Free Alex by Pierre Lemaitre

as hard as she could, as though trying to smash the cage to pieces. Gradually, the cramp passed, but she knows that it had nothing to do with her efforts. The spasm will come back just as it went away. She has succeeded only in rocking the cage. When it starts to swing, it takes a long time to come to a standstill again. After a while it makes her stomach heave. Alex spent hours dreading that the spasm would come back. She monitors every part of her body, but the more she thinks about it, the more painful it becomes.
    In the rare moments when she sleeps, she dreams of prison, of being buried alive, or drowned; when it’s not the cramps, the cold, or the fear, it is the nightmares that wake her. Now, having moved only a few centimetres in the space of twenty or thirty hours, she is experiencing convulsions, as though her musclesare trying to move. These are reflex spasms over which she has no control; her limbs slam against the planks, she howls.
    She would sell her soul to be able to stretch out, to be able to lie down for an hour.
    On one of his first visits, using another rope, he hoisted a wicker basket up to the cage where it swung for a long time before finally coming to a halt. Though it was very close, Alex had to summon all her reserves of willpower, had to rip her hands pushing them between the slats just to grab part of the contents: a bottle of water and some dry dog food. Or maybe cat food. Alex didn’t stop to think; she wolfed it down. Only later did she wonder whether he had spiked it with something. She has started trembling again, but it’s impossible to know whether she is trembling from cold, from exhaustion, from thirst, from fear … The dog food doesn’t fill her up, it simply makes her more thirsty. She eats it only when the hunger gnaws at her. And then there’s the fact that she has to piss and everything else … At first, she felt ashamed, but what could she do? It splatters beneath the cage like the droppings of some giant bird. The shame quickly passed; it’s nothing compared with the pain, nothing compared with the dread of having to live like this for days on end, unable to move, to change her position, not knowing how long he is planning to keep her captive, not knowing whether he really intends to let her die in this crate.
    How long would it take to die like this?
    The first few times he came, she pleaded with him, she begged for forgiveness, she doesn’t know why, and once – it just slipped out – she even begged him to kill her. She had not slept for hours, the thirst was excruciating and, though she had chewed it for a long time, she had puked up the dog food, she stankof piss and vomit; being unable to move was driving her insane and in that instant death had seemed preferable to carrying on. She immediately regretted her words, because she does not want to die, not now – this is not how she imagined her life would end. She still has so much she wants to do. But it doesn’t matter what she says, what she asks: the man never replies.
    Except once.
    Alex was crying hard, she was exhausted, she could feel her mind starting to wander, her brain becoming a free electron, with no self-control, no ties, no bearings. He had lowered the crate to take a photograph. For perhaps the thousandth time Alex said: “Why me?” The man looked up, as though the question had never occurred to him. He leaned over. Their faces a few centimetres apart, separated only by the slats.
    “Because … because you’re you.”
    For Alex this was a bolt out of the blue. It was as though everything stopped, as though God had flicked a switch; all at once she felt nothing, not cramp, nor thirst, the ache in her belly, not her bones, frozen to the marrow, her mind was so focused on what he was about to say.
    “Who are you?”
    The man only smiled. Maybe he’s not accustomed to saying much. Maybe these few words exhausted him. Rapidly he hoisted the cage, grabbed his jacket and left without looking back