Sanctuary

Ella ran, not looking back, bare feet pounding the pavement, dodging the dog shit, glass and other debris. Heart racing, breath catching, she headed west, trying to keep a clear head and a picture of her destination in mind. Refuge, sanctuary, pounding a rhythm through her brain. She darted into a patch of woodland and her pace slowed. It was dark, she needed to move carefully. Something scurried over her feet and she almost screamed. She trod on something sharp, a twig perhaps. The pain was almost welcome, it cleared her head, helped her to focus.

Ella stopped and stood for a moment, listening to the sounds of the night. To her left the soft, gentle shuffling of a small animal, up above the hoot of an owl seeking his supper. Behind her nothing. That was good, or was it? Did it mean he would be waiting for her, knowing exactly where she would run to? Or did it mean she had actually ended him, done what she had dreamed of throughout the long years of misery and torture. Ella knew it was wrong to think or even dream of such a thing, yet devising his death in so many terrible ways had kept her going. For some women it was shopping, losing their minds having baby after baby that got them through the bad times. But for Ella and her bad times that had started so soon after she got married, it was imagining her husband dead.

Reaching the edge of the woods, Ella looked out across the field just making out the lines of the weatherboard church in the distance. The field itself was full of tall grass, like a Stephen King novel. As a child, she had lost herself in that field more than once, daydreaming of the day her prince would come, while her mother yelled herself hoarse trying to find her. Afterwards, as dusk approached and she emerged from the grass, there would always be a beating. She would sit, arms hugging her skinny legs, dreaming of the man who would one day whisk her away from daily chores and punishment.

Ella remembered the day he came. Not through the grass, but in a shiny, new automobile. She had just turned fifteen. He jumped down from the motor and ran a hand through his glossy black hair. Ella was sitting on the veranda and he smiled a dazzling smile as she rose to her feet. She ran inside the house to fetch her mother. They were married just weeks later, in the weatherboard church and moved into a house not far away. Six months passed happily, then Sean lost his job, his car, his mind. The depression outside the walls become depression inside them too. The water turned to whisky, the caresses to blows, the kind words to a deluge of insults. Ella survived, barely, for almost ten years before a switch twitched inside her brain and she lashed out. Taking the biggest knife from the block that had been a wedding present, she slashed and stabbed. She would never forget the shocked expression on his bloated face, not so handsome anymore.

Ella strode through the grass, ignoring the pain in her feet. She stood in front of the church and wondered how she had ever thought this would provide a refuge for someone like her. Going to the back of the building, she found some gasoline, then reaching into the pocket of her dress, ignoring the blood stains, Ella withdrew a box of matches. It had been a dry summer and the church caught like a tinderbox. Stripping off the dress, Ella threw it onto the pyre along with the knife. Then she walked away wearing just the extravagantly expensive underwear she had bought with the last of Sean's whisky fund.