Right to Life Read Online Free Page B

that too. On the vomiting. Kath had said the headbox was stifling and made her queasy in and of itself, never mind the pentothol.
        He slipped her wrists through the black leather manacles and pulled each of the straps tight and threaded the ropes through the silver rings attached. The ropes depended from the a pair of pulleys at the top of each arm of the brand-new X-frame he'd constructed for her. Taking the two ropes together he slowly and carefully hauled her up until only her feet rested on the floor, legs slightly bent beneath her. Her head lolled forward heavily so that the box now rested on her breastbone. That probably hurt but as yet, not enough to wake her. He tied the ropes off quickly to the the climbers' pitons hammered into the concrete floor and then stepped forward and slipped a small brass hook screwed into the headrest he'd attached to the X-frame through the corresponding eye at the back of the box so that her head would stay upright and take the weight off the back of her neck.
        He'd thought of everything.
        He stood back and looked at her. All his creation.
        You couldn't see her face and that was good. Control was important. And she was very pretty.
        He needed to control himself now.
        The only thing that remained at this initial stage was to finish undressing her but he'd wait until she woke for that and was able t fel the cold blade of the knife cutting away her slip and panties. That kind of control was very important too.
        Afterwards he and Kath could come down and have some dinner and watch her, see how she took it all and he could go over again with Kath what the next step was supposed to be so there'd be no fuck-ups, no misunderstandings. This he'd do daily. There was a progression of events to this that he needed to be sure Kath would follow. They could speak as freely down here in front of her as they could upstairs. Sound not only didn't get out of the box it didn't get in much either.
        

FOUR
        
         1:15 p.m.
        And now there was nothing in her life but terror.
        Her legs and arms were manacled and she knew what that meant. She'd read enough in papers and magazines. Seen enough on the evening news. She was in the hands of some sex freak and dear god, she was probably not the first. Not the way he'd worked this out. There was somebody out there beyond her own vivid dark who liked to hear screams and pleas and whimpers. Before they killed.
        Invariably they killed.
        She knew that too.
        She was aware of the terrible frail vulnerability of her body, of her cold nearly naked breasts, her exposed bare arms and legs against the scratchy wooden beams. Inside the box her eyes could not accommodate the dark. The heavy air was suffocating. She could smell her own breath. Sweat stung her eyes. She blinked to clear them and finally closed them while her body heaved with sobs that were wholly beyond her control wrenched from deep inside her. She heard her own quick gasps for breath. They never seemed to satisfied her aching lungs or still her pounding heart.
        She felt the heavy weight at her collarbones.
        The chafe of leather on wrists and ankles.
        Then the cold touch of metal just below her right wrist, sudden, seemingly out of nowhere. Felt it travel from wrist to elbow-joint and stop there. Then from elbow-joint to armpit, slowly, a sharp prick at the delicate flesh there of a knife or sharp scissors and then travelling again, exploring the slope of breast to pause and prick once more at her fear-swollen nipple, her body jerking back then and the blade moving down again sliding over her trembling stomach to her navel and stopping to poke her harder this time at the tender fleshy remains of what once had linked her to life and then moving on.
        She felt rough fingers graze her shoulder pulling away the strap of her slip and then felt that side go slack against her