Writing Exercise as prescribed by Stephen King in his Memoir of the Craft 'On Writing'
I wrote this piece all excited I would be able to send it to Stephen King himself. Well, when I re-read that chapter he never said that. He just said to drop him a line and tell him 'how it went.' So, this vicious little short story has been burning a hole in my Word files for a year or two. I'm kinda stoked having somewhere to post it, actually. It's not the sort of thing I had written before, but it was great fun to do.
What's the Deal?
Stephen King doesn't plot his stories. He lets the characters live through him and they tell him what to do. Finding that out in detail was damn near inspirational for me because I thought I was broken as a writer. I could plot a story arc and within ten pages the characters wouldn't do what I thought they should. Letting them have their way was the only way the writing was any good. The point of this exercise was to write 7 or 8 pages with a basic premise in mind but no real guidelines or actual plot. SK gave a starting point and an established character dynamic already in play and said 'just go see what happens.'Premise
Jane is a violent loony bird who was taken away to rot in an asylum after attacking her estranged husband. On this night she escaped and came to find him at home alone while their daughter was gone at a birthday party. It's a premise that's been done a million times. This is what happened when I did it completely un-plotted at the behest of Stephen King.
~ I knew they’d never keep Jane in that place. Beneath the motherly smile and glittering green eyes was a heart of broken glass resulting from her shattered mind. She’d said next time would be the end as they drug her off into the night, the straight-jacket making zipping noises as the heavy canvas grated across itself with her thrashing. The end of what or for who remained to be seen as I heard the familiar creak of weight on the fifth step from the landing. I was glad I’d neglected to fix it through the summer. It gave me a time check. Seconds… I might have held my breath, but my lungs were already petrified sacks of stagnant air in my chest. They didn’t need my help to stop working. In seconds Jane would round the corner from the foyer where the stairs terminated. Sooner still, I might hear her voice. Thank God Nell wasn't there. I could still keep her childhood happy if Jane would go back to her treatment.
“You heard step five, Dick,” she said, the words a seductive purr. “I know you know I’m here. Don’t I get a welcome home hug?”
I was still fastened to my seat, riveted. That scent bade me Stay, while my mind screamed Run, man! Clock her with a lamp! Do something! And still I sat there, finally cracking the shell on my lungs to breathe and speak. “You have no home here anymore.”
“My home is where my family is, darling.”
“You’re home is with people who can help you, Jane.” I managed to turn when her steps halted a few feet behind me.
She was physically diminutive, no more than 5’4”. Bedraggled and muddied, her angelic blonde curls were frizzed and mangled with her incarceration and escape. The emerald spark in her eyes that I had always loved seemed cast off in some shadow infested corner of her mind. In its place was a manic sort of glee gazing back at me. At least she was happy on some level. The blue dotted hospital gown was mostly covered by a white coat. Or at least it used to be white- a doctor's coat.
“Will you let me clean you up and take you back?”
“Back? What back, Dick? I’m here.” The footsteps resumed and it only took two to put her leaning over the back of the sofa, slender yet strong arms closing around my shoulders and neck. “I am back.”
“Right,” I said, trying to keep my mouth straight. A frown could be disastrous, and I was only just realizing…
She was lucid. Calm. That could be very good or precisely the opposite, a total crap-shoot with my little Janie. There was a time when I would call her that for the sweetness of it, instead of only when the scary was oozing out of her in bucketfuls. But there was also a time about fifteen seconds ago that I’d thought the dark muddy stuff clinging to the ends of her hair and caked under her nails was… well, mud. Fifteen seconds wiser, and with a dangling strand of soiled cornsilk just inches from my left eyeball, I could see a hint of crimson in it. There were striations of red in the blackish crusted bits. Now her nick-name was placation strategy rather than an endearment. “You are back… Janie.” I needed to get her off me, to see the rest of her again. “You’re a mess, staining the sofa I bet.”
“Staining the-!” Jane was gone from me in seconds, her mouth a long O of dismayed horror for the fate of her prized white sofa as she backed away.
