Collapsed Lungs || Ashley Self
@falsereligion
The memory snuck up on her like a ghost, a bloody and bruised echo. As the tire swing waved back and forth, the branch protested so loudly that at times she would get afraid that it was going to give. Ashley would grip the rubber hard, look over her shoulder at the boy pushing it, whisper his name softly.Ā āNeal.ā He would roll his eyes and stop the swing just long enough to tug at a strand of blonde hair.Ā āYouāre fine, Ashley. I wonāt let anything bad happen to you.ā And she believed him because she was young, because in her mind he was two years older and that made him a superhero. But in the end they were both just children, clinging unknowingly to the last pure moments of their lives.
She was seven when her mother left. Perhaps sheād thought sheād married a man who would become a high end drug dealer, the type that lived in a mansion and kept all the gritty aspects of his job far away. That wasnāt how it went though, and Dahlia left for better, bigger things, taking Ashleyās brother Ethan with her.Ā āIāll come back for you,ā sheād promised, kissing the top of the blonde girlās head. Instead of swinging on the tire swing with Neal she would spend every day before and after school sitting on the stoop waiting...waiting...breaking a little more every day. On the day it hit her that she was abandoned, that sheād been lied to, she grabbed a knife from her fatherās house and took it to the rope of the swing. The tire made a satisfying thump as it hit the ground, speaking for the soundless but battered thud of her heart. Neal let her cry, let her bang her small fists against the trunk of the tree. They never talked about the swing again.
Life flashed through her in snippets, it sped through that first night, her eight year old body crumpled on the floor of her bedroom, nightgown pushed over her head, one of her fatherās drug clients taking the last bit of innocence from her soul. She didnāt tell Neal. Not because she didnāt trust him, but because heād always promised her that heād keep her safe. She wasnāt mad that heād failed her, but the knowledge would break him, and that was the last thing she wanted to do. But secrets like that can only be kept for so long. The older Ashley got, the more she fought, the more her skin broke and bruised against the struggle. The look of dangerous and murderous rage on Nealās face the night she finally said the words...god it frightened and excited her all at once. His fists had balled up and heād stalked towards the house, her petite 13 year old frame desperately trying to stand in his way.Ā āIāll fucking kill him. Iāll kill him,ā he muttered over and over. Ashley didnāt know how to stop him...she didnāt know why the instinct hit her, but she gripped the collar of his shirt, rose on her tiptoes and kissed him. It was soft, pleading and thankful all at once, because at least there was one person who cared about her. The act surprised him enough to make him stop. He hadnāt kissed her back, not really, but he didnāt push her away until a full thirty seconds had passed.
After that they had made plans. They were going to run, get away, abandon the sinking ships of their lives and start fresh. But life doesnāt often wait for you to get your shit together. Opportunity rose and with a putrid hatred in her bones, a child entered womanhood with blood on her hands. It was then that Ashley realized....love was nice...love was soft and frilly and full of hope. But hatred gave you the strength to protect yourself. Staring over the bodies of her father...and the first man whoād ever touched her, Ashley shed her life like snakeskin, fled without looking back. Every step made pieces of her crumble, like invisible breadcrumbs pointing the way back to Neal. But she ignored them. It wasnāt his fault...but she needed to be someone else. She had nothing of Ashley left of her, and he had not signed up to be tied to Ash. And part of her didnāt want to see him, to see the face that would only remind her of everything she wasnāt, everything that had been stolen. No...she needed to let go, rip off a tiny piece of a fresh start for herself and tell her aching heart that Neal was better off without her.
Ash grew, redefined herself, but the memories snuck into her heart time and time again. The sound of the trees outside her window groaning in the wind always took her back to that goddamn swing. Why the fuck had she cut it down? Why had he let her? Was he safe...had he carved out a new swinging spot for himself? Had he found someone else to keep safe? Did he remember the time theyād weaved rings out of blades of grass and promised to marry each other one day? They hadnāt known what marriage really was at the time, only that it bound, only that it seemed to dissolve in seconds, and they thought they could do a better job of it. She told herself it was good enough to think that he was safe and happy somewhere. As long as he was somewhere in the world, Ashley could continue to live in it as well. She never thought sheād have cause to question that plan, to try and imagine a world with no Neal at all.
Until the day one of her coworkers at the garage had put the news on. He was older...heād aged, but she knew his bones, she knew those eyes. Ashley had dropped her wrench as the news anchor talked about the death row inmate who had just lost another appeal. It felt like her lungs collapsed inside of her chest, and she could hear that motherfucking tire swing slowly going back and forth, the creak mocking. Time was irrelevant, it didnāt matter that sheād abandoned him back when they were teens, didnāt matter that she hadnāt seen him. It was Neal...he was Neal and she would not let him leave this world like that. And maybe this was some sort of worldly sign that sheād done the right thing in running away.
Ashley never would have been able to put together a plan to save him.
But Ash...she could.
