New Story - With new ideas and directions to hand. I'm writing this and posting it straight onto Steemit - You can not get more exclusive than that! 16

Or rather, Ash tried to go to sleep. Her head ached, her eyes felt scratchy, swollen and painful to move. The sunlight hurt even through her closed eyelids and her throat was becoming tender with every swallow of spit – and of course, just because it was painful to swallow, her mouth was producing more saliva to get rid of.

It was too much trouble to open the door and spit the excess saliva out, she’d have to move and she knew that would hurt more than lying there and swallowing.

She’d just managed to doze off when her dad banged on the car roof. She woke with a jolt and opened her eyes wide in panic. Sunlight stabbed her corneas and she winced and, like a vampire caught out at dawn, she put her hand over face to ward of the sunlight.

“Come on, come into the pub,” her dad said in a cheerful voice.

“I don’t want to, dad, I don’t feel well.”

His tone changed, though his words didn’t.

“Come on, come into the pub,” he said, punctuating every word with a light tap of his fingers on the car roof.

She sighed, she knew there was no point arguing. Ash dragged herself out of the car and followed her dad into the back door of the pub.

She wasn’t old enough to be in the bar and if she knew that, then he certainly did.

“Here you are, love,” the barmaid said when Ash slumped on a chair pushed out for her, next to the bar.

The woman slid a glass of something fizzy towards Ash and she mumbled, “Thank you.”

“Aw she doesn’t look well, Pete, you should take her home and put her to bed,” the woman admonished Ash’s dad.

Inside her head, Ash said, Oh don’t do that, don’t tell him what to do, he’ll only do the opposite.

He took a swift glance at his ailing daughter and shook his head. “She’s all right. She’s putting it on, probably for attention.”

Ash buried her head in the fold of her crossed arms and sighed. It was going to be one of those days.

She managed to get herself comfortable and was grateful that the barmaid took it upon herself to look out for her.

“Leave her alone,” Ash heard her say. “Let her sleep if that’s what she needs, you just go about your business and she’ll be here when you need her.”

Someone pulled a chair up close to Ash and in her sleep, a warning sounded and Ash’s instincts woke her up sufficiently to be aware of the goings-on in her close proximity.

Someone’s face came close to her head but she kept her face buried.

“Aww, she’s all nice and snuggly and asleep,” a man’s voice she didn’t recognise spoke close to her ear and Ash jerked up involuntarily.

Ash glared at the stranger and he jumped back a little at the venomous gleam in her eye.

“Ooh, bloody hell, she’s got a temper!” he said.

The rest of the men in the bar laughed.

Then Ash realised there were no women in the bar, apart from the barmaid and she had to divide her time between two separate rooms.

The man that had woken Ash up became braver and leaned forward to Ash again.

“She’s not exactly pretty is she?” he said, turning to his ‘audience’.

Ash took a sip from her glass, the coke had lost a lot of its fizz and though it hurt, the cool liquid soothed her raw throat a little.

Ash’s mind screamed at her to get out but she knew she had to be careful how she escaped the situation. If she made the wrong move, her dad would take offence and she’d be in for a thrashing at his first opportunity.

She took another sip of her drink. She jerked upright in her seat and spilled some of the pop when the man’s hand slid onto her leg and moved up toward her groin. That was not right, she knew it and from the expression on his face, his tongue between his teeth in a lecherous grin, he knew it too.

“I’m… I’m gonna be sick!” Ash said, adding a weird kind of retching noise on the end of her exclamation.

The guy withdrew his hand immediately and Ash leaped down from the chair and ran out the way she had come in.

She heard laughter following her and, “The toilets are that way!” but she bashed open the door and ran past her dad’s car, out of the pub yard and onto the street, where there were other people.

Completely at a loss as to where she was, she stood on the pavement, panicking. He fever-beleaguered brain couldn’t work out where she was. It looked familiar, but she was lost for the moment.

She turned as her name was called. “Ash! Ash, come back, it was a joke,” her dad called.

But Ash didn’t think it was a joke and if her dad was making explanations for the guy, she could just bet it would happen again if she went back.

Her dad stepped forward as if to pursue her and she took a chance and ran out into the road, dodging slow-moving cars waiting for the traffic lights to allow them to filter across oncoming traffic.

“Ash!” he yelled. “You stupid bitch!”

If Ash had taken the time to look around, she would have seen the disapproving glares from people watching the scenario. Women tut-tutting at her dad’s language and the concern on their faces for her flight into the road.

But Ash didn’t have time for that, she wanted to get away – hopefully, without getting a free ride in an ambulance.

She ran toward the park, she knew where she was, but she was a long way from home and she didn’t have any way of getting home.

“What a fucking day!” she said out loud as she slowed to a walk. “What a fucking scumball my dad is!”

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