Emily Wilstrom fled the house in darkness. It was the early hours of the morning, although she did not dare check the time. Slipping silently from her bed, she laced her sneakers, grabbed the bag she’d prepared, and crept softly over creaking floorboards to the back screen-door where, with trembling fingers, she carefully lifted the hook and slid out into the night.
Then she ran.
She was a pale apparition flying silently through the night. The house had been her grave. A prison and death to her. Escape was her only option - if she ever hoped to live.
Before she left, she had made sure he slept soundly. Her husband could not wake. He must not wake while she was leaving him. The thought of that giant man raging like a wild bear after her … and if he caught her … his monstrous hands could rip her to shreds. She’d experience the violence of those powerful vice-like hands too many times – with broken bones and hundreds of bruises to prove it.
She knew she had one single chance to escape. He would never allow her a second try. The tiny blue tablets she’d crushed into his ice-cream would hopefully give her that chance. They would send him tumbling into a deep abyss of somnolence for the hours it took her to escape. Although, she wasn’t completely sure he’d eaten much of his dessert and, as she hadn’t wanted to hurt him, the dosage was probably insufficient. Yet it was a risk she accepted.
Emerging into the cool darkness, she sensed great danger. Its threat was attached to everything: in every sound she made, in every second she was delayed, in every mistake that occurred. It filled the air she breathed and sounded with the chirping of the crickets: dan-ger, dan-ger, dan-ger, dan-ger.
Her legs were wings flying blindly through a dark monochrome world, lifting her up and over the brick retaining wall at the rear boundary of their property, then along the pale ribbon of gravel which snaked and knotted its way across the open paddocks she knew so well, towards the yawning black opening of the forest.
A cold breeze rustled leaves high up in the trees, and it whispered through the grass: h-u-r-r-y, h-u-r-r-y…. And, hidden in the night shadows, an owl hooted a warning of threat - a repeated motif which sounded and echoed and dissolved again into silence: go--go--go …
Her arms swung ahead of her darting body, pulling away at branches and vines in her way, and her feet pounded against the hard loose dirt of the path along which she strained to see in the dim dripping blue light which filtered through the dense gnarled canopy above. Desperately, she navigated her way around boulders and fallen branches which littered the ground, and she ignored the sharp clawing fingers of thorned hawthorn branches which reached out and grabbed at her limbs, scratching them so deeply that warm blood oozed in trickling rivulets down her skin into her hands and socks. Terror numbed the pain, and her only awareness of discomfort was the burning she felt in her chest, as she ran and ran past the point of exhaustion - gasping and gulping in mouthfuls of cold air as she continued on and on.
And, through it all, her mind repeated one single focused command: E-s-c-a-p-e.
After more than an hour of running, she came to a clearing in which the moon shone more brightly, with the trees more sparsely situated around a rushing body of water. Finally, she stopped and took in a deep cautious breath of relief. She stepped closer to the beautiful flowing river, watching the moonlight gleam in dancing petals of blue across its surface. Nearby, her husband’s fishing boat was chained and locked to the trunk of a eucalyptus tree. With shaking fingers, she reached deep inside her pocket and pulled out the key to the lock. She had made a copy of the key months earlier, knowing that without a car and being so far from town, this was her only real hope to escape and travel the long distance quickly.
Using the key, she released the chains which bound the boat to this hellish place of isolation and danger. She then pushed the boat out into the water, threw in her bag, and jumped in after it, grabbing the oars but letting the strong current do most of the work for now.
As she caught her breath, she enjoyed the budding glow of freedom and safety which began to stir in her soul. She’d planned the many steps that were to follow, for the start of her new life, but the hardest part was now behind her. She knew that from here she would be okay.
Smiling with relief, she reflected on the night. She had escaped.
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