Homecoming (Part 2) - A Narrative Adaptation of the MPV Video "Just a Little Further," Starring Sarah Michelle

[JSample]

Over the years I've seen occasional quicksand videos that I've recognized as being video adaptations of stories that I had read earlier online; with what follows below, I've reversed that process. The following quicksand story is part two of my narrative adaptation of the Mud Puddle Visuals video "Just a Little Further," starring Sarah Michelle. I wish to emphasize as strongly as I can that this story is not about Sarah Michelle herself; such a story about a real person would be both creepy and inappropriate. Instead, this is a creative retelling that interprets and expands upon the background, character, and story of "Sarah" as portrayed by Sarah Michelle in the video. While my story encompasses and expands upon the premise and plot progression that are depicted in the video, the additional interpretive material is solely the product of my own imagination. If anyone would like to read my review of the video, wherein I discuss the various emotional and psychological insights and responses that ultimately led me to write this story, the link is at viewtopic.php?p=112892#p112169.

Because MPV owns the copyright to "Just a Little Further," I contacted Dave Lodoski last July after completing the first draft of this story to ask his permission to post the final version here and to ask some questions regarding the nature of the story itself and the contents of my interpretive expansions. He characterized my story as fan fiction, which I suppose that it indeed is, and said that he saw no problem with it. Because my story interprets Sarah Michelle's performance in the video, I also contacted her to get her feedback on it, and she very graciously took time out of her busy schedule to reply to me. She was both pleasantly surprised and enthusiastic to learn that her performance had inspired a fan of hers to such a degree of creativity (my first attempt at a quicksand story in nearly thirty years), and I am posting this story here with her permission and approval. My hope is that my amateur prose efforts have done justice both to her performance in the video and to her personal and professional capabilities as an actress, and I also hope that forum members here enjoy reading my story as much as I did writing it.
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HOMECOMING (PART 2)
by Jason Sample
June 2017-February 2018

“Oh, shit!” Sarah cried out in startled surprise as she plunged heavily into the center of the pit, more falling forward than jumping as the stealthy grip of the mud around her shoes and lower legs thwarted both her attempt and her expectation. For a moment she feared that she would belly-flop onto the swampy surface as the sticky ooze in the spot from which she had leaped clung briefly but tightly to her legs and feet before grudgingly releasing them at the last second. She was spared the indignity of landing face first in the muck only as her arms instinctively swung around to break her fall and buried themselves elbow deep before her, trapping her hands within the mire, while the front of her formerly clean white top now joined her jeans in being in serious need of an extended pre-treatment the next time she washed them. Look at her now, Mommy.

“Uuunnhh!... mannn...” Sarah sighed unhappily, crashing from her emotional high as she recovered herself and took in the results of her latest effort, “that was not very far at all.” She had ended up at most only a couple of feet forward from where she had launched herself, and nowhere near as deep as she had hoped. “Like, really?” she complained as she pulled back to free her arms, a look of irritation spreading over her face. She had put everything that she had of herself into that final jump, she reflected grumpily, with seemingly little to show for it. “Could... barely get my frickin’ legs... ugh!” she groused in annoyance, again tugging with her arms against the surface as her legs and feet slowly caught up with the rest of her body and settled vertically beneath her in the ooze. Her less-than-satisfactory leap had taken her from knee deep to waist level in the bog, which felt significantly and disagreeably colder here than it had in the shallower parts of the pit, and her greater depth had only deepened the mud’s grasp on her body. “God-dammit!” she muttered as she continued to pull against the mire’s grip on her forearms. “All right... uuunh... uhh!” Her head fell back as she struggled to break the pit’s hold on her hands to no obvious effect; whatever she had done previously to free herself after a jump didn't seem to be working now. “Umm...” Sarah’s eyes wandered momentarily as she took a breath and relaxed her muscles. She was beginning to wonder at her apparent inability to pull herself up and out of the muck as before.

