Gerald's Game - Stephen King [45]
She thought, Everything in perspective . . . and the voices that describe the world to you, I suppose. They matter. The voices inside your head.
With an incoherent prayer that the glass would remain in her hand when the shelf was no longer there to support it, she let go with her left hand. The shelf banged back onto its brackets, only slightly askew and shifted only an inch or two down to the left. The glass did stay in her hand, and now she could see the coaster. It clung to the bottom of the glass like a flying saucer.
Please God don't let me drop it now. Don't let me dr —
A cramp knotted her left arm, making her jerk back against the headboard. Her face knotted as well, pinching inward until the lips were a white scar and the eyes were agonized slits.
Wait, it will pass . . . it will pass . . .
Yes, of course it would. She'd had enough muscle cramps in her life to know that, but in the meantime oh God it hurt. If she had been able to touch the biceps of her left arm with her right hand, she knew, the skin there would have felt as if it had been stretched over a number of small smooth stones and then sewn up again with cunning invisible thread. It didn't feel like a Charley horse; it felt like rigor-fucking-mortis.
No, just a Charley horse, Jessie. Like the one you had earlier. Wait itout, that's all. Wait it out and for Christ's sweet sake don't drop that glass of water.
She waited, and after an eternity or two, the muscles in her arm began to relax and the pain began to ease. Jessie breathed out a long harsh sigh of relief, then prepared to drink her reward. Drink, yes, Goody thought, but I think you owe yourself a little more than just a nice cool drink, my dear, Enjoy your reward . . . but enjoy it with dignity. No piggy gulping!
Goody, you never change, she thought, but when she raised the glass, she did so with the stately calm of a guest at a court dinner, ignoring the alkali dryness along the roof of her mouth and the bitter pulse of thirst in her throat. Because you could put Goody down all you wanted — she practically begged for it sometimes but behaving with a little dignity under these circumstances (especially under these circumstances) wasn't such a bad idea. She had worked for the water; why not take the time to honor herself by enjoying it? That first cold sip sliding over her lips and coiling across the hot rug of her tongue was going to taste like victory . . . and after the run of lousy luck she'd just been through, that would indeed be a taste to savor.
Jessie brought the glass toward her mouth, concentrating on the wet sweetness just ahead, the drenching downpour. Her tastebuds cramped with anticipation, her toes curled, and she could feel a furious pulse beating beneath the angle of her jaw. She realized her nipples had hardened, as they sometimes did when she was turned on. Secrets of female sexuality you never dreamed of, Gerald, she thought. Handcuff me to the bedposts and nothing happens. Show me a glass of water, though, and I turn into a raving nympho.
The thought made her smile and when the glass came to an abrupt halt still a foot away from her face, stopping water onto her bare thigh and making it ripple with gooseflesh, the smile stayed on at first. She felt nothing in those first few seconds but a species of stupid amazement and
(?huh?)
incomprehension. What was wrong? What could be wrong?
Yow know what, one of the UFO voices said. It spoke with a calm certainty Jessie found dreadful. Yes, she supposed she did know, somewhere inside, but she didn't want to let that knowledge step into the spotlight which was her conscious mind. Some truths were simply too harsh to be acknowledged.