The Rose Epitaph

He wasn’t in control. For the first time in his life, Dylan Ashford wasn’t in control. He didn’t have a say. He didn’t even have the right to argue. To point out all the fucking flaws with their decision- their decision. Not his. And shouldn’t it be his? It was his life they were turning upside down; packing up the three shirts, two pairs of jeans, one pair of shoes, and cheap 1990’s walkman into a half broken suitcase and shoving him onto a flying deathtrap clear across the country. Taking him from the snowy mountains of Utah to the tall, jail like, buildings of New York City. Not even the city. To a burb that was known for its bridges and a dump. They were the ones disrupting his life and yet he couldn’t even utter a challenging word.

He didn’t even have the time to argue before he found himself staring out the grand window of the Salt Lake City International Airport, his brown eyes focused on the white and blue coffin that he would find himself in once the watch on his wrist hit nine. He didn’t dwell on the fact he would leave the state he was born and raised in for some alien land he hadn’t known existed until he read the document his father’s overpriced lawyer read to him. He pondered why his father sent some orange skinned, white haired, lawyer with an obnoxious accent all the way to fucking Utah just to get custody? His mother didn’t have any family, or any family who would want a stoic teenager with clear emotional attachment issues. No one wanted the defective model.

But the boy didn’t care anymore about that: about the family who was supposed to care turning their backs on him, while the father who abandoned him six years ago was opening his overly ornate door to his bastard son. Though Dylan would argue it was just for the tax break. Or maybe to get back at the wife who sued him all those years ago for the child support she deserved- taking away her only support would be a nice slap in the face. But that didn’t matter anymore, not to Dylan, who was slowly getting over his lack of control. It didn’t matter because his mother was locked in a four-walled padded white hell; deemed “unstable” to care for herself let alone a seventeen-year-old.

‘He deserves a fair chance to be successful in this world.’ Isn’t that what they said? Seventeen years living in an out of control home wouldn’t damage his future- but any longer, and then there would be a fucking issue. Granted, any longer trapped in a smoke filled house with flames eating at his bedroom door would have proved very detrimental to whatever future Dylan Ashford was destined to have, considering he would more than likely be in a red satin coffin rather than a big blue death trap.

Dylan’s phone vibrated in his pants, and with a sigh he pulled out the gray phone his dad sent over for Christmas rather than the child support check. Without checking, he knew it would be a message from Aaron Rowley- considering Aaron was his only friend. Dylan felt he had no need for friends. He barely wanted the lovable oaf, but Aaron had trouble taking no for an answer and pretty much stalked Dylan from the very first time they laid eyes on each other. Dylan only allowed him the pleasure of being his friend because Aaron was rich. If Aaron had been as poor as the blonde haired boy, Dylan would have deemed him useless.

He read the message: ‘I miss you! Come back! We can run away to California.’

Thanks, but no thanks, Dylan would say. He wouldn’t catch himself dead in California. He closed the phone without answering, and returned his apathetic gaze to the airplane being prepped for boarding. The transportation to his new home and new life. He half wished his father would forget and never show up. He mostly didn’t wish for anything, because Dylan knew wishing was asinine. He accepted his fate. A fate he had no control over.

Dylan Ashford fucking hated not having control.