Gerald's Game - Stephen King [109]
When she applied pressure to the jar's cap with her thumb, it began to turn smoothly, without a single jerk. All according to plan. Like a dream, she thought. Thank You, God. Thank You. Thank You so very, very, very m —
Sudden movement snagged the corner of her eye and her first thought was not that someone had found her and she was saved but that the space cowboy had come back to take her for itself before she could get away. Jessie voiced a shrill, startled cry. Her gaze leaped up from its intent focus-point on the jar. Her fingers clutched it in an involuntary spasm of fright and surprise.
It was the dog. The dog had returned for a late-morning snack and was standing in the doorway, checking out the bedroom before coming in. At the same instant Jessie realized this, she also realized that she had squeezed the small blue jar much too hard. It was squirting through her fingers like a freshly peeled grape.
'No!'
She clutched for it and almost reinstated her grip. Then it tumbled out of her hand, struck her hip, and bounced off the bed. There was a mild and stupid clacking sound as the 'at struck the wooden floor. This was the very sound which she had believed, less than three minutes ago, would drive her mad. It did not, and now she discovered a newer, deeper terror: in spite of everything which had happened to her, she was still a very long way from insanity. It seemed to her that, no matter what horrors might lie ahead for her now that this last door to escape had been barred, she must face them sane.
'Why do you have to come in now, you bastard?' she asked the former Prince, and something in her grating, deadly voice made it pause and look at her with a caution all her screams and threats had not been able to inspire. 'Why now, God damn you? Why now?'
The stray decided the bitchmaster was probably still harmless in spite of the sharp edges which now glinted in her voice, but it still kept a wary eye on her as it trotted over to its supply of meat. It was better to be safe. It had suffered greatly in the course of learning that simple lesson, and it wasn't one it would forget easily, or soon — it was always better to be safe.
It gave her one final look with its bright and desperate eyes before dipping its head, seizing one of Gerald's love-handles, and tearing a large portion of it away. Seeing this was bad, but for Jessie it was not the worst. The worst was the cloud of flies which rose from their feeding- and nesting-ground when the stray locked its teeth and yanked. Their somnolent buzz finished the 'ob of demolishing some vital, survival-oriented part of her, some part that had to do with both hope and heart.
The dog stepped back as delicately as a dancer in a movie musical, its good ear cocked, the meat dangling from its jaws. Then it turned and trotted quickly from the room. The flies were beginning resettlement operations even before it was out of sight. Jessie leaned her head back against the mahogany crossboards and closed her eyes. She began praying again, but this time it was not escape she prayed for. This time she prayed that God would take her quickly and mercifully, before the sun went down and the white-faced stranger came back.
C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - S E V E N
The next four hours were the worst of Jessie Burlingame's life. The cramps in her muscles grew steadily more frequent and more intense, but it wasn't intramuscular pain that made the hours between eleven and three so terrible; it was her mind's stubborn, gruesome refusal to relinquish its hold on lucidity and go into the dark. She had read Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart' in junior high