“God!” she exclaimed, exhaling in frustration as she again pulled up on her arms and glanced around at the surface of the bog, which was undulating slowly with her movements. It shouldn’t be this hard to get out, Sarah puzzled over her predicament as she exhaled again, feeling exasperated over how this day had gone. She scowled as she continued trying to work her hands free from the sticky muck, flexing her wrists and fingers with difficulty in what seemed to be a pointless exercise as the looseness of the mud around her waist belied its increasing thickness farther down below the surface. “This was supposed to be way more fun,” she griped out loud, throwing her head back to her left as her thoughts returned to the anticipation of a thrill that she had been expecting before her last abortive leap. Her deepening foreplay with the pit in her every successive jump had quickly and completely fizzled to nothing at what should have been her climactic moment. “Huhh... disappointed,” she grumbled sullenly, concluding that her afternoon fling with the soppy, flaccid mire surrounding her on all sides had proven altogether unsatisfying. So much for this stupid “dare spot,” she thought glumly as the ooze finally yielded to her efforts and her hands began to emerge from their bondage. “It’s not very deep, either... look at—”

Not very deep... Sarah’s voice broke off abruptly as she again looked around herself at the unstable bog encompassing her. A short breath escaped her lips, followed by an uncertain “um” as she tried to find her footing in the marshy quag. A troubled frown crossed her face. Something wasn’t right, it seemed, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. “What...?” she murmured uneasily, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion as her shoes probed the depths of the pit beneath her. She had become so preoccupied with freeing her arms after her last jump that she had given little thought to her lower body below the surface, but now that the muck had finally relinquished its hold on her hands, she realized that her legs had become deeply mired and nearly immobilized in the thick morass, while the muddy bottom under her feet seemed to have melted away into a strange, mushy consistency that she hadn’t noticed earlier when standing elsewhere in the pit, a shifting softness that clung heavily to her shoes yet yielded readily under pressure. Another quick breath accompanied her next unsettled attempt to push herself up from the bottom – from what should have been the bottom – only to be followed by a sudden gasp as the hair on her neck stood on end and the gravity of her peril became appallingly and undeniably clear. “Oh–!”

           The “something” that hadn’t seemed right —

“Omigod... umm…!” Sarah extracted her right hand from the muck and began slapping her palm at various places on the bog’s surface as she worriedly glanced around herself…

           — the “something” that she couldn't quite put her finger on —

“Oh, my god...!” A wave of urgency swept over her body as she anxiously pressed both her hands back into the mud in another apprehensive attempt to free herself from its grip…

           — was that there was no longer anything solid beneath her to put her feet on.

“OHHH, MY GOD!” Sarah cried in rising panic as she pushed her hands even further into the mire and began hyperventilating uncontrollably, her face a mask of both shock and dismay. “I can’t... feel the bottom!” she panted fearfully, her lips trembling as her eyes grew wide, unable to catch her breath. “What’s going on?!” She gulped heavily against the insistent demands of her runaway lungs as dark possibilities flooded her mind, none of them reassuring. “Is this...? No!” She began pawing madly at the surface, her hair flying from side to side as she hastily looked around to find something, anything, to grab onto. She instinctively tried again to push herself up with her feet, but they could find no purchase in the muddy depths. Even worse, her efforts to pull her body free were stymied by a massive suction grasping her shoes and legs that countered her alternating attempts to heave either foot upward by forcing the other to be driven deeper into the cold, gooey muck, pulling her downward with them. “No!” she cried again with increasing alarm as she dropped lower into the pit. Whereas moments before she had seemed to be floating buoyantly at her waist, within a matter of seconds her frenzied struggles had caused her to descend to just below her breasts. She could still feel no bottom beneath her feet.

