Valentina's last steps.

The distance between Valentina Perez and unknown sanctuary, mere feet, yet a lifetime travelled. A barren desert of dread and torment, now her stage. This, a naked performance watched by the barrel of a smoking rifle in the nosebleeds. Before her, a makeshift barricade that had until this time only harboured in her psyche.

She had dreamt of this occasion for an eternity, limping forward with unwavering determination where the lesser had fallen. A mother, a soldier of endurance, a broken chess piece in a game of survival.

Numerous acts before witnessed a different performance, a daughter, a doting husband, and a loving father. Red roses beset lush greenery that was her sanctum, her place of wonder, her utopia. Her modest home stacked in rows like plastic monopoly houses. Ripped away by blind greed of the pigs that sought to press the button, flick the light switch, snatch away everything she had. What remains are a few, starving in belly and hope, trudging the same stage in the belief of an encore.

‘You can do this Valentina.’

‘Run Valentina, run away.’

‘Mummy, why didn’t you save me.’

Words echoing through her broken mind screams battering her soul.

She gasps, the searing light from the sun burning her eyes, the sound of the vulture upon high waiting for her to fall, to pick at her bones. The sound of the guard’s boot scraping along the coarse ground sends dread and optimism through her. Is this man her saviour or the reaper? She stares at him. His poker face offers nothing.

Trembling, mopping at the filthy bloodstained rags that drape her gaunt flesh as if to present herself to a gratified audience. Moving forward, treading the boards, in this the ultimate act. Her ripped flesh no longer a bargaining chip for mouthfuls of adulation. There will be no flowers cast to her bruised and battered feet, for this farewell performance is absolute.

She reaches into the pocket of a dead man’s jeans. Cloth she yanked from a maggot infested corpse to cover the gangrenous gash two inches above her knee from the circling vultures. In her hand, a heart shaped locket, she pushes on the clasp. Valentina’s jaded eyes met by a miniature portrait of herself and her daughter. She gasps, running her finger across the vision. This precious memory encased in gold her sole reason to prevail. A single portrait of love stolen will now serve as her last bargaining chip.

Beyond the gate, unknown, behind the reaper. The guard grins, sliding his sweaty palms against his rifle. Valentina hangs her head, observing her feet as they trudge closer, her toes ploughing the sandy surface. Her mind sent spiralling into reverse, to a time before, a cherished era. Visions of her daughters’ tender skin as she pushes her hands into the sand. The melody she exhales, a giggle as she squeezes the soft golden powder between her tiny fingers. The expression in her innocent eyes, glowing at her mother, coveting nothing more than affirmation. Her last screams echoing through the black choke and fire, her scorched corpse, her mother’s final keepsake.

Rosa, her rose, would have been eight years old in three sunsets. A name and body now, a memory locked away in a box deep within her Valentina’s heart. Remorse, mourning, emotions gifted to the few.

Her left foot pushes forward in the grate. The fear long gone, the bullet in the guard’s rifle, a medicine to cure her suffering. Valentina lifts her head, the gate opens, a click her final conscious sound as the locket falls from her palm and crashes into the dust. The curtain falls.

The end.