She killed Pomeroy with that same axe. I know she did.
He continued to shriek and plead, but his words had become inarticulate babble. He tried to turn over, turn away from her, and his legs cried out. He tried to draw them up, make them less vulnerable less of a target, and his knee screamed.
“Only a minute more, Paul,” she said, and uncapped the Betadine. She poured a brownish-red muck over his left ankle. “Only a minute more and it's over.” She tipped the blade of the axe flat, the tendons standing out in her strong right wrist, and he could see the wink of the amethyst ring she still wore on the pinkie finger of that hand. She poured Betadine on the blade. He could smell it, a doctor's office smell. That smell meant you were going to get a shot.
“Just a little pain, Paul. It won't be bad.” She turned the axe over and splashed the other side of the blade. He could see random flowers of rust blooming on this side before the goop covered it.
“Annie Annie oh Annie please please no please don't Annie I swear to you I'll be good I swear to God I'll be good please give me a chance to be good OH ANNIE PLEASE LET ME BE GOOD - “
“Just a little pain. Then this nasty business will be behind us for good, Paul.” She tossed the open bottle of Betadine over her shoulder, her face blank and empty and yet so unarguably solid; she slid her right hand down the handle of the axe alnost to the steel head. She gripped the handle farther up in her left hand and spread her legs like a logger.
“ANNIE OH PLEASE PLEASE DON'T HURT ME!” Her eyes were mild and drifting. “Don't worry,” she said. “I'm a trained nurse.” The axe came whistling down and buried itself in Paul Sheldon's left leg just above the ankle. Pain exploded up his body in a gigantic bolt. Dark-red blood splattered across her face like Indian war-paint. It splattered the wall. He heard the blade squeal against bone as she wrenched it free. He looked unbelievingly down at himself. The sheet was turning red. He saw his toes wriggling. Then he saw her raising the dripping axe again. Her hair had fallen free of its pins and hung around her blank face.
He tried to pull back in spite of the pain in his leg and knee and realized that his leg was moving but his foot wasn't. All he was doing was widening the axe-slash, making it open like a mouth. He had time enough to realize his foot was now only held on his leg by the meat of his calf before blade came down again, directly into the gash, shear through the rest of his leg and burying itself deep in mattress. Springs boinked and squoinked.
Annie pulled the axe free and tossed it aside absently at the jetting stump for a moment and picked up the box of matches. She lit one. Then she picked up propane torch with the word Bernz-0-matiC on it and twisted the valve on the side. The torch hissed. Blood poured from the place where he no longer was. Annie held the match delicately under the nozzle of the Bernz-0-matiC. There was a floof! sound. A long yellow flame appeared. Annie adjusted it to a hard blue line of fire.
“Can't suture,” she said. “No time. Tourniquet's no good. No central pressure point. Got to (rinse) cauterize.” She bent. Paul screamed as fire splashed over the raw bleeding stump. Smoke drifted up. It smelled sweet. He and his first wife had honeymooned on Maui. There had been a luau. This smell reminded him of the smell of the pig when they brought it out of the pit where it had cooked all day. The pig had been on a stick, sagging, black, falling apart.
The pain was screaming. He was screaming.
“Almost over,” she said, and turned the valve, and now the ground sheet caught fire around the stump that was no longer bleeding, the stump that was as black as the pig's hide had been when they had brought it out of - Eileen had turned away but Paul had watched, fascinated, as they pulled off the pig's crackling skin as easily as you might skim off a sweater after a football game.
“Almost over - “ She turned the torch off. His leg lay in a line of flames with his severed foot wavering beyond it. She bent and now came up with his old friend the yellow floor-bucket. She dumped it over the flames.
He was screaming, screaming. The pain! The goddess! The pain! O Africa!
She stood looking at him, at the darkening, bloody sheets with vague consternation - her face was the face of a woman who hears on her radio that an earthquake has killed ten thousand people in Pakistan or Turkey.
“You'll be all right, Paul,” she said, but her voice was suddenly frightened. Her eyes began to dart aimlessly around as they had when it seemed that the fire of his burning book might get out of control. They suddenly fixed on something, almost with relief. “I'll just get rid of the trash.” She picked up his foot. Its toes were still spasming. She carried it across the room. By the time she got to the door they had stopped moving. He could see a scar on the instep and remembered how he had gotten that, how he had stepped on a piece of bottle when he was just a kid. Had that been at Revere Beach? Yes, he thought it had been. He remembered he had cried and his father had told him it was just a little cut. His father had told him to stop acting like someone had cut his goddam foot off. Annie paused at the door and looked back at Paul, who shrieked and writhed in the charred and blood-soaked bed, his face a deathly fading white.
“Now you're hobbled,” she said, “and don't you blame me. It's your own fault.” She went out.
So did Paul.
23
The cloud was back. Paul dived for it, not caring if the cloud meant death instead of unconsciousness this time. He almost hoped it did. Just… no pain, please. No memories, no pain, no horror, no Annie Wilkes.
He dived for the cloud, dived into the cloud, dimly hearing the sounds of his own shrieks and smelling his own cooked meat.
As his thoughts faded, he thought: Goddess! Kill you! Goddess! Kill you! Goddess!
Then there was nothing but nothing.
Part III
Paul
It's no good. I've been trying to sleep for the last half-hour, and I can't. Writing here is a sort of drug. It's the only thing I look forward to. This afternoon I read what I wrote… And it seemed vivid. I know it seems vivid because my imagination fills in all the bits another person wouldn't understand. I mean, it's vanity. But it seems a sort of magic… And I just can't live in this present. I would go mad if I did.
1
“Oh blessed Jesus,” Ia moa ed, a d made a co vulsive moveme t forward. Geoffrey grasped his frie d's arm. The steady beat of the drums pulsed i his head like somethi g heard i a killi g delirium. Bees dro ed arou d them, but o e paused; they simply flew past a d i to the cleari g as if draw by a mag et - which, Geoffrey hough sickly, hey
2
Paul picked up the typewriter and shook it. After a tune, a small piece of steel fell out onto the board across the arms of the wheelchair. He picked it up and looked at it.
It was the letter t. The typewriter had just thrown its t.
He thought: I am going to complain to the management. I am going to not just ask for a new typewriter but fucking demand one. She's got the money - I know she does. Maybe it's squirrelled away in fruit-jars under the barn or maybe it's stuffed in the walls at her Laughing Place, but she's got the dough, and t, my God, the second-most-common letter in the English language -!
Of course he would ask Annie for nothing, much less demand. Once there had been a man who would at least have asked. A man who had been in a great deal more pain, a man who had had nothing to hold onto, not even this shitty book. That man would have asked. Hurt or not, that man had had the guts to at least try to stand up to Annie Wilkes.
He had been that man, and he supposed he ought to be ashamed, but that man had had two big advantages over this one: that man had had two feet… and two thumbs.