Unsolicited Writings

She showed him these with an uneasily defiant sort of pride.
"Uh-uh,»he told her. Looking at those pictures had given him a
feeling which was strange yet eerily intangible — it had been like looking at
photographs of his own imagination, and he knew that from that moment on, whenever
he tried to imagine Misery's little combination parlor and study, Mrs Roman D.
"He allowed his smile to melt into an expression of winning (or so he hoped —
please, God, let it be winning) sincerity 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! If
he lived, he could write another book — re-create this one, even, if he wanted to.
Another part of him was furiously trying out ideas,
rejecting them, trying to combine them, rejecting the combinations.Pain — the worst
in days — bellowed through his legs, and he screamed. "All right.
Can I? He was not able to eat much but he ate more
than he thought at first he could. Her tread
was heavy, but Paul didn't hear that, either.

That was the only way he could account for this bizarre behavior — she had seen the
marks after all, and this was the beginning of some new and spectacular punishment.
Paul closed his eyes, swaying unsteadily on his twisted,
aching legs, waiting to see if he was going to get mad or cry. Paul had watched
her plant the cross and then read the Bible over the grave by the light of a
new-risen spring moon. The cop looked like a big
doll that has been badly treated by a gang of nasty children. "One of the
reasons I brought you back was because it seemed like more than a coincidence.
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.
Ramage, hardly dressed for a court ball herself in her long white nightgown and
muskrat's-nightcap with the untied curling ribbons hanging around her face like the
fringe on a lampshade, stared at him with mounting concern.
At some point the conversation had turned to the Jews living in Germany during
the uneasy four or five years before the Wehrmacht rolled into Poland and the
festivities began in earnest. At first he thought he was dreaming
about his own book, that the dark was the dream-dark of the caves behind the huge
stone head of the Bourka Bee-Goddess and the sting was that of a bee — "Paul?
By the time Annie got back home at quarter of six, he had done almost five
pages. He leaned back in the chair, shaking all over, trying not
to shake because it hurt, not able to help it. I
looked at you and saw that I might not be the only one good at keeping secrets.
They had found her outside of Misery the pig's stall, with one
hand wrapped around the handle of her chainsaw. Geoffrey did not
know, but he intended to find out, no matter what the cost to his sanity might be —
and he recognized that the cost might be high.
Saw him melting magically through the bulkhead and reintegrating his corpse's body
down here. " This time when he pushed the tongue there was a
flat click from inside the lock and the jut of metal slid a quarter of an inch into
the door. She stood lightly poised in the doorway,
her chestnut hair with its mysterious deep-red glints like dying embers flowing over
her shoulders in gorgeous profusion. If he, Paul, couldn't see them, then
there was no chance that Mr Rancho Grande might look in through the guest-room
window and see him. "Whatever he thought of it, Mr Rancho Grande
was not going to give Annie the satisfaction of seeing it — that neutral expression
dropped over his face again like the visor on a suit of armor.
If he wasn't able to work at least some of the stiffness out of it, he was
not going to be able to carry through with this. We're going to be all
right if it gets dark before anyone comes to check on that fellow.
On a higher shelf was a pile of Slim Jims, as neatly stacked as the kindling in
Annie's shed.