If I don't read it...it won't happen...

I'm in a book.

I don't mean literally in a book, nor do I mean, figuratively, that I am reading a book.

I mean to say that I am reading a short story so ...engaging, that I feel as though I am in the story, that I am the protagonist, that the conflict is my conflict, and that his terror is my terror.

Unfortunately, the story is of a man in a venom induced state of near-death being brought in to an autopsy room in a body bag. Not dead, but unable to communicate the fact that he is living, the man is doing all within his power to stop the doctors from cutting him up like so much beef.

I can't read the rest...I have to read the rest....I don't want to know what happens...I must know what happens.

If I don't read the story, I won't find out that he dies, and therefore I die, I won't have to go through the excruciating torment of being alive during my own autopsy. However, if I don't finish it, I remain in this constant state of terror, poised on the brink of madness, praying that I might survive this ordeal, but never knowing if I'll be strong enough, if the doctors will be attentive enough.

I must know,

Stephen King is a sick sick man.

loren