Prologue - Far, Far Away

This is my story based on the Escape to Nowhere Challenge by Misty found here at MTS.

Note: This story contains swearing, depictions of alcohol/drug use, and sexual situations. Some sensitive subjects like depression/mental illness/spousal abuse and loss/grief are touched-upon. Please read with discretion!

The gist of the challenge is your sim and their three children flee from a bad situation and start out with very little money and nowhere to live - hence "Escape to Nowhere". This is a fun take on many other 'rags to riches' challenges but isn't a legacy that goes many generations. In fact you are supposed to accomplish your goal in 60 sim days!

As in all other types of these challenges, you start with little money and are restricted as to where you can live and how you can earn money during the different phases of the challenge. The twist here is you are also faced with a series of daily random events to deal with - some good and some very stressful. This is the part that intrigued me to do the challenge and the fact that is is a fairly short one. The ultimate goal is for your sim to eventually save up enough money to buy their own home for their runaway family in 60 days.

I took a liberty with the events and made it a 30% chance of getting one event each day instead of absolutely having an event each day as the challenge is written since I have never done this before. The seasons are set to 7 days each. With that my story will represent just over 2 years in my sims lives. I also turned off occults, zombies and opted out of the celeb system.

I am using a couple of mods to help me out as well:

• Relativity - to make the time for each day 50% slower
• Teen pregnancy mod -  'just in case'. (One of the random 'events' is for your teen to either get someone pregnant or to get pregnant)
• Pregnancy mod - to lengthen the amount of time a sim is pregnant to closer match the speed in years
• No food buying from the refrigerator - If your sim doesn't have the required food in their inventory or in the refrigerator you cannot make the meal. Period. So no free cereal or yogurt!

Each blog entry will be one sim day so my blog will have 60 chapters plus this prologue and likely an epilogue. With that, I wanted a good back story and well it got away from me so without further ado I present my Escape to Nowhere Challenge.

Meet the Cast:

Kaitlin Murdock - age 34 

Main Character

Newt Murdock - age 34

Estranged husband of Kaitlin

Reese Murdock - age 16 

Son of Kaitlin and Newt

Benjamin Murdock - age 9

Son of Kaitlin and Newt

Madison Murdock - age 13 months 

Daughter of Kaitlin and Newt

* * * 

Prologue:

Reese, a very grown up 16 year-old, watched over his two siblings, Benjamin, age 9, and his baby sister Madison, just 13 months. They sat in the lobby of the counselors office while the receptionist pretended to busy while keeping a watchful eye on the trio. Their mother was inside speaking to Dr. Dallas Gentry, the counselor about their 'options'.

Reese picked his baby sister up form the floor when she grew tired of her toy and started fussing. He gently rocked and soothed her. About that time Benjamin began to whine that he was hungry. Reese dug in his pocket and found enough change for Ben to get something to drink from the machine which pacified him for a little while longer.

His mom had been with the counselor for an hour. An hour is a long time for a couple of kids to wait and they were getting restless. Reese wanted to ask the receptionist how much longer but he knew she wouldn't know. He wondered if maybe it was taking so long because they were calling his father. They better not, because if that bastard showed up he would probably kill him.

* * *

Inside Dr. Gentry's office, Kaitlin Murdock, the mother of the three children in the waiting room, was sitting across from the well-dressed and very put-together counselor wishing she were her - someone with a well paying job and no worries.

Kaitlin began to recant how she came to be sitting in the counselor's office with her three children and a bruise under her eye still slightly visible through her makeup. The beautiful stranger, listening intently, was the first person to whom Kaitlin had ever told her story. But now, Kaitlin had no choice. So she took a deep breath and began to tell Dr. Gentry her story....

My husband - Newt - the reason I am here - and I have been married for 17 years. And for the whole of that time he never loved me. It wasn't always horrible though. I mean, he was civil and even kind in the beginning and the sex was great. But I knew he wasn't in love with me when we married. I hoped he would eventually grow to love me if I tried hard enough to please him. You see, I found out I was pregnant with his child the week before graduation. We were married in a quickie ceremony on the grounds of his parent's estate. 

To look at my husband, you would never suspect such a gorgeous man would be capable of such abuse. He was the typical high school jock, captain of the football team with all the girls swooning over him. He took full advantage and boldly slept his way through all of them. 

I was a nobody. A shy Plain Jane with red hair and freckles that no one like him would ever pay any attention to or at least I thought so. 

It was our senior year and we were in algebra together. He needed a tutor and I was assigned.  When he began to schmooze me during our sessions, I fell for it - hook, line and sinker. Instead of tutoring, our sessions together turned into make out sessions with some light petting. Needless to say I was doing his homework for him. He was smooth.

Newt asked me to the prom - the prom! I was going with the most handsome guy at school. My parents took tons of pictures of us. That alone convinced me that he was with me for more than just his algebra homework - I mean we weren't officially a couple so he could have asked anyone.

Well obviously everyone but me knows what is expected on prom night. When he took me to the hotel where all the seniors were congregating he made his intentions clear when he stopped at the front desk and got a key for a room.

He had champagne in the room. We drank a little and began to make out on the couch. Then he began to take it further than we had ever gone.

When I refused, he said such sweet things that I melted. I was in such lust and a little drunk that I let him take my VCard that night.