I fought not to look the way she did, staring at the large mud red swatch covering most of her torso and hips on the white coat. The sleeves were nicely dirtied at the cuffs, too. Looking closer, I could see what looked like long fine threads stuck to the mud painting her smock. Whoever had bled all over my ex-wife, also donated hair samples. The bile lurching up just to the top of my throat burned like hell and I swallowed it back down with my daughter’s face playing in my mind. Nell was the point here. Nell was the reason to try…
The house was old enough to have a skeleton key for all the doors. The old-fashioned brass thing was biggish and clunky and made for an interesting keychain. The only reason I had it was because I locked the bathroom door one night to shower when we’d first moved in. Upon exiting, my forehead met the blazing hot plate of a household cloth iron at an indeterminate rate of speed. Fast comes to mind, though, like sun-baked tarmac from a third floor window. Somehow, being completely alone and cut off from me without the ability to insinuate herself into my personal space was unacceptable. Silly me. “At least I cauterized it, darling,” she would later say breezily about my concussion/ second degree burn site. Leaving the key in my possession was all part of the lesson. Or more closely; the final exam. Tempted to take an hour of uninterrupted me time every once in a while? Yes. Absolutely! But, I would eventually have to come out, and she may not go for the face next time.
“It’s okay, Janie. We’ll have it cleaned right up in the morning. I’ll take care of it.” The all important key was calling to me from the kitchen counter-top. I could lock her in somewhere if I could get to the key. But letting her out of my sight wasn’t really an option… Kitchen…
“Are you hungry, Janie?”
She looked at me oddly, like my face didn’t make sense suddenly. “What are you doing in there?” ‘In there’- my mind, she meant. That’s what she called it, like a closet I was masturbating in behind her back.
“I’m just concerned about you. Do you need anything?”
Her green gaze narrowed down to gleaming slits. “You’re never concerned about me, Dick. You only care about that whore of a girl.”
My teeth could have ground mountains to nubs between them. My absolute limit was the line she just leapt over. The divorce began because of Jane’s allegations of unfaithfulness and my unwillingness to cop to them. The whore of a girl she called out, was not on the table for discussion. Let her say it. Hate her in the pits of your soul for it, but let her say whatever she wants. Then put her somewhere lockable and get that goddamn key! You calm equals her calm, hopefully. Just keep it together.
“She’s gone now,” I said. “Not important. It’s only you and me, Janie. Let me fix you something to eat, okay.”
The narrowed line of her eyes flashed with an almost reptilian quality. “Gone where?”
“Somewhere far away and safe from us both.” I stood, my legs feeling lead-lined and thick with my unusual scheming. That was Jane’s gig, not mine. I was suddenly Red Riding Hood trying eat the wolf, and not sure in which direction to open my jaws. I moved around the sofa and paused by her side under that carefully critiquing gaze. “What about a bath?” That door definitely locks. “Nice and warm… I’ll do your back.”
“Gone, like gone?” she said, her needle seeming stuck in the same groove.
“I’ll bring you tea up there. You used to love that.”
The backhand hit me hard and fast across the jaw. My teeth shredded the inside of my lip as her knuckles dug in and skidded of into the air.
“Don’t be cute,” she said.
“Gone.” The word fell from my bleeding lips as an apology and with a weight meant to imply finality. Luckily, it took.
As a bank of clouds might flee a recent downpour, all of her slithering ocular assessment was a fleeting memory. “Tea?” Her smile formed and brightened.
I nodded wearily, scrubbing a thumb along the crimson moist corner of my mouth. “Your favorite, Chamomile with cream.”
“Oh, you do love me!” Jane squealed, making a little hop into my arms which hadn’t been ready or waiting. “I’m so tired, darling. They were just horrible to me in that place. It was so much work getting back to you.”
I gave her faux sympathy with my eyes. “C’mon, let me give you a bath and you’ll feel better.”
I ushered Jane upstairs and drew the bath while she undressed. The two layers of clothing stripped off her slight form quickly, revealing that her body was much thinner than in our happy days. Thinner even than our not so happy ones. Weeks in the mental health ward at County hadn’t been kind to her and she resembled a petite sized blow-up doll with half the air let out.
