Misery Chastain was dead. Paul Sheldon had just killed her — with relief, with joy. Misery had made him rich; she was the heroine of a string of bestsellers. And now he wanted to get on to some real writing. That’s when the car accident happened, and he woke up in pain in a strange bed. But it wasn’t the hospital.
Авторы: King Stephen Edwin
“Oh blessed Jesus,” Ia moa ed, a d made a co vulsive moveme t forward. Geoffrey grasped his frie d’s arm. The steady beat of the drums pulsed i his head like somethi g heard i a killi g delirium. Bees dro ed arou d them, but o e paused; they simply flew past a d i to the cleari g as if draw by a mag et — which, Geoffrey hough sickly, hey
Paul picked up the typewriter and shook it. After a tune, a small piece of steel fell out onto the board across the arms of the wheelchair. He picked it up and looked at it.
It was the letter t. The typewriter had just thrown its t.
He thought: I am going to complain to the management. I am going to not just ask for a new typewriter but fucking demand one. She’s got the money — I know she does. Maybe it’s squirrelled away in fruit-jars under the barn or maybe it’s stuffed in the walls at her Laughing Place, but she’s got the dough, and t, my God, the second-most-common letter in the English language -!
Of course he would ask Annie for nothing, much less demand. Once there had been a man who would at least have asked. A man who had been in a great deal more pain, a man who had had nothing to hold onto, not even this shitty book. That man would have asked. Hurt or not, that man had had the guts to at least try to stand up to Annie Wilkes.
He had been that man, and he supposed he ought to be ashamed, but that man had had two big advantages over this one: that man had had two feet… and two thumbs.
Paul sat reflectively for a moment, re-read the last line (mentally filling in the omissions), and then simply went back to work.
had been.
“Let me go!” Ian snarled, and turned on Geoffrey, his right hand curling into a fist. His eyes bulged madly from his livid face, and he seemed totally unaware of who was holding him back from his darling. Geoffrey realized with cold certainty that what they had seen when Hezekiah pulled the protective screen of bushes aside had come very close to driving Ian mad. He still tottered on the brink, and the slightest push would send him over. If that happened he would take Misery with him.
“Ian — “
“Let me go, I say!” Ian pulled backward with furious strength, and Hezekiah moaned fearfully. “No boss, make dem bees crazy, dem sting Mis’wee — “ Ian seemed not to hear. Eyes wild and blank, he lashed out at Geoffrey, striking his old friend high on the cheekbone. Black stars rocketed through Geoffrey’s head.
In spite of them, he saw Hezekiah beginning to swing the potentially deadly gosha — a sand-filled bag the Bourkas favored for close work — in time to hiss: “No! Let me handle this!” Reluctantly, Hezekiah allowed the gosha to subside to the end of its leather string like a slowing pendulum.
Then Geoffrey’s head was rocked back by a fresh blow. This one mashed his lips back against his teeth, and he felt the warm salt-sweet taste of blood begin to seep into his mouth. There was a rough purring sound as Ian’s dress shirt, now sun-faded and already torn in a dozen places, began to come apart in Geoffrey’s grasp. In another moment he would be free. Geoffrey realized with dazed wonder that it was the same shirt Ian had worn to the Baron and Baroness’s dinner party three nights ago… of course it was. There had been no opportunity to change since then, not for Ian, not for any of them. Only three nights ago… but the shirt looked as if Ian had been wearing it for at least three years, and Geoffrey felt as if at least three hundred had passed since the party. Only three nights ago, he thought again with stupid wonder, and then Ian was raining blows into his face.
“Let me go, damn
