Ashley's Asylum (3)

12 | Ashley's Asylum

Ashley came around with a start. One moment she was in darkness and within the next, pain elapsed upon her head like an explosion. Her eyelids flickered as she struggled to open them. Immediately she was aware of the wrongness of the situation but she could barely hold onto that thought through the pain.

Her body felt heavy and seemed uncooperative, even moving her head was difficult. She did her best to look up but ended up with her head lolling back onto something hard and uncomfortable.

Even though she was still, everything was spinning. It was like being mid-way between drunk and devastatingly hung over. What on earth had happened?

"Awake are we?"

Ashley jumped in her seat at the unexpected intrusion of noise. It took a great deal of strength and a few failed attempts for her to successfully lift her head up and look in the general direction of the voice.

"What, What's wrong with me?" She slurred.

She took in a blurred figure at first sight, but after a few stinging blinks her eyes settled on someone that made the state she was in so much worse.

Michael leant down just in front of her and rested his hands on his knees. He smiled ruefully at her.

"Trying to escape while we weren't around as if I would leave you somewhere unsafe. Ashley, don't you know me at all?"

Ashley felt anger sear in her chest. She couldn't remember exactly, but somehow she knew that her condition was entirely Michael's fault, him and that blonde jerk.

Her fingers twitched hopelessly by her sides as she lightly brushed the sides of the chair she was seated upon. It hurt to look around but she did it anyway in an attempt to gather her bearings.

A door behind Michael opened and two figures slipped in before closing it quietly behind. The slightest noise hurt Ashley's ears but as she flinched at the door closing, she noticed that movement was coming back to her limbs in a painfully slow manner.

"Feeling like shit?" Sam mused from somewhere behind Michael. "Elsie put a little something in your food. Apparently, she could smell the hostility on you as soon as you woke up, even after she made you a cup of tea."

Ashley could tell he thought the whole thing was a hoot, but the mentioning of Elsie's name triggered a memory or two within her. She looked down into her lap and slowly managed to lift her arms to cradle her head in her hands as Sam rambled off a few more sardonic remarks.

She remembered searching for something, according to Michael she was trying to escape but there were blotches of her memory gone. Elsie's name had triggered a memory, though, something bizarre, something that made no sense.

Slowly she looked up at Michael and caught him watching her diligently.

"The picture" she murmured, causing Sam to pause mid sentence. "Why does Elsie have the picture?"

Michael's expression took a noticeable turn as he shot a look over his shoulder at Elsie, who looked intensely frail beside Sam. When he turned back, he smiled but it was frigid.

"You're not making any sense Ashley."

Ashley rubbed her face with both hands in an attempt to wipe away the cobwebs of drowsiness.

"The picture" she snapped, trying to break through the slur caused by the drugs. "My picture, a picture of me."

Michael took a seat opposite her. The room was empty, aside from the chair he'd chosen, an old bunk bed on the far wall and a bare light bulb. The walls were poorly plastered and the carpet on the floor was tough and old. It looked like the remnants of a long since abandoned bedroom. There was no natural light, though, were they in a basement?