Misery

Misery (1987) is a psychological horror novel by Stephen King. The novel was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1988,[1] and was later made into a Hollywood film and an Off-Broadway play.

Paul Sheldon is the author of a best-selling series of Victorian-era romance novels surrounding the heroine character Misery Chastain. Since 1974, he has finished the first drafts of every one of his books in the same room at the Hotel Boulderado in Colorado. He is determined to finish his new novel, Fast Cars, the "serious," personal–and perhaps partly autobiographical–story that he feels is long overdue, having been sidetracked by the commercial success of the "Misery" series. After he has completed his manuscript, he has an impulse (fueled by several bottles of champagne) to drive to L.A. rather than fly back to his townhouse in New York City. In his inebriated state he is unaware that the Colorado Western Slope is going to be hit with one of the biggest snowstorms of the year in a few hours. Determined to drive through this, he loses control of his car, drives off the road, and tumbles down the steep hill, falling unconscious.

Paul is rescued from the car wreck by a woman named Annie Wilkes, a former nurse who lives nearby. She takes him not to a hospital, but rather to her own home, putting him in a spare bedroom. Using skills learned from her long career, a vast stockpile of food and supplies, and Novril (a fictitious codeine-based painkiller), she slowly nurses Paul back to health. She explains that she is Paul's "#1 fan", and a long-time avid reader of the Misery series. When she reads the manuscript for Paul's new book, Fast Cars, she decides she doesn't like it and argues with Paul on the content and language of the book and punishes him by withholding his medication and then forcing him to drink soap water.

It is around this time that the latest and intended final Misery book hits the shelves. Completely unaware that this is to be the last "Misery" book, Annie, whose life revolves around the character, buys the copy she has reserved. Upon reading the book, and learning of her beloved Misery's death, she flies into a rage. She leaves Paul alone in the house for a period of 51 hours, stating that if she does not leave she may do something unwise. During this time Paul suffers hunger, thirst, extreme pain and Novril withdrawal. By the time Annie returns, he is near death.

Upon Annie's return, she forces him to burn his Fast Cars manuscript, which is the only copy he has, and demands that he write a new Misery book which will bring her back from the dead using an old typewriter missing the key to the letter “N”, the sixth most commonly used letter in the English alphabet. After biding his time, he manages to escape his room while Annie is away getting him paper to write his new novel on, and tours the house in search of Novril. After finding a stash of Novril he also finds a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings from Annie's life, and is disturbed to find numerous cases where Annie hastened or outright caused the deaths of five members of the Krenmitz family, whose children she hated to babysit, her own father, her roommate while in nursing school at the University of Southern California, and elderly patients and infants in various hospitals in Manchester, New Hampshire; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Duluth, Minnesota; Fargo, North Dakota; Nederland, Colorado; and Denver, Colorado.

After Annie gets back, she realizes that Paul had been out of his room. She ties him to the bed and asks him how many times he's been out. After he answers, Annie tells him about a practice used by slavers, called hobbling. She then cuts off his foot and cauterizes it with a blowtorch.

In early May, a Colorado State Trooper comes to Annie’s house with a picture of Paul. Realizing a chance for escape, Paul alerts the officer by throwing an ashtray through the window, but the trooper is brutally killed by Annie, who runs him over with a riding lawnmower and hides the body. She then temporarily moves Paul to the basement, and Paul continues to think of an escape plan.

As Paul continues to write the "new" Misery book he enters an argument with Annie about the condition of the typewriter which angers Annie to the point of amputating his thumb. Ironically, the e and t keys fall off of the old typewriter Annie supplied him with, which he has begun to loathe.

Eventually Paul finishes the new Misery book. As a celebration, he asks Annie for a cigarette and a match, but instead uses the match to light his manuscript on fire, which he had soaked with a squirreled-away bottle of lighter fluid. Stunned, Annie attempts to rescue the manuscript, as Paul knew she would, and he seizes the opportunity to throw the typewriter at her, knocking her down. He then takes several handfuls of burning paper and stuffs it down her throat, seemingly killing her. Crippled and exhausted, he crawls to the bathroom and loads himself on Novril.

Soon the police arrive, looking for their missing colleague, and find Paul alone in the house with no sign of Annie. They later find Annie's body in the barn, with one hand wrapped around the handle of a chainsaw. Ironically, it was not Paul or the burning pages that killed Annie, but a skull injury sustained when she hit her head on the mantle. In addition, the papers he had burned were not the actual manuscript for the Misery book, but rather blank sheets with the book's title on the front page to fool Annie.

Returning home to New York City, Paul is fitted with a prosthetic foot. He learns that his limp would have been worse due to the damage he sustained in the car crash had Annie not amputated it. He submits Misery's Return to his publisher, who tells him that it is certain to become his best-selling book ever. However, the ordeal is far from over for Paul: he suffers nightmares about Annie as well as symptoms of withdrawal from the Novril. He also drinks too much, has writer's block and cannot bring himself to get back to work. Eventually, after a random encounter with a child in the street, he has the same spark that inspired him to write Fast Cars. He begins typing about this boy and the skunk he had with him in a shopping cart, showing the reader he has begun healing mentally.