Running
by
Holly Godfrey

I’m burning against the cold night air.  I normally hate the dark, but at the moment I’m too pissed off to care.   I’m running now, and I turn my head and watch my yellow lit house disappear as I turn the street corner.
I hate them.  I hate Mum for her self-righteous shouting, and dad for just sitting there, looking helpless.
‘I don’t want you hanging around with those kids anymore!’
I don’t even like them that much.  They’re superficial, but they’re fun to be with. It’s that Mum thinks she can tell me what to do, without a reason or a compromise.  She decides for me, and I have no choice in the matter.  I’m powerless.  That’s what I hate.
I pass a wonky street sign, and I wonder where I’m running.
‘It’s not fair, mum!’
‘Life isn’t fair.’
She treats me like a child!  Like a stupid kid who doesn’t understand what she’s getting into.  My new friends may have a bad reputation, but does she bother to get to know any of them? No!  She hears her some mothers gossiping and makes a bunch of assumptions about my friends based on that. 
 Those assumptions are probably pretty accurate though.
I’m running out of steam and I stop by an alleyway, panting.  The cold hits me, and I’m sort of regretting sneaking out.  I realise how freaky it is, standing alone at night next to a smelly alleyway.
Who is that?  Somebody’s walking towards me, and I’m hoping its mum or dad.  Please God let it be mum or dad.   
A stranger wrapped in a thick duffel coat is smiling at me. 
‘It’s pretty dark outside,’ his hoarse voice chokes out.
‘Yeah… I’m just visiting a friend.  She lives nearby.’
A friend who lives in an alleyway?  He’s backed me against a brick wall and I’m hoping it’s accidental.
‘A girl like you shouldn’t be out here in the cold.’
‘Well, I sort of don’t feel the cold, if you know what I mean.  Isn’t it weird how some people are like that?’
I’m blurting out random thoughts so I don’t have to think about what he just said.
‘Are you alone?’ his silky voice cuts through my babble.
I  freeze.
‘Dad’s just coming.’
My lie hangs in the air, and I’m panicking because we both know the truth.
He leans closer.  He’s so close now that there’s no escaping the stench of his stale sweat, his hot breath.  There’s no escaping this situation.
I once fooled myself that I had the control over what happens to me.  Now I’ve learnt the truth.  You can refuse, scream, fight, bargain and plead as hard as you can, and you’ll still lose.  You can use every ounce of strength you have in you, and it’s still not enough.   I was a kid, he was an adult, and there was nothing I could do.  Sometimes, life isn’t fair.