King Exercise III

In which I conclude my brief foray, nudged on by Stephen King, into horror:


Jane, his ex-wife, was standing in the doorway to the den, grinning over a plate of cookies in her hand.

In an instant Richard leapt to his feet, unconsciously kneading his bad arm. He tried to say something, anything, his mouth futilely trying to form words, but none came.

Jane smiled again as she set the plate down. “Thought you’d like some more of my famous chocolate chip cookies, darling.”

A nauseating mixture of baked cookies and the sweet chemical scent of Jane’s perfume choked his nostrils. Of course, he thought, remembering the odor he detected entering the foyer. Jane’s special perfume. The perfume he bought her as a wedding gift, over eight years ago.

Finally he found his voice. “Jane, the hospital. How’d you get out?”

Jane wandered over to the fireplace. A sour look came upon her as she eyed the pictures on the mantel. Pictures of him with Nell. Without Jane. With Sheryl.

“Jane,” Richard continued, more forcefully. “How did you get out of the hospital!”

“Richard, darling, they let me out.”

“No, they didn’t. They were to keep you locked up for the rest of your life. For what you did to me. For what you were trying to do to Nell.”

Jane picked up an 8 1/2-by-11 picture of Richard and Sheryl, with Nell grinning in between them. Suddenly her face became impassive, and she turned to Richard with cold dead eyes. “What did I ever do to Nell,” she said, her voice rising in both pitch and volume, “besides TRY TO SAVE HER FROM YOU AND YOUR BITCH WOMEN WHORE SLUTS!” She flung the picture at Richard, who ducked; it shattered through the backyard window, erupting in showers of glass covering the floor of the den.

Richard quickly backed away, back towards the kitchen, backpedaling with his hands outstretched. “Jane, easy, now.” He realized that if she had escaped from the hospital she probably hadn’t been taking her medication. And an unmedicated Jane was a recipe for something ugly.

Jane followed him, tears welling in her eyes. “Why did you have to do it?” she hissed. “You know I have to punish you. I can’t allow you to – ”

“Jane, slow down. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He glanced furtively to his side, towards the counter, looking for something to help him defend himself. “Let’s relax, sit down.” Then he saw them: the scissors, next to Nell’s present. “Let’s talk this over.”

“We can’t. You don’t have enough time.”

Richard stopped retreating, and began to slowly align his body so that his good arm could lunge for the scissors. That he even had to do this filled him with hatred for her. Three years ago, while he was sleeping, Jane nearly severed his right arm at the bicep with pipe cutter.

“We have plenty of time, Jane. Besides, did you know its Nell’s birthday today?”

Jane motioned to the living room. “I know, darling. That’s why I’m here. ’Nother cookie?”

Blood drained from Richard’s face. He knew with certainty: the cookies contained lethal doses of a compound called carbon tetrachloride mixed with strychnine. Jane had bought some three years ago to kill Nell and tried to kill him when he discovered the poison and pieced together her plans. Now she was finishing the job.

He knew from his research he had an hour or two window to save himself. How long had he slept since he ate those first cookies? Two hours? Was he a dead man already?

Well, even if, he could still save Nell. He had no choice.

His stomach churning, he fought a sudden urge to vomit.

Jane laughed. “What’s the matter, Richard? Did my little piggy-wiggy eat too much – ”

Richard whirled, snatched up the scissors, and fell upon Jane. She shrieked, tried to fend him off with one arm while retreating towards the foyer –

The two fell into each other, crashing atop the kitchen table, falling to the floor in a mess of intertwined limbs, plates, and mail. Richard heaved himself up, found himself looking into Jane’s eyes.

Their eyes met for a long time, then Jane’s slowly dilated. Richard looked down, and saw his hands covered in blood. He released his grip on the scissors; they stayed wedged between her ribs.

He felt dizzy and sick, probably from the poison in his blood and the impact of what he had just done. Crawling away from the body, he thought, what do I need to do? Oh, yes, call the police. Immediately.

