Distant

She sat in her shabby rocking chair on the porch of the askew old farmhouse, holding an ice pack against her left temple. This time he did hit her harder than usual before he had finished the bottle of cheap whisky, and sank down unconscious on his bed.

Her eyes searched the snow covered mountain chain at the horizon. There, far away, so distant, and so unattainable it must be, the little green valley of peace and freedom. Her mother had often told her about it, sheltering her from the violent father.

Dad had sold her for a barrel of schnaps when she had been twelve years old to her husband, this mean bastard, more than twenty years older than her. That has been about two dozen years ago. She had stopped counting the beats and the rapes long time ago. But she never had stopped dreaming of that little paradise valley somewhere out there in the distant mountain chain.

Day by day she prayed for a chance to get away from here. She didn‘t pray to God, she already has lost all her faith in that phenomenon. She prayed to her mother who had passed away more than four years ago. But her situation seemed to be absolutely hopeless, it was a four hours journey to the next city and she had never learned to drive a car. He locked away the rifle every day, and he was nearly double her size, and strong, he could kill her with one of his giant paws.

One day a hurricane tore away the large square piece of corrugated iron that sheltered an old, deep and dried out well behind the house. He cursed and ranted the whole day long, since shortly before sunset, when he already had been rather drunk he grabbed the toolbox and shuffled to the well. As he had reached it he somehow lost his balance, stumbled and fell into the well, instinctively grasping the low stone curb with his fingers. Heavy rainfall has made the bricks very slippery, he increasingly lost his grip. She stood motionless in the back door of the farmhouse, watching, hearing with a heart as cold as ice, as the curses and verbal insults turned into desperate pleading to help him. He would completely change his behavior, he promised her, he would never beat or rape her again, he would let her free, bring her to town, help her building up a new existence…

She turned away and slowly walked into the dark bedroom. While she was packing his saddlebags she heard his last shrill scream. She saddled her little chocolate brown mare and headed slowly to the distant mountains that seemed to glow in the last violet rays of sun, to her and Mama’s dream of the little green valley of peace and freedom, and she did not take one look back…