Jack Ketcham - Right to Life

Which made him a little afraid of her.

Not that she'd get away somehow because that was damned unlikely and besides, the Organization stories were working, he could tell. No, you're afraid of her because she might just make you want to kill her one of these days just by being available for the killing and that would be very spontaneous and very much an escalation, wouldn't it?

Then he thought about the baby. It would be terrible to harm the baby. She was just beginning to show.

He felt sure she'd have made a good mother.

In some ways he actually admired her. She had guts and will and stamina. The will he'd have to break, was already breaking but he wanted to let her hold onto the stamina. She'd need it for what they had in mind.

He folded the sharp blade back into the Swiss Army knife and pulled out the corkscrew and when the shaking stopped finally he went to work on her the way he'd planned to.

Kath wished she could call Gail. Her best and oldest friend. They'd met way back in nursing school and stayed friends even though these days Gail lived in the City working at Bellevue. But Stephen was always afraid of somebody dropping by unexpectedly. She wasn't going to be allowed to encourage friendships for the duration. The duration was turning into a damned long time.

It wasn't fair.

She hated the isolation.

She thought that Sara wasn't the only one imprisoned here.

Sure she had work at the hospital to get her out of the house five days a week but she didn't really have any friends among the staff there. He wouldn't let her go to any meetings or rallies either. He didn't want them to be seen, he said, till it was over. So she was stuck with the house and the basement and the television and that was it.

He'd almost completely stopped fucking her. That was another thing.

On the sixth day she drove home from work in a blinding summer rainstorm and ran directly upstairs to run a good hot shower and change out of her drenched clothes and when she came back down toweling her hair, wanting to get a coke from the fridge, she saw that the door to the cellar was open. She felt a moment's panic thinking that somehow she'd managed to get out of the Long Box, to get free. Until she looked out the window and saw that Stephen's pickup was parked behind her own car in the driveway.

She walked downstairs and saw that he hadn't even bothered to change out of his work clothes which were just as wet as hers had been. Wet sawdust caked the legs and knees of his jeans.

He already had her out of the box and up on the X-frame and was beating her ass with a paddle. He had the paddle in one hand and his cock in the other and she turned and went upstairs. Grossed-out and furious at both of them.

She knew perfectly well why she was mad and disgusted with Stephen.

Her feelings for Sara were more complex.

On the one hand it was as though Sara were a kind of rival. He sure as hell had never run home to have sex with her five minutes after walking through the door.

But she was also aware that Sara was her savior too in a way. That if it weren't for Sara up there on the X-frame it would be her. And if her sex life was practically non-existent these days so were the kinky games he always needed to play.

So why was she so mad at her? Why so disgusted?

The disgust part was easy. The dull unwashed hair. The stink of sweat and sometimes urine. She could guess that the mad part was just plain jealousy. Jealousy over the baby she carried inside and jealous that he wanted her – wanted to use her in spite of the dirtiness and the smell. But she kept coming back to the fact that it was Sara or it was her up there and why in the world would anyone in her right mind be jealous of the way he was using her because it hurt for god's sake. It was fucking degrading and it hurt. It confused her.

Anyone in her right mind, she thought.

Maybe she was crazy. She'd considered it seriously from time to time.

Maybe you'd have to be crazy to live with him.

But she'd stuck thus far. She knew she'd play it through. She'd lie to Sara and befriend her – she was turning into a world-class liar – take her side in little things like the shower and the cat, talk to her quietly and seriously about the Organization. All of it an act. See where things went. That was what she'd do.

And then the oddest thing happened.

She hadn't wanted it. Stephen had kidded, cajoled, yelled and finally threatened so that eventually she gave in and went down and shed her clothes and straddled her and at first nothing was going on. Certainly Sara wasn't cooperating. Her tongue and lips just lay there under her wet and slack and then Kath started to move, not expecting much at first but doing it all on her own with no direction from Stephen and even with no cooperation coming from below soon she thought she was going to fucking explode, she was moving back and forth and side to side and directing it all herself, total power over her body and over Sara's, wholly in command of the pace and the action until finally she found herself shuddering, quivering in the grip of the most powerful orgasm of her entire life.

She couldn't believe it.

It only made her feelings all the more complicated. That this should happen with a woman. When she'd never even considered having sex with a woman before. And this particular woman, their captive, Stephen's captive and now in a way that was far more real than before, her own.

The night of the fourteenth day she waited until Stephen was asleep. She took the flashlight off its hook in the kitchen and walked quietly downstairs. She sat down in the chair and let her light play across the Long Box, annoyed with herself and uncomfortable with what thoughts and feelings had drawn her here. Annoyed with Sara and with Stephen too.

She could imagine her breathing inside the box. The rise and fall of her breasts. The slow small shift inside her belly.

Could imagine the cord like driftwood to which the baby clung, tossed in a rich warm sea.

It was only by accident that she found the equipment.

Months had passed and by then much had changed.

She knew who they were for one thing.

Stephen and Katherine Teach. Forty-six and forty-four respectively. They'd met seven years ago on a ward at St. Vincent's Hospital in Sussex, New Jersey – she knew where she was now too, a small rural town hours northwest of the City – where he was a patient and she was his day-nurse. He had nearly put his eye out with a chunk of wood when his power-saw hit a knot in a two-by-four. They'd dated. Married six months later.

Both were only children with no living parents. Kath was Catholic and Stephen was a Baptist though neither went to church much anymore. Stephen liked to brag that it didn't matter, he'd read the Bible six times over cover to cover including the begats, he was his own church. They liked action movies and comedies and Chinese food and pizza. They disliked housework completely. Especially doing the dishes. As though the remains of a meal were revolting to them. They had no discernable hobbies unless you counted the anti-abortion rallies and demonstrations they could no longer go to now that Sara was with them and you counted the Organization. They read only magazines – not even the newspaper. They got their news off the TV screen. Said it was easier.

They owned a CD player and never used it. Instead they watched TV.

Katherine was barren.

That was the word they used. Barren.

They'd always been saddened by this. They felt that a baby would solidify the bond between them. At least Kath did.

Nowadays she rarely spoke to Stephen.

So she learned all this from Kath. Who was lonely. Who was bored. Who spoke to her a lot.