the list

Image | | andy townend

‘I tended to worry when there was nothing to worry about. And when there was something to worry about, i got drunk.’
― Charles Bukowski, Pulp

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His throat burned, bile rising, tension building, heart racing.

And the dogs howled, snarled.

His feet pounded, blisters rising, legs screaming, ready to quit.

Terror building inside him.

The steps rose ahead of him, his legs ready to fold, his lungs ready to burst. He ran hard up the steps, twisting, turning. The snarling hounds fast behind him.

He reached the top.

Stumbled into the bus shelter. Collapsed on to the bare metal bench. Pulled his coat tight around him. Reached into his pocket.

It was still there.

The list.

Crumpled, tattered, torn.

The list that could save him. He knew it could. It must. It held the answer. The only answer.

He had read it a hundred times. It was all there, every detail. Each step he needed to take to be free.

He began to read, the first line, the first item on the list.

Hot fetid breath filled his nostrils, he felt the fangs slice into his face. The black eyes of the hound.

The last thing, he ever saw.

 

WordPress Writing 101 (November 2015): Day 2

25 thoughts on “the list”

          1. Hahahaha–good! (I used to read King, the early work was better, I think. Call me prudish, but I don’t see the necessity for profanity on every cockadoody page (as Misery’s “Annie” would say).

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            1. Well, I agree that his earlier works were the best, I love ‘The Stand’ and ‘The Shining’ and the ‘Gunslinger’ series, for example, I am a ‘constant reader’ but some of his more recent, and shorter, novels have felt a little derivative and, heaven help me, feel a bit like ‘cashing in’. The swearing doesn’t move me one way or the other…also most of the movie / TV adaptations suck, they never seem to get inside his mind even when he has produced his own stuff…

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            2. I agree that some of his work seems more about cashing in…we all have to live. I think “Dolores Claiborn” was done well as a movie–I have the DVD; and “Misery” with Kathy Bates–excellent. “The Shining” was better as a book–Jack N creeps me out so bad, and Shelley Duvall was such a whiner… I’m not familiar with the Gunslinger series, and I don’t believe I saw The Stand. “Carrie” was fabulously scary at the time both the book and movie came out; I like Piper Laurie (Carrie’s mom) very much, and look where Sissy’s gone on to–stellar actress, no matter the role (which is how I feel about Kathy Bates too).

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            3. His work has certainly been influential, both on his readers, those who have seen him on screen (for better or worse) and those who have interpreted his characters on the silver screen..

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            4. And the story goes that he wrote his first story, pitched in the trash–and his wife dug it out and sent it off, bada bing bada boom, he became rich and famous…

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