Chapter 1: Swallowed By the Floor -- Fabulous Freewrite In the Art of Stephen King

I accepted a challenge from someone to do a freewrite in the art of Stephen King. He always struck me as an individual who knew how to describe emotional torture in a way that made it seem ordinary, which I have always found so fascinating. So I took a hack at it. It's a bit bleak. Not my usual ware.

FABULOUS FREEWRITE IN THE ART OF STEPHEN KING: CHAPTER 1

Swallowed By the Floor

Sarah hung up the phone and dropped to her knees, then fell forward into something of a collapse. Her fingers gripped and clawed at the carpet in front of her, like a mad cat. Then she fell motionless and rigid. Her mouth gaped open for a scream, but no sound came out, just a breathy wheeze. The scream was there. It welled up from the center of her spine where the nerves attached to the back of her stomach--right where she remembered the needle going in when she was in labor with her first born. The epidural had worked on only half of her body, and she was not prepared for the pain.

This felt a little bit like that. Only much worse, and not of a physical nature. She felt something of a wail erupt out of her as if her stomach had been accidentally stepped on and a bellow had sprung out as a result.

Sarah smashed her face against the floor and let out a wail so curdling, it frightened even her. As she did so, her body curved in on itself as if to help squeeze out whatever was obviously trying to claw its way out.

Her face rubbed against the carpet, her teeth exposed to the fibers while she contorted in pain from her memories. She was reliving something, but she couldn’t stop it. And somehow it felt good to go there. The carpet was thick, but stiff and unfriendly, like a brush. Sarah wished the floor had been made instead of memory foam and layered in soft down. She could have buried herself in it and let it swallow her agony.

She imagined herself being absorbed by the floor as it slowly gave way to her curves and edges. She thought it might be nice to just become part of the floor itself. The soft foam would surround her supple figure, ooze into her crevices, fill her mouth and and ears, and quiet her screams.

It would push up against her spine and her stomach, calming the spasming nerves. Her hair would become fluffy grey down and whisp about with the slightest current of air. This is the floor she imagined she had been lying on, screaming about it all.

But the floor was unforgiving, and she felt it on her sharpest edges--her shoulders, her hips, her face. She longed for the medicine from the epidural to numb her brain. If she could, she would insert it directly into her skull. Anything would do: Heroin. Morphine. Pentobarbitol. She pictured the needle being inserted into a juicy vein in her arm, the medicine reaching every inch of her body, and everything would go quiet after that. She longed to drift into a slow peaceful sleep, encompassed firmly by the giant-marshmallow floor, never to feel again.

Aurora, she would call herself. Sleeping Beauty, who pricked her finger and fell into a deep sleep for 100 years. Sarah stayed like this for several moments. Maybe hours. No way of knowing. It felt short and long all at the same time. But it felt somehow real, being a part of something, even if it was just an imagined foam floor.

As Sarah wished for this bliss of pillow-soft nothing to surround her, she slowly began to regain awareness of her arms, her fingers, her toes. She could feel them against the carpet. Her fingers began to slowly move. They felt attached to her body now, which was in something of a fetal position, her right arm cradling her head while the left arm lay somewhere in front of her. She wasn’t sure where. Her body had not quite come back to a knowledge of itself yet. She felt her breath move in and out of her lungs. Her back and neck were aching a little from having rested on the ground. She must have been there for at least an hour. She must have fallen asleep. She could feel a slight amount of drool on the side of her cheek closest to the floor.

Sarah thought about whether it would be worth it to move her left arm enough to bring it to her face and wipe the spit. She decided against it. Too much work.

After a few minutes of breathing…...in……..out……..in……..out…….Sarah slowly began to position herself so she could push herself up from the floor. As she did so, it occurred to her that her right arm was completely submerged under the carpet, from her shoulder to her fingertips. Her head still rested on her shoulder, and her arm extended past her head, totally covered in carpet. She attempted to pull her arm out, and nothing happened.

She noticed her body slowly start to sink deeper and deeper into the floor. Soon, her ears were filled with subflooring and carpet fiber. Her mouth became completely filled with it too. Her eyes, now open, saw only layers of carpet, foam, plywood, dirt, and finally concrete as she sunk even further into the subfloor.

The parts of her that were still slightly jutting out of the surface seemed to gravitate lower and lower until the entire left side of her body was almost flush with the top of the floor. Parts like her shoulder and hips, became small bumps in the floor, rounded and smoothed out over time. As time passed, her husband was more easily able to view her as what she always had been to him--a part of the furniture.

Whenever friends or extended family came to visit, the line was the same,

"How's Sarah?"

"Oh, she hasn't moved much. Maybe an inch."

After awhile, no one seemed to notice her there. A young niece or nephew might crawl over her and inspect the small bumps that still remained of her, and then quickly move on in boredom. But there was really nothing more of her to remember. Eventually it seemed appropriate to have a funeral. Guests that arrived for the luncheon afterward wondered at her death as they stood on her buttocks and enjoyed baked ham and potatoes.

She sat there listening to all the wonderful and strange things they had to say about her. She found it difficult to relate to the person they spoke of, as that person was made of flesh and blood, and had feelings, whereas she was made of wood and fiber, and was void of pain or emotion.

She preferred her life this way and hoped the new owners of the house would not make any renovations any time soon. She wasn’t sure she was up for it.

Link to Chapter 2 Here