chapter 2

As the screen door flies open on the dingy and dilapidated wooden shack a flame headed man looks up "Are you insane don't throw the door off its hinges!" Cherry looks down, muttering under her breath. The bulky man stands from his chair looming over his frightened daughter. "How many times do I have to tell you to speak up? Nobody's gonna want a useless girl who mutters" He sighs "You're as useless as your mother," The fire in Cherry's hair seems to die to an ember. "I-I-I I'm sorry sir, but I have something you'll be happy to hear and I was eager to tell you," The foreboding figure glares down. "Well, what would that be? Out with it already." The trembling girl manages to force out a sentence. "I broke up with Alison and I'm ready to accept my engagement to Anthony" The previously intimidatingly callus man softens hugging his daughter. "I'm glad you're over that lesbian nonsense," Cherry cringes at the sentiment. "But I don't want to marry him until after college." The softness sharpens and a shadow seemingly engulfs the room and an angry voice booms. "You are not going to waste your baby making years in college.You will marry him as soon as you graduate high school.Your going to be a stay at home wife for your husband." Quivering in horror the once fiery redhead backs away in fear. In the bedroom Alison gathers the required items and sits on the bed listening to the crashes and glass shattering in the main room as the sound of something being thrown with a heavy hand against the wall echoes immediately followed by the sounds of more stuff breaking.Screams ring out from the main room unsure whether it's from pain fear or a mix of both. When Cherry comes in with blood covering her face,while bruised and cut from seaming whatever the broken glass was. "Oh shit, are you ok?" The beaten girl nods dripping blood on the floor. "Let's just go," She says, choking back tears.

Cherry hugs her lover and loses control as they climb out the window to freedom. The duo makes their way down the street and to the overlook at the edge of town where the pair had spent the night. "Well this is goodbye to our lives as we knew them" Alison sadly chuckles. Cherry openly weeps, still sobbing and shaken up from her fathers abuse. " th-things will never be the same'' The rosie haired girl says, managing to form a sentence between sobs. Allison comforts her partner, holding her tightly in an embrace, "We should go. It won't be long before they realize we're gone. We need to get ahead of the search party, I know that was tough for you, it was tough for me to listen to, but I promise I'll protect you no matter what" The crying mess that once was the maroon-haired beauty nods just crying even more into her lover's shoulder. Alison helps Cherry regain a resemblance to her former, happier self, and they start on their epic journey to freedom.