Misery

she called his “manuscript-book”. She told him she didn’t think it was as good as his others.
“It’s hard to follow. It keeps jumping back and forth in time.”
“Technique,” he said. He was somewhere between hurting and not hurting, and so was able to think a little better about what she was saying. “Technique, that’s all it is. The subject… the subject dictates the form.” In some vague way he supposed that such tricks of the trade might interest, even fascinate her. God knew they had fascinated the attendees of the writers” workshops to whom he had sometimes lectured when he was younger. “The boy’s mind, you see, is confused, and so — “
“Yes! He’s very confused, and that makes him less interesting. Not uninteresting — I’m sure you couldn’t create an uninteresting character — but less interesting. And the profanity! Every other word is that effword! It has — “ She ruminated, feeding him the soup automatically, wiping his mouth when he dribbled almost without looking, the way an experienced typist rarely looks at the keys; so he came to understand, effortlessly, that she had been a nurse. Not a doctor, oh no; doctors would not know when the dribble would come, or be able to forecast the course of each with such a nice exactitude.
If the forecaster in charge of that storm had been half as good at his job as Annie Wilkes is at hers, I would not be in this fucking jam, he thought bitterly.
“It has no nobility!” she cried suddenly, jumping and almost spilling beef-barley soup on his white, upturned face.
“Yes,” he said patiently. “I understand what you mean, Annie. It’s true that Tony Bonasaro has no nobility. He’s a slum kid trying to get out of a bad environment, you see, and those words… everybody uses those words in — “
“They do not!” she said, giving him a forbidding look “What do you think I do when I go to the feed store in town? What do you think I say? “Now Tony, give me a bag of that effing pigfeed and a bag of that bitchly cow-corn and some of that Christing ear-mite medicine”? And what do you think he says to me? “You’re effing right, Annie, comin right the eff up”?” She looked at him, her face now like a sky which might spawn tornadoes at any instant. He lay back, frightened. The soup-bowl was tilting in her hands. One, then two drops fell on the coverlet.
“And then do I go down the street to the bank and say to Mrs Bollinger, “Here’s one big bastard of a check and you better give me fifty effing dollars just as effing quick as you can”? Do you think that when they put me up there on the stand in Den — “ A stream of muddy-colored beef soup fell on the coverlet. She looked at it, then at him, and her face twisted. “There! Look what you made me do!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sure! You! Are!” she screamed, and threw the bowl into the corner, where it shattered. Soup splashed up the wall. He gasped.
She turned off then. She just sat there for what might have been thirty seconds. During that time Paul Sheldon’s heart did not seem to beat at all.
She roused a little at a time, and suddenly she tittered.
“I have such a temper,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said out of a dry throat.
“You should be.” Her face went slack again and she looked moodily at the wall. He thought she was going to blank out again, but instead she fetched a sigh and lifted her bulk from the bed.
“You don’t have any need to use such words in the Misery books, because they didn’t use such words at all back then. They weren’t even invented. Animal times demand animal words, I suppose, but that was a better time. You ought to stick to your Misery stories, Paul. I say that sincerely. As your number-one fan.” She went to the door and looked back at him. “I’ll I put that manuscript-book back in your bag and finish Misery’s Child. I may go back to the other one later, when I’m done.”
“Don’t do that if it makes you mad,” he said. He tried to smile. “I’d rather not have you mad. I sort of depend on you, you know.” She did not return his smile “Yes,” she said. “You do. You do, don’t you, Paul?” She left.

The tide went out. The pilings were back. He began to wait for the clock to chime. Two chimes. The chimes came. He lay propped up on the pillows, watching the door. She came in. She was wearing an apron over her cardigan and one of her skirts. In one hand she held a floor-bucket.
“I suppose you want” your cockadoodie medication,” she said.
“Yes, please.” He tried to smile at her ingratiatingly and felt that shame again — he felt grotesque to himself, a stranger.
“I have it,” she said, “but first I have to clean up the mess in the comer. The mess you made. You’ll have to wait until I do that.” He lay in the bed with his legs making shapes