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 hadn’t even known they were in there. He cringed back from her.
“You must think I was born yesterday,” she said. Her lips drew back from her teeth. “In my job I saw dozens of people die—hundreds, now that I think about it. Sometimes they go screaming and sometimes they go in their sleep—they just slip away, the way you said, sure.
“But characters in stories DO NOT just slip away! God takes us when He thinks it’s time and a writer is God to the people in a story, he made them up just like God made us up and no one can get hold of God to make him explain, all right, okay, but as far as Misery goes I’ll tell you one thing you dirty bird, I’ll tell you that God just happens to have a couple of broken legs and God just happens to be in MY house eating my food ... and...”
She went blank then. She straightened up with her hands hanging limply by her sides, looking at the wall where an old photograph of the Arc de Triomphe was hung. She stood there and Paul lay in his bed with round marks in the pillow beside his ears and looked at her. He could hear the water which had been in the pitcher dripping on the floor, and it came to him that he could commit murder. This was a question which had occurred to him from time to time, strictly academic, of course, only now it wasn’t and he had the answer. If she hadn’t thrown the pitcher, he would have shattered it on the floor himself and tried to shove one of the broken pieces of glass into her throat while she stood there, as inert as an umbrella-stand.
He looked down into the spillage from the drawer, but there was only the change, a pen, a comb, and his watch. No wallet. More important, no Swiss Army knife.
She came back a little at a time, and the anger, at least, was gone. She looked down at him sadly.
“I think I better go now. I don’t think I better be around you for awhile. I don’t think it’s ... wise.”
“Go? Where?”
“It doesn’t matter. A place I know. If I stay here, I’ll do something unwise. I need to think. Goodbye, Paul.”
She strode across the room.
“Will you be back to give me my medication?” he asked, alarmed.
She grasped the doorknob and pulled the door shut without answering. For the first time he heard the rattle of a key.
He heard her footsteps going off down the hall; he winced as she cried out angrily—words he couldn’t understand—and something else fell and shattered. A door slammed. An engine cranked over and then started up. The low, crunching squeal of tires turning on packed snow. Now the motor-sound began to go away. It dwindled to a snore and then to a drone and was finally gone.
He was alone.
Alone in Annie Wilkes’s house, locked in this room. Locked in this bed. The distance between here and Denver was like... well, like the distance between the Boston Zoo and Africa.
He lay in bed looking at the ceiling, his throat dry and his heart beating fast.
After awhile the parlor clock chimed noon and the tide began to go out.
14
Fifty-one hours.
He knew just how long because of the pen, the Flair Fine-Liner he had been carrying in his pocket at the time of the crash. He had been able to reach down and snag it. Every time the clock chimed he made a mark on his arm—four vertical marks and then a diagonal slash to seal the quintet. When she came back there were ten groups of five and one extra. The little groups, neat at first, grew increasingly jagged as his hands began to tremble. He didn’t believe he had missed a single hour. He had dozed, but never really slept. The chiming of the clock woke him each time the hour came around.
After awhile he began to feel hunger and thirst—even through the pain. It became something like a horse race. At first King of Pain was far in the lead and I Got the Hungries was some twelve furlongs back. Pretty Thirsty was nearly lost in the dust. Then, around sunup on the day after she had left, I Got the Hungries actually gave iKing