Putting one hand in front of the other, he slide off her body and through the debris of the kitchen. He finally slid up against the refrigerator, strained to reach up to grab the telephone, dialed 9-1-1. He explained to the operator that he was poisoned, that there was a homicide, could you please send someone over right away, yes ma’am, here’s my address, thank you. He let the phone drop.

Something caught his eye: a woman’s purse. Not Sheryl’s, but Jane’s. Sweating profusely and thinking it best to stay focused, he reached out and pulled the purse towards him. Was some of the poison still in there? He feverishly reflected it might be a good idea to find out; it might save his life if the paramedics knew what they were dealing with.

He roughly foraged through the contents of the purse, finding no containers or jars of any kind. But something did catch his attention. A magenta envelope, vaguely familiar to him. He recognized its color, the font of the writing. Oh yes, Clarke’s Bakery. He’d always get Nell treats there. He carefully opened the envelope, taking great care to stay focused, all the while awaiting an ambulance. It was an invoice. For Nell’s birthday catering at the school this afternoon. Let’s see, what did they eat? What do a dozen hyperactive seven-year-olds require for a birthday party?

For your records, the invoice announced. The birthday cake, a cake designed for two dozen, to be inscribed with the words “Happy Birthday Nell” and to hold seven candles.

Richard stared in horror. He tried to scream but a hoarse rasp came out instead.

Next to the box marked Picked Up By, in flowery cursive script –

Jane Davies

King Exercise II

Continuing my plunge into horror at the urgings of Steve King:


Richard needed to change the subject of this rambling self-dialogue. Taking a cautious sip of the tea, he spied the kitchen over the rim of the cup, his eyes falling on his book, then abruptly noticed something new next to it on the counter. He slowly walked over to investigate.

A package. Brown wrapping, tied from all four sides with a red-and-white string, and a little note stuck at the top. He opened and read: Mr. Davies, Enjoy! Emmie.

Richard smiled and immediately set about the task of removing the wrapping. Mrs. MacAffey had been here, all right, and she left him a box . . . of cookies. Presumably her esteemed homemade chocolate chip specials. God, he hadn’t tasted one of those treats since Thanksgiving – since their little dispute over pay and the regularity of her housekeeping duties. Savoring those chewy morsels dissolving in his mouth, he had to admit, somewhat guiltily, that the whole labor dispute was kind of petty, on both parties, but especially his.

Collecting the box of cookies, his Caesar tome, and his cup of steaming tea with just the use of his left arm proved almost impossible, but where there’s a will, or a growling stomach and hungry mind, there’s always a way. He fell in a bundle into his favorite armchair in the living room, a cozy little spot next to a bay window facing out into the backyard. He paused a moment to soak in the view: leaves leisurely blowing across the velvet-like grass, the late-winter sun slowly sneaking down towards the horizon, winding its way between some old dogwood trees that signaled the end of his property fifty yards away.

A yawn suddenly came upon him, and Richard stretched out, yawned again. The cookies proved too tempting and he found himself wolfing down three more in quick succession, each washed down with a few sips of tea. By the time he turned to the bookmarked page he noticed that twenty minutes had somehow slipped by.

Oh well, he thought. Still have two hours or so until Nell was due home. It was too long since he’d had the time to nap. Teaching, researching, writing, Sheryl, Nell . . . all had taken their toll on his body and mind. Never one to relish the thought of wasting precious hours of his life, he nonetheless decided it would be okay to snooze for a bit. Besides, tonight of all nights there was probably a ninety-percent chance he’d be performing mediating duties worthy of a high-level ambassador – between his daughter and his girlfriend.

He slept.

He dreamed – quite vividly for a man who claimed to never dream. It was a first-person dream; that is, he found himself moving from room to room as a movie camera would pan in and out on its unseen rollers. The house in this dream seemed vaguely familiar. The outlines reminded him of some other place, but the filler – the paint, wallpaper, pictures on the wall – the filler was odd. Unusual. And everything had a sickly, yellowish tint to it.

