EGL // lashton

forty eight

Ashton let his legs move himself forward as he was forcefully pushed through the narrow hallway. His wrists ached as the hard metal was digging into his skin, but he felt no pain.

He was pushed through the long hallway and ignored the vicious looks he got from the guys dressed in orange jumpsuits as he passed them, before he was thrown into an empty cell only containing a metal bed with a thin mattress and a sad excuse of a toilet.

"Get comfortable, Irwin. You'll be spending a lifetime in here" the officer spoke with a satisfied tone in his voice before forcefully shutting the bars behind him.

~
12 hours earlier
~

Ashton was seated in the middle of the pools of blood on the floor, his back against the wall that was covered in a dark poetic words. His eyes were locked on the empty wall across from him, his breathing so quiet he almost thought he was no longer breathing at all.

The cabin was empty, no tracks of Luke anywhere except from the marks of blood from a body being dragged out of the house.

Ashton knew that would be the case, no one ever leaves a dead body behind without getting rid of it. Letting a brutally abused body stay behind is a one way ticket into jail, and people are smarter than that. Ashton would know, he had been lectured about it ever since he could talk.

Ashton knew that if Luke was dead, he would be gone.

But even though he was gone, Luke was everywhere. He was on the porch, he was in the hallway, he was in the living room, he was in the kitchen, and he was in the bedroom. He was in every room where he had created a memory, and Ashton felt himself losing his breath each second that went by because of it.

He was lost. So fucking lost in a world where he had always felt at home. Now he couldn't see anything. The road in front of him was pitch black and bumpy, making it impossible for him to move forward. He was stuck in one place, feeling like the ground would swallow him and drag him down to hell to torture him further.

Ashton could almost hear the painful screams coming from Luke if he closed his eyes and concentrated on only the darkness surrounding him. The screams left scars on his skin, scars that wouldn't ever heal.

Ashton could see Luke's pretty blue eyes in front of him, staring into his own before melting down and disappearing like thin water through the cracks in the wooden floor.

Luke was slowly slipping away from Ashton, piece by piece, and it wouldn't take long before Ashton was completely alone.

The only thing he had that had him hanging from the ceiling in a thin thread was the letter he still had in his hand, his fist clenched around it to keep it as close to him as possible.

He hadn't opened it, hadn't taken a single peek at the piece of white paper. He was scared of what was going to be shown if he opened it, scared that the words written in the letter would make him lose Luke forever.

He couldn't lose Luke. Luke was his everything. Luke was the curiosity inside of him, Luke was the blood running through his veins, Luke was the beating of his heart. Luke was the oxygen in his lungs, the tears in his eyes, the smile on his lips, the laugh he released.

Luke was the only piece of love circling around in Ashton's body, and without him Ashton would turn inhuman. He'd be empty. He'd be dead.