Blue Bell

by Sasha Fino

  “Don’t waste time now. Find it. Oh, find it, Audra, and get the hell out of here!” Dana demanded. I’ve finally comprehended her voice is inside my head.

  I’ve moved the jute rug that looks like it’s 100 years old. Finding, a smaller looked trap door. “The key, Dana!” I’ve panicked.

  “Under the bed’s mattress, I hid it in a hole, it is sewn shut on the bottom,” Dana told me. I went to the bed lift the dirty old mattress. Seeing a small hole that had the key, ripping it, and getting the old golden key out. I’ve pushed the cushion back in place running back to the locked trap door. Opening it only to find many old notebooks and important documents, putting everything into my backpack.

  “Long, at last, I can shut down the whole fucking Blue Bell Academy and everything that happens to be connotation to Blue Bell.” Yelling aloud with joy, like one did when they won a long, ongoing video game. “Nope, you won’t. My Audra! Sorry to say you didn’t win. I won this game, my love!” Coldness ran upon my back. While I turn to see, Ashbrook smiling wickedly from ear to ear.

  “How did you know I’m here!” I growled at him.

  “My dear love I am the Headmaster I’ve had eyes everywhere.” He replied back to me. “Audra, I’ve thought that have we might have sex… my favorite way! I will murder you in your own blood after I’ve come.” he laughs coming closer to me into the lantern light. He looks like a madman.

  “You’re a monster! You are not my Dante!” I take a deep breath and remember that I should make my attacker see me as a human if I am to have a chance to get out alive…

  “I am still deeply in love with you, Dante! Also, I am pregnant, and I am going have this baby we made from pure love, please don’t hurt me…”

  “Is that so Audra. You will meet our baby soon after I am all done with you for once and for all!”

  “Keep the hell away from me and our growing baby, your DAMN BASTARD!”

  Hours later, in the early morning as dawn begins to break the day. I walk back to the school grounds, looking like I walked from hell, wearing nothing but my shoes, blood all over my naked body, out of breath, so cold and frozen. I hear people calling, shouting my name. Looking for me over every inch of Blue Bell’s grounds. I yell until someone hears me. Shining their flashlight on me, as it’s not quite sunlight yet.

  “OH MY GOD. Audra is alive, and nude— get her a blanket and calls for an ambulance A.S.A.P., the girl is covered in blood! Don’t let any guy see her naked.” A woman yells to people, rushing to take her arms before I fell down. I observe that

  woman is a cop, I confess crying, “I killed Headmaster Ashbrook.

  It’s self-defense after he beat me and rape me, trying to kill me.”

  “Oh Audra, you’ll be fine now, sweetheart. I’m Police Officer Beverlee,” she winks at me.

  In the ambulance, I had been in and out of consciousness. I realize slowly, Ms. Santana was by my side holding my hand along with Police Officer Beverlee on my other side. I was told that my Dad and Grandma are on their way. I fainted at the thought of my baby and how everyone will know at school. I awaking in the hospital later that night seeing my Grandma and Ms. Santana, right beside me smiling at me with tear’s their eyes.

  “Please tell me is my baby okay.”

  “Yes, your baby is wonderful growing in you while we speak,” Grandma told me.

  “I did it!”

  “You sure did, Audra! Save your voice… I love you dear one.” Ms. Santana cried putting a motherly kiss upon my forehead.

  Dad was not happy to learn that he shall be a new dad and grandpa within the year, especially when he found out my unborn child was Ashbrook’s as well.

  The hospital discharges me the next day. Dad wanted me back home with him. Police Officer Beverlee told my dad that I needed to stay in town. I was required for questioning due to my knowledge of the events at my school. I was now the key witness; also that Blue Bell had FBI, CIA, and Police there around the clock, investigating. My Dad agreed to let me stay as long as grandma could stay with me at a hotel near the school and not at the school.

  Upon returning Blue Bell for questioning… observing it, a sadness had settled on everyone’s faces while I pass by them. My school feels so cold, dark and empty. I was trying to find Lindsay but she wasn’t in our room. I went all over the hallways to see her or Lionel. Until Britney, Chole, Matt, Bryce, and Trent found me with tears in their eyes. I asked them what is

  happening, “where’s Lindsay and Lionel.”

