Beware the Dog : Roald Dahl [23 of 32]

• He looked around the room. The nurse had taken the roses out the night before, and there was nothing except the table with a packet of
• cigarettes, a box of matches and an ash tray. Otherwise, it was bare. It was no longer warm or friendly. It was not even comfortable.
• It was cold and empty and very quiet. Slowly the grain of doubt grew, and with it came fear, a light, dancing fear that warned
• but did not frighten; the kind of fear that one gets not because one is afraid, but because one feels that there is something wrong.
• Quickly the doubt and the fear grew so that he became restless and angry, and when he touched his forehead with his hand,
• he found that it was damp with sweat. He knew then that he must do something; that he must find some way of proving to himself that
• he was either right or wrong, and he looked up and saw again the window and the green curtains. From where he lay,
• that window was right in front of him, but it was fully ten yards away. Somehow he must reach it and look out.