Today's word cloud: "The Monkey's Paw" - W.W. Jacobs

"Without, the night was cold and wet(...)" 

With this alternative (oldfashioned?) meaning to the word 'outside', W.W. Jacobs gives a well-deserved atmospheric introduction to his gothic masterpiece. And that dictates the tone of how things are going do develop (to the worse) in the very few pages that follow within this classic horror short story.

And if you call yourself a fan of the horror genre and haven't taken the (very short) time to read this tale yet, set aside a similarly cold and rainy evening you happen to be at home to read it in the dim light.
Then come back and let me know how delightful (actually, frightful) your reading experience was. Enough said about how great this story is, let us proceed to the word cloud itself:

If like me, you read it umpteen times before (I actually took it to the next step, as I told it, lights off and all, to several of my pupils aged 9 to 12 and boy, they loved it!), its most frequent words are not much of a surprise, are they?

So it's either down to it being a short story or the fact it's so direct to the point, the words do reflect what goes on in the plot. Or would you rather wish there were some other ones? Just remember to be careful with what you wish for...