Gerald's Game - Stephen King [88]
Because there is none, toots — none at all.
Toots this and toots that, she thought distractedly. Would you please put a sock in it, you mouthy bitch?
At last her bottom began to slide up toward the head of the bed. Each time it moved, Jessie tensed her stomach muscles and did a mini sit-up. The angle made by her upper and lower body slowly began to approach ninety degrees. Her elbows began to bend, and as the drag of her weight began to leave her arms and shoulders, the tingles racing through her flesh increased. She didn't stop moving her legs when she was finally sitting up but continued to pedal, wanting to keep her heart-rate up.
A drop of stinging sweat ran into her left eye. She flicked it away with an impatient shake of her head and went on pedaling. The tingles continued to increase, darting upward and downward from her elbows, and about five minutes after she'd reached her current slumped position (she looked like a gawky teenager draped over a movie theater seat), the first cramp struck. It felt like a blow from the dull side of a meat-cleaver.
Jessie threw her head back, sending a fine mist of perspiration flying from her head and hair, and shrieked. As she was drawing breath to repeat the cry, the second cramp struck. This one was much worse. It felt as if someone had dropped a glass-encrusted noose of cable around her left shoulder and then yanked it tight. She howled, her hands snapping shut into fists with such sudden savagery that two of her fingernails splintered away from the quick and began to bleed. Her eyes, sunk into brown hollows of puffy flesh, were squeezed tightly shut, but tears escaped nevertheless and went trickling down her cheeks, mixing with the tunnels of sweat from her hairline.
Keep pedaling, toots — don't stop now.
'Don't you call me toots!' Jessie screamed.
The stray dog had crept back to the rear stoop just before first light, and at the sound of her voice, its head jerked up. There was an almost comical expression of surprise on its face.
'Don't you call me that, you bitch! You hateful hi — '
Another cramp, this one as sharp and sudden as a thunderbolt coronary, punched through her left triceps all the way to the armpit, and her words dissolved into a long, wavering scream of agony. Yet she kept on pedaling.
Somehow she kept on pedaling.
C H A P T E R T W E N T Y
When the worst of the cramps had passed — at least she hoped the worst of them had — she took a breather, leaning back against the slatted mahogany crossboards which formed the head of the bed, her eyes closed and her breath gradually slowing down — first to a lope, then a trot, and finally to a walk. Thirst or no thirst, she felt surprisingly good. She supposed part of the reason lay in that old joke, the one with the punchline that went 'It feels so good when I stop.' But she had been an athletic girl and an athletic woman until five years ago (well, all right, maybe it was closer to ten), and she could still recognize an endorphin rush when she was having one. Absurd, given the circumstances, but also very nice.
Maybe not so absurd, Jess. Maybe useful. Those endorphins clear the mind, which is one reason why people work better after they've taken some exercise.
And her mind was clear. The worst of her panic had blown away like industrial smogs before a strong wind, and she felt more than rational; she felt wholly sane again. She never would have believed it possible, and she found this evidence of the mind's tireless adaptability and almost insectile determination to survive a little spooky. All of this and I haven't even had my morning coffee, she thought.
The image of coffee — black, and in her favorite cup with the blue flowers around its middle — made her lick her lips. It also made her think of the Today program. If her interior clock was right, Today would