Right to Life by Jack Ketcham

foetus in his upturned hand.
        She knew Kath to be the woman who'd followed them inside.
        She said nothing nor did she allow her eyes to register what she saw. She was not yet a week in his basement but already she'd learned how to mask her feelings unless those feelings involved pain and terror. Those she couldn't master.
        Daily over the next two weeks she was beaten on the X-frame. Sometimes blindfolded, sometimes inside the headbox. Kath had contrived a double-thick bib of old dishcloths for her to wear against the chafe of the box at her shoulderblades. The bottom layer was faded blue. The top was faded green.
        Sometimes the beatings were short, lasting only a matter of minutes, pro forma. Seemingly almost passionless. An exercise in power and no more. He would use a belt or a light crop.
        Other times they were endless. He would spend the night with her devising new ways to torment her as other men might sit in front of the television set nursing a beer. On these nights she could feel his excitement spreading like ozone through the basement air. There were occasions when she wore only the blindfold and could hear that he was masturbating. Light liquid slapping sounds followed by a groan.
        Her contempt for him was matched only by her need to conceal it.
        On the ninth day he seemed to realize that she could probably hear what he was doing and put rubber earplugs in her ears from then on.
        There were times when every orifice in her body was plugged except her nostrils. Ears, ass, mouth, vagina.
        He grew more inventive. Bound her in exotic ways. He hung her on the frame upside down and beat her until she nearly passed out from the blood rushing to her head. He held a heat-lamp inches from her skin and watched her skin redden and burn and watched her twist in pain. He poked her with knives, pins, meat-forks. He strangled her with his hands and when she passed out he waited and when she woke he strangled her again.
        Worst by far were his rages. She'd been told to control her bodily functions but one night it simply wasn't possible, she'd been on the rack too long and there was no bedpan in front of her so she held it as long as she could and then she just let go. Her relief at so doing ended when he came at her with the studded whip. He was very good with the whip and this time he targeted one place only, the delicate flesh of her armpits and whipped them until she could feel the blood ran down her sides all the way to the hip.
        He called her a whore and a cunt and a bitch and a pig and a useless cow and whatever else he could think of. Not just when he was hurting her. He used the words constantly. Conversationally. Reminding her that he could say and do anything he pleased.
        There were days she went twenty-four hours between meals. Her only drink was water. Her food consisted of greasy cheap tuna salad or American cheese sandwiches on white bread and canned vegetable soup. It never varied. She was not allowed to brush her teeth or brash her hair. She was not allowed to wash except those parts of her he had blistered or bloodied.
        She began to stink.
        Inside the long dark box where she stayed through most of the day she began to mark the time by marking temperatures. Mornings it was always cool. During the course of the afternoon the box would warm both from the basement temperature outside and her body inside and by mid-afternoon while they were still both at work she would be slick with sweat and reeking with her own thick musky smell and would stay that way until they got around to opening it. When they let her out they would leave the box open to air out. When she got in again the temperature would drop till morning and then begin to warm again.
        Her daily cycle.
        On the tenth day Stephen noticed the cat moving into the box while it lay open and she was on the X-frame. The cat had come to her some