So I want the cursor (mouse pointer) to disappear off of the screen after a few seconds but reappear when I hit the escape button, is this possible? if so how would I write the code for this? (I want there to be around a 3 second delay before the cursor vanishes)
The easiest way to make the cursor vanish is to use this. (Seems to be buggy in editor sometimes but it does work in published builds.) The only problem you might have is if you want a fade-out effect for the vanishing.
To invoke this vanishing you could just use Monobehaviour's Invoke method.
I assume you want to trigger this vanishing when the user is not doing anything with the mouse. If he/she has done anything then call CancelInvoke on the Monobehaviour though be aware that the function cancels all invoked functions on the monobehaviour if you'd have more for other stuff...but for this vanishing invokation you won't need but one so you should be fine.
And finally to actually call the invocation related methods you could either use the mouse events, or by checking mouse values via the Input class.