Gerald's Game - Stephen King [126]
She couldn't seem to take her eyes off her hands, couldn't seem to stop shrieking. She had never felt anything remotely like what she was feeling now, and some distant part of her thought: If sex was even half this good, people would be doing it on every streetcorner they just wouldn't be able to help themselves.
Then she ran out of breath and swayed backward. She grabbed for the headboard, but a moment too late — she lost her balance and spilled onto the bedroom floor. As she went down, Jessie realized that part of her had been expecting the handcuff chains to snub her before she fell. Pretty funny, when you thought about it.
She struck the open wound on the inside of her wrist as she landed. Pain. lit up her right arm like the lights on a Christmas tree and this time when she screamed it was all pain. She bit it off quickly when she felt herself drifting away from consciousness again. She opened her eyes and stared into her husband's torn face. Gerald looked back at her with an expression of endless, glazed surprise — This wasn't supposed to happen to me, I'm a lawyer with my name on the door. Then the fly which had been washing its front legs on his upper lip disappeared up one of his nostrils and Jessie turned her head so quickly she thumped it on the floorboards and saw stars. When she opened her eyes this time, she was looking up at the headboard, with its gaudy drips and tunnels of blood. Had she been standing way up there only a few seconds ago? She was pretty sure she had been, but it was hard to believe — from here, the fucking bed looked approximately as tall as the Chrysler Building.
Get moving, Jess! It was Punkin, once more yelling in that urgent, annoying voice of hers. For someone with such a sweet little face, Punkin could certainly be a bitch when she set her mind to it.
'Not a bitch,' she said, letting her eyes slip closed. A small, dreamy smile touched the corners of her mouth. 'A squeaky wheel.'
Get moving, damn it!
Can't. Need a little rest first.
If you don't get moving right away, you can rest forever! Now shag Your fat ass!
That got to her. 'Nothing fat about it, Miss Smartmouth,' she muttered pettishly, and tried to struggle to her feet. It took only two efforts (the second thwarted by another of those paralyzing cramps across her diaphragm) to convince her that getting up was, at least for the time being, a bad idea. And doing so would actually create more problems than it would solve, because she needed to get into the bathroom, and the foot of the bed now lay across the doorway like a roadblock.
Jessie went under the bed, moving with a gliding, swimming motion that was almost graceful, blowing a few errant dust bunnies out of her way as she went. They drifted off like small gray tumbleweeds. For some reason the dust bunnies made her think of the woman in her vision again — the woman kneeling in the blackberry tangles with her slip in a white pile beside her. She slid into the gloom of the bathroom and a new smell smote her nostrils: the dark, mossy smell of water. Water dripping from the tub faucets; water dripping from the shower head; water dripping from the washbasin taps. She could even smell the peculiar waiting-to-be mildew odor of a damp towel in the basket behind the door. Water, water, everywhere, and every drop to drink. Her throat shrank dryly inside her neck, seeming to cry out, and she became aware that she was actually touching water — a small puddle