Escape

A short story I wrote for school about a young girl who must escape from her crazed and murderous step father.

Snow danced through the sky, slowly making its way closer to the ground where it would melt and be lost forever. I had already seen one thing fade away and be lost to the earth for all eternity and it made me wonder whether I was going to suffer the same way. I wondered whether I was just going to fade away and be forgotten like the snow that now fell around me.
  My once pale blue eyes were stained red from salt tears. Blood and dirt infested my clothes and my tangled dark hair. Trickles of blood oozed from my fingers where my nails had be torn and chipped. The cold forced my slender to violently shiver in an attempt to keep warm, stealing away what little energy my battered body possessed.
 The past night had just felt like a painful dream, it felt like it had just been a figment of my imagination but I knew it was really a memory that would haunt me forever. I never saw it coming, it had just been a normal day but then it all changed in the blink of an eye....

**********

It had been a typical Friday night. I had spent the majority of the evening just sitting in my room working on an essay while listening to my stereo. Downstairs I could hear my mother yelling at my step father who had come home drunk again even though he had promised her he wouldn’t.  I turned up my stereo in annoyance, hoping it would drown out their wrathful voices. They would always fight on a Friday night as my step father would always come home drunk and my mother never learned to just accept this fact like I did. 

 Suddenly I heard a loud thump over my blaring music. I turned my stereo back down in hope that I would still hear them fighting but the house was quite, far too quiet. Cautiously I made my way towards my bedroom door and inched it open before straining my hearing in the hope that I would at least hear something, but there wasn’t a single noise. Slowly I opened my door wider and crept into the hallway. I could hear the ancient floor boards creek as they strained to hold my weight due to mild rot and aging. The cold air made my skin crawl and a nervous shiver made the hairs on my arm stand on end. Something was definitely wrong.
 I peered down the stair case but my eyes were only greeted by the sight of my front door. Nervously I started to creep down the wooden stairs. The further down the stair case I got the more nervous and fearful I grew until it was almost too much to bear. My legs felt like jelly beneath me forcing me to grab the banister to help steady myself. Part of me just wanted to turn back around and forget everything but my curiosity just wouldn’t let me. I had to find out what was going on.
 When I reached the bottom of the stairs I glanced up the hallway. Darkness engulfed the cold room. Hope filled me as I noticed some light escaping from the gaps between the living room door and its frame. For some reason the light made me feel more at ease, it made me feel as if I wasn’t alone and that all of these petty fears were just my mind playing tricks on me, but I knew I couldn’t trust the light.
 Usually on a Friday night after my mother and step father stopped arguing, one of them would storm up to their bedroom while the other slammed all of the doors downstairs, trying to get rid of their pent up anger. Tonight though there had been none of that. The world inside my house had gone straight from an uproar to deafening silence, which was never a good sign.
 The only sounds I could hear was my heart beating and my heaving breaths as my body prepared to run at the first sign of trouble. I was just outside the door when a sudden noise nearly made me leap out of my skin. I couldn’t take it any longer. I burst through the door but instantly regretted it as the sight I saw would haunt me for the rest of my life. It was a sight no child should have to see.
 Lying on the floor was the body of my mother. Blood dripped from a gaping hole in her fore head. Her clouded lifeless eyes stared deep into my soul making my heart leap with fright. Standing above her was my step father. His face was red from the angry blood rushing through his furious body. I stared in disbelief as I saw what he gripped in his firm hands. My step father glared at me with satanic eyes as he held the bloodied fire poker over his head. He looked possessed but I knew he wasn’t, he was just corrupted by the influence of the alcohol that pulsed through his body.
 My legs froze as he started inching towards me, a sinister laugh escaping from his chapped lips. I could hear my mind screaming at me to run but I just couldn’t move. I was frozen like the world outside. The horrifying image of my mother’s dead eyes and the blood dripping from the pointed end of the fire poker terrified me and kept my feet glued to the floor.
 “Come on darling, I’m not going to hurt you,” my step father said, his words slurring from the alcohol that possessed him.
 He was almost upon me. I could smell the stench of his breath and the odour of cigarette smoke. Suddenly my body snapped out of its frozen state and I sped out of the door. My step father moaned in frustration before thundering after me. I burst out of the front door and sprinted towards the trees. The cold snow bit at my bare feet, it felt like needles were being pressed into my tender flesh.
 Birds squawked and screeched as I disturbed their sleep and some of them even flew at me, scratching my face with their knife like talons but I didn’t care. I kept fighting my way through the thick woodlands, desperate to find a place to hide. I could hear snapping branches and crunching snow behind me and knew my step father was close on my heels but I didn’t dare look back.
 Pain erupted from my cuts and scrapes. My skin felt like it was on fire but I couldn’t give up, my life depended on it. I charged through the bushes and trees, desperately trying to create a distance between me and my insane pursuer.
 Finally I saw my chance. I could see a small badger set in the earth behind a thick blackberry bush. It looked just big enough for me to fit through but my step father wouldn’t stand a chance. I dived through the bush’s branches, not caring about the thorns that tore at my skin as my desperation to survive wouldn’t let me give up.
 I plunged into the badger set and crawled in as far as I could. My breaths were short and rapid as my lungs begged to taste the crisp air. My heart thumped and jumped in my chest, overcome with panic. My muscles burned as if they had been set alight and my eyes watered with petrified tears.
 The sound of my step father trying to force his way through the bush brought new fear to me, forcing me to shake with both fear and adrenaline. Every second felt like a minute and every minute felt like an hour until I heard my step father’s retreating footsteps. Fear still gripped my heart, stopping me from being able to see if the coast was clear or not. Eventually I managed to build up the courage to climb out of the badger set. The coast was clear.
 Now it’s back to where my tale started, with me lying on the snow covered ground gazing up at the over cast sky, my body bruised and bloodied. Snow fluttered to the ground and formed a small cold blanket over my body, which ached too much for me to move so I just embraced the cold and was actually grateful for it as it started to numb the pain. I watched as the clouds departed to reveal a gorgeous sky that looked like glittered black velvet. A smile crept across my face as I saw the moon full and suddenly I felt safe. It felt like the moon was watching over me. It felt like it was protecting me from the darkness with its gentle and loving light.
 Slowly the adrenaline slipped away from me and was replaced by pure exhaustion. My eye lids grew heavy and I found I no longer had the energy to keep them open. Slowly I let them fall. My body grew heavy and numb. My world fell silent. I had escaped....at least for now.