Lost & Found.

All around me there were memories. New ones with Fox, old ones with Kenny and my dad. Some of them I didn’t recognize and some of them I didn’t want to. It’s like I’m swimming in an ocean of pictures, haunting me, pulling me towards the surface as I lose my breath.

I touch one of my dad hugging Kenny and I, I know instantly it was at one of his signings. He used to bring us to them, showing off his adorable daughters as he used to say. Now, I’m beginning to think it was to keep us away from that monster he was married to. I think it was only a matter of time before she blew up and it wasn’t like we didn’t already know she hated us.

But she stayed because everybody loved our father.

Moisture melted to my cheeks, confusing me. How do you cry underwater. Is that possible? I floated, trying my hardest to not sink to the surface. Something told me I couldn’t survive if I hit the barrier between this essence and the bright light below me, that had to be the top, right? Up became down and left was right.

Pictures started to move and a million movies began to play out before my eyes. Most were of Kenny, something I’d never seen before. She was older, a reassurance of my subconscious. She’d live, she was strong.

I’m silly.

I floated through one of Fox and I, it was so dark, though, and I couldn’t see it clearly enough before it was too late and I was sucked in. The alley around me was entirely unfamiliar, this had never happened. A burly man stepped forward, pushing hair from my neck, I still couldn’t breathe. I had to keep reminding myself that I was underwater, that I couldn’t breathe, that it was impossible.

Through the water I could hear the man speaking, his water muted voice sending shivers up and down my spine. “Look what we got here, mate,” he chortled and more of the same face appeared. They crowded me, pushing me backwards until I could feel a rough wall behind me. “Scared little girl?” one face asked, “What kind of a question is that?” another grunted. A thousand pressed against me, stopping breath that wasn’t coming anyway.

I wanted to laugh at them, chide them for trying to suffocate someone underwater, but then it started to hurt. I cried out, water filling my mouth and panic flooding my chest. Fox sprinted around a corner, fighting off the faces that were slowly turning into something entirely different. My mother, the monster, was all that was left. She fought back with all her might, but I couldn’t move, I was petrified. Then I blinked and she was gone and Fox was next to me, holding me close into his warm chest.

I wanted to thank him, I owed him everything, but I was back in the open water full of memories and dreams. Music was coming from the light now, it called me forward. I needed to breathe, that’s what I needed more than anything, but the water held me back. I feared the light and the air, guitars strummed themselves, the melody soothing me into acceptance.

‘We don’t care about the message or the rules they make, I’ll find you when the sun goes black...’

I pulled myself to the surface, my need for air and my curiosity trumping anything else. The top was so close, I just needed to push myself a little further and I would be there. It was feet away, my fingertips could feel the smooth surface.

When I got there I wished I hadn’t. What was the top was the bottom and I was falling, the ground so far away that it was invisible to my eyes. My eyes squeezed shut as I waited for impact...

“Woah, wake up!” Fox yelled, shaking my shoulders roughly.

I shot up in the bed, rubbing my shaking fingers into my cold arms. “I should have hit the bottom, there was no bottom,” I murmured, shaking a little. The room around me was familiar, but only in the way that any motel room was. The overused couch in one corner, a bedside table and cheesy wallpaper. The only difference was that this room only had one bed and the couch actually had nothing more than a thin blanket on it.

Fox’s grey eyes looked deep into my soul, his dark hair almost covering his face. He had one knee on the bed and both hands wrapped around my arms, their grip close to cutting off circulation. His lips were slightly parted as he stared, “What was that all about?” He sounded freaked out, eyes slowly growing less wide.

“What do you mean?” I asked, staring right back at him.

His dark eyebrows pushed themselves closer to each other, confused wrinkles appearing in his forehead. “You weren’t breathing,” he said, sounding slightly breathless, but only out of exasperation. “Why-” a ring tone cut him off.

Slowly he let go of me, leaving white marks where his hands had been, to turn and look at his phone that was leaving a low glow underneath his blanket on the couch. ‘Well, now this could be the last of all the rides we take, so hold on tight and don’t look back. We don’t care about,’ it sang, before Fox finally stood and picked it up. “Hello?” he snapped, clearly not happy.

For a second, I wondered just what he could have been talking about. For a moment, I believed he had the seen the same dream as me, but that was impossible. I tried to listen to their conversation as Fox sent me secret glances and turned around. He was hiding his voice from me, this was something important and more than anything I wanted to know what was going on.

