“Fuck,” Ashley murmured to herself as she crept into the house, not really knowing what to do but still feeling relieved that her father’s shoulders rose and fell with every breath. He was still alive. That had to count for something.
At least it did to her.
She checked his pulse and found it steady, felt his forehead and found it cool, not hot. Whatever was wrong with him, it wasn’t too bad. She hoped. “Dad, can you hear me?”
He nodded slightly and waved at her, as if to say he was fine. Ashley gave a sigh of relief and nodded.
“I’m going to take a shower, Dad,” Ashley informed him, hoping she could get into clean clothes if he needed to go back to the hospital. In the back of her mind, she was silently pleading that today wasn’t the day, the one where it all fell apart, the one where she lost him forever. She had heard stories of stroke victims going downhill months after their strokes, and finally succumbing to the damage the stroke caused. It was very likely that could happen to Ned, and if that did? Well, she didn’t know what she’d do with herself.
Ashley hadn’t known what to do with herself for about two years now, since her father’s health had begun to fall apart and he’d had the stroke. She’d decided to stay home instead of going to school. In the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but berate herself as she stepped under the hot stream of water in the bathroom, staring at the pale-yellow plastic that had decoratedthe tub her whole life. Or what she could remember of it, anyway.
She wondered if things would have been better for them if she had actually gone to college. Maybe she could have somehow saved her father from this fate. If she had gone to college, she’d be working on a sensible major, two years away from being able to provide more for them. Then, Ned would be able to have the treatment he needed. If she had gone to college, maybe she could have even gone to medical school and eventually been the person to somehow solve whatever it was that was happening to her dad. Honestly, it was a pipe dream, and she knew that, but still, Ashley couldn’t help but daydream of all the ways she would have saved her father, given the opportunity.
Suddenly, she heard a crash come from the living room, and all the daydreaming came to a halt.
Ashley’s heart stopped the moment she heard the crash come from the living room, her mind going blank and jumping to the worst conclusions. Had Ned fallen out of his chair? Please don’t let him have suffered another stroke. Please don’t let anything bad have happened. The lights began to flicker above her head, and an additional crash sounded from the living room.
One crash was a coincidence, two crashes?
The lights flickered again, and Ashley could hardly breathe. She turned off the shower and grabbed the towel to wrap it around her upper chest, not knowing what to think as the lights stuttered once more, plunging her into darkness. She had no option at that moment other than to tighten the towel around herself and yank the door open, hoping that she would find her father sitting at the television, as confused as her.
Ashley wasn’t prepared for what she saw when she walked into the living room. The threadbare recliner where he usually spent his days and nights was empty. “Dad? Did you go to bed?”
Nobody answered her.
“Dad?” Even she could hear the fear in her voice as she called out a second time.
Ashley walked deeper into the living room, taking in all the familiar objects in the room. The TV still flickered with static, photos still graced the walls and shelves. The carpet was still that awful shade of orange, and the walls remained the faded yellow shade it’d always been. Everything was the same, except for the person missing from the chair that hadn’t changed much since Ned found it on the side of the road coming home from work one day.
For a brief moment, hope blossomed in place of the fear. Maybe her father got up and decided to check on his truck? Maybe that crash she’d heard actually came from outside and it drew him out into the storm, despite how ill he’d looked earlier?
But the hope died as quickly as it bloomed and the urge to walk to the door to check on her father was replaced by the urge to run. And a scream.
A scream that tore up from the bottom of her stomach and wrenched out of her lungs as she met a pair of red glowing eyes. The eyes of a giant wolf.
A wolf that bared its teeth and growled as he stood there in the doorway to her father’s bedroom.
Chapter
Three
Awolf.
Ashley blinked once, backed up, knocked a picture off a shelf, and then held her hands out, as if that would ward the wolf off. The last time she checked, which, to be fair, was never, wolves didn’t tend to hang out in trailers. Certainly not the type of trailer that she lived in. Her home was the worn-down kind that was considered trash by everybody. Maybe you’d find a wolf sanctuary at some fancy double-wide owning person’s home, but not in her kind of home. She wasn’t even sure there was enough food in the fridge to pique the wolf’s interest.
“Stay back,” Ashley said softly, hoping the wolf would listen. It just growled at her again.
The wolf’s hackles rose and a sinking feeling that made it feel as though she might fall overwhelmed her. Had it killed her father? Was that why he wasn’t in the living room? Had the wolf dragged him to his bedroom and now it was coming for her?
The urge to scream hit her again, but her throat was so tight only a squeak came out.
The wolf’s eyes glinted red, and a certain sort of malice was evident in how it slowly strode towards her, making no secret of how it looked down on her. Like everyone else, it lookedat Ashley like she was nothing more than trash, something disposable, something that was only good as food.
The problem with that was that Ashley wasn’t the kind to just give up and let death take her. She’d never been a quitter or a coward. And allowing herself to get eaten by a wolf in nothing more than a towel? Yeah, Ashley could just picture the sheriff finding her body in that state and the way that all his little goons would leer at her. She had seen them watching her at the diner time and time again. While she wasn’t a looker like the leggy blonde that came into the diner that went by Candy, she knew that the sheriff’s deputies would nudge each other and probably take pictures if they found her naked and mauled to death.
“Like hell am I going to let you eat me,” Ashley declared because, really, that was the only thing that she could think to do at that moment. She had to let the wolf know that it wasn’t going to win and make that idea clear.
She kept backing up until she hit another shelf, the one Ned kept his books on. One of the books tumbled down and she caught it without thinking. She saw that it was his much read copy of War of the Worlds. It was a thick book, thank God. Not much of a weapon, but if she hit the fucking wolf in the right place, it might gain her one more second of life.
