Misery

of him. Then she just stood there, looking down at him out of her paper-white face, the cords on her neck standing out, one vein pulsing in the center of her forehead. Her hands snapped open, hooked shut into solid rocklike fists, then snapped open again.
“You… you… you dirty bird!”
“What — I don’t — “ But suddenly he did, and his entire midsection first seemed to turn hollow and then to entirely disappear. He remembered where her bookmark had been last night, three-quarters of the way through. She had finished it. She knew all there was to know. She knew that Misery hadn’t been the barren one, after all; it had been Ian. Had she sat there in her as-yet-unseen-by-him parlor with her mouth open and her eyes wide as Misery finally realized the truth and made her decision and sneaked off to Geoffrey? Had her eyes filled with tears when she realized that Misery and Geoffrey, far from having a clandestine affair behind the back of the man they both loved, were giving him the greatest gift they could — a child he would believe to be his own? And had her heart risen up when Misery told Ian she was pregnant and Ian had crushed her to him, tears flowing from his eyes, muttering “My dear, oh, my dear!” over and over again? He was sure, in those few seconds, that all of those things had happened. But instead of weeping with exalted grief as she should have done when Misery expired giving birth to the boy whom Ian and Geoffrey would presumably raise together, she was mad as hell.
“She can’t be dead!” Annie Wilkes shrieked at him. Her hands snapped open and hooked closed in a faster and faster rhythm. “Misery Chastain CANNOT BE DEAD!”
“Annie — Annie, please — “ There was a glass water-pitcher on the table. She seized it up and brandished it at him. Cold water splashed his face. An ice-cube landed beside his left ear and slid down the pillow into the hollow of his shoulder. In his mind («So vivid!”) he saw her bringing the pitcher down into his face, he saw himself dying of a fractured skull and a massive cerebral hemorrhage in a freezing flood of ice-water while goose-pimples formed on his arms.
She wanted to do it; there was no question of that.
At the very last moment she pivoted away from him at d flung the water-pitcher at the door instead, where it shattered as the soup-bowl had the other day.
She looked back at him and brushed her hair away from her face — two hard little spots of red had now bloomed the white — with the backs of her hands.
“Dirty bird!” she panted. “Oh you dirty birdie, how could you!” He spoke rapidly, urgently, eyes flashing, riveted on her face — he was positive in that moment that his life might depend on what he was able to say in the next twenty seconds.
“Annie, in 1871 women frequently died in childbirth. Misery gave her life for her husband and her best friend and her child. The spirit of Misery will always — “
“I don’t want her spirit!” she screamed, hooking her fingers into claws and shaking them at him, as if she would tear his eyes out. “I want her! You killed her! You murdered her!” Her hands snapped shut into fists again and she drove them down like pistons, one on either side of his head. They punched deep into the pillow and he bounced like a ragdoll. His legs flared and he cried out.
“I didn’t kill her!” he screamed.
She froze, staring at him with that narrow black expression that look of crevasse.
“Of course not,” she said, bitterly sarcastic. “And if you didn’t, Paul Sheldon, who did?”
“No one,” he said more quietly. “She just died.” Ultimately he knew this to be the truth. If Misery Chastain had been a real person, he knew he might very well have been called upon “to aid the police in their inquiries”, as the euphemism went. After all, he had a motive — he had hated her. Ever since the third book, he had hated her. For April Fools” Day four years ago he’d had a small booklet privately printed and had sent it to a dozen close acquaintances. It had been called Misery’s Hobby. In it Misery spent a cheerful country weekend boffing Growler, Ian’s Irish Setter.
He might have murdered her… but he hadn’t. In the end, in spite of his having grown to despise her, Misery’s death had been something of a surprise to him. He had remained true enough to himself for art to imitate life however feebly — to the very end of Misery’s hackneyed adventures. She had died a mostly unexpected death. His cheerful capering had in no way changed the fact.
“You lie,” Annie whispered. “I thought you were good, but you are not good. You are just a lying old dirty birdie.”
“She slipped away, that’s all. Sometimes that happens. It was like life, when someone just — “ She overturned the table by the bed. The one shallow drawer spilled out. His wristwatch and pocket-change spilled out with it. He