Then a sudden realization flooded over him. This was his house. The very house he was dozing in, only not in this present time. Eight years ago. He was dreaming of his house, eight years ago when they had first bought it.

He and his ex-wife, Jane, back in the days when Jane was well – or at least acted well.

They had bought the house on the cheap. Almost stole it. The owner was a man of minor fame in the town; an ex-councilman, in fact, as well as the owner of a John Deere dealership located just on the outskirts of the city, on Route 78. Yet in the house that the Davies had bought Mr. Chambers had lived modestly. And, it turned out, had also died modestly. Being a sworn bachelor and somewhat of a tightwad with his fortune, he had never created his own family and had alienated the one he was born into. So for sixty hot summer days the house served as Mr. Chambers’ casket. After this gruesome discovery, and after nearly a year of trying to fumigate the lingering odors of Mr. Chambers from it, the house was finally placed on the market at a very appealing price. A price which very much appealed to the Davies: husband Richard, fresh and ready to start at his new position teaching Ancient History at Shale, and pregnant wife Jane, eager to start her own family and continue with her fascination with all forms of cooking.

As his disembodied spirit drifted through the house Richard realized he was coming full circle. Back into the living room, the room Chambers had, the one he died in: the striped silver wallpaper, stained green from tobacco; the lime shag carpet, resplendent in dog-shit stains and old furniture depression-marks; the plastic-coated floral-printed sofa and love-seat.

But where Richard’s chair was, and where Chambers’ brown-patched La-Z-Boy should have been if this really was reverse time-travel, stood a cage. Its form mocked that of a birdcage: round base, tapering to a point at the top, only it filled the entire corner of the room. All the warmth in his body drained as if he had walked through a misty waterfall of ice-cold fog. Suddenly every muscle in his body froze; he found he could not move further any more.

To his deep dismay, the cage slowly glided toward him, great rusted invisible hinges shrieking as it gouged a path through the carpet, leaving trails of blood on the hardwood floor behind it. Richard tried to move back, but was glued in place, despite the odd feeling of having no body.

From somewhere a spotlight shown into the cage. Richard gasped.

He gazed at himself inside the cage.

It was him, yet to his uncomprehending mind it wasn’t. The man inside the cage wore the torn and ratty black-and-white striped uniform of a concentration camp prisoner. The specter hadn’t shaved in days – or slept in that long either, judging by the tea-bag sized black circles beneath his eyes. He was Richard, and tried pitifully to smile, but only revealed a toothless cavity that drooled some dark awful ruby-red substance.

A scream snowballed inside Richard. Yet one part of his brain still remained rational, and noted offhand that he had been screaming a long while now. Like the whistle of a train rapidly accelerating upwards in pitch and volume as it neared the station.

The eyes of the man in the cage pleaded to articulate something, but the more he tried to mouth words the more liquid oozed from that terrible dripping hole.

Richard was certain he began audibly screaming now. That rational part of his brain, now starting perhaps to get a little bit concerned, suddenly informed him that he was dreaming, and could wake up any time he wanted to now. Except, scream as he might, it found he could not.

Instead an invisible vice gripped him and drew him toward the cage, toward his mirror image. Agitated, the prisoner slapped both hands against the bars repeatedly, uttering harsh, apelike sounds. Richard’s “No! No! No!” soon fell into syncopated rhythms with the man’s. Finally, less than a foot away, the cage bars disappeared and he was close enough to embrace the repellent creature.

Great big rolling tears streamed down the prisoner’s filthy face. He stopped banging and reeled his hands slowly in.

Richard stopped screaming. All the volume had seemingly shut off, like a water spigot.

The man’s hands fell flush against his chest, then crawled down over his ribs, down to his belly, finally grasping the tattered ends of his death camp tunic.

Richard stared into the man’s eyes, those blood-shot windows desperately trying to tell him something, then glanced down to the prisoner’s gory, soiled hands.

