This week was Ashley's turn to host girls night. It had been a really long time since she had hosted a girls night at her place because of all the drama that had been going on in her personal life. You see, just over a year ago, Ashley married Gabe. Gabe was the best thing that had ever happened to Ashley. He would do anything for her. Gabe took take of Ashley both emotionally and financially. Ashley's life with Gabe was perfect until one horrible night.
It was ten minutes past eleven and Ashley was lying in bed watching Dave Letterman when she heard this really strange noise coming from the guest bedroom of her and Gabe's two-story bungalow. Gabe was out of town on business so Ashley was a little on edge. She never liked being in such a big house all by herself. She heard the noise again, only this time it was much louder. The noise even woke up Charlie, Ashley's golden retriever, who was sleeping at the foot of her bed. Now Ashley was stricken with fear. She reached for the phone on her nightstand to call Gabe, but before she could finish dialing the number a man appeared in the doorway of her room.
The hotel phone began to ring.
"Hello?" Gabe answered.
"Gabe, it's Cheyenne. You need to get home as soon as you can. Ashley is in the hospital."
"What?! I'll get on the next flight home."
And later that night, Gabe walked into Ashley's hospital room only to see his beautiful wife with ugly black and blue marks on her face. Ashley was sleeping so Gabe decided not to wake her. Instead, he went to find Cheyenne to get an explanation of what had happened.
"She was raped." Cheyenne shuddered as she spoke the harsh words. "A man broke into your house and raped her. He was arrested shortly after he committed the crime. It was really weird, he hung around your house and continued to watch Ashley. The police said the man, named Ivan, had been stalking Ashley for the last several months. He has some weird obsession with her and even admitted to raping her."
Gabe was disgusted. He didn't know what to do. He was upset for the pain that Ashley was in and angry at himself for not being there to protect her. He made a vow to himself that he was not going to let this man get away with doing this to his wife.
A week and a half later, Gabe was waiting outside of Ivan's apartment. Ivan had been released on bail and that infuriated Gabe even more. He waited until Ivan was leaving his apartment to confront him. Gabe went nuts on Ivan, screaming and cursing at him. He promised that Ivan would regret what he had done to Ashley. Ivan didn't know what Gabe's threat meant but he didn't want to find out either. Three weeks later, with the help of Reed, the new Senator of California, Ivan was convicted to a life sentence for the rape of Ashley and two other women over that past ten years. Gabe and Ashley's relationship went through a rough patch. Ashley had told Gabe that she had remembered meeting Ivan at a dinner party for her work. She thought she may have done a little bit of innocent flirting with him. Gabe couldn't help but feel that a small part of what had happened was Ashley's fault. But eventually Gabe realized that the situation with Ivan was not Ashley's fault.
Ashley was a little nervous to be hosting her first girls night since the whole ordeal. The doorbell rang.
"Shit!" Ashley said outloud to herself. The girls were there, but her chicken was still in the oven baking. She went to the door and answered it with a smile.
"Hey!" Danielle said as soon as Ashley opened the door. "I brought a bottle of champagne to celebrate your first girls night in ages."
At least someone is excited about tonight, Ashley thought as she returned the smile and took the bottle of champagne from Danielle. Despite all of Ashley's nerves, before she knew it she was laughing with her friends and enjoying herself just like she used to before the incident with Ivan.
Author's Note: I
hope everyone can see the similarities between my story with Gabe and
Ashley and the story of Ahayla and Gautama. I decided to
modernize the story of Ahayla and Gautama. Ahayla is Ashley in
the story, Gabe is Gautama and Indra is Ivan. I changed the story
to where Gabe resembled Gautama but Gabe didn't raise her and then
marry
her like Gautama did in the original story, because in this day and
age, that would be considered really
weird. Also, since the story is about people from this generation
who don't have any supernatural powers, so Gabe gets his revenge on
Ivan with Reed (aka Rama) helping put Ivan in jail for life. In
the original story, Indra is punished first by having a thousand female
genital all over his body and then Gautama changed his punishment so
that his body was covered with a thousand eyes. In the original story,
Indra disguised himself to look like Gautama and got into Ahayla's bed
that way, but in my version, I made him
Ashley's stalker. This was to keep with the modernized theme of
the story. I feel like this is a good modernized portrayal of the
ancient Indian epic that was first written in the Ramayana. Reed
played a small part in getting justice for Ashley and Gabe, but in the
Ramayana, Rama was the one who transformed Ahayla from stone into her
human form again and told Gautama that Ahayla did not betray him like
he had originally thought. I gave Reed such a small part in my
story because of the fact that, in my story, Ashley was not the victim
of a supernatural curse like Ahayla was, and so Ashley did not need a
supernatural being like Rama to rescue her from the curse.
Bibliography: Narayan, R.K. (1972) The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic.
Image Information: Detail from a mural in Karnataka. Website: Kamat's Potpourri
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Bibliography: Narayan, R.K. (1972) The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic.
Image Information: Detail from a mural in Karnataka. Website: Kamat's Potpourri
Return to Coverpage