Ava
Before
“Seriously?” I scoffed when I saw the road sign and Mason pulled off. “Filey?”
Rolling his eyes but keeping them on the dirt track he steered along, he sighed. “What’s the point of laying low if we’re slap bang in the middle of some God-forsaken city?”
“But, Filey.”
I caught him trying to hide his chuckle when he announced, “And it gets better, baby.”
My eyes widened slowly when he pulled up in front of a rundown farmhouse. Half of the plaster was crumbling, revealing bare brickwork to the elements. An upper floor window hung loosely from its frame, the catch of the breeze threatening to bring it down altogether. Mud and debris covered the whole of the forecourt, and the whiff in the air reminded me of the boy’s toilet block in my senior school.
“Oh, no!” Shaking my head and glaring at him, I tried to keep my hands from magnetising themselves around his neck. “I am not staying here!”
“Come on. All the fresh country air will do us a world of good!”
“And the pig shit?” I asked as I peered out of the window and curled a lip. “This place will never win hotel of the year, that’s for certain!”
Mason laughed, and my heart stuttered at the sound of it. “Baby, it’s not a hotel.”
Unease slithered into my veins, and I narrowed my eyes at him. “What do you mean it’s not a hotel?”
His face lit up as he looked at the decrepit building in awe, and damn if the sight didn’t near bring me to my knees. It had been so long since I had seen him wear a smile, let alone a grin. As if on cue, the clouds parted, and a ray of sunshine shone down on the handsome face of my husband. It was at that moment, I knew that if this was where Mason wanted to be, I would beat off anyone who would dare to oppose him.
“I bought it.”
Those three simple words obliterated the previous thought in my head. I would open the gate for any person that wanted to beat him and beckon them in with a smile. Me included.
“What?”
“I bought the farm. It’s self-sufficient…”
“Insufficient would be more on par!”
“And,” he carried on. “We have our own pigs and goats.”
Oh, the joy.
I couldn’t move. I stared at him with horror when he grinned at me again and climbed from the car. “Come on, Ava.”
I had thought that the last few months had taken Mason’s sanity and left nothing but a moving corpse behind. Now I knew undeniably that he had lost his sanity; I would be dealing with the corpse aspect incredibly soon.
Hugging my bag to my chest, I slowly cranked the car door open and peeked down. “Oh, Christ.” Taking a deep breath, I glanced at my five-inch heels, and then back to the six inches of wet earth surrounding the car. “I am really regretting not driving off that bloody cliff, right now,” I muttered to myself as I took a precarious step out.
One foot. Then the other.
When I went to step forward, the mud made a deep squelching sound and appeared to eat my shoe. Whole. My bare foot was elevated an inch from the ground as I squinted, anxiously looking for my lost shoe.
“What the fuck!”
It then swallowed my right shoe.
Throwing my hands in the air, I forced the strap of my bag around my neck and put one shoeless foot in front of the other.
Like it had a life of its own, and it was exceptionally ravenous, the dirt sucked at my feet with each hazardous stride towards the farmhouse. I had only managed to move a few yards, and my thighs already ached with the effort it took to wade through the sludge. I swore it was having an identity crisis and presumed itself to be quicksand.
Mason had, miraculously, made it to the front door. Turning to beckon me, I frowned at him when his eyes progressively grew large and round. His arm lifted, and he pointed at me, his mouth opening and closing numerous times. I wasn’t sure if he was having a stroke.
I stopped when, wildly, he shook his head from left to right, his soundless shouting making me think of those old silent movies.
The air was sucked from my lungs, and the world turned upside down when I felt my body launch upwards. The wind whipped at my hair as I sailed through the air with all the grace of an obese ballet dancer.
With a thud, I landed back down. Face first in the fucking muck.
I wasn’t in that position for long. Oh no. I was rolled over, and over again. Three times, in fact, each time collecting a new layer of dirt, dried leaves, and quite possibly cow shit. I gathered by then that I would look adequately kitted out for an army assault course.
On my back, facing the sky, I wasn’t sure whether it was safe to move, but attempting to wipe the mud from my eyes, I took a hesitant peek.
I had never moved so fast in my entire life. Scrambling backwards, the action thwarted by my hands grappling at nothing but sludge, I didn’t get far before the enormous black hairy hog thought I was playing a game and took another run at me.
Hands came under my arms, and I was dragged backwards, my arse bouncing up a few stone steps before Mason got us safely inside and kicked the door shut.
Struggling to breathe through the shit – literally -in my nose, I coughed and spluttered.
Hesitantly, I sensed my ‘wonderful’ husband move around to the front of me. Lifting my eyes slowly, I fixed him with a stare.
He was gnawing on his lower lip, but the laughter in his eyes saw me scrape some of the sludge off my chest and sling it at him.
“You know I hate you,” I muttered. “I don’t need to tell you. You know it.”
“That I do, baby,” he spluttered as the dam opened and he bent double with hysterics.
“Bastard.”