Good Day to Die by Stephen Solomita Read Free Book Online

hopeless; despair producing despair. Still, there was nothing she could do about it. She was dealing with a world so foreign to anything she’d ever known it left her no point of entry, no grasp of its underlying principles. She knew she couldn’t manipulate this world, couldn’t change or mold its perfect madness.
    Becky came every day, unlocking the cabin door, calling a cheerful, “Well how are we doing today, Miss Lorraine?” Bringing the food Lorraine wolfed down, taking Lorraine to the outhouse, bathing her in the stream. As if she were tending a show dog in a kennel.
    Lorraine heard the first birdsong and knew morning was at hand. She wondered if the singing bird was a robin, the traditional “early bird” out for its morning worm. The song, a trill followed by a sharp staccato burst, was picked up by another bird, this one farther away. Then another and another.
    Within minutes, a dozen songs, each with the distinct voice of its author, hung in the air. Lorraine listened intently, recognizing only the coarse, distant scolding of the crows. She imagined the birds engaged in some kind of impossible aesthetic. Imagined them celebrating the glory of the infinite cosmos. Moved to song by the beauty around them.
    You have to do something.
    The words came unbidden. Came at odd moments, echoing internally, a command without a commander. Blotting out the birds’ celebration, the greater glory, the impossible aesthetic. Everything.
    You have to do something.
    She searched back through her life for pertinent data. Some relevant experience from which to draw a plan of action. She found nothing, of course. She had never been face-to-face with …
    The word that came to mind was evil. She knew the word was useless, even though it fit Becky and her Daddy-husband perfectly. What could you do against evil? Pray to God for relief? There was no priest to perform an exorcism. To drive the evil back into the eternal fires of Hell. This was not a movie, no matter how unreal it seemed.
    “I could make Becky love me.”
    Lorraine was so taken aback by the sound of her own voice that for a moment she failed to consider the significance of the words. But then, little by little, she came to understand that Becky was her only way out. Unless she decided to die.
    She knew she could choose death. Even though she didn’t have the courage to perform the physical act of suicide, she could simply wander into the forest until she was completely lost. Until she became trapped in mud or tumbled down the side of a mountain or fell into a frigid lake. It would amount to the same thing.
    I don’t want to die in the forest.
    Another unbidden thought. Followed quickly by a surge of emotion that left her hands trembling. Outside, rain began to fall, spattering on the leaves, the roof, the bare, packed earth surrounding the cabin. Lorraine felt she had an obligation to name the emotion that’d left her shaking, but her mind wandered to the trees outside her prison cell. Each morning, she passed beneath their branches when Becky led her to the outhouse. She couldn’t see them, of course, but the passage from sun to shade to sun was apparent enough. Now, she wondered if the trees were grateful for the rain that washed their leaves? If their roots shivered in anticipation? If they knew their own needs?
    But what’s the point of knowing your own needs if you can’t do anything to satisfy them? Of being a thirsty tree when you can’t move the twenty feet to a rushing stream?
    “I’ve got to pull it together.”
    Once again, she spoke aloud; once again the sound of her own voice startled her. But this time she didn’t allow herself to become distracted, resolving instead to begin by denying her helplessness. And her fear.
    There is a way out of here, she decided, and I’m going to find it.
    Her mind jumped to her kidnappers, to Becky and Becky’s Daddy. Apart from his frenzied attacks on that first night, she knew nothing about Daddy. Each