Right to Life

She got up and walked over to his chair and bent over and kissed him. He smelled like tuna and Old Spice aftershave. She glanced at Sara Foster five feet away, still breathing hard but managing to control it, a bead of sweat rolling down off her collarbone from inside the box. She thought that for a woman her age Sara had a damn good body. Her pubic hair was bikini-waxed, unlike her own. She thought she'd like to get that done someday but there was never enough money around for extravagances like a bikini wax. The tan-line from her two-piece was very clear. Forget about the clumsy headbox and she was very attractive. Made her feel sort of dumpy, tell the truth.

All this and fertile, too, she thought.

She wondered if Stephen was going to keep his promise about not having sex with her. Not real sex, anyway. If he'd be able to do that.

He'd better.

"How long you going to leave it on?"

"Well, I've got to get her out of the cuffs in about an hour or she's going to have problems with circulation. But by then she'll be hurting and compliant enough so that she won't be hard to handle. I figure we'll just tie her to the chair here and you can hold her head still for me while I take off the box and blindfold her from behind. I don't want her to see us yet. I want us to stay anonymous. We'll turn off the lights and leave her an hour or so and then I want to come back and try to feed her. I'm betting she refuses. So then we put her up on the rack again and I'll give her her first beating. Show her what things are going to be like from now on. She'll get the idea."

"What if she doesn't? Refuse I mean."

He grinned. "If you were in her shoes, would you accept food from us right now? But even if she does, fine. Establishes dependency. Either way we can't lose."

She collected his empty plate off his lap. The cat tried to nuzzle her leg but she stepped away.

Dumb animal.

"Are you going to stay down here a while?"

He nodded. "I want to make sure she's basically okay, that she doesn't throw up inside the box or anything. I'll hang around. But you go on ahead. I'll give you a yell when I need you. If Sandy calls let me know."

"Okay."

She walked upstairs through the doorway that led to the dining room and kitchen and put the plates in the sink and rinsed them and stacked them in the dishwasher. Outside the window over the sink a pair of jays were harassing a small flock of sparrows attempting to feed by the cherry tree next to the garage, diving at them from the white birch on the opposite side of the lawn. Scattering them but making no real effort to feed. Just flying back to the birch and perching there until the sparrows returned and then diving back down to scatter them again. Seemingly just for the hell of it. Or maybe it was the sparrows themselves the jays were after.

Were bluejays predatory? She didn't know.

Nowadays, who wasn't?

***

In the basement he thought of all the things – the things he would do to her before she broke, all those things which would make her break in the course of time. It would take time he knew and that was fine because the good part was in the breaking. Once the will to resist had disappeared they were like herd animals, like cattle, without motivation other than to go on living with a minimum of pain. The pleasure was in the taming of the will and the mastery of the spirit and he was only in the second true hour of that, the second true hour of all that lay ahead yet already h hard-on was irresistible so he grasped it in his warm calloused hand and looked at her breathing flesh just a few feet away and stroked and stroked.

The cat sat watching him. The cat made him uncomfortable.

He wished it would go away.

When he was finished he went to the sink to wash the scum off his hand and remove the smell of his body and sat down and gazed at her again.

Screw HBO. He had his own Original Movie. Right in front of him.

It was going to go on and on.

FIVE

5:25 p.m.

"I don't want it," she said. "How many times do I have to tell you? Please. Just let me out of here. Why can't you just leave the blindfold, let me get dressed and drive me back where you found me? Or anywhere. My god, I'm not going to tell anybody. How can I? I don't even know who you are or where I am!"

"Eat your sandwich," he said.

"Please. I can't. Just the smell of it's making me sick!"

"When I tell you to do something you do it. I don't care what it is. You understand?"

"You want me to throw up? Is that what you want?"

"I don't care what you do as long as you do what I say and eat the sandwich. Now take a bite."

He held it under her nose.

Tuna salad.