Memory was slow to return. At first there was only pain. The pain was total, everywhere, so that there was no room for memory. Then he remembered that before the pain there was a cloud. He could let himself go into that cloud and there would be no pain. He needed only to stop breathing. It was so easy. Breathing only brought pain, anyway. But the peace of the cloud was spoiled by the voice. The voice - which was a woman's voice - said, 'Breathe! You must breathe, Paul!' Something hit his chest hard, and then foul breath was forced into his mouth by unseen lips. The lips were dry and the breath smellcd of the stale wind in the tunnel of an underground railway; it smelled of old dust and dirt. He began to breathe again so that the lips would not return with their foul breath. Along with the pain, there were sounds. When the pain covered the shore of Ins mind, like a high tide, the sounds had no meaning: 'Bree! Ooo mus bree Pul!' When the tide went out, the sounds became words. Me already knew that something bad had happened to him; now he began to remember. He was Paul Sheldon. He smoked too much. He had married twice, but both marriages had ended in divorce. He was a famous writer. He was also a good writer. But he was not famous as a good writer; he was famous as the creator of Misery Chastain, a beautiful woman front nineteenth-century England, whose adventures and love life now filled eight volumes and had sold many millions of copies. He felt trapped by Misery Chastain, so he wrote Misery's Child. In the final pages of this book Misery died while giving birth to a daughter. Her death made Paul free, and he immediately started to write a serious novel, about the life of a young car-thief in New York. He finished the novel late in January 1987. As usual he 1 finished it in a hotel in the mountains of Colorado; he finished all his books in the same room, in the same hotel. Now he could drive to the airport and fly to New York for the publication of Misery's Child, and at the same time he could deliver the typescript of the new novel, which was called Fast Cars. The weatherman on the radio said that the storm would pass to the south of Colorado. The weatherman was wrong. Paul was driving along a mountain road, surrounded by pine forest, when the storm struck. Within minutes a thick layer of snow covered the road. The car's wipers were unable to keep the windows clear and the tyres couldn't grip the surface of the road. Paul had to fight to keep the car on the slippery road . . . then on a particularly steep corner he couldn't control it. He had time to notice that the sky and the ground changed places in an unbelievable way. Then the dark cloud descended over his mind. He remembered all this before he opened his eyes. He was aware of the woman sitting next to his bed. When he opened his eyes he looked in her direction. At first he couldn't speak; his lips were too dry. Then he managed to ask, 'Where am I?' 'Near Sidewinder, Colorado,' she said. 'My name is Annie Wilkes.' She smiled. 'You know, you're my favourite author.'