Ashes, Oh Ashes

chapter 2

That weekend, as we had planned, I showed up at her house with James and Henry. Ashley was a hostess type girl, who enjoyed entertaining and having a bunch of friends over. Her mother luckily didn’t mind either- it being just her and Ashley, even when James got rowdy or Henry made a mess. Sometimes Ashley’s good friend Lucille would join them.

We crashed on her couches- surrounded by bags of candy and miscellaneous junk food. That also, was something we did as a type of hobby. Twix, Snickers, M&Ms, pretzels, popcorn, marshmallows, chips and several other unhealthy mounds of snacks were piled around us.

Ashley took her normal seat next to me after she popped in Silent Hill into her built-in DVD player on her TV. She grabbed a handful of pretzels and began munching on them quietly.

“You need more junk in your system.” Henry joked, as usual. He always picked on her for eating less candy than they did.

She grinned in her usual amusement. “Not today, Henry.”

He threw an M&M at her, which she promptly caught with her left hand. She popped it into her mouth for his amusement.

“This movie makes me laugh.” James commented.

“Why?” I asked.

“ ‘Cause after awhile you can see all the flaws with it. Like the three-foot flame coming from a small lighter, in the rain.”

I laughed. “I’ll be looking for that.”

“It’s towards the beginning.” Ashley added. “You brought Hannibal Cannibal movies, right?”

“All four of them.” I nodded.

“Good.” She smiled to herself and we settled into the movie.

This was another reason I liked Ashley a lot more than other girls; she was cool about stuff. She didn’t squeal if someone had an itty-bitty scratch or when someone’s head imploded, yet she wasn’t a total tomboy.

I couldn’t help but take notice of her quiet, shallow breathing next to me. There just seemed to be something . . . odd about her. I had grown used to the way she breathed, but sometimes if you listened closely, you could hear something deep in her lungs that sounded like she was almost suffocating. I had inquired one time if she had asthma, but she had shaken her head with a curious look.

But it wasn’t her breathing, exactly; it was in her lungs, rather than her nose. I hadn’t dared ask Henry or James if they ever heard it- because I didn’t want to embarrass her. I didn’t ask her either- to save my face from a smarting slap. She hadn’t ever slapped me, and I didn’t want her to be on the long list of girls that did so.

It sounded like burning wood, if I had to put a name to it. Scratch suffocation, well . . .  I don’t know, it’s hard to describe. But sometimes it sounded like flames engulfing a house (which is a disturbing sound at three in the morning) and sometimes it just sounded like suffocation, even though she breathed quite regularly.

I listened to Rose’s ragged breathing as she ran through the halls of the old, abandoned school while looking for Sharon. This movie wasn’t scary, but rather just gory. For some strange reason, I could see Ashley running in the place of Rose for a fleeting second in my mind.

I blinked and lightly shook my head. Was it really the sound of Rose’s breathing that put Ashley in her place? I had to quit imagining things. Besides, this was a movie taking place under skies of ashes- of course breathing would be labored.

I just then realized how dumb I sounded talking about breathing.

I grimaced and got up, making my way to her kitchen- where I knew her fridge was open to us at any time we wanted.