Ashley's Asylum (3)

10 | Ashley's Asylum

Ashley laid in silence but the noise in her head couldn't be louder. Till now she had been compliant with Wilton and Hanz for obvious reasons. Her life hung in the balance and Sam had made it perfectly clear that any attempt to escape would result in her death. She had believed him, until now.

She had done the forbidden and she had run away from them. Ashley replayed it again and again in her head. She tried to see what she could have done differently, but in the end, there had been nowhere to run to and nobody to help her.

Ashley clenched her fists in anger. That wasn't true. There were people around who could have helped her if they'd wanted to, cars that could have stopped and the group of teenagers who could have pointed her in the right direction. She cursed them bitterly.

If Sam had been true to his word, their ignorance could have gotten her killed. That was the issue at hand now, the fact that she was still alive despite breaking the only distinct rule that had been laid down.

Her thoughts took her all the way back to the start of this disaster, to the moment she discovered all about David's trickery and the falsehood of the Asylum. David had said Michael had chosen her for a reason. There had been plenty of other applications; prettier, smarter, dumber girls who wanted the job but Michael had chosen her. He'd sat with her profile for hours. What was it about her that interested someone like him. Was it really something as simple as an attraction.

Ashley didn't think psychopaths felt the same way as ordinary people, yet Michael and Sam were passionate and had shown regret, anger and hurt before. What did that make them? Hybrid psychopath's, a rarer breed of a killer and all the more dangerous for it. Or perhaps sociopaths?

Could they both think they were in love with her? The theory had crossed her mind but she didn't want to consider it. Michael had definitely chosen her for a reason beyond using her to escape the Asylum, he hadn't shared the reason with Sam either evidently. He didn't want his partner doing anything unsavoury to her, he'd demonstrated that just before she'd escaped. He was distantly possessive but she refused to believe it was all because he'd fallen in love. That didn't sit right.

Sam was just as confusing. One moment he seemed to be the only thing standing between her and the dangers that Michael posed and in the next moment he was the danger. He wanted to keep her safe, yet he was the one pushing a pair of scissors into the nape of her neck and pawing his nasty hands all over her body. He said he wanted to get rid of her as well and yet he was the one to capture her again.

Ashley laughed internally at herself. She was still trying to figure them out and even when up close and personal she was still no closer. It was useless, she could barely follow Karl's thought pattern let alone Sam and Michael's. They really were insane.

Her chest began to ache suddenly. Every thought boiled down to her thinking the same thing over and over. She should never have taken up a job at the Asylum. It was pointless regretting something she couldn't change but Ashley couldn't stop resenting the decisions that had led her to this point in her life. She had never felt so hopeless. At any moment she could die, how was she supposed to deal with that? Ashley had come up against this sensation once before but now it was a solid sense of despair. There was no emergency security team preparing to burst in and save her. Tomorrow the sun would rise but whether she would be alive to witness it was another thing. One of the worst parts was the not knowing.

An unholy sensation rippled throughout her body right down to her core. The world without her in it made her feel physically faint. Bile shot up out of nowhere and scolded her throat. Ashley bolted upright and clamped a hand over her mouth.

All this speculation on them wanting to keep her alive could just be her deluding herself. Her being alive now could all be down to them wanting to murder her in their own time in the right place. For all she knew, this was the right place.