Authors Note: I hope you enjoy this: my first fan fiction. If you are annoyed as to why Alice has blue eyes instead of green, there is a reason. The reason? She's Alice. Not Clary. She is a different character with some similarities but she is a more like a parody. Please refrain from mentioning this as it has been explained.

Screaming and crying. That's what my world has always been filled with. Screaming and crying and abuse. From my dad of course. Mum was smart. Mum left. But she left me too. Screaming and crying and abuse and disappointment. So it was only natural that I was used to waking up with some screaming or crying or abusing me or disappointing me. That day was different though. I could tell. Because it was quiet. Even when everyone was asleep it was always loud. The snoring, the screaming and thrashing from nightmares, the TV left on. But for the first time in my life, the house was silent. Something was wrong. I got up, got dressed and the went to check on the twins. I still have nightmares about what I found. The adorable 8 year old twins, dead in their beds, fresh bruises surrounding their necks in a cruel ring. They had been strangled. And then I turned around and he was there. Broken beer bottle in hand advancing on me ready to kill. My drunk father. I spun away as he jabbed, my heart pounding. I ducked under his arm and ran to my room. I had been afraid of this for years. He was drunk every night and more abusive every week. I had packed bags for the twins and I so we could run at a minutes notice. I didn't need their extra packs though so I just grabbed mine and bolted for the door. But he was there. I had no choice. It was either I risked dying or I did die no question. I ran straight for the window hard and it shattered on impact. I grabbed out and managed to reach the branches of the tree before I could fall from my second story bedroom. I looked back but he was already gone. Heading for the front door so he could grab me. I climbed down the tree quickly as possible and bolted.

I know what you're thinking some one must have heard right? But no. We lived way out of town. There were no neighbours to hear the window shatter. There were no neighbours to hear him yelling at me everyday or the screams that always came from our house. So I ran for the trees. I ran for the forest on the other side of the highway a few hundred metres away hoping I could make it then scale a tree Dad would find impossible to climb. I pumped my legs and arms as if death was on my tail, which, honestly, it was. The highway was in sight and I somehow managed to run harder. I ran and ran terrified of the laboured breathing and pounding feet I could here behind me. But I was fitter and alcohol didn't slow my mind and body. So I made it to the highway. There were no cars on it at six so no one could help and I had to run farther but I did it. And that's when it got harder. It was already quite dark since dawn was still on the horizon but now there were branches in my face, the ground was more uneven and the were so many tree roots for me to trip over but finally I saw a tree with low but super thin branchpes that could only just take my weight so sure as hell wouldn't hold my dad's. He was closer now, I could tell, so I took what was left of my energy and ran for the tree jumping for a high branch, just reaching and using the momentum to swing myself up and climbed as high as I could before I knew the branches would snap under my small amount of weight for sure. I could hear him though the leaves kept him from view and I hoped he couldn't see me and the fear on my face. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing true terror in my eyes.

An hour later I heard him leave after so many branches snapping my terror had turned the sound from branches to bones breaking in my mind. All I could see in my mind was the twins Alissa and Ty dead with their necklaces of bruises. After what must have been another half hour of waiting I decided he would have gotten bored by now and I could carefully get down. Or not. Maybe alcohol didn't make him that stupid. I had wondered why so many branches were snapping. He must have given up trying to climb after me and started snapping as many branches as he could reach to make the fall from the branches he couldn't reach far enough to break bones. Oh yes, my dad was very tall with very powerful legs. Legs. Yeah. They're very likely to break if I try to make that jump. But I'm no idiot. I grab my back pack and pull out the single piece of rope I put in not long ago. I went through a lot of possible situations not long ago, things that might have happened in the scenario where I had to leave. Getting stuck in a tree with way too far a distance for me to jump between the ground and the lowest safe branch was one of them. I hung the rope over the branch the middle of the rope actually on the branch with the two ends just brushing the ground. I actually tied two ropes together to make it so long so the middle was the knot which made it pretty easy to find. Then carefully I did just as I practised with the tree outside my bedroom window and lowered my self from the branch until I was just hanging on with my hands. Carefully I let go with one hand and grabbed onto the bit of rope that was on the other side of the branch to me and then quickly the side that was closest to me with the other hand, sliding down a lot before I grabbed on and stopped it from continuing to slide down towards immense pain. I then shimmied down the rope, pushing it up one side a tiny bit then down the other side all the way down. I pulled the last bit down, knotted it and put it back in my bag. And then I walked in the opposite direction to home.