Excerpt 1 Literature

Title: Misery

Author: Stephen King

Date: 1987

Country of Origin: America

Paul looked at the typewriter. The typewriter was there. N’s! He had never realized how many n’s there were in an average line of type.

I thought you were supposed to be good, the typewriter said – his mind had invested it with a sneering and yet callow voice: the voice of a teenage-gunslinger in a Hollywood western, a kid intent on making a fast reputation here in Deadwood. You’re not so good. Hell, you can’t even please one crazy overweight ex-nurse. Maybe you broke your writing bone in that crash, too … only that bone isn’t healing.

He leaned back as far as the wheelchair would allow and closed his eyes. Her rejection of what he had written would be easier to bear if he could blame it on the pain, but the truth was that the pain had finally begun to subside a little.

The stolen pills were safely tucked away between the mattress and the box spring. He had taken none of them – knowing he had them put aside, a form of Annie-insurance, was enough. She would find them if she took it into her head to turn the mattress, he supposed, but that was a chance he was prepared to take.

There had been no trouble between them since the blowup over the typewriter paper. His medication came regularly, and he took it. He wondered if she knew he was hooked on the stuff.

Hey, come on now, Paul, that’s a bit of a dramatization, isn’t it?

No, it wasn’t. Three nights ago, when he was sure she was upstairs, he had sneaked one of the sample boxes out and had read everything on the label, although he supposed he had read everything he needed when he saw what Norvil’s principal ingredient was. Maybe you spelled relief R-O-L-A-I-D-S, but you spelled Norvil C-O-D-E-I-N-E.

The fact is, you’re healing up, Paul. Below the knees your legs look like a four-year-old’s stick-drawing, but you are healing up. You could get by on aspirin or Empirin now. It’s not you that needs the Norvil; you’re feeding it to the monkey.

He would have to cut down, have to duck some of the caps. Until he could do that, she would have him on a chain as well as in a wheelchair – a chain of Norvil capsules.

Okay. I’ll duck one of the two capsules she gives me every other time she brings them. I’ll put it under my tongue when I swallow the other one, then stick it under my mattress with the other pills when she takes the drinking glass out. Only not today. I don’t feel ready to start today. I’ll start tomorrow.

Now in his mind he heard the voice of the Red Queen lecturing Alice: Down here we get our act clean yesterday, and we plan to start getting our act clean tomorrow, but we never clean up our act today.

Ho-ho, Paulie, you’re a real riot, the typewriter said in the tough gunsel’s voice he had made up for it.

“Us dirty birdies are never all that funny, but we never stop trying – you have to give us that,” he muttered.

Well, you better start thinking about all the dope you are taking, Paul. You better start thinking about it very seriously.

He decided suddenly, on the spur of the moment, that he would start dodging some of the medication as soon as he got a first chapter that Annie liked on paper – a chapter which Annie decided wasn’t a cheat.

Part of him – the part that listened to even the best, fairest editorial suggestions with ill-grace – protested that the woman was crazy, that there was no way to tell what she might or might not accept; that anything he tried would be only a crapshoot.

But another part – a far more sensible part – disagreed. He would know the real stuff when he found it. The real stuff would make the crap he had given Annie to read last night, the crap it had taken him three days and false starts without number to write, look like a dog turd sitting next to a silver dollar. Hadn’t he known it was all wrong? It wasn’t like him to labor so painfully, not to half-fill a wastebasket with random jottings or half-pages which ended with lines like ‘Misery turned to him, eyes shining, lips murmuring the magic words Oh you numb shithead THIS ISN’T WORKING AT ALL!!!!” He had chalked it off to the pain and to being in a situation where he was not just writing for his supper but for his life. Those ideas had been nothing but plausible lies. The fact was, things had gone badly because he was cheating and he had known it himself.

Well, she saw through you, shit-for-brains, the typewriter said in its nasty, insolent voice. Didn’t she? So what are you going to do now?

He didn’t know, but he supposed he would have to something, and in a hurry. He hadn’t cared for her mood this morning. He supposed he should count himself lucky that she hadn’t re-broken his legs with a baseball bat or given him a battery-acid manicure or something similar to indicate her displeasure with the way he had begun her book – such critical responses were always possible, given Annie’s unique view of the world. If he got out of this alive, he thought he might drop Christopher Hale a note. Hale reviewed books for the New York Times. The note would say: “Whenever my editor called me up and told me you were planning to review one of my books in the daily Times, my knees used to knock together – you gave me some good ones, Chris old buddy, but you also torpedoed me more than once, as you well know. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you to go ahead and do your worst – I’ve discovered a whole new critical mode, my friend. We might call it the Colorado Barbecue and Floor-Bucket school of thought. It makes the stuff you guys do look about as scary as a ride on the Central Park carousel.”

This is all very amusing, Paul, writing critics little billet-doux in one’s head is always good for a giggle, but you really ought to find yourself a pot and get it boiling, don’t you think?

Yes. Yes indeed.

The typewriter sat there, smirking at him.

“I hate you,” Paul said morosely, and looked out the window.