Gerald's Game - Stephen King [34]
I want to go to sleep, she thought. It was the child's voice again. Now it sounded shocked and frightened. It had no interest in logic, no patience for cans and can'ts. I was almost asleep when the bad dog came, and that's what I want now — to go to sleep.
She sympathized wholeheartedly. The problem was, she didn't really feel sleepy anymore. She had 'ust seen a dog tear a chunk out of her husband, and she didn't feel sleepy at all.
What she felt was thirsty.
Jessie opened her eyes and the first thing she saw was Gerald, lying on his own reflection in the highly polished bedroom floor like some grotesque human atoll. His eyes were still open, still staring furiously up at the ceiling, but his glasses now hung askew with one bow sticking into his ear instead of going over it. His head was cocked at such an extreme angle that his plump left cheek lay almost against his left shoulder. Between his right shoulder and right elbow there was nothing but a dark red smile with ragged white edges.
'Dear Jesus,' Jessie muttered. She looked quickly away, out the west window. Golden light — it was almost sunset light now — dazzled her, and she shut her eyes again, watching the ebb and flow of red and black as her heart pushed membranes of blood through her closed lids. After a few moments of this, she noticed that the same darting patterns repeated themselves over and over again. It was almost like looking at protozoa under a microscope, protozoa on a slide which had been tinted with a red stain. She found this repeating pattern both interesting and soothing. She supposed you didn't have to be a genius to understand the appeal such simple repeating shapes held, given the circumstances. When all the normal patterns and routines of a person's life fell apart and with such shocking suddenness — you had to find something you could hold onto, something that was both sane and predictable. If the organized swirl of blood in the thin sheaths of skin between your eyeballs and the last sunlight of an October day was all you could find, then you took it and said thank you very much. Because if you couldn't find something to hold onto, something that made at least some sort of sense, the alien elements of the new world order were apt to drive you quite mad.
Elements like the sounds now coming from the entry, for instance. The sounds that were a filthy, starving stray eating part of the man who had taken you to see your first Bergman film, the man who had taken you to the amusement park at Old Orchard Beach, coaxed you aboard that big Viking ship that swung back and forth in the air like a pendulum, then laughed until tears squirted out of his eyes when you said you wanted to go again. The man who had once made love to you in the bathtub until you were literally screaming with pleasure. The man who was now sliding down that dog's gullet in gobs and chunks.
Alien elements like that.
'Strange days, pretty mamma,' she said. 'Strange days indeed.' Her speaking voice had become a dusty, painful croak. She supposed she would do well to just shut up and give it a rest, but when it was quiet in the bedroom she could hear the panic, still there, still creeping around on the big soft pads of its feet, looking for an opening, waiting for her to let down her guard. Besides, there was no real quiet. The chainsaw guy had packed it in for the day, but the loon still voiced its occasional cry and the wind was rising as night approached, banging the door more loudly and more frequently — than ever.
Plus, of course, the sound of the dog dining on her husband. While Gerald had been waiting to collect and pay for their sub sandwiches in Amato's, Jessie had stepped next door to Michaud's Market. The fish at Michaud's was always good — almost fresh enough to flop, as her grandmother would have said. She had bought some lovely fillet of sole, thinking she would pan-broil it if they decided to stay overnight. Sole was good because Gerald, who would live on a diet of nothing but roast beef