Marie sat in a small ball in her hiding place. She was curled behind a lilac bush in the corner of her spacious backyard. The light from the porch did not reach her, and she felt a little safer. She could hear Kim bellowing her name as he searched the house for her in a rage. She had sneaked out to her haven when he had paused in his assault on her to grab a beer from the fridge. Beating up your wife is hard, thirsty work. She tried to make herself smaller, and she moved closer into the dark shadow of the corner. She knew if he found her, she would be in a world of hurt. She closed her eyes, and tried not to listen to the bellows of rage coming from inside her house.

Marie rubbed the ache in her upper right arm. The cast had only come off last week, and the muscles were still weak from not being used. She had been rather thankful for the cast. Kim had not touched her the entire six weeks it had been on. He had resorted to some rather nasty verbal abuse, but after so long; she was able to tune out the worst of it. She remembered the suspicious looks the nurses had given her as she explained she had broken her arm in a tumble down the basement stairs. It had been the truth. She just didn’t tell them that she had a little help in the fall. Kim had been adoring and supportive in the ER and since she had never been to this particular hospital, they didn’t report the accident to the police.

She looked up at the house, and saw that the lights were off in most of the house. She could see the flicker of the TV in the den, and hoped Kim had settled in front of it, and would forget about her. She knew that if she stayed out of sight when he was in this frame of mind, that eventually he would fall asleep in front of the TV and she would be safe for a little while. If she was lucky, he would not remember in the morning.

She hugged her knees a little tighter and tried to remember what had set him off this time. Oh yeah. She had made the spaghetti sauce a little spicier than was to his liking, or so he said. She had made it exactly the same way she had a dozen times before, and he always raved about how good it was. That was the scariest part of the whole nightmare she was trapped in. She never knew what would set him off. If she said anything in her defense, he hit her. If she was quiet, he hit her. Tears rolled unnoticed from her eyes, and she felt so lost. She was alone in the world and at his mercy. She felt like no one cared. She reached up to rub her eyes, and winced at the pain. Her right eye was swollen almost shut and she knew it would be a dark purple color by morning. Her lip was swollen and the cut on it had almost stopped oozing blood. The face she would see in the mirror in the morning was one she was seeing all too frequently. Sighing, she put her head on her knees, and tried to remember how she had gotten into this mess.