For English last year I had to write a section from any book in the style of a narration by none other than Holden Caulfield, a misanthrope from "The Catcher in the Rye" by JD Sallinger. So what did I choose? Stephen King's famous "Misery", specifically Chapter 22, perhaps one of the more gruesome scenes in the book (except the lawnmore incident
). So anyway, I got 22/27, mainly because Holden wouldn't use a surreal horror genre! Annie stood at the end of my bed, staring right at me. Well, I suppose it was her bed but I was the one goddam using it, as I had been for the last god-knows how many years. She had kept me locked in this room, and so I’m now claiming it as mine. I’d become quite attached to my new belongings, except that Royal Typewriter. I’m sure it has been smiling menacingly at me about how it had got one over of me by not letting me use the latter “n”. I hate that typewriter.
Anyway, Annie stood there and in her hand she held an axe she had taken from the shed; the other hand had a propane torch. I now realised how much danger I was in, and how much of a psychopath Annie was. She had tried to pretend to be nice, but I saw through her goddam façade and I knew how phoney she was. Pretending to be nice just to get her own way, keeping me prisoner here even with cops looking for me. Just to write a new Misery book. I saw an evil look sweep over Annie’s face.
“No… Annie, stop you bleeding psychopath. Let’s talk this over...” I whimpered, knowing full well that the time for talking was over.
She tore back my last protection against her fury; the bed clothes covering the bottom of my twisted and ugly sonuvabitches legs. Written down the side of the propane torch in crude painted lettering were the words “Bernz-0-matiC”. She had written them down to be sickeningly funny, cruel and sadistic. Annie kills me, she really does. And I though she was about to too.
It daunted on me that Annie had probably killed her ex-patients, children and terminally ill with the same axe, and her lover Andrew Pomeroy. What happy memories that axe must have for her. She probably relishes using it. I began shrieking and trying to squirm, but my crappy legs refused to budge. I’ll never forgive them for that, though most likely I won’t see one, or both, of them again.
Annie began pouring a reddy-browny-muck all over my legs. She poured it on the axe blade too. She tried to reassure me:
“Just a little pain, Paul,” Like hell it was. We both knew that wasn’t true. Annie raised the axe up high, but even though I closed my eyes I could hear the blade whistle as that sonuvapsycho brought it down on my legs. I don’t want to talk much about the pain I felt, it’s too distressing and it still hurts now.
My eyes flew open to see the dripping blade rise once more, to cleave off the stump of my foot which was holding on by a mere strip of flesh. Blood sprayed out everywhere, all over Annie. She didn’t mind. She’d experience this before, no doubt. My foot, still wriggling, came clean off. Well, unclean off as the bed and foot was soaked in crimson blood.
She picked up that cursed torch and a yellow, dirty flame sprouted at the end. I screamed again as the bitch literally poured the damned fire over the stump that was once my foot. As she continued to use the propane torch on my leg, the bed sheet caught fire.
Annie quickly turned off the torch, stopping the whole damned house setting on fire but it did nothing to stop the searing pain. She put out the flames with the chemical toilet next to my bed, and lifted up my still-wriggling foot.
“See? It wasn’t so bad, and now to get rid of the trash.” Annie calmly said, with no regret for what she had done. Heartless cow. Annie walked out the room, with my now lifeless foot in her hand. My blackened stump was no longer bleeding. Annie kills me. I hope she has now, because she’ll never read that blasted book.
I can’t remember what happened after that, though I must have blacked out. Or Annie had drugged me again. At least the pain went away.
