The Mist
Stephen King

(2/6/23-2/7/23)

JN:     

        A man named David Drayton, his wife Stephanie, and their five-year-old son Billy looked out over the lake to see the storm coming in. They were in the midst of a six-week heat spell with temperatures consistently over ninety degrees, and storms were a regular occurrence. The one that came in looked different, however. David told his wife and son to retreat to the basement once the winds picked up and joined them as thunder cracked overhead. In the darkness of the basement, with only a couple of candles to see their surroundings, the family listened to trees drop left and right, including one splitting through a window above them. 
        The following morning, they went out to observe the damage, and as Stephanie cleaned inside, David cut up the trees that fell around their property. On the lake, a thin layer of an unnaturally white mist seemed to be closing in. Stephanie and David worried about its strange nature, but David insisted that it was nothing. As David chainsawed the trees, their neighbor Brent Norton, whom David wasn’t very fond of, came up to him to apologize for one of his trees falling on David's boathouse and to ask for his help, since his chainsaw wasn’t working. David agreed and offered to bring Brent into town to grab groceries and supplies after clearing the remainder of the trees blocking the road. Billy went with them, but Stephanie stayed back to clean the garden. 
        Going into town, they managed their way through the tree-fallen road to reach the supermarket. David tried to call Stephanie on a pay phone, but the phone stopped working. Inside the store, Brent and Billy grabbed some of the stuff Stephanie wrote on a list. When David joined them, Brent made note of the line, which was apocalyptically long. The minutes rolled by as David made small talk with Brent until a siren began blaring outside with shouts of a fire spreading. Someone came into the store saying that the mist (roll credits) was coming. While David, Brent, and Billy stayed in line, not wanting to give up their place, several people looked outside and confirmed that the mist was rapidly approaching. A man with a bloody nose entered the store, exclaiming that the mist was deadly. At that time, a crowd of people panicked and left the store, and any chance of buying their groceries was lost. David looked outside and saw the mist taking over the parking lot, and then suddenly it was against the store window. Shrieking could be heard from outside. One man went out to help whoever shrieked, and David saw the man get yanked into the mist, never to be seen again. At that point, no one left the store except for a woman who braved it to try and get to her kids. 
        As they sat around, David decided to investigate the generator room in hopes of finding something to use as a blanket for Billy. Inside, the emergency lights turned out, and scared and disoriented, David heard a scratching sound. He ran inside and grabbed a couple of other men to help him start the generator. They decided to open a door outside despite David's pleading not to, and suddenly a white tentacle, the same color as the mist, burst inside, grabbed one of the men, and pulled him away. More tentacles joined, and not only were they pulling him, but they were also eating him alive. David tried to save him but let go when he knew that helping could cost him his life (and he had a son to watch over). He closed the door to the outside, slicing several of the tentacles in half, killing the severed limbs and spraying goo everywhere. David yelled and punched the guys who had the idea of opening the door. When he finished, he talked with the other guy there, admitting that everyone inside the market had a right to know what walking out into the fog truly meant. 
        David first went to Brent to try and explain to him what he saw, but Brent would not hear it and wouldn’t even go to the back room to confirm David's story. Ollie, one of the guys that did see, gathered a crowd to tell them what they saw. The manager, who still believed that the apocalypse hadn’t arrived yet, wouldn’t allow people to go in the back without him. Therefore, David went with him into the back to show the tentacle, and the manager confirmed what he saw when he returned to the main store, cementing everyone’s fears. Brent still preached about them lying, and a small group listened. Mrs. Carmody, a religious fanatic, claimed that the mist was a godly phenomenon, insisting that anyone who went into it would die.
        Over the next several hours, David and several others kept watch at various windows to look for tentacles, but no one found any. Brent and his small group of now four insisted that they were leaving, and although people asked them to reconsider, no one cared to stop them. As a last wish, David asked one of the men to tie a clothesline around him, and he agreed. Out into the mist, the group went, and only towards the end of the clothesline did the screams start and the clothesline whip. A monstrous grunt sounded in the distance before the line went slack. When David pulled the end inside, it contained only bloody frayed clothes.
