If the escapes don't work properly, use an array of chars?
char x[] = {'E', 'x', 'a', 'm', 'p', 'l', 'e', 7, 'C', 't', 'r', 'l', '-', 'x', 0};
printf("The string: [%s]\n", x);
(assuming \a means Ascii 7...)
P.S.: In assembler, one would use chr$("Example", 7, "Ctrl-X", 0)
Is there a C equivalent to that syntax?