My car had always been my safe space, but lately even my trusted Skoda wasn't safe from the barrage of accusations and lies. In my so far 20 years of living, only the first five had been truly happy. those were the years when my father was still living with us. He moved out two weeks before my sixth birthday, and has now become nothing more than another grey faceless icon in my contacts. I usually heard from him once a year after that. Every year on my birthday, usually around midnight, a simple text-message and a pop-up from my bank telling me some small amount of money had entered my account. It reminded me there may still be a man I could call dad out there somewhere, even if he wouldn't answer neither my calls or my messages.

Since my dad walked out that front door never to be seen again it had been me, my mother and a barrage of random men that came and went. Mother had always been a beauty, but seemed to have the worst taste in men imaginable. I got so used to them appearing, disappearing and reappearing I didn't even bother to learn their names after a while. They all just went by "dude" when I would meet them on my way to or back from school, and my mother had been relegated to the name Martha by the time the fifth, or was it sixth, dude had come around. That was until Adrian came into the picture...

For the last year and a half the latest dude had managed to stick around. For some reason this leech of a man had some sort of hold on my mother's attention, and after a few months of seeing the same dude again and again it became clear that my mother intended to let this one remain a permanent fixture in both of our lives. I don't know if it was because my mother had finally turned old and frumpy, the fact she was suddenly 50 pounds heavier, or a general lack of luck with other men, but somehow Adrian stayed latched onto her like a tick sucking the very lifeblood out of a wounded animal. It wasn't until the critter had got his teeth well and truly settled into his victim's neck that the verbal abuse began.

Having struggled with my first year of university, my weight and general health had aken a bit of a hit, and it didn't take long for the tick to notice. Little comments quickly turned into full on speaches about how having a fatass like me around was draining my mother's finances dry. All this while I watched him and my mother constantly bicker and fall further and further into their own vices. When I lost my job a month ago, and the rent I used to pay dried up, I was quickly given an ultimatum: Get a new job, or get the fuck out of dodge. Trying as I may I failed to find another job. The comments and harassment seemed never ending, and a week ago I finally decided enough was enough. On the night before my 20th birthday I packed my car with what little belongings I had, got my plush butt settled in the driver's seat and turned the ignition.

As I pulled out of the driveway I could hear both Martha and Adrian yelling and screaming about rent. About how little i must care for them. About how I was a selfish bitch. I'd heard it all before, and I didn't care anymore. As I straightened thecar up and started accelerating away from the house, the vampire and his victim turned into dots in the rear-view mirror. On my phone I could see the first actual answer my dad had ever sent me in 20 years. I don't know if my plead for help, sent in a dark moment five days ago, had truly touched him, or if he felt a twinge of some sort of responsibility for the frst time in his life. It didn't really matter to me. All that mattered was that it made up a very basic foundation of some sort of plan. It read: "Happy Birthday Ida. Living in Cassis. Meet me there. Money sent. Dad."