Bag of Bones   ::   Кинг Стивен

I’d work in there even if the temperature beneath the roofpeak built to a hundred and twenty degrees… which, by three in the afternoon, it just might.

The paper rolled into the machine was an old pink-carbon receipt from Click! the photo shop in Castle Rock where Jo had bought her supplies when we were down here. I’d put it in so that the blank side faced the Courier type-ball. On it I had typed the names of my little harem, as if I had tried in some struggling way to report on my three-faceted dream even while it was going on:

Jo Sara Mattie Jo Sara Mattie Mattie Mattie Sara Sara Jo Johanna Sara Jo Mattiesarajo.

Below this, in lower case: normal sperm count sperm norm all’s rosy I opened the office door, carried the typewriter in, and put it in its old place beneath the poster of Richard Nixon. I pulled the pink slip out of the roller, balled it up, and tossed it into the wastebasket.

Then I picked up the Selectric’s plug and stuck it in the baseboard socket. My heart was beating hard and fast, the way it had when I was thirteen and climbing the ladder to the high board at the Y-pool. I had climbed that ladder three times when I was twelve and then slunk back down it again; once I turned thirteen, there could be no chickening out—I really had to do it.

I thought I’d seen a fan hiding in the far corner of the closet, behind the box marked GADGETS. I started in that direction, then turned around again with a ragged little laugh. I’d had moments of confidence before, hadn’t I? Yes. And then the iron bands had clamped around my chest. It would be stupid to get out the fan and then discover I had no business in this room after all.

“Take it easy,” I said, “take it easy.” But I couldn’t, no more than that narrow-chested boy in the ridiculous purple bathing suit had been able to take it easy when he walked to the end of the diving board, the pool so green below him, the upraised faces of the boys and girls in it so small, so small.

I bent to one of the drawers on the right side of the desk and pulled so hard it came all the way out. I got my bare foot out of its landing zone just in time and barked a gust of loud, humorless laughter. There was halfa ream of paper in the drawer. The edges had that faintly crispy look paper gets when it’s been sitting for a long time. I no more than saw it before remembering I had brought my own supply—stuff a good deal fresher than this. I left it where it was and put the drawer back in its hole. It took several tries to get it on its tracks; my hands were shaking.