Стивен Кинг - If It Bleeds

Except, of course, he could help.

Drew walked to the dead socket of the fireplace, pausing once for a coughing fit, and bent over the stand containing the little collection of fireplace tools. He considered the poker, but the idea of skewering the rat with it made him wince. He took the ash shovel instead. One hard hit ought to be enough to put it out of its misery. Then he could use the shovel to sweep it off the side of the porch. If he lived through tonight, he had no wish to start tomorrow by stepping on the corpse of a dead rodent.

Here is something interesting , he thought. When I first saw it, I thought “he.” Now that I’ve decided to kill the damn thing, it’s “it.”

The rat was still on the mat. Sleet had begun crusting on its fur. That one pink paw (so human, so human) continued to paw at the air, although now it was slowing down.

“I’m going to make it better,” Drew said. He raised the shovel… held it at shoulder height for the strike… then lowered it. And why? The slowly groping paw? The beady black eyes?

A tree had crashed the rat’s home and crushed him ( back to him now ), he had somehow dragged himself to the cabin, God knew how much effort it had taken, and was this to be his reward? Another crushing, this one final? Drew was feeling rather crushed himself these days and, ridiculous or not (probably it was), he felt a degree of empathy.

Meanwhile, the wind was chilling him, sleet was smacking him in the face, and he was shivering again. He had to close the door and he wasn’t going to leave the rat to die slowly in the dark. And on a fucking welcome mat, to boot.

Drew set down the lantern and used the shovel to scoop it up (funny how liquid that pronoun was). He went to the stove and tilted the shovel so the rat slid onto the floor. That one pink paw kept scratching. Drew put his hands on his knees and coughed until he dry-retched and spots danced in front of his eyes. When the fit passed, he took the lantern back to his reading chair and sat down.

“Go ahead and die now,” he said. “At least you’re out of the weather and can do it where you’re warm.”

He turned off the lantern. Now there was just the faint red glow of the dying embers. The way they waxed and waned reminded him of the way that tiny pink paw had scratched… and scratched… and scratched. It was doing it still, he saw.

I should build up the fire before I go up to bed , he thought. If I don’t, this place is going to be as cold as Grant’s Tomb in the morning.

But the coughing, which had temporarily subsided, would no doubt begin again if he got up and started moving the phlegm around. And he was tired.

Also, you put the rat down pretty close to the stove. I think you brought it in to die a natural death, didn’t you? Not to broil it alive Build the fire up in the morning.

The wind droned around the cabin, occasionally rising to a womanish screech, then subsiding to that drone again. The sleet slatted against the windows. As he listened to these sounds, they seemed to merge. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. Had the rat died? At first he thought it had, but then that tiny paw made another short slow stroke. So not quite yet.

Drew closed his eyes.

And slept.

He awoke with a start when another branch thudded down on the roof. He had no idea how long he had been out. It could have been fifteen minutes, it could have been two hours, but one thing was sure: there was no rat in front of the stove. Apparently Monsieur Rat hadn’t been as badly hurt as Drew had thought; it had come around and was now somewhere in the house with him. He didn’t much care for that idea, but it was his own fault. He had invited it in, after all.

You have to invite them in , Drew thought. Vampires. Wargs. The devil in his black riding boots. You have to invite—

“Drew.”

He started so strongly at the sound of that voice that he almost kicked over the lantern. He looked around and by the light of the dying fire in the stove, saw the rat. He was on Pop’s desk under the stairs, sitting on his back paws between the laptop and the portable printer. Sitting, in fact, on the manuscript of Bitter River .

Drew tried to speak, but at first could only manage a croak. He cleared his throat—which was painful—and tried again. “I thought you just said something.”

“I did.” The rat’s mouth didn’t move, but the voice was coming from him, all right; it wasn’t in Drew’s head.

“This is a dream,” Drew said. “Or delirium. Maybe both.”

“No, it’s real enough,” the rat said. “You’re awake and you’re not delirious. Your fever’s going down. Check for yourself.”

Drew put a hand on his forehead. He did feel cooler, but that wasn’t exactly trustworthy, was it? He was conversing with a rat, after all. He felt in his pocket for the kitchen matches he’d left there, struck one, and lit the lantern. He held it up, expecting the rat to be gone, but he was still there, sitting on his back paws with his tail curled around his haunches and holding his weird pink hands to his chest.

“If you’re real, get off my manuscript,” Drew said. “I worked too hard on it for you to leave a bunch of ratshit on the title page.”

“You did work hard,” the rat agreed (but showing no signs of relocating). He scratched behind one ear, now seeming perfectly lively.

Whatever fell on him must have just stunned him , Drew thought. If he’s there at all, that is. If he was ever there.

“You worked hard and at first you worked well. You were totally on the rails, running fast and hot. Then it started to go wrong, didn’t it? Just like the other ones. Don’t feel bad; wannabe novelists all over the world hit the same wall. Do you know how many half-finished novels are stuck in desk drawers or filing cabinets? Millions .”

“Getting sick fucked me up.”

“Think back, think honestly. It was starting to happen even before that.”

Drew didn’t want to think back.

“You lose your selective perception,” the rat said. “It happens to you every time. On the novels, at least. Doesn’t happen at once, but as the book grows and begins to breathe, more choices need to be made and your selective perception erodes.”

The rat went to all fours, trotted to the edge of Pop’s desk, and sat up again, like a dog begging for a treat.

“Writers have different habits, different ways of getting in the groove, and they work at different speeds, but to produce a long work, there must always come extended periods of focused narration.”

I’ve heard that before , Drew thought. Almost word for word. Where?

“At every single moment during those focused periods—those flights of fancy —the writer is faced with at least seven choices of word and expression and detail. Talented ones make the right choices with almost no conscious consideration; they are pro basketball players of the mind, hitting from all over the court.”

Where? Who?

“A constant winnowing process is going on which is the basis of what we call creative wri—”

“ Franzen! ” Drew bellowed, sitting upright and sending a bolt of pain through his head. “That was part of the Franzen lecture! Almost word for word!”

The rat ignored this interruption. “You are capable of that winnowing process, but only in short bursts. When you try to write a novel—the difference between a sprint and a marathon—it always breaks down. You see all the choices of expression and detail, but the consequent winnowing begins to fail you. You don’t lose the words, you lose the ability to choose the correct words. They look all right; they look all wrong. It’s very sad. You’re like a car with a powerful engine and a broken transmission.”