Misery

Part IV Goddess

Chapter 1

"You will be visited by a tall, dark stranger," the gipsy woman told Misery, and Misery, startled, realized two things at once: this was no gipsy, and the two of them were no longer alone in the tent. She could smell Gwendolyn Chastain’s perfume in the moment before the madwoman’s hands closed around her throat.

"In fact," the gipsy who was not a gipsy observed, "I think she is here now." Misery tried to scream, but could no longer even breathe.

– Misery’s Child

"It always look dat way, Boss Ian," Hezekiah said. "No matter how you look at her, she seem like she be lookin" at you. I doan know if it be true, but the Bourkas, dey say even when you get behin" her, the goddess, she seem to be lookin" at you."

"But she is, after all, only a piece of stone," Ian remonstrated.

"Yes, Boss Ian," Hezekiah agreed. "Dat what give her her powah."

– Misery’s Return

1

umber whunnnn

yerrrnnn umber whunnnn

fayunnnn

These sounds: even in the haze.

2

Now I must rinse she said, and this is how it rinses out:

3

None after Wicks and McKnight carried him from Annie’s house on a makeshift litter, Paul Sheldon was dividing his time between Doctors Hospital in Queens and a new apartment on the East Side of Manhattan. His legs had been re-broken. His left was still in a cast from the knee down. He would walk with a limp for the rest of his life the doctors told him, but he would walk, and eventually he would walk without pain. His limp would have been deeper and more pronounced if he had been walking on his own foot instead of a custom-made prosthesis. In an ironic sort of way, Annie had done him a favor.

He was drinking too much and not writing at all. His dreams were bad.

When he got out of the elevator on the ninth floor one afternoon in May, he was for a change thinking not of Annie but of the bulky package tucked clumsily under his arm – it contained two bound galleys of Misery’s Return. His publishers had put the book on a very fast track, and considering the world-wide headlines generated by the bizarre circumstances under which the novel had been written, that was hardly surprising. Hastings House had ordered an unprecedented first printing of a million copies. "And that’s only the beginning," Charlie Merrill, his editor, had told him at lunch that day – the lunch from which Paul was now returning with his bound galleys. "This book is going to outsell everything in the world, my friend. We all just ought to be down on our knees thanking God that the story in the book is almost as good as the story behind the book." Paul didn’t know if that was true, and didn’t really care anymore. He only wanted to get it behind him and find the next book… but as dry days became dry weeks became dry months, he had begun to wonder if there ever would be a next book.

Charlie was begging him for a nonfiction account of his ordeal. That book, he said, would outsell even Misery’s Return. Would, in fact, outsell Iacocca. When Paul asked", him, out of idle curiosity, what he thought the paperbacks rights for such a book might fetch, Charlie brushed his long hair away from his forehead, lit a Camel, and said: "I believe we could set a floor at ten million dollars and then conduct one hell of an auction." He did not bat an eye when he said it; after a moment or two Paul realized he either was serious or thought he was.

But there was no way he could write such a book, not yet, probably not ever. His job was writing novels. He could write the account Charlie wanted, but to do so would be tantamount to admitting to himself that he would never write another novel.

And the joke is, it would be a novel, he almost said to Charlie Merrill… and then held back at the last moment. The joke was, Charlie wouldn’t care.

It would start out as fact, and then I’d begin to tart it up… just a little at first…then a little more… then a little more. Not to make myself look better (although I probably would) and not to make Annie look worse (she couldn’t). Simply to create that roundness. I don’t want to fictionalize myself. Writing may be masturbatory, but God forbid it should be an act off autocannibalism.

His apartment was 9-E, farthest from the elevator, and today the corridor looked two miles long. He began to stump his way grimly down to it, a t-shaped walking-stick in each hand. Clack… clack… clack… clack. God, he hated that sound.

His legs ached sickeningly and he yearned for Novril. Sometimes he thought it would be worth being back with Annie just to have the dope. The doctors had weaned him from it; The booze was his substitute, and when he got inside he was going to have a double bourbon.

Then he would look at the blank screen of his word processor for awhile. What fun. Paul Sheldon’s fifteen-thousand-dollar paperweight.

Clack… clack… clack… clack.

Now to get the key out of his pocket without dropping either the manila envelope containing the bound galleys or the sticks. He propped the sticks against the wall. While he was doing that, the galleys dropped out from under his arm and fell to the rug. The envelope split open.

"Shit!" he growled, and then the sticks fell over with a clatter, adding to the fun.

Paul closed his eyes, swaying unsteadily on his twisted, aching legs, waiting to see if he was going to get mad or cry. He hoped he would get mad. He didn’t want to cry out here in the hall, but he might. He had. His legs hurt all the time and he wanted his dope, not the heavy-duty aspirin they gave him at the hospital dispensary. He wanted his good dope, his Annie-dope. And oh he was so tired all the time. What he needed to prop him up were not those shitty sticks but his make-believe games and stories. They were the good dope, the never-fail fix, but they had all fled. It seemed playtime was finally over.