Behind the Door

Elizabeth's Escape

Miss Elizabeth Hubert

Address unknown

E_White19@newmail.com

19th December 2011

Ms Marcia Tempe, Mr Alexander Hubert

9 Godstow Road

Darkfield

DF34 W27

Dearest 'parents', (I'd grant you a capital but I'm using the word specifically for ironic purposes)

I'm writing to tell you that I have left, though you may not have noticed yet. After all of my 19 years of being in this abysmal atmosphere I have had enough. I would say don't bother looking for me but I know you probably won't anyway... That's if you notice me gone at all, or care enough to find this letter.

So let’s begin, I know I haven't been the easiest child to deal with, the constant conversation making (in the beginning) and habitual breathing could be frustrating to any parents attempting to pretend they're prepubescent’s. I've had to keep my distance on the rare occasion you allowed me the choice, put up with your endless put downs about things I cannot change - hair colour, skin colour, eye colour, weight, intelligence - why have a child naturally... why not just create your perfect child on the Sims instead? Or even better for you two in particular - don't have any! - be honest you would, probably, even fail a Sims child.

To be fair you weren't bad parents, you weren't really parents at all... The vacancy throughout my life that was supposed to be filled with the love and care of birth givers was gaping with the misfortune of having you two as permanent fixtures. When I say permanent I mean temporary, for as long as I could handle you both but I can take it no longer. The good things to come from you both are:

1) My pale as snow, porcelain skin

2) My black waist-length ringlets

3) My independence (this I don't think I would have had if you were half decent parents)

4) And finally, my gift that, like my hateful worthless mother, allows me to see snippets of future occurrences.

But don't be flattered by this admission because there are more awful things I could tell you about your abusive, mentally unstable, in some cases d**g addled -selves, things that make me loathe you both. They make me want to see you miserable. But I won't stay around for that because then, in turn, I would be miserable.

So this is it, our final goodbye. I will never again be neglected and abused. You will never again have to convince yourselves that you had good reasons and that you are loving people. And I can promise you of these two things: you will never see me again and you will never be happy, together or apart.

Never yours, hatefully,

The Daughter, E.

And as she sealed the purple letter into its pale blue envelope she released a sigh of relief. The day had come where her parents would cease to have influence over her life; her happiness had completed its stint behind the solid steel bars of her parents’ oppression. Her breach of such a dull life had been, up until this point, merely the colourful clothing and matching stationary she surrounded herself with, to her parents disdain. So she knew using this paper to break the news to them would be the icing on the proverbial cake.

With a sly smile she stands up, pulling straight her bright red, skin tight jacket. Placing a grape green satchel over her shoulders and carrying her matching hand bag over her wrist she realises she's finished, ready to leave and start her new life - wherever that may be.

...

Before I know it I'm marching in a diagonal line away from the house I once thought of as home. The damp grass sliding over my boots with each step, like worms squirming out of the ground. I can see at the end of my garden, where society clashes with wilderness, the woodland that will be my safety and my way out of this place. I am relishing the idea of leaving and my steps increase as I break into a run, excited about the encroaching reality of my passing over the invisible barrier. Heart racing so hard it feels like my body is going into spasms, the too loud vibrations of the front row of a rock concert cannot compare. It doesn't seem to take long before I have to slow to find a gap in the dense line of trees and bushes.

It's clear by the light shift that I've reached the tree line at the edge of the acre long back yard, and as I take my first carefully placed step through a perfectly hidden entrance into the unknown and out of view I take a look back; it's as though I'm an outsider viewing a world that shouldn't have been created. I feel as though I am Alice passing through the looking glass, my favourite book when I needed an escape, and now it had become my reality. The wonderfully bright greens and purples of the trees, flowers, mushrooms, and the other strangely present foliage. It feels as though they are all reaching up to greet me, it isn't just for the sun's hot glare beating down above me, they are welcoming me into their home.

Walking through my colourful array of friends I've reached a clearing, a stream passing through a few pine trees, one of which is laid over the water. Looking tired and as though he has been covered in a blanket - small pink, purple and violet flowers and the lightest green moss I have ever seen. At first it was a dream, or more like a dream, fantastical and truly eye opening. Everything was incandescent and it was as though I was peering through my personal looking glass resulting in all of my senses being heightened. There is a poem that fits perfectly here, explains how I feel better than any of my own words could, I read it in school and it stuck, probably due to the hopeless Romantic hiding inside me - Lord Byron wrote "there is pleasure in the pathless woods; there is rapture on the lonely shore; there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea and music in its roar; I love not man the less, but nature more."

I'm so distracted by the scenery that I'm taken completely by surprise.... Severe pain shoots through my eyes, through the pupils, then as a vibration hits through the vitreous humor, down the optic nerve and an echo of it repeats itself at the top of my neck... I bend over in agony; my mind is reeling from the pain and shock. Then they come, short flashes that I can’t make out at first. After a few seconds the flashes begin to slow, and I can make out green and red, then I can see tree outlines. The pictures are becoming clear. As suddenly as they began the pictures stop sending flashes through and my eyes stop on one specific event; a girl is laying flat on her stomach - she looks so familiar - I can't be sure who she is because of all of the blood but what I am sure of is that it happens here, in my clearing! I can’t see her face, though I arch my neck and tilt my head, craning as though it will help me to see. Do I stay? Wait and help her? But I don't know how long I will be waiting; they're never clear on what time things will happen. But then something occurs to me... Usually I notice them coming, the dizziness, the extremely bright colours - all of the signs I'm used to having and I didn't realise were there, probably because I was overwhelmed by my long overdue escape and by nature itself - uncorrupted by people (until now), dirty cement, artificial light and unnatural noise. Or is it something else? The only time I didn't receive a warning, telling me something was coming, was when I was younger, and whatever sends me them sent me the flashes so quickly to warn me of my imminent danger - not quickly enough obviously as I was still hit by that horrible girl on her bicycle - that it turned into me seeing myself being rode into as it happened - so it felt like I was hit twice! A bike hitting my front and what feels like a baseball bat hitting me behind my eyes.

Pushing that aside I think hard about the girl I see, because I recognise her and because I am suspicious – thinking that, maybe, the occurrence is impending. But I'm halted in mid thought by the sound of rustling behind me...