I was getting out of here today.

John was right. I hadn't seen Alexs' father in a few days so I believed that he was truly gone for the week at the very least and therefore I had a limited window of opportunity to make an escape attempt.

John had been drinking heavily over the last few days and it was going to work in my favor. I wasn't sure if all the years of heavy drinking and age were catching up to him but instead of the violent fits of rage I was accustomed to he was angry and still yelled but he seemed to lack the energy to actually hit me in the way that he normally would. He would throw empty bottles at my head while he yelled and called me names and talked about all the disgusting things he would do to me once he sobered up. I was counting on his drunken state to cause him to make a mistake that would work in my favor.

I was still in quite a lot of pain still, in my abdomen particularly. While the bleeding had stopped I was worried about infection. All of my other injuries were things that I'd had to push through. There were some injuries that I'd woken up with my first night here but I couldn't recall where they'd come from. I'm sure they were fractures and maybe even broken but I felt almost numb to the pain, I knew it was there but I didn't, couldn't feel it but that was all the more reason to attempt to escape.

**

My opportunity came at sunset.

He had finished his drunken tirade and had collapsed in the single chair in the center of the room, a brown bottle hanging from his limp fingers.

I slowly made my way to my feet once I was sure that he was pretty soundly asleep.

He tended to leave the metal door to the cell I'd been kept in open while he was in the room with me, relying heavily on my fear to ensure that I wouldn't run and that was true while he was sober. But he was currently in a drunken stupor where I hoped he would remain while I tried to make my escape.

I grabbed a large shard that had bronek off of one of the bottles scattered on the floor after he'd thrown it at me and tried my best to avoid stepping on the rest of the broken glass with my still bare feet.

I made my way out of the room for the first time and was met with a small office area with a rotting desk and an equally rickety chair. A look around the room revealed that I was more than likely in either an extremely old jail going by the three other cells in the room or I was in some kind of medieval dungeon under a castle.

Just as I was making my way out of the office area, a dull glint from the desk caught my eye. Keys.

John's car keys were sitting there, just conveniently sitting there like they were waiting for me to grab them. So I did.

Car keys in hand I wound my way through the fairly simple floor plan of the surprisingly large building. I ran across several doors that led outside but found that they were all locked from the outside.

As I was testing yet another door along the hallway, I heard a loud crash and then John's bellowing voice.

"Annie!"

Fuck.

I gave up on my quick but quiet approach and took off running to the nearest hallway. My next turn took me into a giant open room with nothing but John's truck parked on the other end, opposite a garage door.

I took off toward the truck and just as I was about a foot away, a hand clamped around my hair and pulled me back into a large body.

"Thought you could get away from me Annie?"

He shook my head violently as he clamped his other hand on my throat and squeezed.

I'd dropped the keys when he'd jerked me backward but I still held firm to the glass shard in my hand. I got a secure grip on it even though the edges were digging into my skin, lifted my arm and drove it down as hard as I could into his upper thigh. He roared in pain and loosened his grip on me enough that I was able to fall forward.

"You fucking bitch!"

I was able to get the keys from where they hand fallen and scrambled to my feet and over to the truck. ONce I was in I risked a glance over to where I had left John lying and saw that he was struggling to his feet. There was quite a bit of blood soaking through the fabric of his pants but he was moving slowly enough that I was able to get into the truck and put the key in the ignition.

This was it. I was going to gain my freedom once again and I could only hope that this would be the last time I would have to run for my life. All I had to do was turn this key and I could find somewhere safe. I turned the key.

Nothing happened.

A stuttering engine was not something I wanted or needed to hear right now.

I tried three more times to turn the key over with no success. This truck was a pice of shit and John always had trouble getting it started in the mornings I just hoped that it would just work.

By now, Johns had stumbled to his feet. He was still clearly drunk and I knew that the sway he was walking with was due more to the liquor in his system rather than the wound I'd inflicted.

I had no other choice that to lock the doors of the truck and keep trying to get the engine to turn over.

I flinched as John banged on the hood of the truck.

There was a bloody handprint on his face and smeared down his shirt that combined with his general uncleanliness and unattractivness made him look like something out of a horror film.

"Annie girl, get out of the truck. Don't do anything stupid. Get out out now and I won't hurt you too bad. Won't tell the other guy that you tried to run off on us."

I was ignoring him the best I could as I kept trying to start the truck. He always found ways to convince me to go against what was actually in my best interest but there was no way in hell I was staying here by choice.

And then it happened. Two more turns and the engine finally finally turned over and the truck came to life with a roar. All I had to do now was drive forward there was no visable remote to open the garage door so I knew that I would have to drive through it. I wasn't sure if that would actually work but I'd seen it in movies so I was hoping ut would work out for me. But I had a problem, John was still standing in front of the truck and blocking the path I needed to take. I revved the engine a few times in attempt to get him to move but instead of looking concerned he looked...smug.

"You won't run me over Annie, you don't have it in you to hurt me. You need me. You want me. You are nothing without me."

I wasn't really thinking my decision through before I put the truck in reverse and slammed on the gas. I hit the breaks before I hit the wall behind me and threw the car into drive.

I hate John, hated him but I didn;t want to have anyone's blood, even his, on my hands. I wasn't a murderer and I really didn't want to run him over despite the despicable things he'd done to me over the years I didn't want to kill him, didn't really want to see him dead. But I quite literally had no other way out of here.

So, I hit the gas.

**

I don't think I'd ever forget the sound of a body slamming into the front of a car. I didn't know if John was dead but I can't imagine he was just going to walk off being hit by a pickup truck.

I'd been driving aimlessly for a while now. I wasn't familiar with the area but I was hoping that I hadn't been brought to another state. I was in a more wooded area and while I'd found a main road, I hadn't come across any signage that would give me a location so I just kept straight, I'd run into something helpful eventually.

While I drove, I thought about what exactly would happen now that I was free. I definitely needed a hospital I couldn't quite remember why I was there in the first place but I'd sustained significant injuries and I definately needed to go back because the adrenaline was wearing off and exhaustion was settling in and I was starting to feel how every bump on the road jostled and irritated my injuries. I wanted to just pull over and sleep but I couldn't I had to keep going.

I drove until I was struggling to open my eyes after each blink and I seriously considered just pulling as far into the wooded area lining the highway as possible to sleep but shining lights straight ahead caught my attention. A very familiar skyline.

Home.