Free Right to Life by Jack Ketcham

seeped away like water down the pipes and left her numb and empty.
        The pain returned too.
        Her breasts mostly. But also her back and shoulders and her ass pressed against the cold hard wood. There was no way to get comfortable inside the box, no way to fully relax her aching muscles. Inside the box, sleep came with a hammer in its hand or else it didn't arrive at all.
        Once again her life reduced itself to waiting.
        How many days? One? Two? Three now?
        When she finally heard footsteps cross the room moving in her direction she knew that they belonged to him and not to some deliverer. At best he was coming to feed her or ask if she needed the bedpan. At worst she'd be beaten again for some unknowable, infraction or put inside the headbox. She was resigned to all of it.
        She heard his fingers on the latch and his voice telling her to put on the blindfold and she did and then she was sliding out into the room again.
        "Stand up."
        She was always a little dizzy after being inside. She stood slowly and carefully, using her hands on the top of it to support her for a moment until she felt sufficiently steady.
        "Put this on."
        She felt fabric, cotton, press lightly against her stomach and she reached for it with both hands and hugged it to her, smelled the clean fresh scent of it. She unfolded it, turned it.
        "The other way. You got it wrong. That's the back."
        She turned it again.
        Clothes! He was giving her clothes!
        A dress!
        She pulled it on over her head and winced as it slid across her breasts but that was nothing to the sensation of being clothed again. It was probably a little baggy, a little bit big for her she thought and yes, it was, she knew as she began to button it. But the light thin material felt wonderful.
        A short-sleeve dress. She almost felt human again.
        "These too. They're yours."
        He handed her her shoes. The flats she'd worn to the clinic. Their familiarity tore at her as though they were of another life entirely, relics of some dimly familiar well-loved past. She leaned back against the box and slipped them on.
        "Thank you," she said.
        "You're welcome. Put your hands behind your back."
        He snapped the manacles together.
        "Come with me."
        He took her arm, firmly and not gently, and suddenly she was frightened again. But she did as he said and walked with him. There was nothing else she could do.
        "Where are we going?"
        "You don't question me, remember? You'll see."
         Maybe this is the end, she thought. Maybe they're going to do it now.
         End me.
         Kill me. Or let me go.
         No. Not possible.
        "Careful. There are stairs here."
        He led her up slowly. She counted the steps, trying to calm herself, trying to interrupt the circle of excitement and fear which looped into each other inside her. Neither excitement nor fear would do her any good. She counted sixteen wooden steps. They came to a carpeted landing. Fresh air swept cool around her ankles and she thought they must be standing by the back door, that it must be off to her left. Then he turned her to the right and moved her up yet another, slightly higher step and she was standing on a wood floor. This must be the kitchen or dining room area, she thought. She smelled faint cooking-smells, hamburger or something, almost overwhelmed by cleaning-smells, ammonia, bleach, and something like Windex or Fantasik.
        Simple, comfortable, familiar smells. Not the damp musty basement. They nearly brought her to tears.
        "Okay, slow now."
        He moved her a half-turn to the right and walked her fourteen steps straight ahead over a wood floor and stopped, took her by the shoulders and turned her around.
        "Sit."
        She bent her knees and reached down behind her with her hands until she found the base