Where the Ash Settles

Candies

The forest didn’t have a name, but it had a teeth. Every branch that whipped across my face felt like a reminder of what I was trying to escape, and every jagged rock beneath my bare feet tore through skin I had already spent a lifetime trying to heal.

I didn’t know where the path led. I didn’t care.

My breath was shallow, coming in sharp, ragged gasps that burned my throat. My heart hammered so violently against my ribs that it felt like it would burst right out of my chest. It was pitch black, the night devouring everything except the faint, mocking moonlight filtering through the heavy canopy. All I could think, the only mantra keeping my legs moving, was a single word. Run. Keep running. Don’t stop.

I cast a panicked look over my shoulder, my vision swimming. The darkness behind me was absolute, silent, and empty. No one was there. Not yet. But the terror didn't leave; it just twisted deeper into my gut.

Tears scalded my cheeks, hot and bitter. Why? The question echoed in the hollow spaces of my mind, desperate and unanswerable. Why did this happen to me?

I never wanted this kind of life. I never asked for the walls that trapped me, the shadows that stalked me, or the hands that held me down. Where did it all go wrong? When did my existence stop being mine and start belonging to a monster?

My foot caught on a thick, exposed root.

The ground rushed up to meet me. I crashed hard, the air violently forced from my lungs as the impact rattled my bones. For a long, agonizing moment, I just lay there in the dirt. The sheer exhaustion was a physical weight crushing me into the earth. I didn't have the strength to stand. I didn't even think I had the strength to breathe.

With a trembling, agonizing effort, I pushed myself up into a sitting position. My hands shook so badly they looked like dry leaves in a storm. I looked down at my feet. They were a ruined mess, covered in dark mud and fresh, slick blood from the sharp stones and briars. My knees were scraped raw, blood welling up and dripping down my shins.

I stared at the crimson staining my skin, a hollow, humorless laugh bubbling in my throat before dying instantly. It’s not the first time I've bled, I thought to myself. Blood was an old friend. Blood was the only constant I had left.

I lifted my hands, turning them over in the dim light. My wrists and forearms were covered in bruises. A map of cruelty. Some were fainted, faded into a sickening yellowish-green, while others were fresh, a deep, angry purple that throbbed with every beat of my pulse. They were the fingerprints of my captivity.

A twig snapped in the distance.

The sound electrified my dead muscles. Panic, cold and sharp, flooded my veins, overriding the agony in my limbs. He was coming. I knew it. He would never let me go.

Adrenaline forced me to my feet. I staggered, a choked cry escaping my lips as weight pressed onto my bleeding soles, but I forced my legs to move. I started running again, pushing through the thick brush, ignoring the thorns that tore at my clothes and skin. I was so afraid. The kind of fear that swallows your sanity whole.

Then, through the dense barrier of trees, I saw it. A grey streak of asphalt cutting through the wilderness. A road.

Hope, fragile and terrifying, flared in my chest. I burst through the final line of trees and scrambled up the embankment, stumbling right onto the empty, open road.

The roar of an engine shattered the night.

Blinding, white-hot light slammed into my eyes. I froze, paralyzed like a deer in the headlights, as a massive black car rounded the bend, hurtling directly toward me. I couldn't move. I couldn't scream. My brain short-circuited at the sudden appearance of the vehicle.

The screech of tires tore through the air, a violent, deafening sound that echoed off the trees. The car swerved slightly, braking with such force that the front bumper dipped, stopping mere inches before it would have crushed my bones.

The headlights were too bright. They formed a wall of pure, piercing light, burning my eyes and casting long, distorted shadows behind me. I couldn't see anything past the glare. I could only hear the heavy, smooth purr of a high-end engine idling in the dark.

The driver’s side door opened.

A heavy silence descended over the road, broken only by the click of a heel hitting the asphalt. A man stepped out of the car.

Because the headlights blocked my vision entirely, I couldn't see his face. I could only look down. My eyes latched onto his shoes—expensive, polished black leather that gleamed under the auxiliary lights. They looked pristine. Impeccable.

Then, the shoes began to move. He started walking toward me.

Each step he took felt like a gavel striking a death sentence. A cold, suffocating weight wrapped around my throat. I'm dead, the thought solidified in my mind, heavy and certain. He found me. He knew exactly where I’d run.

The illusion of freedom vanished, shattered into a million jagged pieces. I was going to have to go back to that place again. Back to the locked doors, the suffocating shadows, and the inescapable torment. Back to that man.

I began to shake violently, my knees buckling. I started taking frantic steps backward, my bloody heels scraping against the rough asphalt. I was terrified, caught between the blinding lights of the car and the dark abyss of the forest behind me.

The man closed the distance between us with a slow, deliberate stride. He didn't rush. He didn't need to. He had all the power, and he knew it.

The moment he stepped into my immediate space, the sheer presence of him made my breath catch. I couldn't bear to look at his face. I couldn't bear to see the twisted satisfaction in his eyes.

Instinct took over—the survival mechanism that had been beaten into me over months of torment. I looked down at the ground, violently throwing my bruised hands up in front of my face in a defensive shield, bracing myself for the inevitable blow.

"Please don't hit me," I begged, my voice cracking, a pathetic, trembling whisper that barely carried over the idling engine. "Don't take me back. I don't wanna go there again. I won't do anything bad, please... I promise. Please."

I waited for the harsh grip on my wrists. I waited for the cruel laugh, or the heavy strike that usually followed my disobedience.

But nothing happened.

The silence stretched, long and agonizing. No hand grabbed me. No voice yelled. There was only the quiet hum of the night and the steady, calm breathing of the man standing less than two feet away from me.

When I got no reply, a fragile confusion pierced through my absolute terror. Slowly, hesitantly, I pulled my hands down from my face. My fingers trembled as I forced myself to look up.

The breath completely left my body.

The man standing in front of me was not the man I knew. He was a stranger.

The harsh glare of the headlights caught the sharp, aristocratic lines of his silhouette. He was tall, intimidatingly so, wearing a perfectly tailored, dark three-piece suit that didn't have a single crease. On his left wrist, a heavy, branded watch caught the light, gleaming with quiet, obscene wealth. His dark hair was flawlessly styled, every strand perfectly in place despite the night wind, looking like he had stepped right off a movie set or out of a high-end corporate boardroom.

But it was his face that made me freeze.

He was strikingly handsome, but his features were carved from ice. I looked into his eyes—a deep, dark brown, almost black in the moonlight. There was absolutely nothing in them. No anger, no pity, no surprise, and no warmth. They were completely vacant of human emotion, staring down at me like I was an unexpected obstacle on his path rather than a bleeding, broken girl on the verge of collapse.

My lips parted, the realization that I wasn't being captured slowing the frantic pacing of my heart, only for a wave of pure exhaustion to instantly take its place.

"Sorry..." I whispered, the word tasting like copper and dirt in my mouth. "I thought you were... someone else."

Before I could even finish the sentence, the world violently tilted.

The bright headlights blurred, bleeding into a messy smear of white and grey. A heavy, dark curtain rushed in from the edges of my vision, swallowing the stranger, the road, and the night. My legs gave out entirely, the strength draining from my body like water.

I fainted, falling forward into the dark, entirely at the mercy of the man in the suit.