Misery

"I’m going to stop and put this bottle in the ditch about two miles up the road," she said. "But first I’ll put his fingers on it, of course." She smiled at him – a dry, spitless smile.

"Fingerprints," she said. "They’ll know he went past my house then. Or they’ll think they do, and that’s just as good, isn’t it, Paul?" His dismay deepened.

"So they’ll go up the road and they won’t find him. He’ll just be gone. Like those swamis who toot their flutes until ropes come out of baskets and they climb the ropes and disappear. Poof!"

"Poof," Paul said.

"It won’t take them long to come back. I know that. After all, if they can’t find any trace of him except that one bottle after here, they’ll decide they better think some more about me. After all, I’m crazy, aren’t I? All the papers said so. Nutty as a fruitcake!

"But they’ll believe me at first. I don’t think they’ll actual want to come in and search the house – not at first. They look in other places and try to think of other things before they come back. We’ll have some time. Maybe as much as a week." She looked at him levelly.

"You’re going to have to write faster, Paul," she said.

Dark fell and no police came. Annie did not spend the time before it did with Paul, however; she wanted to re-glaze his bedroom window, and pick up the paper-clips and broken glass scattered on the lawn. When the police come tomorrow looking for their missing lamb, she said, we don’t want the to see anything out of the ordinary, do we, Paul?

Just let them look under the lawnmower, kiddo. Just let them look under there and they’ll see plenty out of the ordinary.

But no matter how hard he tried to make his vivid imagination work, he could not make it come up with a scenario which would lead up to that.

"Do you wonder why I told you all of this, Paul?" she asked before going upstairs to see what she could do with the window. "Why I went into my plans for dealing with this in such great detail?"

"No," he said wanly.

"Partly because I wanted you to know exactly what the stakes are, and exactly what you’ll have to do to stay alive. I also wanted you to know that I’d end it right now. Except for the book. I still care about the book." She smiled. It was a smile which was both radiant and strangely wistful. "It really is the best Misery story of them all, and I do so much want to know how it all comes out."

"So do I, Annie," he said.

She looked at him, startled. "Why… you know don’t you?"

"When I start a book I always think I know how things will turn out, but I never actually had one end exactly that way. It isn’t even that surprising, once you stop to think about it. Writing a book is a little like firing an ICBM… only it travels over time instead of space. The book-time the characters spend living in the story and the real time the novelist spends writing it all down. Having a novel end exactly the way you thought it would when you started out would be like shooting a Titan missile halfway around the world and having the payload drop through a basketball hoop. It looks good on paper, and there are people who build those things who’d tell you it was easy as pie – and even keep a straight face while they said it – but the odds are always against."

"Yes," Annie said. "I see."

"I must have a pretty good navigation system built into the equipment, because I usually get close, and if you have enough high explosive packed into the nosecone, close is good enough. Right now I see two possible endings to the book. One is very sad. The other, while not your standard Hollywood happy ending, at least holds out some hope for the future." Annie looked alarmed… and suddenly thunderous. "You’re not thinking of killing her again, are you, Paul?" He smiled a little. "What would you do if I did, Annie? Kill me? That doesn’t scare me a bit. I may not know what’s going to happen to Misery, but I know what’s going to happen to me… and you. I’ll write THE END, and you’ll read, and then you’ll write THE END, won’t you? The end of us. That’s one I don’t have to guess at. Truth really isn’t stranger than fiction, no matter what they say. Most times you know exactly how things are going to turn out."

"But – "

"I think I know which ending it’s going to be. I’m about eighty percent sure. If it turns out that way, you’ll like it. But even if it turns out the way I think, neither of us will know the actual details until I get them written down, will we?"

"No – I suppose not."

"Do you remember what the old Greyhound Bus ads used to say? "Getting there is half the fun."

"Either way, it’s almost over, isn’t it?"

"Yes," Paul said. "Almost over."

Before she left she brought him another Pepsi, a box of Ritz crackers, sardines, cheese… and the bedpan.

"If you bring me my manuscript and one of those yellow legal pads, I’ll work in longhand," he said. "It will pass the time." She considered, then shook her head regretfully. "I wish you could, Paul. But that would mean leaving at least one light on, and I can’t risk it." He thought of being left alone down here in the cellar and felt panic flush his skin again, but just for a moment. Then it went cold. He felt tiny hard goosebumps rising on his skin. He thought of the rats hiding in their holes and runs in the rock walls. Thought of them coming out when the cellar went dark. Thought of them smelling his helplessness, perhaps.

"Don’t leave me in the dark, Annie. Please don’t do that."

"I have to. If someone noticed a light in my cellar, they might stop to investigate, driveway chain or no driveway chain, note or no note. If I gave you a flashlight, you might try to signal with it. If I gave you a candle, you might try to burn the house do" with it. You see how well I know you?" He hardly dared mention the times he had gotten out of his room, because it always made her furious; now his fear of being left alone down here in the dark drove him to it. "If I had wanted to burn the house down, Annie, I could have done it long before this."