This was no game; it was his life. "I would take you with me just to keep an eye on you, now that youve shown how untrustworthy you can be, but it wouldnt work.
Are you seriously telling me that? He had purposely turned the top sheet around so she could read this:Above this sopping pile of paper Pauls swollen right hand hovered, and held between the thumb and first finger was a single burning match. She unscrewed the hose, opened the bulkhead, and dropped the green plastic snake inside. He saw Annie Wilkes in a long aproned dress, her hair covered with a mobcap, an Annie who looked like a nurse in Londons Bedlam Hospital.
In a numb sort of way he understood and appreciated the bravery of the act, of making little lives that werent, creating the appearance of motion and the illusion of warmth. So the doctor never came.
("Virginia") Sandpipers Polaroids would leap immediately into his mind, obscuring imagination with their cheery but one-dimensional concreteness. He hadnt lived the life of a hero or a saint, but he did not intend to die like an exotic bird in a zoo.