I wasn't naive but I wasn't sexually active either so I wasn't on birth control. And well, he didn't bring anything.  

He told me I couldn't get pregnant if this was my first time. I was in no shape to argue and didn't want to - but I think I knew somewhere in the back of my mind I was playing with fire. I am not sure if he really believed that or not, I would like to think he did.

After prom night, our tutoring sessions had turned into make out and sex sessions - with protection - he obviously didn't want me pregnant. I was happily doing his homework and looked forward to our ‘time together.’

Seems the truth of the matter was, he needed to pass algebra to be able to secure the scholarship to play football at Bridgeport University. Anyone who plays there almost always goes on to play professional sports. So he stayed with me. I was a means to an end. I made myself believe he was beginning to care for me for more than just an easy lay like all of the other girls that threw themselves at him.

Well, let me just say - you CAN get pregnant your first time. As I said, I found out the week of graduation but didn’t tell him until after. When I finally told him I was pregnant we had a huge fight - our first.

He wanted to 'get rid of it'. I was shocked. I could never do that and told him in no uncertain terms that I was keeping our baby.

You are the only person I told this to. Reese will NEVER know that his father didn't want him. As much as I dislike that man, that secret will go to my grave. I know Reese probably hates him now - probably more than I do, but he will never think he wasn't wanted.

Well, Newt backed down and we told his parents. Everyone would know the baby was his since we had been ‘together’ for about 4 months. Because of this his parents insisted we get married and live with them while he was in college. Their condition was that he would have to forgo the football scholarship and get a business degree at the local college instead. When he graduated he would have a position in his father’s business. They reasoned he had a family now and this would be a better future for his new family. My family was thrilled that we were getting married and moving in with Newt’s family. They loved me but were elderly and on a fixed income. They couldn't support another mouth to feed and his family was one of the richest families in town. 

So we married and as long as we lived lived in the little bungalow behind the main house on his parents property, he was good and sweet. We made love most nights or as I now understand it - had sex. It was a great stress reliever for him and he was always in a better mood afterwards. Sex was always good between us. I looked forward to those times. 

I still don't understand why Newt agreed to marry me. I like to think he had grown to care for me and our unborn baby even if he didn't love me yet and wanted to do the right thing for us. However, as things stand today, I think his parents threatened him with his inheritance if he put a black eye on the family. Really, they just wanted him to take over the family business, not be a professional athlete. He was their only child. They needed him to learn the business and my pregnancy was the prefect excuse to keep him home. 

We lived with his parents for 5 years before he finally graduated and took that job at his father's business. We moved out of his parent’s home into our own home. That's when things began to deteriorate.

In the beginning we just argued and then had make up sex. I put it off to the stress of adjusting to living in a new home, supporting a family and raising a four year-old away from his support system.  

After a few years, I told him I wanted another child - that Reese shouldn’t grow up an only child. He agreed since his mom was hounding him about when we were going to have more children. 

He liked trying and soon I was pregnant again. He tried to pretend to be happy but I knew he wasn't. The bigger my belly grew, the more distant he became. 


After Benjamin was born, we once again fell into fighting and make up sex. The arguments gradually got worse and worse. 

After a couple of years, he began staying late at work and coming home drunk. He apologized profusely the next day coming up with excuse after excuse - then we would have sex. I was stupid. I thought that meant he cared for me. It wasn’t as loving as before but I always let him - I was craving that closeness. 

This pattern continued until I got pregnant again. My birth control must have failed. He was furious and accused me of cheating on him. That was the first time he hit me. It was a slap and unfortunately Benjamin - 8 years old at the time - saw him and started crying. That made him stop before it became more than that. He left the house and I comforted Ben. He was crying asking if we were going to get a divorce. It broke my heart. 

When Newt came back, we argued some more and I told him if he ever touched me again, I would leave him. He apologized profusely and guess where we ended up. 

As my pregnancy progressed and I began to get ‘fat’ he distanced himself again and began staying late at work more often. I guess he was getting his stress relief with someone else. He was, still is, a very attractive man so it wouldn’t be hard for him to find a willing partner.

After Madison was born, the hitting started again. Anything would set him off. He was even yelling at the boys all the time for little stuff and threatening to "whip" them into shape. They became terrified of him and tried to stay out of his line of sight when he was home. 

I tried to make sure there was nothing he could complain about; dinner on the table, Maddy down for the night, homework done, house clean but if he came home drunk, none of that mattered. He would find something to get angry about. 

Reese figured out what was going on pretty fast and began to try to protect me. A few days ago, when Newt started in, Reese walked in the house, coming home from a friends house. When he saw that Newt had hit me, he jumped between me and Newt and Newt hit him. 'That will teach you to interfere in things that are none of your business!' he shouted to poor Reese. That was the last straw. That will never, ever happen again. I made up my mind right then that I had to leave. Of course he stopped when I started screaming and sent Reese to his room. Later he apologized to me and I - I let him - make it up to me...I - I didn't want him to be suspicious....

Kaitlin wiped the tears that threatened to fall. Finished with her story she said, "So that brings me to today and why I am here. This morning, after Newt left for work, the four of us hastily packed as much as we could. I have very little money, only $500, and I need to get far, far away from here; somewhere Newt and his parent’s money can’t find us. Dr. Gentry, can you help us. Please..."

Go to Chapter 1

I appreciate any and all feedback. Thanks for reading!