Misery

Would she have behaved in this same fashion if it had been Joe Blow from Kokomo she had hauled out of the wreck? No. No, he didn't think so. She had kept him because he was Paul Sheldon, and she - “She's my number-one fan,” Paul muttered, and put an arm over his eyes.

An awful memory bloomed there in the dark: his mother had taken him to the Boston Zoo, and he had been looking at a great big bird. It had the most beautiful feathers - red and purple and royal blue - that he had ever seen… and the saddest eyes. He had asked his mother where the bird came from and when she said Africa he had understood it was doomed to die in the cage where it lived, far away from wherever God had meant it to be, and he cried and his mother bought him an ice-cream cone and for awhile he had stopped crying and then he remembered and started again and so she had taken him home, telling him as they rode the trolley back to Ly

Its feathers. Its eyes.

The throbbing in his legs began to cycle up.

No. No, no.

He pressed the crook of his elbow more tightly against his eyes. From the barn he could hear spaced thudding noises. Impossible to tell what they were, of course, but in his imagination (your MIND your CREATIVITY that is all I meant) he could see her pushing bales of hay out of the loft with the heel of her boot, could see them tumbling to the barn floor.

Africa. That bird came from Africa. From - Then, cutting cleanly through this like a sharp knife, came her agitated, almost-screaming voice: Do you think that when they put me up there on the stand in Den - Up on the stand. When they put me up on the stand in Denver.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help you God?

("I don't know where he gets it.”) I do.

("He's ALWAYS writing things like this down.”) State your name.

("Nobody on my side of the family had an imagination like his.”) A

("So vivid!”) My name is A

He willed her to say more; she would not.

“Come on,” he muttered, his arm over his eyes - this was the way he thought best, the way he imagined best. His mother liked to tell Mrs Mulvaney on the other side of the fence what a marvellous imagination he had, so vivid, and what wonderful little stories he was always writing down (except, of course, when she was calling him a sissy and a bawl-baby). “Come on, come on, come on.” He could see the courtroom in Denver, could see A

A

(He read at just three! Can you imagine!”) That spirit of… of fan-love…

("He's always writing things down, making things up.”) Now I must rinse.

(Africa. That bird came from") “Come on,” he whispered, but could get no further. The bailiff asked her to state her name, and over and over again she said it was A

Still trying to imagine why the ex-nurse who had taken him prisoner might have once been put on the stand in Denver, Paul drifted off to sleep.

12

He was in a hospital ward. Great relief swept through him - so great he felt like crying. Something had happened when he was asleep, someone had come, or perhaps A

But surely they would not have put him in a long ward like this? It was as big as an airplane hangar! Identical rows of men (with identical bottles of nutrient hung from identical IV trays beside their beds) filled the place. He sat up and saw that the men themselves were also identical - they were all him. Then, distantly, he heard the clock chime, and understood that it was chiming from beyond the wall of sleep. This was a dream. Sadness replaced the relief.

The door at the far end of the huge ward opened and in came A

Then he saw that the first Paul Sheldon's face had turned a ghastly white as soon as the sand struck it and fear jerked him out of the dream and into the bedroom, where A

“You were moaning,” she said.

“I had a bad dream.”

“What was it about?” The first thing which was not the truth that popped into his head was what he replied: “Africa.”

13

She came in late the following morning, her face the color of ashes. He had been dozing, but he came awake at once; jerking up on his elbows.

“Miss Wilkes? A

“No.” Christ, she's had a heart attack, he thought, and there was a moment's alarm which was immediately replaced by joy. Let her have one! A big one! A fucking chest-buster! He would be more than happy to crawl to the telephone, no matter how much it might hurt. He would crawl to the telephone over broken glass, if that was what it took.

And it was a heart attack… but not the right kind.

She came toward him, not quite staggering but rolling, the way a sailor will when he's just gotten off his ship at the enc of a long voyage.

“What - “ He tried to shrink away from her, but there was no place to go. There was only the headboard, and behind that, the wall.

“No!” She reached the side of the bed, bumped it, wavered and for a moment seemed on the verge of falling on top of him. Then she just stood there, looking down at him out of her paper-white face, the cords on her neck standing out, one vein pulsing in the center of her forehead. Her hands snapped open, hooked shut into solid rocklike fists, then snapped open again.

“You… you… you dirty bird!”

“What - I don't - “ But suddenly he did, and his entire midsection first seemed to turn hollow and then to entirely disappear. He remembered where her bookmark had been last night, three-quarters of the way through. She had finished it. She knew all there was to know. She knew that Misery hadn't been the barren one, after all; it had been Ian. Had she sat there in her as-yet-unseen-by-him parlor with her mouth open and her eyes wide as Misery finally realized the truth and made her decision and sneaked off to Geoffrey? Had her eyes filled with tears when she realized that Misery and Geoffrey, far from having a clandestine affair behind the back of the man they both loved, were giving him the greatest gift they could - a child he would believe to be his own? And had her heart risen up when Misery told Ian she was pregnant and Ian had crushed her to him, tears flowing from his eyes, muttering “My dear, oh, my dear!” over and over again? He was sure, in those few seconds, that all of those things had happened. But instead of weeping with exalted grief as she should have done when Misery expired giving birth to the boy whom Ian and Geoffrey would presumably raise together, she was mad as hell.