  Britney was the one to tell me the horrible news… telling me that Lindsay and Lionel had been murdered by Ashbrook before he found me in the woods. In shock and in denial, crying and wanting to be somewhere alone, I just kept running. Ms. Santana found me and confirmed that Lionel and Lindsay were murdered on the same night, filling in the details that Ashbrook and Mr. Baxter were implicated in their murders.

  I confess to her that Lionel and Lindsay have primary information on a flash drive that I took from Ashbrook’s computer while he slept one night. They were on their way to meet the CNN reporter Lori Richards to give her a flash drive. That I faced danger in the eye and lived to tell the story, and they didn’t. I cry my heart out while Ms. Santana comforts me. That night Grandma was allowed to sleep with me in my dorm room because I couldn’t bear to leave my friends spirits.

  The next day brought the hard part sharing my nightmare of a story on how Headmaster Ashbrook tied me up, beating, raped, and use his hunting knife to cut me and how I’ve ended taking his hunting knife and using it on Ashbrook to kill him. I’ve told the same story over, and over again to the police, FBI, reporters, I was everywhere on CNN, FOX NEWS, and the top News Broadcast in America. Stories came to the surface putting Mr. Baxter and Ms. Weaver in jail forever along with other school staff and board members. I had suspected correctly the local police had been paid off for overlooking what was found under that trap door in my freshman year after I found the three girls.

  “Audra, please tell me what you did in those woods.” Lori was sitting there, taking notes with Ms. Santana.

  “I ended up taking his hunting knife and using it on Ashbrook to kill him,” I replied, shaking my head.

  “Yes, but you are not telling the important part. Lindsay and Lionel were murdered. Think of your friends and their grieving families, Audra!”

  “I sure am, every moment of these passing days. I might just as well have killed them. I’m sorry, Lori, I blacked out. All I could tell you is that he told me that … you will meet our baby soon after I am all done with you once and for all!” I said, holding back the tears.

  “All right, I know you loved him, and you are having his child. Yet, Ashbrook almost killed you,” Lori said, looking deep into my soul, needing to know what Ashbrook did.

  “By the law, we need to know what Ashbrook did to you! It’s now with the FBI, and all over the news.”

  “We made love every Sunday, even from my seventeenth birthday. I loved him, but …” I tailed off. I knew that Lori and Ms. Santana each saw it in my eyes, the truth of that night. “Please tell me, Audra, did he rape you, or did you want him to on that night?” Ms. Santana asked me, putting her hand on mine.

  “I could tell you that when my friends and I found those dead bodies in there, it was the night of hell for me. Yet I was

  wrong. It was hell knowing that I could end up like those girls. I wondered if they would ever find my dead body.” “Go on,” Lori whispered to me.

  “The blood came out like water. It was horrible! To see him like this monster, the devil in his eyes. Yes, he raped me at first, but then it changed.”

  “Walk us through that night, Audra,” Ms. Santana said as I went back to that night to explain the full story.

  “I am still deeply in love with you, Ashbrook! Also, I am pregnant, and I am going have this baby we made from pure

  love, please don’t hurt me …”

  “Is that so, Audra? You will meet our baby soon after I am all done with you for once
and for all!”

  “Keep the hell away from me and our growing baby, your

  DAMN BASTARD!”

  “When did it happen? We only had unsafe sex our first time, that was over a whole year ago.”

  “I don’t know how, but I am.”

  “You planned it, didn’t you, Audra?” he hissed,

  “You fucking bitch! I have my sons already. I do not want any other kid to pay for!” Ashbrook said, striking my face hard.

  He was breathing heavily like myself and pulled out his hunting knife.

  “Get on the bed,” he hissed at me while he played with the knife.

  “Ashbrook, slow down. You’re not the man I know. The man I love would be thrilled that I am having his child. I love you. I always will, Ashbrook,” I cried out.

  Ashbrook breathed in my ear, saying nothing as he pushed me on the bed, ripping off my clothes with his knife and becoming a mad man. I was petrified, watching my life coming to an end. He started making little knife cuts upon my body while I shrieked in pain for God to save me from this hell trap.