My mind kept racing from one possibility to the next. The basement door is in the back of the pantry… kitchen… that would be ideal. But she’s ready for the tub and has agreed to tea…
I cranked the taps closed on a three quarters full tub. “Get in now. It’s hot like you like it and I’ll go make you some tea.” Helping her into the tub, my stuttering pulse evened out. Get her settled… She might even fall asleep in there. I smiled with effort and turned to go ‘make tea’.
“Dick?”
One eye closed on the cringe screwing up my face. “Yeah, Janie?”
“Where’s the key?”
“What key?” Yeah, I actually tried it.
“The one for that door you’re itching so hard to get through,” she said.
“Locked my set in the car by accident.” I could almost believe that one. A steady record of three lockouts a year for the past decade or so made it plausible. “I used the spare to get into the house. I couldn’t lock the door if I wanted to, Janie.”
“Honest?”
“Honest.”
“Okay, as long you can promise me you’ve taken care of her.”
I looked back at her then, the daggers flying free in my mind camouflaged by a drawn blankness. I made a minimal nod.
After a thoughtful pause, Jane closed her eyes and sunk into the long gentle curve of porcelain at her back. My heart leapt at my good fortune. I again turned to go and nothing stopped me. She was cheerfully soaking in nearly scalding water, the blood on her body and in her hair starting to reconstitute with the wet.
Hurrying down to the kitchen, my thoughts were focused but franticly so.
This can work. Grab the key and lock her in, then call the cops. They’ll haul her off again and…
They’d already done that once, though, and my steps faltered in the kitchen doorway. By the look of that pilfered coat, some unsuspecting doctor had fallen victim to her ‘love’ for me. Or maybe the coat had been clean and she had dyed it with someone else’s juices. Either way, Jane wasn’t savable. Leaving her alive and in exile would only redouble her resolve to come back. To keep her kept, it would take constant restraint- a padded cell with no windows and another one of those zippy straight-jackets as her only wardrobe. Somewhere inside, I could still feel pity for even her. Nell would be safer if Jane stopped breathing altogether and Jane herself... would only ever be at peace in complete oblivion. I wasn’t a murderer but in my heart of hearts, I wanted Jane dead. I wanted her so out of reach that even a real-life gypsy with a fully functioning crystal ball couldn’t find her again.
The out-dated kitchen landscape wasn’t anything new and I barely saw it. My eyes flicked to the keys on the table, the skeleton hailing me, Hey, Dick! Over here! Quick, before her mood swings again! I scurried over and worked the large brass key away from the smaller, more modern, ones. Wouldn’t do to have them jangling in my pocket when they were supposed to be in the ignition of my car.
I turned to the bank of cabinets where dry goods were kept. (In alphabetical order by brand name, left to right, top to bottom or there would be hell to pay.) In an upper cabinet beside the sink was the tea she waited for. Celestial Seasonings Chamomile. Just beside it was a day-glow yellow box that had been snickering at me for ages due to its logical placement in Jane’s filing system. (It was an old house. Packed dirt basement and vaulted attic potentially filled with vermin.) The Clement’s Rat Poison box eyed me now… a wink… maybe a little come hither as I reached for the tea. I’d let her be genuinely happy one more time.
Climbing the stairs to deliver Jane’s fate, the tea smelled delicious. It steamed up my glasses as I sniffed at it. Arsenic isn’t supposed to have any real taste or smell. But this was Jane and one couldn’t be too careful. I put cream in it and a little honey just for good measure. She took honey on her birthdays and Christmas. I could call this her ‘Liberation Day’ and she’d be only too grateful. I hoped.
I turned the knob and stepped into the bathroom a little lost in the sloshing miniature waves of Death’s brew. Strange to be so calm holding someone’s life in my fingertips on a saucer. I should feel bad and didn’t, not one iota. My daughter was a complete innocent, doomed to being born into this particular family unit. In her psychotic insecurity, Jane imagined all manner of lurid things between myself and the child. My sweet Little Nell was a whore of a girl in her mother’s eyes. The tiny waves in this cup would make sure those ugly words were never uttered again.
“I put a little honey in for your homecoming,” I said, the air in the room so moist from the bath that the tea steam dissolved in it. I looked up as I cleared the door. The tub was empty and a resounding slam crashed at my back. I managed to save the tea wobbling off the saucer with a start and spun in a panic.