        Things remained quiet for a while until one of the lookouts spotted a pinkish slug with wings plop itself on the window. As soon as the first one came, more came as well. Initial panic turned to fascination before a large scrawny bird creature came and devoured one of the slugs. Another bird entered through one of the various holes around the store that the lookouts used. The bird perched on a man and tore him to shreds before another man, the only one with a gun, shot it. One of the slugs also made it inside but was killed without fatalities. The openings were further protected against entry. Waiting and sleep ensued in the store as nighttime came. David didn’t sleep much, instead opting to look over Billy. Ollie came up to him in the middle of the night looking panicked, so David left Billy alone with a woman named Amanda Dumfries and went with him to the back, where he showed David two army men who hanged themselves. These army men worked for the Arrowhead Project, a secretive project that utilized powerful lasers and other tools for experimental purposes (sounds like the culprit). 
        The following morning, the creatures left, and David made love to Amanda (not too much to unpack with this one, it just kind of happened). One of the men approached David and told him he wanted to fight his way out, but David was naturally very hesitant about doing so. When the man, Dan Miller, talked about how they should first go to a drug store next door to scout it out and see if there are other people, David started listening. What put him over the edge, however, was when Dan spoke of how Mrs. Carmody was gaining influence, and if enough people began listening to her, someone would be sacrificed. Convinced, he gathered a team of seven to go out and check the drugstore, and one by one they ventured out into the mist. The person who went first screamed, and David, who was at the rear, saw why. Bodies lay sprawled across the store surrounded by a silky string. David only realized too late what it was: spider webs. Just then, webs flung right and left, cutting through any material they happened to touch. Ollie, David, and the woman who killed the small slug that entered the store were the only ones able to make it safely out of the store as the spiders came. Monstrous ten-to-twelve-legged spiders the size of a large dog scurried toward others from their scouting party and grabbed one of the unlucky members. The three of them retreated to the market, barely alive to tell the tale. 
        Hours later, David woke up from a short sleep and was immediately briefed about how Mrs. Carmody had gained more members and how they should make a run for it. David suggested they escape in his car, and several other people agreed to come, including Ollie, Amanda, Mrs. Reppler (the badass older woman who survived the drug store), and Billy. The next morning as they prepared to make their run, Mrs. Carmody and her congregation blocked the exit. She then called upon her disciples to grab Billy to make a human sacrifice, and Ollie shot her in retaliation. She gave one last cry before collapsing, and her followers dispersed, leaving the group access to the exit. They ran out to the car, Ollie making it first, and David watched as some large crab-scorpion monster grabbed him with his claw and snapped his body in half. Another person was killed by a spider that came, and only Mrs. Reppler, David, Amanda, and Billy made it safely inside the car.  
        Inside the car, they appeared to be safe for the moment. David drove away from the supermarket, going extremely slow due to the lack of vision brought on by the fog. He first tried to go back to look for Stephanie, but when trees blocked his path and monsters made noises in the forest, he knew in his heart that it was a lost cause. Turning around, he drove south, coming upon tentacles in the road and various flying creatures overhead. A creature of unimaginable size walked over them (I imagine like the creature from Stranger Things), so tall that its underbelly couldn’t be seen through the mist, causing craters wherever it stepped. Nonetheless, David kept driving until he found a hotel where they crashed for the night. Only sleeping a little, he planned to keep going south with the little gas that remained, hoping against hope to find something. With that, David finished writing all of his events from the mist, four days worth, before leaving the pages on a counter in the hotel. (That’s the end of the chilling story. Did they make it out, or were they killed immediately the next day? That’s up to you to decide. I like to think that after driving south, they managed to get some more gas after daring to go outside at the gas station. They kept driving south, eventually catching up to the edge of the mist, where they were able to continue past it and find a safe haven. Thanks for reading, and thankfully mist in most cases is much safer.)