wanted to let him go. He's the only thing keeping me together right now. If he wasn't here I'd still be lost in the memories of the worst days of my life.

"Darling, don't apologize. It's okay. What happened?" I, again, didn't have the words to answer him right now and after realizing I couldn't answer him, he turned to the door as the chief walked back in.

"Everything okay now?" He asked Ash, glancing between us sitting on the floor while Ash continued to rub my back soothingly.

"She'll be okay but I'm going to take her home for today and figure out what happened. I'll deal with him another day." He answered, talking about the man who was still sitting in the interrogation room.

"That's understandable. I'll deal with him for now. Let me know when you can come back in."

"Will do." Ash stood up with me in his arms which I was grateful for, I didn't want to let go of him right now and I'm sure I wouldn't for the rest of the day. He was the only thing keeping me together.

Ash turned his body to face the glass and I hid my face in his chest. I knew if I looked again the same thing would happen and I was really trying not to let the memories take over again. "Darling? Are you alright?"

I shook my head in response and tried to hide my face even more while squeezing my eyes shut, not wanting to see the man out of the corner of my eye and have another flashback.

He leaned down and kissed the top of my head as he started walking to the door. "Let's get you home." 

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[Edited 3/18/22]