“You took too damn long,” Jane said outside the door. A scraping thud rattled the frame as the knob on my side tilted down a small amount, but with force. A chair from the spare room had been wedged under it; I’d heard the sound before. “What are you doing in there, Dick? Something original like poisoning me? Do you have a kitchen knife stuffed down your pants, maybe?”
I opened my mouth and only a disgruntled rasp came out.
A chortling laugh rang through the old wooden barrier. “I knew it. You always were so-“
A car horn outside the house cut her off. Two beeps… a door slamming closed. I slid the tea to the sink’s edge and lunged for the window. The jambs had been nailed shut when Nell was born, but I didn’t need to open it to see my daughter walking a little dejectedly up the path to our front door. “Nell!” I bellowed to best of my lungs’ ability. My blood ran like a glacial river in my veins. I pounded furiously on the window frame and she looked up. Sweet, pale brown eyes found me and smiled a little wanly with a wave. “Don’t come inside!”
Nell cocked her head to the side and frowned, not hearing or understanding. Or both. Her response was to run full bore for the front door and my glacial river froze solid.
“Gone?” simmered low and slow from outside the door. “Really gone, Dick?”
A muffled slam vibrated up through the floorboards, the front door. “Daddy!” Nell’s tiny voice carried up the stairwell, approaching on her clicking footsteps. “The party was cancelled when Jenny Filmore threw up all over the dog and… Mommy…?” The footsteps ceased. “I thought you were staying with the healing angels.”
The doorknob was useless, nothing would budge it as I shoved and yanked my hands raw.
“The angels set me free, Nellie.”
“Nell, honey! Listen to me! You have to run!”
My daughter’s shriek raised in terror and shock was akin to my nerves being fed through a hand crank press like they use at The Olive Garden. Parmesan, anyone? I quadrupled my efforts at the door, scrabbling along the hinges, hoping for a loose one. Something! Anything to get out! “Nell!”
They were struggling out there, the walls being brushed and thudded with the skirmish.
“Mommy! Stop!” Another peeling scream cut through me, down to bones I didn’t even know I had just before a sharp wet crack sounded against the door. The shrill voice stopped on a dime.
“Good riddance,” Jane said.
The knob loosened up in my hand as the chair came free.
“Come out, Dick.”
My last remaining light in the world had been snuffed out.
“She’s gone now. Not important anymore.”
All that remained was the ravenous black hole of Jane’s madness.
“Just you and me, darling.”
The trembling in my hands made getting the key into the lock a tricky proposition. I managed and when Jane finally tested the knob, I already had that satisfying click in my grasp.
“Damn it! You lied to me!” Jane fumed. The knob jimmied and yanked as I moved toward the sink. “What are you doing in there?”
Twitching fingers didn’t help with the tea much either, making it slosh over the rim. It didn’t matter anymore. There would be no vengeance from the clean police for tea spilled on the bathroom floor. “You were right,” I said, slumping to sit on the edge on the tub. “I spiked the tea with rat poison. Nice call.”
The door jostled viciously. “So what? Get out here and kiss me! She’s gone. She was the start of all our problems, Dick!”
Mmmm… Delicious, just like it smells…
“What are you doing in there!”
“Returning the favor,” I told her, easing into another long swallow of honeyed chamomile. It’s true about arsenic, couldn’t taste it at all.
“What favor? Are you mad?”
Maybe. A bitter chuckle bubbled up my throat and I finished the cup before responding. “I’m robbing you of the only thing in the world that you love.”
I let my body go backward into the tub water without a care for whether my head struck the opposite porcelain rim. It did. The already blood stained depths made for murky conditions as I sunk in. Didn’t think I would be seeing for much longer anyhow. I could still hear Jane making a racket outside the door, but it was thick and garbled syllables in a language I couldn’t understand. I didn’t care anyway. Nell was gone and the arsenic would take care of whatever the drowning and the head trauma didn’t cover. As my lungs filled with water, I heard that last soul-grinding cry behind my ears again. Nell, my Little Nell. I’ll find you, my sweet baby. Daddy will be there soon.
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