Rosetta Valencia Rivera stumbled along the beach toward the village lights. The sand sucked at her feet like Satan's hand reaching up from hell to drag her down.
She fingered the silver cross that hung around her neck. “Please, God!” she cried out in prayer, “protect me from this evil!”
The sound of her voice was stolen from her lips by the roar of the breaking waves. She had lost both her sandals. The thin white cotton dress that her mother had washed and pressed a hundred times was dirty and torn at the neck line. One of her young breasts was exposed and she held the top back in place as she wiped tears from her face.
There were no clouds in the sky on this night. Venus hung above the horizon in the west. Phosphorescent algae rode the gentle white waves that broke against the beach. A soft warm breeze blew in off the Pacific and the air smelled of fish and coconuts and Asia thousands of miles away.
It was one of those nights that normally would have filled Rosetta’s heart with joy as she walked on the warm sand and imagined that the stars were a million radiant angels descending from heaven.
Tonight, though, she saw none of this as her heart pounded in her chest.
“Help me God! Forgive me for the shame I have brought on my family!”
In the pale moonlight there was movement in the shadows. Rosetta tripped and fell. She scrabbled forward on her hands and knees.
Then, close by a whisper in her ear said her name and someone grabbed her by the hair.
“Don't hurt me!” she sobbed. “Please don't hurt me!”
It was the last thing human ears would hear Rosetta say. If God heard her prayer He did not answer. Perhaps He was busy with other matters. Or perhaps the brutal death of one young woman in a far off corner of the world, where nothing important ever happened, was too insignificant an event for His attention.
Perhaps He didn't care.
Perhaps He didn't exist.