Gerald's Game

by Stephen King

Such news only served to increase her belief that men were not so much gifted with penises as cursed with them.

Gerald died before he ever had a chance to climb into the saddle, but he fucked me good and proper just the same.

This was now, and things were what they were. Survival was not a matter for politeness or apology.

She wants to change the past, but the past is heavy—trying to do that, she discovers, is like trying to pick up the house by one corner so you can look under it for things that have been lost, or forgotten, or hidden.

Dreams on waking were like the empty cocoons of moths or the split-open husks of milkweed pods, dead shells where life had briefly swirled in furious but fragile storm-systems.

Men and women alone in the dark are like open doors, Jessie, and if they call out or scream for help, who knows what dread things may answer? Who knows what some men and women have seen in the hour of their solitary deaths? Is it so hard to believe that some of them may have died of fear, no matter what the words on the death certificates say?

seemed to her that only adults could combine emotions in so many daffy ways—if feelings were food, adult feelings would be things like chocolate-covered steak, mashed potatoes with pineapple bits, Special K with chili powder sprinkled on it instead of sugar. Jessie thought that being an adult seemed more like a punishment than a reward.

He had been able to face her with his lies; it was the truth which had finally caused him to look away.

Jessie had also discovered that pity came cheap in the aftermath of tragedy, and that all the pity in the world wasn’t worth a pisshole in the snow.

I’ve come more and more to believe in these last few months that the only reason a man sticks a ring on your finger is because the law no longer allows him to put one through your nose.