In one quick motion the man pulled up his prison tunic, up over his chest, and straight up to his chin.

The man had no stomach.

Instead, a burnt cauterized cavity, blood and mucus and bile oozing among the shredded intestines hanging like stalactites from his ribcage. And more of that nauseous ruby-red bilge seeping out and burning the floor like acid.

Richard screamed so loud he jumped from his chair, spilling cold tea on the history book and overturning the empty cookie plate.

Almost immediately, he hugged himself, sweaty, trying to stop the shaking. Counting slowly to ten helped him calm his ragged breaths, and he kept his eyes focused on the floor in front of him, kept staring at that oriental pattern rug he and Sheryl had bought. No lime green shag carpet.

At last he felt calm, and loudly exhaled. “Oh man, oh man,” he muttered.

“What’s the matter, lover? Bad dream?”

He looked up. He screamed again.

King Exercise I

For Christmas 2002 my wife bought me Stephen King’s On Writing. As I’ve written about elsewhere, I was a huge fan of his, reading just about everything he wrote up until the mid-90s before moving on. I did read Dreamcatcher during our honeymoon (mostly on the plane ride across the country) and was disappointed. But the man’s an undisputed master of his genre, of that I agree wholeheartedly and enthusiastically. So I read this book in a day or two, and was intrigued when I came across the challenge.

Somewhere near the middle of the book (I forget exactly where) he proposes a fairly typical and somewhat clichéd set up: a woman and her daughter just learn that dear old Dad has escaped from the looney bin. Now, Steve challenges the budding young storyteller, and I can almost see the glee behind those coke-bottle lenses, now … reverse the characters and make the woman the crazy one.

I took the challenge in the spring of 2003. Here’s the untitled horror story I wrote, in three postings:


Three hours of peace, Richard thought as he juggled his packages inside the foyer. Time to rest before playing referee between Nell and Sheryl tonight.

He placed the Saab keys in the stained-glass bowl under the antique tin lamp he and Sheryl recently acquired in Nantucket and fumbled the packages across the tiled floor. To his dismay Nell’s present spilled out, along with Sheryl’s note, and Richard nearly threw out his back trying to keep the porcelain monkey from smashing against the basement door. Cursing under his breath he collected his gifts and party favors neatly under his good arm, hung his wool coat, and made his way into the kitchen.

A faint, sweet chemical odor trailed him into the house, and he paused absentmindedly, tangling with a vague memory. When nothing immediately came, he sniffed deeply, but still in vain. Oh well, he mentally shrugged; Mrs. MacAfee finally got around to spring cleaning. He smiled at the dim realization that the best way to jump-start shoddy service was simply to “forget” to mail the check.

What better way to spend a chilly afternoon alone than with a little light reading and a cup of hot tea? He placed a pot of water on the burner and rubbed his hands briskly near the flame. Despite the lateness of the season, April temperatures still clustered around the freezing mark, and the old house still poured heat out of every window pane and crevice. Been that way forever, he thought, over eight years, when he and Jane were newlyweds and purchased it –

Richard jerked himself upright. What brought that into his head? He hadn’t thought of Jane since he last saw her, at the sentencing, almost three years ago. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Every time he looked at Nell he saw Jane in those brilliant green eyes, the high cheekbones, the way her mouth twisted in mock anger. But aside from such vague recollections bubbling just under the surface, semi-conscious – well, well, he tried his best not to think of his ex-wife.

A wise policy, he now affirmed. Warmed up enough from the stove, he carefully removed the contents of his package on the oak table. Exhibit A: one porcelain monkey. For his daughter, for her birthday. A slight grin played across his face as he shook his head. Nell had a fascination with monkeys bordering on the obsessive-compulsive. Big ones, small ones, stuffed furry ones, posters of the hairy beasts, Halloween costumes – you had to face it, the kid didn’t do anything half way.

Just like her mother.