  Ashbrook went on to slap, smack, and beat me until I was bleeding badly. Ashbrook cuffed me to the old headboard of the bed; then, he unfastened his pants and had sex with me. It’s wasn’t him; I knew how sex had felt between us. I thought that I was dreaming all of this. I closed my eyes while I lay there. I swear I could feel the death of my unborn child.

  Ashbrook let out a loud moan when he had cum in me. “I am going to keep doing this until you are dead.”

  “Kill me now. I don’t even care about the sex ring at Blue Bell anymore, Ashbrook! I can’t live my life now … not with what you have done with me! I am sure that you murdered the baby, our own baby. I am sick,” I yelled out to him. I was in tears begging for death. He just looked at me. I peered into his black eyes.

  “Audra, if you ever loved … kill me!”

  I was too emotional to fully understand what he was talking about. “Never. I hate you more than ever … and yet if I did kill you, I would kill myself. I can’t walk out knowing I left two dead people that I love in this hell trap!”

  “The baby is fine. Look, there is no blood,” Ashbrook told me as he shone the flashlight down for me to see. I didn’t believe him.

  Ashbrook let me go, unlocking me from the handcuffs. I looked at my hands, waving them around me.

  “Why all of this?” I asked him calmly, still shaking and in pain looking at my free hands.

  “Just to stop you from ruining my life, losing my Academy, going to jail for life. Yet it was never you … we are not lying on the beach anymore in the afterglow. I blame myself for all eighteen murders I did before I met you by the lake.”

  Ashbrook got up from me and looked around. “GOD, OH GOD!” he cried. I can’t seem to recall how long we stayed like this; he sits on the bed looking at me while I looked back at him lying there without a word. Then I don’t know why, but I reached out to grab him.

  “I love you, Audra. You’re the only one that I ever loved,” he told me. We passionately kissed. I was half dead when he put the knife right into his own heart. Just like that, Ashbrook was gone, gone, gone…”

  “I just held him while I cried. The pain was too much on my body. I don’t know how I got up or I crawled out and left,” I sadly told Lori and Ms. Santana.

  They each looked at me and trembled.

  “You told us that you killed him, that it was self-defense,” Lori said.

  “Was it? Freshmen year to that night … I don’t know how to explain it. I found three dead girls, but yet three years later I witnessed a murder,” I wondered aloud.

  “Okay, let’s stop for the day. I think I might have pushed you too much. I’m so sorry, Audra,” Lori whispered as tears ran down my face.

  New rules were announced at Blue Bell and no one would be allowed have sex at the school; and if you were caught it would be mean permanent expulsion. New teachers where been brought along with on-site counselors. Ms. Santana was named the Headmistress for the rest of the school year; while explaining the doors of Blue Bell Academy would be shut. The sweetness of victory is mine at last, and it’s felt all so great. Lori Richards was the chief reporter for the school’s updates and given exclusive access to the details as they came to light.

  I decided to stay at school and finish the year. We even hold a funeral for Lionel and Lindsay on the school grounds. Everyone in the school shows up. I speak at the funeral. In fact, it was very hard saying farewell to two best friends.

  I also had to figure out how to grieve the man I loved while coming to terms with the fact that he were same man almost killed me.

  The rest of year I didn’t make a wave in the school’s newspaper. Shucking to my school duties. The day I graduated Blue Bell Academy was almost as sad as the day of the funerals. The year of the Class of 2011 was just extremely sad.

  The murders hang over our heads, but we smile while we walk for graduation to get our diploma in front of our family, friends, fellow classmates, and the school faculty or what’s left of them.

  The next day I was really to move back to my home with my family. Grandma and I started to pack my dorm room early. I’ve said my goodbyes to all of my friends. I asked my family to go to the car to wait for me. I wanted to take one last walk around school before I left forever. Seeing Mr. Corsair, stopping him saying farewell to him. Mr. Corsair hugs and kisses me on my forehead, telling how I made him proud to knows me, wishing me all the best in life.

