Carrie

by Stephen King

She continued to walk down the street toward the small white house with the blue shutters. The familiar hate-love-dread feeling was churning inside her.

She was thick through the waist only because sometimes she felt so miserable, empty, bored, that the only way to fill that gaping, whistling hole was to eat and eat and eat—but

Carrie's whirling mind strove to find something huge enough to express her agony, shame, terror, hate, fear.

Jesus watches from the wall, But his face is cold as stone, And if he loves me As she tells me Why do I feel so all alone?

“But hardly anybody ever finds out that their actions really, actually, hurt other people! People don't get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don't stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it. Lots of kids say they feel sorry for Carrie White—mostly girls, and that's a laugh—but I bet none of them understand what it's like to be Carrie White, every second of every day. And they don't really care.”

And now, seemingly unbidden—like the knowledge of menstruation—a score of memories had come, as if some mental dam had been knocked down so that strange waters could gush forth. They were cloudy, distorted little-girl memories, but very real for all that.

Little by little it was forgotten. The eye of memory opened only in dreams.

Mrs. White threw her tea in Carrie's face. It was only lukewarm, but it could not have shut off Carrie's words more suddenly if it had been scalding. She sat numbly, the amber fluid dripping from her chin and cheeks onto her white blouse, spreading. It was sticky and smelled like cinnamon. Mrs. White sat trembling, her face frozen except for her nostrils, which continued to flare. Abruptly she threw back her head and screamed at the ceiling. “God! God! God!” Her jaw snapped brutally over each syllable. Carrie sat without moving. Mrs. White got up and came around the table. Her hands were hooked into shaking claws. Her face bore a half-mad expression of compassion mixed with hate. “The closet,” she said. “Go to your closet and pray.”

After the blood the boys come. Like sniffing dogs, grinning and slobbering, trying to find out where that smell is. That . . . smell!”

“I don't want to fight with you, Momma,” Carrie said, and her voice almost broke from her and dissolved. She struggled to control it. “I only want to be let to live my own life. I . . . I don't like yours.” She stopped, horrified in spite of herself. The ultimate blasphemy had been spoken, and it was a thousand times worse than the Eff Word.

She did not know if her gift had come from the lord of light or of darkness, and now, finally finding that she did not care which, she was overcome with an almost indescribable relief, as if a huge weight, long carried, had slipped from her shoulders.

Wearing it gave her a weird, dreamy feeling that was half shame and half defiant excitement.

She felt that her heart would break if he uttered so much as the wrong sound, and if he laughed she would die. She felt—actually, physically—her whole miserable life narrow to a point that might be an end or the beginning of a widening beam. Finally, helpless, she said: “Do you like me?” He said: “You're beautiful.” She was.

And when Frieda grinned, she felt something very old and rusty loosen inside her. A warmth came with it. Relief. Ease.

He didn't talk when he drove; he liked to drive. The operation gave him a feeling of power that nothing could rival, not even fucking.

She was a big woman with massive upper arms that had dwarfed her elbows to dimples, but her head was surprisingly small on the end of her strong, corded neck. It had once been a beautiful face. It was still beautiful in a weird, zealous way. But the eyes had taken on a strange, wandering cast, and the lines had deepened cruelly around the denying but oddly weak mouth. Her hair, which had been almost all black a year ago, was now almost white.

She was suddenly hopeful that no one would stick out a foot or slyly paste a kick-me-hard sign on her back or suddenly squirt water in her face from a novelty carnation and retreat cackling while everyone laughed and pointed and catcalled.

The record changer clicked; another record dropped down. In the sudden, brief silence, she heard something within her turn over. Perhaps only her soul.

A picture rose in her mind instantly, her mother droning endless prayers to a towering, faceless, columnar God who prowled roadhouse parking lots with a sword of fire in one hand. Terror rose in her blackly, and she had to fight with all her spirit to hold it back. She could not explain her dread, her sense of premonition. She could only smile helplessly and repeat: “Don't. Please.”

It was all happening too fast. Her legs were trembling under her and suddenly, even with the comparatively high neck of her gown, her breasts (dirtypillows) felt dreadfully exposed. The sound of the applause in her ears made her feel woozy, almost punch-drunk. Part of her was actually convinced that all this was a dream from which she would wake with mixed feelings of loss and relief.

They were laughing at her again. And suddenly it broke. The horrible realization of how badly she had been cheated came over her, and a horrible, soundless cry (they're LOOKING at me) tried to come out of her. She put her hands over her face to hide it and staggered out of the chair. Her only thought was to run, to get out of the light, to let the darkness have her and hide her.

The tears of shame began to flow, as hot and as heavy as that first flow of menstrual blood had been.

The bleeding freak on this oil-stained asphalt suddenly seemed meaningless and awful in its pain and dying.

Sue tried to pull away, to disengage her mind, to allow Carrie at least the privacy of her dying, and was unable to. She felt that she was dying herself and did not want to see this preview of her own eventual end. (carrie let me GO) (Momma Momma Momma oooooooooooooo OOOOOOOOOO) The mental scream reached a flaring, unbelievable crescendo and then suddenly faded. For a moment Sue felt as if she were watching a candle flame disappear down a long, black tunnel at a tremendous speed. (she's dying o my god i'm feeling her die) And then the light was gone, and the last conscious thought had been (momma i'm sorry where) and it broke up and Sue was tuned in only on the blank, idiot frequency of the physical nerve endings that would take hours to die.

She began to run, breathing deep in her chest, running from Tommy, from the fires and explosions, from Carrie, but mostly from the final horror—that last lighted thought carried swiftly down into the black tunnel of eternity, followed by the blank, idiot hum of prosaic electricity.

I feel that I would kill myself before ever teaching again. Late at night I keep thinking: If I had only reached out to that girl, if only, if only . . .

I want to think things over, decide what I'm going to do between now and the time when my light is carried down that long tunnel into blackness. . . .