Stephen King - Insomnia

[“Miserable little thief! Here’s something for you! How do -you like it?”] Atropos uttered a squeal of pain, and when Ralph looked up, he saw that Lois had buried her teeth in his right wrist. His left hand, the one holding the scalpel, flailed blindly at her balloon-string, missing it by less than an inch. Ralph sprang to his feet and, still with no clear idea of what he was doing, pulled Lois’s pink half-slip over Atropos’s slashing hand… and his head.

[“Get away from him, Lois! Run!”] She spat out the small white hand and stumbled toward the barrelhead table in the center of the room, wiping Atropos’s blood from her mouth with atavistic loathing.

… but the dominant expression on her face was still one of anger.

Atropos himself, for the moment just a bawling, writhing shape under the pink half-slip, groped after her with his free hand, Ralph slapped it away and shoved him back against the side of the archway.

[“No you don’t, my friend-not at all.”] [Let me go! Let me go, you bastard You can’t do this!] And the weirdest thing of all is that he really believes that, Ralph thought. He’s had it his own way for so long that He’s completely forgotten what Short-Timers can do.

I can fix that, I think. Ralph remembered how Atropos had slashed Rosalie’s balloon string after the dog had licked his hand, and his hatred for this strutting, leering, complacently insane creature suddenly exploded in his head like a rotten-green roadflare. He grabbed one side of Lois’s slip and twisted his fist twice around it in a savage winding up gesture, pung it so tight that Atropos’s features stood out in a pink nylon deathmask.

Then, just as the blade of the scalpel popped through the fabric and began to cut it open, Ralph whirled Atropos around, using the slip as a man might use a sling to whirl a stone, and sent him flying across the archway. The damage might have been less if Atropos had fallen, but he didn’t; his feet knocked against each other but never quite crossed. He hit the rock facing of the archway with a thud, voiced a muffled scream of pain, and dropped to his knees. Spots of blood bloomed on Lois’s half-slip like flower-petals. The scalpel had disappeared back through the slit it had made in the cloth, Ralph sprang after Atropos just as it reappeared and lengthened the original cut, freeing the bald creature’s staring, bewildered face. His nose was bleeding; so were his forehead and right temple. Before he could begin to get up, Ralph grabbed the slippery pink bulges that were his shoulders.

[Stop it I’m warning you, Shorts! I’ll make you sorry you were ever bo-] Ralph ignored this pointless bluster and slammed Atropos forward, hard. The midget’s arms were still tangled in the slip and he caught the floor with nothing but face. His shriek was part amazement, mostly pain. Incredibly, Ralph felt Lois in the back of his mind, telling him that enough was enough, not to really hurt himnot to hurt the pint-sized psychotic who had just tried to kill her.

Atropos attempted to roll over. Ralph kneedropped him in the middle of the back and knocked him flat again.

[“Don’t move, friend. I like you just the way you are.”] He looked up at Lois, and saw that her amazing fury had departed as suddenly as it had come-like some freak weather phenomenon.

A tornado, perhaps, that touches down out of a clear blue sky, rips the top off a barn, and then disappears again. She was pointing at Atropos.

The nasty little thief has got my earrings, Ralph. [“He’s got my earrings. He’s wearing them!”] [“I know. I saw.”] One snarling side of Atropos’s face poked out of the slit in the nylon like the face of the world’s ugliest baby at the moment of its birth. Ralph could feel the muscles of the small creature’s back trembling beneath his pinioning knee, and he remembered an old proverb he’d read somewhere.

… maybe at the end of a Salad a teabag string: He who takes a tiger by the tail dare not let go. Now, in this unlikely den beneath the ground and feeling like a character in a fairy-tale concocted by a lunatic, Ralph thought he had achieved a sort of divine understanding of that proverb. Through a combination of Lois’s sudden rage and plain old shitass luck, he had wound up at least temporarily on top of the scuzzy little fuck-The questionand a fairly pressing one, at that-was what to do next.

The hand holding the scalpel lashed up, but the stroke was both weak and blind. Ralph avoided it easily. Sobbing and cursing, not afraid even now but clearly hurting and all but consumed with impotent rage, Atropos flailed up at him again.

[Let me up, you overgrown Short-Time bastard! Silly old white-hair, ugly wrinkle-face!] [“I look a little better than that just lately, my friend. Haven’t you noticed! [Asshole Stupid Short-Time asshole. I’ll make you sorry I’ll make you so sorry.”] Well, Ralph thought, at least he’s not begging. I almost would have expected him to start begging by now.

Atropos continued to flail weakly with the scalpel. Ralph ducked two or three of these strokes easily, then slid one hand toward the throat of the creature lying beneath him.

[“Ralph.” No.” Don’t."’] He shook his head at her, not knowing if he was expressing annoyance, reassurance, or both. He touched Atropos’s skin, and felt him shudder. The bald doc uttered a choked cry of revulsion, and Ralph knew exactly how he felt. It was sickening for both of them, but he didn’t take his hand away. Instead, he tried to close it around Atropos’s throat and wasn’t very surprised to find he couldn’t do it.

Still, hadn’t Lachesis said that only Short-Timers could oppose the will of Atropos? He thought so. The question was, how?

Beneath him, Atropos laughed nastily.

[“Please, Ralph. Please just get my earrings and we’ll go.”] Atropos rolled his eyes in her direction, then looked back at Ralph.

[Did you think you could kill me, Shorts? Well, guess again.] No, he hadn’t thought it, but he’d needed to find out for sure.

[Life’s a bitch, ain’t it, Shorts? Why don’t you just give me back the ring? I’m going to get it sooner or later, I guarantee you that.] “Fuck you, you little weasel.”] Tough talk, but talk was cheap.

The most pressing question was still unanswered: What the hell was he supposed to do with this monster?

Whatever it is, you won’t be able to do it with Lois standing there and watching you, a cold voice that was not quite Carolyn’s advised him. She was fine when she was pissed off, but she’s not pissed off now. She’s too tenderhearted for whatever’s going to happen next, Ralph. You have to get her out of here.

He turned toward Lois. Her eyes were half-closed. She looked ready to crumple at the base of the archway and go to sleep.

[“Lois, I want you to get out of here. Right now. Go up the stairs and wait for me under the tree.] The scalpel flashed up again, and this time it almost sliced off the end of Ralph’s nose. He recoiled, and his knee slid on nylon. Atropos gave a mighty heave and came within a whisker of rolling out from under. At the last second, Ralph shoved the little man’s head flat again with the heel of his hand-that, it seemed, was allowed by the rules-and replanted his knee.

[owww! Owww! Stop it! You’re killing me!]

Ralph ignored him and looked at Lois.

[“Go on, Lois! Go on up! I’ll be there as soon as I can."’]

[“I don’t think I can climb out on my own-I’m too tired.”] [“Yes, you can. You have to, and you can.”] Atropos subsided again-for the moment, at least-a small, gasping engine under Ralph’s knee. But that was a long way from being enough. Time was passing topside, passing fast, and right now time was the real enemy, not Ed Deepneau.

[“My earrings-“I [“I’ll bring them when I come’ Lois. I promise.