Belt and Buckle

"Clear up this mess before I get back or you'll answer to my belt" He slammed the door.
It was no idle threat. She felt the raised welts of skin in sinuous mounds across her back. She felt again in her mind the searing pain that had shot through her as those paths were laid down, now a maze of tracks. A superficial healing that buried the true injuries.

When they had first buckled themselves in to life at the farm it had been a lovers nook but over the years their entanglements had become less about love and more about rage. Their life was hard and full of blame. Hope was her only salvation. Hope of change or hope of escape, she didn't much care which.

She took the tin bucket to the well and pumped the water up from the cool depths of the earth saying the verse she had heard in church over and over to her self for comfort, 'trees do bend though straight and tall'. She could live through this diet of silverfish and chalk, endless chores and toil, so long as there was hope. That's what she told herself anyway.

The pump frothed and bloomed, filling the bucket with water clear as the rising moon and she dragged it into the kitchen where the eggs had dropped to the floor. As she wrung the cloth she saw her reddened blue-veined hands, work worn, weary, chapped and briefly mourned the Lily-white smoothness that had been theirs.

She let the water trail serpentine free onto the flagstone before it was constrained and brought into check by the lines and order of the mortared edges. Oh, to be free to cavort like water without boundaries. She dreamed of the freedoms she would like to enjoy. Feeling resentful and rebellious all at once she threw the cloth to the floor and strode to the pantry. The brown bottle uncorked, she poured the beer into a glass revealing it a lightbulb of translucent Amber. She felt strength in her righteousness. She could fight this battle. She would not live in fear any longer.

She raised the glass to her lips as the latch clicked up on the door. She had made it worse again. The gnarled muscles in his neck stood out against the reddening skin as he strode towards her removing his belt.  The glass splintered as it hit the floor and she knew she would never find freedom. She could not have the buckle without the strap.