  Ms. Santana was standing with my family by our car telling me to always call or text her. She wants to come to Portland to see the baby right away. I kiss Ms. Santana’s cheek goodbye for now give her a hug. I get into the car, and I never look back at Blue Bell as we drove away!

  I did it, I actually closed Blue Bell’s doors because of the sex scandals that went on from day one. It wasn’t’ over just yet, going to court in Washington D.C. for days on end.

  I was the main key witness testifying to everything that went on at that school. Admitting to finding about the series of stories I had uncovered in my research and was told by Ashbrook of our past American presidents that had secretly gone to Blue Bell to have sex with the girls. Along with Washington’s list of powerful people that’s still coming out, putting a huge nail to the coffin of the prostitution and sexual trafficking. The heat was on Washington’s top influential people.

  And finally, it’s all done for me. On my last night in D.C., I dreamt of it. Dana with Lionel and Lindsay. Looking so happy and at peace. Each of them being dressed in all white, in a nice place I’ve never seen. They thank me while they took turns talking to me while they dance joyfully around me.

  “I am not trapped in that evil school anymore, thank you, Audra,” Dana sang to her words making a song on her newfound freedom.

  That same night I dream of Ashbrook, dreaming of how I wish it could have been…

  I see him sitting on a rock by the flowing brook. Ashbrook looks like an angel while he peering right at me. Walking right up to him I smiled causing him to let out a laugh while he stands up.

  “Audra, you’re perfect,” Ashbrook rejoices with pure happiness, pulling me into his arms.

  I smile “Yes, I sure made of it my love.” Letting Ashbrook passionately kiss me. Yes, I know he almost killed me, remember I warned you I wasn’t innocent…

  January 7, 2012, I gave birth to a healthy and beautiful boy that I’m named Jayden Ashbrook. After my great-grandfather first name and my baby has mine and my grandma’s unconditional love.

  The End

  Where are they now?

  Chloe, went off to New York to become a stage actress, but she found fame with her artwork…she really made it. She got married to an A list actor and now they live an affluent suburb and have kids. Chole is too busy with her artwork and being a housewife with kids…she won’t speak of what happed at Blue Bell. She has PTSD and has severe depression of what had happened to her and goes to therapy twice a week to cope.


  Matt, a stockbroker. Travels all over the world with daddy’s money. Always accompanied by the most beautiful women. We keep in touch.

  Bryce, sad to report she is still stuck in Radcliffe Heights, Rhode Island. Britney once told me that Bryce won’t ever move on and will stay stuck in that way of life. Britney told me; she tries so hard to help her but we found out that Bryce is into hardcore drugs. Sleeping with every guy that will pay her and is now disowned by her family. I realize what happened to her at the school wreck her entire life.

  Trent, He went off to college and got everything after his grandfather had died, he is too busy with politics and running for some office in his home state. He is married with two boys and a baby girl on the way. Trent loves being a family man. Good for him.

  Britney, she went on to be a lawyer after she went to Harvard Law School, we are wonderful friends. She always teams up with me along with Trent to expose the truth on underage sexual abuse in and out of schools. Britney was one that pushed and inspired me to write this story.

  Ms. Santana, We keep in touch every day and I call her mom. She now works for the law and always coming to see me, and she will be able to play with Jayden and my sister Madison. In fact, she found love at last. My Dad’s cousin and best friend, Harry Calloway, they are happily married. I couldn’t be any happier for my beloved mom.

  Mr. Corsair, his whereabouts remains unknown to me to this day. No one knows what had happened to Mr. Corsair. Like he fell off the face of the earth. I did discover some time ago that Mr. Corsair wasn’t his real name. I asked everyone I’ve been on familiar terms with if they know who he is but I came upon with no answers. Odd Hun? Whomever he is and if he is reading this… “thanks for your fantastic help.”

  0As for myself, being a mother is pure joy. Watching Jayden and my sister, Madison play in the garden, watching them grow has filled my heart. I enrolled for college classes online and completed a Master’s degree in women’s studies and a minor degree in writing. I have dated guys since Ashbrook, but in the bedroom department, I never let them do what Ashbrook and I did in bed.