CARRIE: CREEPSHOW
❝THIS IS GONNA BE AN ENTIRELY NEW EXPERIENCE.❞
-STEPHEN KING, CREEPSHOW (1982)
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THE TOWN LOOKED EXACTLY THE same, but also newer. The parts that Carrie remembered destroying that night were fixed in almost the exact same way they were before, only this time they had a bit of shine to the typical rustic, worn-down Hawkins vibe. The only thing that differed from the way the town looked back in 1972 was the scorch marks on the paved roads from the fires that burned through town. That, and the countless pumpkins that were set outside of people's houses.
"Halloween..." Carrie concluded, speaking softly.
Mama never let her celebrate Halloween; it was the Devil's holiday where witches and demons would crawl from the pits of Hell and terrorize both the sinners and the saints. Carrie often wondered what it was like to go out and get candy from the different houses by simply dressing in costume and shouting the words "trick or treat" to those who answered the door. She would watch them from her window, never getting to know what it was like to be a child.
Mama... That's right. She was gone.
But even though she knew that Mama was gone, even though she knew there was nothing to go back to, Carrie walked in the direction of the White family bungalow. Was it for closure? Maybe. Comfort? Perhaps. But it was undeniable that curiosity struck Carrie like the knife that...
Barely anybody was in the streets. The sun had just barely come up in the sky so only those with the earliest of morning shifts would be out and about. But even so, not a soul was passing through. Perhaps that was for the best. After all, seeing a girl walking the empty streets of a semi-small town covered in years-old blood would have been one Hell of a morning starter.
Carrie's feet, though heavily bruised and bloodied from ages of walking that desolate version of Earth, moved smoothly against the Hawkins pavement that led to the White family bungalow. She knew it was this way because everything was still the same. Each house was still in the same condition Carrie remembered it to be. Even the trees, which were aging steadily, were still rooted out front of the houses with the manicured lawns surrounding them, though they seemed to be dying at a great speed due to the frigid winter air that would soon be nearing their fair town.
The houses began to look more and more familiar to her sunken eyes. She noticed Stacy Walter's busted front porch from her son's best friend ramming into it with his car when picking him up one night. And there was Mr. Anderson's house with the lopsided tree that Carrie always itched to climb on like the other kids in the neighborhood he let take a whack at it. Oh, how she longed to climb up that tree and get a scrape on the knee and go crying to her caring mother; how she just longed to be normal like those other kids!
And there was the house. It wasn't a pile of rubble like she had seen in the other world. It was restored in its full stature from the day that Carrie had burnt it to the ground. Nearly everything was to its exactness from that day... if not for the sign out on the front lawn that read "THE WHITE HOUSE MUSEUM PRESENTS THE CARRIE EXPERIENCE, ONLY $20!"
"Huh?" Carrie gasped in disbelief.
No, this couldn't be right... She had to see this for herself.
When she approached the front door- it was an exact remake of what she remembered the original to be- and let her hand rest on its handle, she found that it was locked. Focusing on the lock on the other side of the door slowly turning, she heard a soft "click" and let the door swing open on its own will. And when it had, Carrie saw what resembled her house, but not what it once had been...
The outline of the house was almost the same, yes, but the rugs Mama put down and all the pictures on the walls were different. The only things that were quite the same were the models of the furniture and even those were more vibrant in color than the ones she had before. That made Carrie wonder how they knew. Mama barely let anybody inside let alone give someone enough time to know what furniture they had.
Velvet ropes and signs were strung about the floors and walls that led into different parts of the house. Glass casing was set overtop of small things that caught Carrie's eye; the telephone situated just outside the living room, books about Jesus Christ that Carrie remembered throwing out the window that night so Mama would let her go to the prom and even her Mama's Bible... Lord, how she wished she could burn that damn book in hellfire...
But they weren't the only things encased in class. At the front entrance hall of the house were three things, each as terrifying as the next. The first was the bucket Chris filled up with pig's blood. Beneath that was a sign that delved into how it killed Tommy Ross, how that bucket was the start of it all. Then there was the tiara... The one she wore when she became Prom Queen, and it was still just as bloody and broken as before... And, in the center of them both, was a wax figure of Carrie White herself. Her blank, ruthless stare burned into Carrie as it gave her a cold reminder of how everyone must've seen her now, a merciless, God-forsaken demon of which should've never seen the light of day! This is what the world became of the story of Carrie White. She was portrayed as a freak, something to gawk at and pass the story around a campfire and warn your children about.
"Who the hell are you?" Carrie heard a man's thick, New-York-accented voice just after she heard the front door squeak open. "Are you the actress for today's show?"
Carrie didn't reply.
"Well, you're here too early," He grumbled. "The shows don't start 'til later on tonight. Oh, and you'll have to keep your movements minimal; I know the last gal probably told ya' that you should go all out, but that damned school got a new principal and won't let us use their gym this year for the horror show. And is that suppose' to be your dress? Well, sorry, sweetheart, but you let the fake blood dry up too-"
"The closet's in the wrong place." Carrie spoke suddenly when she noticed it.
"What?"
"The praying closet. It's supposed to be under the stairs, not near the kitchen..."
"Yeah? And what do you know?"
The front door slammed shut and the lock clicked tight. The man jumped and dropped his briefcase on the floor at the suddenness of it all. His mouth gaped open as he looked at the door and then to the woman standing in front of him. His eyes, hidden beneath sunglasses, doubled in size when he saw the woman who was identical to the wax figure behind her.
"Y-You're Ca-Ca-Car-"
"I know a lot that you don't," Carrie sneered. "I know that Mama threw me in there for things I didn't do. Throwing me in there for asking her my skin was different from her's... She told me to get in my closet and pray the dirtiness out of myself... But Mama was the one who had sex with a black man! It was her fault, and she got mad at me for something she did!" She advanced forward and the man pressed himself into the door.
"Mama told me breasts were bad and threw me in there when I saw Estelle Horan's outside and asked what they were! And my first period? The thing she never told me about? She put me in that closet for being a woman when being a woman was all I wanted to be! I thought I was dying in that locker room and she didn't give two shits about me! Told me I had lustful intentions when she ain't ever told me! Every time I was there it was her fault and she made me think it was mine so the least you can do is put the closet of my misery in the right place!"
Carrie's wrist shot out in front of her. She imagined the man's body lifting in the air, and it had. She imagined the closet door opening, and it had. With only the smallest bit of force in her compared to the fullest capacity of power in her body she had accumulated over those long years, Carrie let the man's body fly through the air. He hit his back against the wall and shook the rest of the room.
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Ever since he got up that morning, Will had this weird feeling, like something was wrong. He didn't really know what it was, just that it wasn't exactly anything good. Though, he attempted to hide this odd sensation by plastering a smile on his face while he and his friend embarrassingly dressed as the Ghostbusters at school on Halloween.
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"No, please!" The conscious man begged just before the door slammed in his face with a sickening crash. "Wait, let me out! Please! Please!"
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"Will, you okay?" Mike asked.
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"Pray to Heaven for your wicked soul..." Carrie said. "You pray for forgiveness!"
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Will replied, "Yeah, I'm fine."