Stephen King - Insomnia

Because Atropos hadn’t said I won’t, and even more important, Atropos hadn’t said I can’t. He had Just said no. just a little backsliding, in other words, and easily remedied.

Steeling himself, Ralph ran the scalpel straight down the middle of Atropos’s back. The slip split, the dirty white tunic beneath it split, and so did the flesh beneath the tunic. Blood poured out in a sickening flood, and Atropos’s tortured, wailing shriek beat at Ralph’s ears.

He leaned over and murmured into the small ear again, grimacing and avoiding the blood as best he could.

[“I don’t like doing this anymore, Chumley-in fact, about two more cuts and I’m going to throw up again-but I want you to know that I can do it and I’m going to keep on doing it until you either give me the promise I want or until the force that stopped me from choking you stops me again. I think if you wait for that to happen, you’re going to be one hurting unit. So what.do you say? Do you want to promise, or do you want me to peel you like a grape?”] Atropos was blubbering.

It was a nauseating, horrible sound.

[You don’t understand. If you succeed in stopping what’s been started-the chances are slim, but it’s possible that you might-I will be punished by the creature you call the Crimson King.”

Ralph clamped his teeth together and slashed down again, his lips pressed so tightly together that his mouth looked like a long-healed scar. There was a faint tug as the scalpel’s blade slid through gristle, and then Atropos’s left ear tumbled to the floor. Blood poured out of the hole on the side of his bald head, and his scream this time was loud enough to hurt Ralph’s ears.

They’re sure a long way from being gods, aren’t they? Ralph thought.

He felt sick with horror and dismay. The only real difference between them and us is that they live longer and the-v’re a little harder to see, And I guess I’m not much of a soldier-looking at all lhtil blood makes me feel like passing out. shit.

[All right, I promise.” just stop cutting me! No more.” Please, no more.”

[“That’s a start, but you’re going to have to be more specific. I want to hear you say that you promise to stay away from me and Lois an Ed, too, until the rally at the Civic Center is over.”] He expected more wiggling and weaseling, but Atropos surprised him.

[I promise I promise to stay away from You, and from the bitch you’re running around with-I [“Lois. Say her name. Lois.”

[Yeah, yeah, her-Lois Chasse I agree to stay away from her, and Deepneau, too. From all of you, just as long as you don’t cut me anymore. Are you satisfied? Is it good enough, God damn you?] Ralph decided he was satisfied… or as satisfied as any man can be when he is deeply sickened by his own methods and actions. He didn’t believe there were any trapdoors hidden in Atropos’s promise; the little bald man knew he might pay a high price later for giving in now, but in the end that hadn’t been able to offset the pain and terror Ralph had inflicted on him.

[“Yes, Mr. A I think it’s good enough.”]

Ralph sild off his small victim with his stomach rolling and a sensation-it had to be false, didn’t it?-that his throat was opening and closing like the valve of a clam. He looked at the blood-spattered scalpel for a moment, then cocked his arm back and threw it as hard as he could. it flew end-for-end through the arch and disappeared into the storeroom beyond.

Good riddance, Ralph thought. At least I didn’t get much on mlselfike crying.

There’s that. He no longer felt like vomiting. Now he felt I Atropos got slowly to his knees and looked around with the dazed eyes of a man who has survived a killer storm. He saw his ear lying on the floor and picked it up. He turned it over in his small hands and looked at the strands of gristle trailing out from the back side.

Then he looked up at Ralph. His eyes swam with tears of pain and humiliation, but there was something else in them as well-a rage so deep and deadly that Ralph recoiled from it. All his precautions seemed flimsy and foolish in the face of that rage. He took a blundering step backward and pointed at Atropos with an unsteady finger.

[“Remember your promise”] Atropos bared his teeth in a gruesome grin.

The dangling flap of skin on the side of his face swung back and forth like a slack sail, and the raw flesh beneath it oozed and trickled.

[Of course I’ll remember it-how could I forget? In fact, I’d like to make you another. Two for the price of one, you might say.] Atropos made a gesture Ralph remembered well from the hospital roof, spreading the first two fingers of his right hand in a V and then flicking them upward, creating a -red arc in the air. Within it, Ralph saw a human figure. Beyond it, dimly glimpsed, as if seen through a mist of blood, was the Red Apple Store. He started to ask who that was standing in the foreground, on the curb of Harris Avenue… and then, suddenly, he knew. He looked up at Atropos with shocked eyes.

[“Jesus, no.” No, you can’t."’] The grin on Atropos’s face continued to widen.

[You know, that’s what I kept thinking about you, Short-Time.

Only I was wrong. You are, too. Watch.] Atropos moved his spread fingers slightly wider. Ralph saw someone wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap come out of the Red Apple, and this time Ralph knew immediately whom he was looking at. This person called to the one across the street, and then something terrible began to happen. Ralph turned away, sickened, from the bloody arc of the future between Atropos’s small fingers.

But he heard it when it happened.

[The one I showed you-first belongs to the Random Shorts-to me. another words. And here’s my promise to you: if you go on getting in my way, what I’ve just shown you is going to happen. There’s nothing you can do, no warning you can give, that will stop it from happening.

But if you leave off now-if you and the woman simply stand aside and let events take their course-then I will stay my hand.] The vulgarities which formed so large a part of Atropos’s usual discourse had been left behind like a discarded costume, and for the first time Ralph had some clear sense of how truly old and malevolently wise this being was.

[Remember what the junkies say, Shorts.-dying is easy, living is hard. It’s a true saying. If anyone should know, it’s me. So what do you think? Having any second thoughts?] Ralph stood in the filthy chamber with his head down and his fists clenched. Lois’s earrings burned in one of them like small hot coals.

Ed’s ring also seemed to burn against him, and he knew there wasn’t a thing in the world to stop him from taking it out of his pocket and throwing it into the other room after the scalpel. He remembered a story he’d read in school about a thousand years ago.

“The Lady or the Tiger?” it had been called, and now he understood what it was to be given such a terrible power… and such a terrible choice. On the surface it seemed easy enough; what, after all, was one life against two thousand?

But that one life-!

Yet really it isn’t as if anyone would ever have to know, he thought coldly. No one except maybe for Lois… and Lois would accept my decision. Carolyn might not have done, hut they’re very different women.

Yes, but did he have the right?

Atropos also read this in his aura-it was spooky, how much the creature saw.

[Of course you do, Ralph-that’s what these matters of life and death are really about: who has the right. This time it’s you. So what do you say?] [“I don’t know what I say. I don’t know what I think. All I know is that I wish all three of you had LEFT ME THE FUCK ALONE!”] Ralph

Roberts raised his head toward the root-riddled ceiling of Atropos’s den and screamed.