With growing dread Sarah continued smacking her arms and hands against the surface of the mire as she cast her eyes about for a means of escape, but there were no branches overhead, and the nearest vegetation stood at the perimeter of the clearing, well beyond her flailing reach. Her throat began to tighten as she felt the clammy mud soaking through her top against her skin in a wet, heavy embrace, and a sob of anguish surged from her chest as a dawning terror sparked within her mind and quickly expanded to fill her consciousness. “Fucking quicksand?!” Sarah whimpered incredulously, hesitantly, as if naming the unspoken horror would somehow bring it to life. But there was no longer any doubt. “FUCKING QUICKSAND?!” she shouted in stunned disbelief as she sank deeper into the pit. “NO!”

Her frontal cortex flew into overdrive as she desperately swung her head and torso about, searching for a way to extricate herself from the muddy trap. “I thought it was just pretend, really, like...!” she protested tearfully in consternation as her hands scrambled rapidly from side to side for some path to freedom. This deceptive “dare spot” was just supposed to be a challenging game, a demanding test of one’s nerve and stamina; Joyce had never said anything about actual quicksand! Another wave of fear swelled over Sarah as the sucking mire began to devour her breasts despite her efforts to hold herself up and out of its grasp – “No!” – and an involuntary cry of fright fell from her lips as she fought frantically against the clinging muck that now had a firm hold on her body and seemed hungry for more. “Ohh, fuck! FUCK!” she swore furiously at both the mud and herself as she struck her arms and hands repeatedly and futilely against the soggy surface. This must be why her friends had always come as a group when they would visit this spot! How could she have been so foolish as to come here alone?!

Indifferent to her self-recriminations, the unyielding quagmire resisted her frightened attempts to free herself as she settled more deeply into its grip, and for a harrowing moment Sarah imagined that the miry pit had indeed come alive and was now knowingly and cunningly drawing her into its ravenous maw. Here’s that “thrill” you wanted, you silly girl, the “fucking” quicksand mocked her lasciviously as it forced her to its will, dragging her down to her armpits and having its way with her as she collapsed against the surface in a sobbing scream of horrified helplessness. She had indeed been seduced, but not by any kind of lover, and her stomach churned with revulsion as the insidious incubus assaulted her psyche. Denying the delirium, she thrust the ghastly image from her reeling mind, and with a groan of defiance Sarah pushed against the mindless mud with every ounce of strength that her weight training had imparted to her arms and upper body in an agonized attempt to break the mire's hold on her, but to no avail. Her stricken voice again cried out in torment as she fell to her right, plunging first her right arm and then her left, over and over, into the morass in search of a hidden root or branch, a vine, anything with which she might pull herself to safety. She found only oozing muck between her fingers. A wounded, plaintive “NOOOOOOO-OH-OH!” wailed from her lips, her eyes burning with tears as she felt herself slipping deeper into the pit, her arms splayed uselessly on the surface before her as the treacherous slough continued to engulf her body. “FFFFUUUUUUUUUUCK!” she shrieked impotently at the quicksand... and at her own folly.

A heaving, guttural howl of primal terror, more animal than human, erupted from Sarah’s throat as she clawed at the mire, her feral cry resounding through the nearby woods before crumbling into gasping sobs. Livid with herself, she drove her right arm deeply into the muck in a seething fit of powerless rage, only to have to reach in with her left, straining, to pull it back out. With every passing moment, with every panting movement, she felt her body descending ever more surely into the quicksand’s unrelenting grip. Panic began to consume her as, deep within the recesses of her fevered brain, a buried relic of human evolution ignited her autonomic nervous system into full fight-or-flight response, and she began to struggle blindly, mindlessly, to free herself.

“Okay! What can I do? Ohh-ohhhh...!” Sarah groaned breathlessly, her eyes wide with fear, her thoughts racing in different directions faster than she could follow. She felt as if every neuron inside her skull were firing at once, obliterating reason and logic and inundating her consciousness with random impulses and emotions beyond her control as she grasped manically from side to side at the sodden surface, while the persistent ooze patiently cemented its own grasp on her body even more firmly. Her vision seemed to be narrowing, blurring the periphery of sight and mind as one intent and one intent alone — escape — quashed all other conscious thought beneath its instinctive impetus. Wordless moans gave way to gravelly, disjointed cries as she continued to thrash her arms about. “Nooo!... oh, fuck!... okay... there’s somebody—”

That one word snapped her scattered mind back into focus. Neither fight nor flight was going to save her; at this rate, they would end her. If she were ever going to find release from the cold, muddy bonds constricting her, salvation would arrive in only one form.