Sleep was still gently tugging at my limbs, but I ignored it, and stood to creep up behind Fox. “What are you doing calling me?” he half whispered, the venom in his voice making me shrink back. The voice on the other end murmured something too far off for me to understand. I shrunk back farther, Fox’s voice reminding me of a snake coiling for attack. His whole body was tense and his voice a mere venomous hiss. I shuddered, taking small, cold steps towards the bathroom, where I locked myself in and turned on the hot water.

Fox could finish his conversation in peace. Slowly, I turned to the mirror. What was becoming of me? Why was my life such a mess? Thinking back I could only remember the happy times, the others seemed to disappear. I wondered why people had to die, I could still be in a fairytale. The water stung against my clothed skin. The mirror fogging up around my gaunt features. I used to have shiny and straight blonde hair, now it was limp and the familiar deep color I should have been used to. It was dead, just like my eyes. My lips were chapped against my pale skin and I almost wanted to cry remembering how full and pretty they used to be. Freckles actually started to stand out against my skin, a homage to the sudden lack of sun I was seeing.
Fox’s ringtone played over and over in my head, making me laugh a little. It wasn’t the type of music you’d think he’d be into, but there it was. Just goes to show that you can’t judge a book by it’s cover.

I sunk lower into the scalding water, watching as it left my skin pink and numb. Numb was a good feeling, it was the absence of feeling. It was apathy.

It was safe.

“‘Cause you only live forever in the lights you make. When we were young we used to say, that you only hear the music when your heart begins to break... Now we are the kids from yesterday...” I sang softly, remembering the next lines from the radio. It was a sad song, that much I could tell. The echoes of guitars seemed to sing from below the water. I was reminded of my dream, inside the water the only panic was staying away from the surface. The surface was where all my problems hid.

That, I realized, was my issue. I used to keep all of my problems hidden, but with Fox around it was easier to bring them to the top. I didn’t want to fight my battles, though, I’d rather leave them raging inside of me where they weren’t visible.

Now it’s just a matter of finding a way to shove them back into the depths of my mind again. I let myself sink under the water, the hot water streaming from the faucet directly into my face. The drum beat hardened and became faster until it didn’t fit with the words that I hadn’t quite learned yet; they hung in vague lumps in the back of my mind and twisted at the bottom of my throat. The guitar grew louder too, overpowering what I wanted to know. I sighed, forgetting for only moments that I was underwater.

Frantically, I pushed myself up, the hard metal of the faucet ramming into my forehead. The pounding was above water too and I panicked. I pulled the drain plug and jumped out of the bathtub, trying to find a place to hide. The thin towel of a rug lying on the floor gave way beneath my feet, slipping until it was securely under the sink and I was flying backwards. I felt my back make contact with the edge of the tub and my butt make contact with the hard, cold floor. The temperature change was quickly becoming apparent.

My teeth rattled as I winced and tried to scoot away from the thundering door. “Rabbit?!” Fox yelled. He must have heard me fall because the pounding quickly became erratic and almost scared sounding. I groaned, realizing that I’d overreacted. “Ashlynn?!” He hadn’t used my name in what felt like decades. Something was wrong.

My mind flashed back to the phone call before I pulled my shivering bones up to answer the door. “I’m sorry, I spaced out for a second,” I mumbled as I unlocked the door and he had it open within seconds. The pure shock and disbelief in his face was enough to make me laugh, if only just a little bit.

“Damn it, don’t do that again,” he demanded, shaking his head a little and running a hand through his dark, curly locks. His grey-green eyes watching me with a wariness that was impossible to face and the hint of worry still goading at the cogs in his brain. “You’re wet,” he sighed, his eyes shifting from me to the floor beneath him, which was also a little bit from my splash to the surface of the tub.

I looked to my feet, sitting on the edge of the tub, the cold surface reminding me of just how hard it was when it hit my back. “Sorry,” I said, my voice scratchy and raw from the amount of time I’d spent underwater and airless.

Fox shook his head again, “get dry.” I looked up at him, his eyes still searching the floor as if it had done something to him. “We have to hit the road,” he said, closing the door behind himself as he left, head still lowered.


I didn’t bother to question his motives, again my mind flying to the image of him on the phone. Serpent-like and tense. I felt the future pressuring itself on my shoulders. Nothing good could be coming.