Jack Ketchum - Right to Life

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.

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.

She wasn’t lying about vomiting. She felt like a drunk at the end of a long night on sweet cheap wine. Waves of nausea rolled through her, making her sweat. It was worse than being inside the box. She shook her head side to side, trying to escape the reek of it. It was all she could do. The leather manacles were attached tight to the arms and legs of the chair. There was a rope around her shoulders and another around her waist.

“Please!”

She began to cry again beneath the blindfold. The blindfold her only garment now. How long and how often could you cry before it was impossible to cry anymore? Did tears have a physical limit? She hoped they did. Like her nudity the tears shamed her.

He shoved the sandwich roughly to her closed lips. It crumbled. Cold clammy bits of bread and tuna falling across her chest and thighs. Some of it clung to her lips. She sputtered it away.

He sighed. She heard a plate set down on a table. He walked around behind her.

She felt the rope around her waist fall free and then the one around her shoulders. He drew them off her.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “I guess this isn’t working. I thought maybe you’d sort of get into all this. Some people do, you know.” He sighed again. “I guess we’ll just take you back like you say. You sure you won’t tell? I mean, you promise?”

Some people get into this? Was he crazy?

“I won’t. I swear.”

“You remember what we look like?”

“No. I mean, it was so fast. How could I?”

He seemed to think about it.

“Good. Okay. I guess we’ll do it then. Too bad though.”

One by one the manacles fell free from the chair legs. She felt a sudden surge of hope. Maybe if he was crazy, he was also crazy enough to take her out of here. Let her go. Give her up. Or even if he had something else in mind, something she didn’t even like to think about, there still might be a chance to get free. Everything, every hope, began with getting out of here. Beyond that she’d take her chances. It occurred to her that he could kill her just as easily here as anywhere. Easier in fact.

She was healthy and strong. Anything but this she might possibly deal with.

She felt something brush her ankle. Suddenly wet then smooth and soft. She jumped.

“What’s that?”

“The damn cat. Don’t worry. Hey! Outa here!”

He released the manacles from the chair arms. She moved her wrists and jangled the rings.

“Aren’t you going to take these off?”

“In a minute. First I have to go upstairs and get you some clothes. I sort of ruined the ones you were wearing, you know?” He laughed. “Got to make sure you don’t try to run away on me in the meantime. Stand up.”

He took her hand. His was hard and calloused. Not a big hand but definitely a laborer’s hand.

“Come with me. Over here. Nice and slow. Be careful.”

He led her blind across the room. Then he stopped her and raised her hand and snapped it to a ring on the X frame. Suddenly she was scared again.

“No, wait. You said…”

“Just for a minute. While I get you some clothes.”

He raised her other hand and attached that too so that she was facing the frame, arms spread wide above her. She heard him step away. At least her legs were free, she thought. Not like last time. For a moment there was only silence.

She heard a whistling sound and fire climbed her shoulder.

She jumped and screamed. The pain settled slowly into a stinging glow, a thousand tiny pinpricks along a fireline of hurt.

“Fooled you,” he said.

Then suddenly the blows were coming furiously, fast and hard across her back and buttocks and arms, the tender flesh of her underarms, across the backs of her legs and thighs, then even her breasts and stomach as she tried to twist away, the whip finding the same burning places over and over, uncanny, lighting them with bright new pain like lines of bee stings, like lines of biting ants, no matter how hard she tried to evade him, her wrists burning too scraped raw as she twisted inside the manacles, and whatever he was using it was bloodying her, she could feel the wetness inside the pain that was nothing whatever like the feel of sweat though she was sweating too, every muscle straining, bruising herself as she jerked and twisted against the heavy boards of the X frame. She could hear him grunt with the exertion and her own gasps for breath, the blows crack-crack-crack-crack like pistol shots in her ears and it was like there were two of him, three of him, four of him, coming at her from everywhere at once.

Ah ah ah ah ! she heard and it was her own voice leaping startled out of her at the fall of each blow, mixed with a high wining’ keen and that belonged to her too though she’d never heard her voice or any voice make a sound like that. She could take no more no more and she twisted from yet another blow to her anguished shoulders and the whip found her breast again burning across it like a laser cutting deep and PLEEEEEESE! she screamed, not in protest nor even begging but a prayer to the grim gods of pain, the gods of the body’s disaster.

He stopped. She heard him breathing behind her.

“You’ll get that every time you disobey. Each and every time. And worse,” he said.

From her calves on up her body trembled from the sheer effort of standing. Somehow she found a voice.

“Why? Why are you doing this to me? What did I do to you? I didn’t do anything.”

“Oh. You’re innocent? Is that it?”

“I…”

“Let me tell you something, Sara.”

She started at hearing her name. Almost as though he’d hit her again.

“That’s right, I know who you are. And I didn’t just lift your name off your driver’s license either. I know plenty about you. But we’ll get to all of that later. Let me tell you something. The only innocent on God’s green earth is an infant, Sara. A baby. Some people would say an unborn baby. But I’d extend that to, say, the first six months of life or so. In my own opinion. What’s your feeling on the subject?”

“I… I don’t know. I…”

“Let me ask you something. What were you going to do with your unborn child? Your baby. Your innocent…” He laughed. “I know perfectly well what you were going to do with him. You were going to let some fucking jew doctor kill him and flush him down the toilet. Now that’s real nice. I don’t think that makes you exactly an innocent yourself, do you? I honestly don’t think so. Plus you had to do a little fancy fucking in order to get yourself knocked up the first place, didn’t you? And I don’t see any wedding ring on your finger. So you tell me. Who’s innocent here?”