Gerald's Game - Stephen King [108]
'I don't theeenk so, my deah,' she said in her snottiest Elizabeth Taylor Cat on a Hot Tin Roof voice. She did not hear herself do this, did not even realize she had spoken.
Already she could feel the blessed balm of relief stealing over her; it was as sweet as that first drink of fresh, cool water was going to be when she poured it over the rusty razorwire embedded in her throat. She was going to slide out of the devil's hand and ooze on over to the Promised Land; absolutely no doubt about it. As long as she oozed carefully, that was. She had been tested; she had been tempered in the fire; now she would reap her reward. She had been a fool to ever doubt.
I think you better stop thinking that way, the Goodwife said in a worried tone. It will make you careless, and I have an idea that very few careless people ever manage to slide out of the devil's hand.
Probably true, but she hadn't the slightest intention of being careless. She had spent the last twenty-one hours in hell, and no one knew any better than she did how much was riding on this one. No one could know, not ever.
'I'll be careful,' Jessie crooned. 'I'll think out every step. I promise I will. And then I . . . I'll . . . '
She would what?
Why, she would go greasy, of course. Not just until she got out of the handcuffs, but from now on. Jessie suddenly heard herself talking to God again, and this time she did it with an easy fluency.
And she saw (almost as though it were an approving answer to her prayer) exactly how it was supposed to go. Getting the top off the jar would be the toughest part; it would require patience and great care, but she would be helped by its unusually small size. Plant the jar's base on the palm of her left hand; brace the top with her fingers; use her thumb to do the actual unscrewing. It would help if the cap was loose, but she was pretty sure she would be able to get it off in any case.
You're damn right I'll get it off, toots, Jessie thought grimly.
The most dangerous moment would probably come when the cap actually started to turn. If it happened all at once and she wasn't ready for it, the jar might shoot right out of her hand. Jessie voiced a croaky little laugh. 'Fat chance,' she told the empty room. 'Fat fucking chance, my deah.'
Jessie held the jar up, looking at it fixedly. It was hard to see through the translucent blue plastic, but the container appeared to be at least half full, maybe a little more. Once the cap was off, she would simply turn the jar over in her hand and let the goo run out onto her palm. When she'd gotten as much as she could, she would tilt her hand up to the vertical, letting the cream run down to her wrist. Most of it would pool between her flesh and the cuff. She would spread it by rotating her hands back and forth. She already knew where the vital spot was, anyway: the area just below the thumb. And when she was as greasy as she could get, she'd give one last pull, hard and steady. She would block out all pain and keep pulling until her hand slid through the cuff and she was free at last, free at last, Great God Almighty, free at last. She could do it. She knew she could.
'But carefully,' she murmured, letting the base of the jar settle onto her palm and spacing the pads of her fingers and her thumb at intervals around the cap. And —
'It's loose!' she cried in a hoarse, trembling voice. 'Oh my and pumpkin pie, it really is!'
She could hardly believe it — and the doom-monger buried somewhere deep inside refused to — but it was true. She could feel the cap rock a little on its spiral groove when she pressed the tips of her fingers gently up and down against it.
Carefully, Jess — oh so carefully. Just the way you saw it.
Yes. In her mind she now saw something else — saw herself, sitting at her desk in Portland, wearing her best black dress, the fashionably short one she had bought herself last spring as a present for sticking to her