Misery

coquettishness: “I see you, Paul… those blue eyes. Did I ever tell you what lovely blue eyes you have? But I suppose other women have — women who were much prettier than I am, and much bolder about their affections, as well.” Came back. Came creeping in the night and killed me, hypo or bee-sting, no difference, and so much for the knife under the bed. All I am now is the latest number in Annie’s considerable body-count. And then, as the numbing euphoria of the injection began to spread, he thought almost with humor: Some lousy Scheherazade I turned out to be.
He thought that in a moment sleep would return — a more final sleep — but it did not. He saw her slip the hypo into the pocket of her skirt and then she sat down on the bed… not where she usually sat, however; she sat on its foot and for a moment he saw only her solid, impervious back as she bent over, as if to check on something. He heard a wooden thunk, a metallic clunk, and then a shaking sound he had heard some place before. After a moment he placed it. Take the matches, Paul.
Diamond Blue Tips. He didn’t know what else she might have there at the foot of the bed, but one of them was a box of Diamond Blue Tip matches.
Annie turned to him and smiled again. Whatever else might have happened, her apocalyptic depression had passed. She brushed an errant lock of hair back behind her ear with a girlish gesture. It went oddly with the lock’s dull dirty half-shine.
Dull dirty half-shine oh boy you gotta remember that one that one ain’t half-bad oh boy I am stoned now, all the past was prologue to this shit hey baby this here is the mainline oh fuck I’m tucked but this is crystal top-end shit this is going out on a mile-high wave in a fucking Rolls this is — “What do you want first, Paul?” she asked. “The good news or the bad news?”
“Good news first.” He managed a big foolish grin. “Guess the bad news is that this is THE END, huh? Guess you didn’t like the book so great, huh? Too bad I tried. It was even working. I was just starting to… you know… starting to drive on it.” She looked at him reproachfully. “I love the book, Paul. I told you that, and I never lie. I love it so much I don’t want to read any more until the very end. I’m sorry to have to make you fill in the n’s yourself, but… it’s like peeking.” His big foolish grin stretched even wider; he thought soon it would meet in the back, tie a lover’s knot there, and most of his poor old bean would just topple off. Maybe it would land in the bedpan beside the bed. In some deep, dim part of his mind where the dope hadn’t yet reached, alarm bells were going off. She loved the book, which meant she didn’t mean to kill him. Whatever was going on, she didn’t mean to kill him. And unless his assessment of Annie Wilkes was totally off the beam, that meant she had something even worse in store.
Now the light in the room did not look dull; it looked marvellously pure, marvellously full of its own gray and eldritch charm; he could imagine cranes half-glimpsed in gunmetal mist standing in one-legged silence beside upland lakes in that light, could imagine the mica flecks in rocks jutting from spring grasses in upland meadows shining with the shaggy glow of glazed window-glass in that light, could imagine elves shucking their busy selves off to work in lines under the dew-soaked leaves of early ivy in that light…
Oh BOY are you stoned, Paul thought, and giggled faintly.
Annie smiled in return. “The good news,” she said, “is that your car is gone. I’ve been very worried about your car, Paul. I knew it would take a storm like this to get rid of it and maybe even that wouldn’t do the trick. The spring run-off got rid of that Pomeroy dirty bird, but a car is ever so much heavier than a man, isn’t it? Even a man as full of cockadoodie as he was. But the storm and the run-off combined was enough to do the trick. Your car is gone. That’s the good news.”
“What…” More faint alarm bells. Pomeroy… he knew that name, but couldn’t think exactly how he knew it. Then it came to him. Pomeroy. The late great Andrew Pomeroy, twenty-three, of Cold Stream Harbor, New York. Found in the Grider Wildlife Preserve, wherever that was.
“Now Paul,” she said, in the prim voice he knew so well. “No need to be coy. I know you know who Andy Pomeroy was, because I know you’ve read my book. I suppose that I sort of hoped you would read it, you know; otherwise, why would I have left it out? But I made sure, you know — I make sure of everything. And sure enough, the threads were broken.”
“The threads,” he said faintly.
“Oh yes. I read once about a way you’re supposed to find out for sure if someone has been snooping around in your drawers. You tape a very fine thread across each one, and if you come back and find one broken, why you know, don’t you? You know someone’s been snooping. You see how easy it is?”