The Running Man

by Richard Bachman

Maybe only because it needed to be said once, to make it coalesce and take concrete shape, as things do when a man forces himself to translate unformed emotional reactions into spoken words.

He understood well enough how a man with a choice between pride and responsibility will almost always choose pride—if responsibility robs him of his manhood. A man can’t stick around and watch his wife earning supper on her back. If a man can’t do any more than pimp for the woman he married, Richards judged, he might as well walk out of a high window.