Read Online Ashes to Ashes by Nathaniel Fincham - Free Book Online Page A

you...once. And once only...by damned. You said
that you would call me and I will hold you to it. Or...something of
that nature. I am not going to stalk you or anything. I'm not in
your closet...I swear it. This is a nice jacket, though.” An even
cuter giggle. “Call me. In case you don’t have it my number
is…Bye.”
    Ashe stopped the machine before it continued
onto the next message.
    Finishing the beer, he dumped the bottle into
the garbage can and flipped the light back off. He paused to once
again take in the silence of his house, his self-assembled tomb.
Some people spoke about a death rattle, the noise made by the
person and their body around the time of dying. But the actual
point of death, true death, does not have a distinct sound. There
is only silence, nothingness. That was death. Life being replaced
by nothing.
     
     

Chapter 7
     
    Scott was shivering and shaking, sitting on
the top of a cold bench in Lincoln Park. It was well into the night
and the sky had become clear, void of any clouds. Because there
were no clouds to hold it down, any heat that the day had
accumulated had risen into the clear sky and away from the ground.
It was April but it felt like winter had snuck back around. He
wished that he had grabbed a thicker coat, one with a hood to cover
his iced over ears.
    He knew it was late but refused to turn on
his phone to see for sure. It might have been 3 a.m. give or take
an hour. He felt fatigue setting into his stomach, creeping into
his bones, mingled with the cold that already held residence. He
had been in the park for what might have been over an hour, but he
wasn’t sure. He would soon be moving on. Hopefully the search had
died down some, but he didn’t get his hopes up.
    Keeping his head down, Scott sat on the top
of the bench with his feet hanging off the edge. He tried his best
not to attract any of the vagabonds of the homeless village. There
were many dirty and tired figures around him, lying in tattered
tents, sitting on the dirt or grass, or standing near flaming metal
drums, where anything burnable was being used for heat. Some had on
less clothing than Scott himself was lucky enough to have. How
could they must be. He couldn’t imagine living life always cold. He
felt bad for them…for their daily struggle. The lost and forgotten
would do whatever they could to be close to comfortable warmth, he
noticed. He tried not to show it, but he was watching them. Many
were drunk or high, numbed to the cold. Scott could smell alcohol
and weed and had seen a few needles being passed around.
    Lincoln Park might have once been a
beautiful, green piece of land, consistently populated during a
sunny afternoon by parents and their children. The children might
have swung or climbed the jungle-gym or dug in the shallow sandpit
while their parents sat on the wooden benches, conversing or
reading. But those days were long gone. The swing set had become
swing less. The jungle-gym was slowly crumbling, its wood
disappearing back into the dirt. And the sandpit was nothing but
mud. The sunny afternoons were no more.
    Luckily for Scott, he only intended the park
to be a pit stop, a moment to get off the streets and hide. He
hadn't quit made it out of Youngstown, because he had to halt and
gather his nervous, bouncing thoughts. The cops were out in full
force, spotlighting dark alleys and crevasses, looking for a hole
that Scott might be hiding in. If he didn't know the town and
hadn’t managed a head start, he might have been picked up hours
ago. But he had to pause his running. His legs were tired, his
thoughts were scattered, and he wasn't sure what to do next.
    What was his next move?
    For the moment, Scott felt safe, at least
safe from the police. They wouldn't walk into Lincoln Park after
dark without back-up and shotguns unless they had a death wish.
Which a lot of police officers seemed to possess, Scott admitted.
He had known several of them that didn’t come across as being too
bright