I have to hope.

What were Pandora’s words when all that was left was Hope. ‘Please – No’ or ‘Thank you – Yes’.

An AP-500 story

I just have to hope that the nasty stories in the media aren’t true. I don’t want them to be true. I want to believe that people are kind and nice and generous. That Christians don’t pick and choose the rules they want to obey. But my father, the Senior of the local church …… I’m beginning to see that hell is on earth. And my father (I never thought of him as Dad) always called on his strange sounding God ‘Gaahd will do this, that or other nastiness because YOU deserve it’.

“Gaahd is angry with Man. Gaahd is angry with you. Gaahd knows how vile you are. Gaahd knows that you are a failure forever. Like every vermin that has crawled from the womb since the beginning – all carry the mark of sin. Sin by Eve. Sin by Adam. Sin by Cain. Sin by all the elders of Israel. Sin all the way to Jaysus Christ. Sin by everyone since Jaysus unless they prove their fitness and their belief since the day of their baptism. No fault. No favour. No distrust or disrespect of Gaahd. Gaahd knows the heart of every man, woman and child. Gaahd tells Man what to do. Obedience. Total Obedience. Man tells Woman what to do. Woman serves Man in everything. That is why Man is the Ruler in the House. The symbol of manliness is a sign from Gaahd.”

Exactly how would this monster react when he found that I wanted, beyond anything else in my soul, to be ‘woman’. No longer ‘man’ because I hated the thing between my legs. I hated him as an example of ‘man’ almost more. I didn’t hate God or even Gaahd. I didn’t believe that either existed.

I didn’t believe in anything that he tried to teach me. Everything he said sounded wrong or even vile. In later days, I knew everything he did was Abuse. He had Power and he used it to hurt. Emotional abuse; psychological abuse and more. I never saw him hit anybody but I saw many cower at his words.

So, I stayed on at school to do my homework using the need for the library as my excuse. I worked lots of jobs with the excuse that only variety would prove my usefulness and widen my range of skills.

But, I’m getting ready to run. I’ve got my bag packed and tucked away in a friend’s backyard shed. I’ve saved quite a lot of money unbeknown to him. And I have to run in a way that he’ll never track me down.

I’ve been buying new clothes, new everything.

I have to hope that he says ‘My boy’s gone. Five foot five, ten stone, short blonde hair. Here’s a photo.”

I hope they won’t be looking for a girl - five foot seven in heels, nine stone now (behind a thick jersey) and with brown hair. I hope he won’t find me.

And I hope the bad stories aren’t true.

Another 500-word story for adapting, expanding etc (with proper attribution) AP