Rose Madder by Stephen King

He remembered staggering to his feet that last time behind the shithouse, face bleeding from half a dozen cuts and scrapes, his nose stuffed halfway shut, aching all over from repeated confrontations with his own wheelchair, his ribs and guts throbbing from having about three hundred pounds of Dirty Gertie perched on top of him . . . but he could have lived with any of that — that and more. It was the wetness from her and the smell of her, not just urine but a woman’s urine, that made his mind feel as if it were buckling each time it turned back that way. Thinking of what she had done made him want to scream, and it made the world — which he badly needed to stay in touch with, if he didn’t want to end up behind bars, probably laced into a straitjacket and stuffed full of Thorazine — begin to fuzz out.

As he staggered along the fence he thought, Get her, get her, you have to turn around and get her, get her and kill her for what she did, it’s the only way you’ll ever be able to sleep again, it’s the only way you’ll ever be able to think again.

Some part of him knew better, though, and instead of getting her, he ran.

Probably Dirty Gertie thought it was the sound of approaching people that drove him off, but it wasn’t. He ran because his ribs hurt so badly that he could only draw half-breaths, at least for the time being, and his stomach ached, and his testicles were throbbing with that deep, desperate pain only men know about.

Nor was the pain the only reason he ran — it was what the pain meant. He was afraid that if he took after her again, Dirty Gertie might do better than just fight him to a draw. So he fled, lurching along beside the board fence as fast as he could, and Dirty Gertie’s voice chased him like a mocking ghost: She left you a little message . . . her kidneys by way of my kidneys . . . a little message, Normie . . . here it comes . . .

Then one of those skips happened, a short one, the stone of his mind striking the flat surface of reality and flying up and off it again, and when he came back into himself, some little length of time — maybe as short as fifteen seconds, maybe as long as forty -five — had passed. He was running down the midway toward the amusements area, running as thoughtlessly as a cow in a stampede, actually running away from the park exits instead of toward them, running toward the Pier, running toward the lake, where it would be child’s play to first bottle him up and then bring him down.

Meanwhile, his mind shrieked in the voice of his father, the world -class crotchgrabber (and, on at least one memorable hunting trip, world-class cockgobbler, as well). It was a woman! Ray Daniels was screaming. How could you let your clock get cleaned by some cunt, Normie?

He shoved that voice out of his mind. The old man had shouted enough at him while he was alive; Norman was damned if he was going to listen to that same old bullshit now that the old man was dead. He could take care of Gertie, he could take care of Rose, he could take care of all of them, but he had to get away from here in order to do it . . . and before every Security cop in the place was looking for the bald guy with the bloody face. Already far too many

people were gawking, and why not? He stank of piss and looked as if he’d been clawed by a catamount.

He turned into an alley running between the video arcade and the South Seas Adventure ride, no plan in mind, wanting only to get away from the geeks on the midway, and that was when he won the lottery.

The side door of the arcade opened and someone Norman assumed was a kid came out. It was impossible to tell for sure. He was short like a kid and dressed like a kid — jeans, Reeboks, Michael McDermott tee-shirt (I LOVE A GIRL CALLED RAIN, it said, whatever the fuck that meant) — but his entire head was covered by a rubber mask. It was Ferdinand the Bull.

Ferdinand had a big, sappy smile on his face. His horns were decorated with garlands of flowers. Norman never hesitated, simply reached out and snatched the mask off the kid’s head. He got a pretty good handful of hair, too, but what the fuck.

‘Hey!’ the kid screamed. With the mask off, he looked about eleven years old. Still, he sounded more outraged than fearful. ‘Gimme that back, that’s mine, I won it! What do you think you’re — ‘

Norman reached out again, took the kid’s face in his hand, and shoved him backward, hard. The side of the South Seas Adventure ride was canvas, and the kid went billowing through it with his expensive sneakers flying up in the air.

‘Tell anybody, I’ll come back and kill you,’ Norman said into the still-billowing canvas.

Then he walked rapidly toward the midway, pulling the bullmask down over his head. It stank of rubber and its previous owner’s sweaty hair, but neither smell bothered Norman. The thought that the mask would soon also stink of Gertie’s piss did.

Then his mind took another of those skips, and he disappeared into the ozone for awhile.

When he came back this time, he was trotting into the parking lot at the end of Press Street with one hand pushing against his ribcage on the right side, where every breath was now agony. The inside of the mask smelled exactly as he had feared it would and he pulled it off, gasping gratefully at cool air which didn’t stink of piss and pussy. He looked down at the mask and shivered — something about that vapid, smiling face creeped him out. A bull with a ring through his nose and garlands of posies on his horns. A bull wearing the smile of a creature that has been robbed of something and is too stupid to even know what it is. His first impulse was to throw the goddam thing away, but he restrained himself. There was the parking-lot attendant to think about, and while he would undoubtedly remember a man driving off in a Ferdinand the Bull mask, he might not immediately associate that man with the man the police were shortly going to be asking about. If it bought him a little more time, the mask was worth holding onto.

He got behind the wheel of the Tempo, tossed the mask onto the seat, then bent and crossed the ignition wires. When he bent over that way, the smell of piss coming off his shirt was so tart and clear that it made his eyes water. Rosie says you’re a kidney man, he heard Dirty Gertie, the jiggedy-jig from hell, say inside his head. He was terribly afraid she’d always be inside his head now — it was as if she had somehow raped him, and left him with the fertilized seed of some malformed and freakish child.

You’re one of those shy guys who don’t like to leave marks.

No, he thought. No, stop it, don’t think about it.

She left you a little message from her kidneys, by way of my kidneys . . . and then it had flooded his face, stinking and as hot as a childhood fever.

‘No!’ This time he screamed it aloud, and brought his fist down on the padded dashboard.

‘No, she can’t! She can’t! SHE CAN’T DO THAT TO MEI’ He pistoned his fist forward, slamming it into the rear-view mirror and knocking it off its post. It struck the windshield and rebounded onto the floor. He lashed out at the windshield itself, hurting his hand, his Police Academy ring leaving a nest of cracks that looked like an oversized asterisk. He was getting ready to

start hammering on the steering wheel when he finally got hold of himself. He looked up and saw the parking-lot ticket tucked under the sun-visor. He focused on that, working to get himself under control.

When he felt he had some, Norman reached into his pocket, took out his cash, and slipped a five from the moneyclip. Then, steeling himself against the smell (except there was really no way you could defend yourself against it), he pulled the Ferdinand mask back down over his head and drove slowly over to the booth. He leaned out of the window and stared at the parking attendant through the eyeholes. He saw the attendant grab for the side of the booth’s door with an unsteady hand as he bent forward to take the offered bill, and Norman realized an utterly splendid thing: the guy was drunk.

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