Right to Life

He stood up and didn't recognize her at all. Who the fuck was this woman? Who did she think she was? The woman was smirking at him, a superior look on her face and that angered him further and he went to the worktable for a pair of pliers. He was going to work on the nipples, open them up with pliers so that when the time came the baby could feed not just on mother's milk but blood too which was richer and more nourishing and suddenly he was stepping into a huge wide open field in the middle of the night and there were stars all around above and he felt very small and very much younger and very afraid of being alone at night under such a crowded sky.

And then the pliers were gone from his hand he was lying in his bed asleep next to Kath, something tormenting his sleep, something forgotten or left undone that was making him sweat and toss in a halfsleep, on the cusp of wakefulness, trying to remember what it was he'd omitted to do when suddenly he felt sething hit the window-screen behind him and push it out from the inside, something escaping and he thought, the cat, goddammit and he bolted upright in his bed expecting to see exactly that, the cat escaping through the window but all he saw was the fluttering curtain, pale white lace drifting slowly, hanging in the summer air.

THREE WEEKS THIRTEEN

On the sixth day of her captivity she recognized him. It was a gesture he made, holding his arm out, his hand palm-up toward the X-frame. Directing her there. In the gesture and in the smug self-satisfied smile she saw the man on the street in front of the clinic the day of her examination, the pink plastic foetus in his upturned hand.

She knew Kath to be the woman who'd followed them inside.

She said nothing nor did she allow her eyes to register what she saw. She was not yet a week in his basement but already she'd learned how to mask her feelings unless those feelings involved pain and terror. Those she couldn't master.

Daily over the next two weeks she was beaten on the X-frame. Sometimes blindfolded, sometimes inside the headbox. Kath had contrived a double-thick bib of old dishcloths for her to wear against the chafe of the box at her shoulderblades. The bottom layer was faded blue. The top was faded green.

Sometimes the beatings were short, lasting only a matter of minutes, pro forma. Seemingly almost passionless. An exercise in power and no more. He would use a belt or a light crop.

Other times they were endless. He would spend the night with her devising new ways to torment her as other men might sit in front of the television set nursing a beer. On these nights she could feel his excitement spreading like ozone through the basement air. There were occasions when she wore only the blindfold and could hear that he was masturbating. Light liquid slapping sounds followed by a groan.

Her contempt for him was matched only by her need to conceal it.

On the ninth day he seemed to realize that she could probably hear what he was doing and put rubber earplugs in her ears from then on.

There were times when every orifice in her body was plugged except her nostrils. Ears, ass, mouth, vagina.

He grew more inventive. Bound her in exotic ways. He hung her on the frame upside down and beat her until she nearly passed out from the blood rushing to her head. He held a heat-lamp inches from her skin and watched her skin redden and burn and watched her twist in pain. He poked her with knives, pins, meat-forks. He strangled her with his hands and when she passed out he waited and when she woke he strangled her again.

Worst by far were his rages. She'd been told to control her bodily functions but one night it simply wasn't possible, she'd been on the rack too long and there was no bedpan in front of her so she held it as long as she could and then she just let go. Her relief at so doing ended when he came at her with the studded whip. He was very good with the whip and this time he targeted one place only, the delicate flesh of her armpits and whipped them until she could feel the blood ran down her sides all the way to the hip.

He called her a whore and a cunt and a bitch and a pig and a useless cow and whatever else he could think of. Not just when he was hurting her. He used the words constantly. Conversationally. Reminding her that he could say and do anything he pleased.

There were days she went twenty-four hours between meals. Her only drink was water. Her food consisted of greasy cheap tuna salad or American cheese sandwiches on white bread and canned vegetable soup. It never varied. She was not allowed to brush her teeth or brash her hair. She was not allowed to wash except those parts of her he had blistered or bloodied.

She began to stink.