The Escape Plan

• Tara Hughes, Grade 9
• Poetry
• 2010

Hi my name is Ace, welcome to my life.

It’s Friday I should be happy because it’s the end of the week, but instead I’m laying here on my bed with my iPod on full blast trying to drown out the painfully frightening screams of my mum, Mia, being brutally beaten in the kitchen downstairs by my father, Steve.

It’s been this way for three years now, since my father got retrenched from his high powered skyscraper job in the city, which he loved and after months of searching, ended up having to settle for being a janitor in some stingy hotel five miles off the highway. Because of this he has since drowned his emotions in alcohol, if you ask me, when he lost his job his sense of right and wrong went with it.

The beatings happen most days, where my father goes to work at about three in the morning comes home a few hours later at eight, gets changed and the heads of to the pub down the road and drinks like a fish until six in the afternoon, then by the time he gets home the vicious effects of the alcohol have kicked in and he starts slurring on about how my mum, Tom and I have ruined his life and about how he would make us all pay.

The abusive behavior of my father has gone on so long that I can barley remember the person he used to be and I'm sick of it!, all the fighting,the screaming,the bitterness and the hurt is to much to bare anymore, I need to find a way out of this House.

It's 4am and Ive been lying awake all night. I heard my father leave for work aroud one hour ago and have since been thinking of ways to escape out of this hell. The problem is I have nowhere to run and hide away for a bit since I don't socialize enough with my family to just rock up and ask to stay, and none of my friends parents would allow a sixteen year old kid to stay with them, not that I blame them really.

OK, so Ive come up with an idea, it's five in the morning so I better get going before the sun comes up and somebody catches me. I have decided that with the four years of money I earnt from mowing lawns and walking dogs, I can just scrape up enough cash to last me a few months on my own and then I can get a job somewhere.

As I'm sneaking down the stairs, I stop off at Toms bedroom opening the door just a crack. Whoa he looks so peaceful. God I'm going to miss him and mum so much.
I close the door behind me, making sure it's locked and turn onto the road and start to jog towards the train station , so I can catch the five thirty two train to nowhere.