Gerald's Game by Stephen King

Author:Stephen King [King, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

19

Jessie awoke in the mild, milky light of dawn with the perplexing and ominous memory of the woman still filling her mind—the woman with her graying hair pulled back in that tight countrywoman’s bun, the woman who had been kneeling in the blackberry tangles with her slip puddled beside her, the woman who had been looking down through broken boards and smelling that awful bland smell. Jessie hadn’t thought of that woman in years, and now, fresh from her dream of 1963 that hadn’t been a dream but a recollection, it seemed to her that she had been granted some sort of supernatural vision on that day, a vision that had perhaps been caused by stress and then lost again for the same reason.

But it didn’t matter—not that, not what had happened with her father out on the deck, not what had happened later, when she had turned around to see him standing in the bedroom door. All that had happened a long time ago, and as for what was happening right now—

I’m in trouble. I think I’m in very serious trouble.

She lay back against the pillows and looked up at her suspended arms. She felt as dazed and helpless as a poisoned insect in a spider’s web, wanting no more than to be asleep again—dreamlessly this time, if possible—with her dead arms and dry throat in another universe.

No such luck.

There was a slow, somnolent buzzing sound somewhere close by. Her first thought was alarm clock. Her second, after two or three minutes of dozing with her eyes open, was smoke detector. That idea caused a brief, groundless burst of hope which brought her a little closer to real waking. She realized that what she was hearing didn’t really sound very much like a smoke detector at all. It sounded like...well ... like .

It’s flies, toots, okay? The no-bullshit voice now sounded tired and wan. You’ve heard about the Boys of Summer, haven’t you? Well, these are the Flies of Autumn, and their version of the World Series is currently being played on Gerald Burlingame, the noted attorney and handcuff-fetishist.

“Jesus, I gotta get up,” she said in a croaking, husky voice she barely recognized as her own.

What the hell does that mean? she thought, and it was the answer—Not a goddam thing, thanks very much—that finished the job of bringing her back to full wakefulness. She didn’t want to be awake, but she had an idea that she had better accept the fact that she was and do as much with it as she could, while she could.

And you probably better start by waking up your hands and arms. If they will wake up, that is.

She looked at her right arm, then turned her head on the rusty armature of her neck (which was only partially asleep) and looked at her left. Jessie realized with sudden shock that she was looking at them in a completely new way—looking at them as she might have looked at pieces of furniture in a showroom window.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.