“Okay, enough, enough,” Richard found himself mumbling. He gingerly placed the monkey within the styrofoam peanuts of the box and after a brief reconnaissance to the den for Scotch tape and scissors, wrapped it, and applied a bow. Setting it aside, he then filled out her card, an appropriately colorful collage of monkeys, freshly freed from their barrel, intertwined into the number seven.

Dear Nell, my favorite little chimp, Happy Birthday! Hope you enjoy your birthday party! Love, Dad.

He debated whether or not to add Sheryl’s name after his, then finally decided to leave the envelope unsealed and the decision with Sheryl.

The pot on the stove whistled, and Richard made poured a cup of tea. Sitting in the wicker chair at the glass table, legs crossed comfortably, he sipped the hot beverage and reread Sheryl’s note. Richard – Sorry about not getting the afternoon off! See you both soon tonight – I have a little special present for Nell I think she’d adore. I’ll call you at seven. Love, Sheryl.

He glanced at the clock above the sink. Quarter past three. That gave him two-and-a-half hours before Nell was due home from her catered school party. Two hours plus to read his latest interest, an epic bio of Julius Caesar. That would so come in handy this semester. Maybe even help jump-start his stilted magnus opus, a twelve hundred page first-draft overview of Europe at the advent of the first millennium, sitting in a drawer now for – what? – almost seven months now.

The writing had been so therapeutic three years ago, after Jane and those unpleasant events. It had been a way to console himself, a way to wrap himself up in an alien world where he felt more at home in. He had given blood and tears to help Nell adjust through the hell of it, and at night, after putting the child to bed, he had looked forward to spending the evenings with some kings and queens, knights, popes and antipopes.

But then things quickly changed: life happened. He had met Sheryl, an office manager-slash-friend of his sister-in-law, at a family Fourth of July bash, and actually asked her out. Richard soon discovered to his absolute delight the she was an avid history buff, a liberal arts graduate, a lover of wine, a fan of impressionism – both in painting as well as music – and, like himself, a recent divorcee. By September and the start of a new semester he had realized he was in love, and dutifully relegated his opus to his desk’s bottom drawer.

He told her of his love for her, and she echoed his feelings.

Life would have been perfect save one small, minor problem: Nell. The problem seemed paradoxical to Richard; the two women in his life initially got along tremendously, but little by little Nell grew distant, sometimes angry and often downright rude, whenever he’d mention Sheryl. No approach helped the situation. He tried to whole gamut of parenting techniques: rational discussion failed, as did outright bribes. And though he never outright spoke of Nell’s behavior to Sheryl, he sensed that his girlfriend knew on some level, and had tried on numerous occasions to befriend his daughter.

Nell responded like an adult who realized her affections were being purchased: coolly at first, then ice cold, and finally, the stone-cold-dead silent treatment.

Then, last night, tucking his six-year old into bed after improvising a version of the tale of Gawain and the Green Knight, the question was posed to Richard.

“Is Sheryl going to be my new mommy?”

Richard had paused a long time. He had mentally rehearsed for this moment, but now that it was before him, his throat suddenly lost all moisture. It took an unusually strong effort at willpower for him, he who was used to lecturing in front of halls filled with several hundred students four periods a day, to produce an audible voice to speak to the little girl.

“Your daddy loves Sheryl, and Sheryl loves your daddy, honey. We may get married, but” – and this next part had been particularly acidic to him, though he’d fought to keep a poker face – “but your mommy will always be your mommy. Sheryl will just – ”

“When’s mommy coming home, daddy?” Her radiant green eyes, shining like sapphires from the light from the hall, pierced his, cut into him and into his heart.

“Nell, we’ve talked about this before, honey. Your mommy is sick. She’s in a hospital to get well. There are doctors treating her, and someday she’ll come back.” Yeah, he had thought, hopefully when hell froze over and he was long in his grave after about, oh, another forty or fifty years of enjoying life without the sick fear of losing it prematurely –

Or of losing the use of one’s arm.