Hillary_Tail of the Dog Read Online Free Page A

blocked by something being shoved into the box through the open lid. In the faint light, it looked like a bag. The person was shaking something from the bag into the box.
    Food? Hillary thought, and hoped it was. She had begun to get hungry. Right about now a hamburger would be great. I’d even settle for a piece of bread, a cracker, anything.
    Instead of a meal, Hillary felt tiny legs scampering over her legs, up her thighs, along her stomach, up her chest and toward her face.
    She screamed as she thrashed her body about, trying her best to get the creepy crawlers off of her. She hated insects more than anything. She couldn’t identify exactly what was crawling on her, but she imagined spiders, cockroaches, beetles and ants. When she was about five years old, she was unfortunate enough to fall into the mound of fierce red ants. They quickly crawled up her body, biting her several times before her mother responded to her ear-piercing screams and pulled her up, hosed her down and applied first aid to twelve red, painful bites. That was years ago, but Hillary remembered it as if it happened yesterday. It was one of the most painful experiences of her life.
    Now, as she squirmed within the cramped confines of the box, she knew she had no other choice. She didn’t care if her captor caught her or killed her—she had to get out of there. This was more torture than she could bear...so she thought.
    She pushed up at the lid as hard as she could. It went up another few inches as she fought to sit upright and lunge out of there. Her captor dropped the bag in the box and slammed the lid down— hitting Hillary’s head in the processing and crushing three of her fingers under the weight of the lid.
    Hillary screamed in agony as her head crashed into the side of the box. She did not lose consciousness, but wished she had. The intense pain from her crushed fingers grew more and more unbearable by the second—making the ant bites she sustained feel like a tickle in comparison.
    Hillary’s vicious captor pulled the lid up an inch higher and then slammed it back down on her fingers before she had a chance to move them. Hillary could hear bones crushing and feel skin tearing. She was grateful that she could not see them. Her screams of protest and pain were ignored as her captor began pulling at the fingernails on her crushed fingers.
    Hillary could only whimper in pain, praying that she would just pass out. She was beyond praying for rescue. She just wanted to die. It was amazing how quickly the will to live dissipated when pain became so intolerable.
    She could feel her captor tearing pieces of her nails off bit by bit until the last shred of nail was off. Her captor then dug something sharp into the freshly sore, soft, sensitive center of the spot where one of her nails used to be. The pain was excruciating. Hillary howled out in pain.
    “ Please ,” she sobbed, “p lease stop hurting me. Why are you doing this to me ?”
    Her captor remained silent and continued squeezing, scraping and poking at Hillary’s deep pink, bleeding fingers. She tried desperately to pull her hand away, but it was caught firmly under the lid and would not budge.
    At last she could no longer feel her fingers. She didn’t know if they went numb or if her captor cut them off, but she was grateful that she could no longer feel the pain. Her gut-wrenching yells quelled to soft, piteous moans.
    Her captor opened the lid again and shoved what remained of Hillary’s fingers back into the box. Her mutilated hand fell upon her left knee. The light went off and Hillary was engulfed by blackness. Insects continued to scurry about, crawling up her pant legs, on her neck, up her sleeves. Hillary lay motionless, with her eyes closed, ignoring it all. Her stomach began to grumble. It was the only noise she could hear now, the last sound she heard before becoming one with the