“SOMEBODYYY-Y-Y!” Sarah cried out hoarsely to the surrounding forest, clenching fistfuls of muck as her voice trailed off piteously and her arms fell back into the mud. Her wild exertions had been constantly sapping her strength, and it was becoming a struggle just to breathe. For several seconds her lungs labored deeply as she tried to steady herself, her body rising and falling in the quag with each gasping breath as her heart pounded within her chest in a mad race against the adrenalized demands of her body. Horror filled her eyes at the thought of what was happening to her and what would very soon happen to her if she could not break free, and she began raking her hands again over the miry surface, twisting her torso left and then right, her voice reduced to groaning whimpers of desperation as she felt herself being drawn deeper into the pit. “No!... okay... hunh-uuuhh-unh!... fucking quicksand!” she grumbled bitterly against the soft, wet, sticky substance that held her captive within its clutches.

“SOMEBODY, HELP ME! I’M IN QUICKSAAANNND!” Sarah screamed raggedly at the top of her lungs before collapsing again in convulsive sobs as her hands once more fell back to the surface. Despite the warmth of the afternoon air, she shivered under a dank chill that now swept over her as encroaching clouds darkened the sun above, overshadowing the clearing and the surrounding woods as the fading light abandoned her to her lonely struggle against the pitiless pit, and she began crying miserably as the loose mud flowed over her shoulders and started lapping at her neck. She was only fooling herself, she recognized through her tears as she forlornly grasped handfuls of muck; she knew that no one would hear her cries. She was deep in the middle of the woods on a weekday and had deliberately not told anyone where she was going or what she had been planning when she struck off earlier that afternoon in search of the “dare spot,” and of course — of course! — she had forgotten her cell phone. It’ll be fun, she ruefully remembered thinking earlier that morning while she was mapping out her day’s adventure. No one will be around, and I’ll have the mud all to myself. Now all she wanted was for someone, anyone, to somehow chance upon her and rescue her from the miry deathtrap that had her all to itself.

Sarah began tearing at the surface of the quicksand again, but every movement was becoming more taxing as exhaustion began to weigh her down. “No-o... I can’t... I...” she groaned haltingly, gasping for every breath as her body slumped further into the mire. In her torment she felt as if she were truly going out of her mind as she now heard herself pleading with the earth, with the sky, with the universe itself to have mercy on her, to pardon her transgression, to forgive her trespass into the pit’s inner sanctum. “I... oh, please-please-please... no-o, no-no-no... I was just playing around! I just–I was just playing! I was just playing!” She cast her eyes upward beseechingly to whatever gods might be as she struggled vainly against the muck’s deepening hold on her body. “I don’t want to–I don’t want to die in quicksand!” she begged the remote, impassive heavens, shaking her head in urgent supplication, “I don’t–I want–I want to go home!” Her panic-stricken mind immediately seized on this desperate wish. “I want to go home! I want to go home!” she wailed helplessly as the unforgiving ooze enfolded her more deeply into its grip.

The confident, educated, professional woman whom she had grown up to become was quickly vanishing from her consciousness, and in her absence Sarah felt as though she were regressing, reverting, devolving into a frightened little girl. “No-oh-oh! I don’t want to be here! Oh-ohh-ohh!” she sobbed fearfully as she dragged her hands uselessly across the quicksand’s surface, her remaining composure dissolving into terrified, pitiable whimpering and weeping as the muck drew her in deeper. “Help me!” she cried tearfully to the insensate forest around her, her emotional turmoil over her peril now resolving itself into anger and resentment as she again began striking her arms against the mire, one after the other, repeatedly and forcefully to either side of herself in a tempestuous tantrum of childlike fury.

