Read Right to Life for Free Online

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