Something in the raw passion of that willful act brought the adult Sarah back from the brink of oblivion, and with renewed determination she plunged her right arm and her left into the muddy surface before her and began pulling against it with all her might, groaning and growling vehemently through clenched teeth as she wrestled the mire in a final bid for freedom. “Uuuuunnngh!... aaaaagggghh-ghah-haanh!... nooooo-oh-oh-ohh!” she demanded of every scrap of strength that she could muster from her fatiguing muscles, asserting her very being against fate itself and defying the quicksand to resist her will. Unfortunately, the quicksand didn’t resist her at all as her arms and hands plowed loosely and easily through the muck, grasping only ooze while her legs and body remained firmly trapped, and she came away with nothing for her momentous effort but another wasted expenditure of precious energy.

There was no way that she was going to be able to pull herself free, and Sarah knew it. She could find no leverage, no hand- or foothold, nothing whatsoever, and soon her strength would give out completely. Already her feet and legs were growing numb as the cold, soggy depths of the pit stole warmth incessantly from her body. “I can’t... do this...” her weeping voice rasped wearily as she felt herself beginning to falter, her arms drifting aimlessly over the surface of the mire as her breathing became shallower. “Please...!” she again entreated the sky through the trees, her head and eyes rolling back as she gasped repeatedly for air, “I fucking can’t do this... please help me... somebody... some—”

Once again the frightened little girl emerged from her hiding place in abject misery. “It’s not fair...!” she wept inconsolably as the quicksand crept up to her chin. Sarah felt betrayed... betrayed by the “dare spot,” betrayed by her best friend, betrayed by her very childhood. All she had wanted to do was to jump and play in the mud once more as she had blissfully done so very long ago in the creek at the edge of her backyard. Her mother had forgiven her then for making a mess on the kitchen floor and ruining her good clothes, but what unpardonable offense, what unforgivable sin, had she now committed to deserve such a terrible punishment as this? Surely the universe didn’t give a damn about her blue jeans!

No, it didn’t, the thought struck her as tendrils of ooze crept around her lower jaw. The universe didn’t give a damn about her blue jeans... or her top… or her shoes. The universe didn’t give a damn at all about anything that she was wearing, or what muddy condition her clothes were in. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

The universe didn't give a damn at all… about her.

She was doomed.

“I can’t... I'm so scared... I don’t want to do...” Sarah gasped as she grasped futilely at the liquefied earth, knowing that she was running out of time. She would only be able to stay above the surface for a little while longer, especially as the suction of the quicksand around her shoes and legs caused her every movement to pull her body slowly and inexorably downward. As difficult as it had now become for her to breathe, she knew that soon she would no longer be able to breathe at all. This was her nightmare. The horror of this prospect, of suffocating in an agony of helplessness beneath the surface of the merciless mire, of being entombed alive within the asphyxiating ooze, drove her tormented mind to the only remaining defense within its reach.

“It’s not true!” Sarah panted insistently, shaking her head and squeezing her eyes shut to the fearful reality around her. “It’s not happening, it’s not happening, it’s not happening...” She repeated the mantra over and over, as if its desperate incantation would somehow carry the terrified little girl away from this bleak, dismal place, transporting her to another time and delivering her safely elsewhere, to the loving, happy home that she had known as a child, to the warmth and security of her own bed in her own room, where she would momentarily awaken from the bad dream to the comforting, consoling arms of her mother, who would gently dry her daughter’s tears and rock away her pathetic cries until at last she fell back to sleep.

Not.

“…It’s not happening!... It’s not happening!... It’s not happening!... I can’t… uh—” Sarah's voice broke off as she opened her eyes and swallowed hard against the unchanged, woeful scene of her entrapment. “Uhh—I can’t...” she moaned despairingly, her head falling backward into the muck as she dragged her hands listlessly over the marshy surface. Her body was now mired even more deeply than it had been before, and she shuddered as the clinging ooze infiltrated and then began soaking the hair on the back of her head. She knew that there would be no waking from this morbid, muculent nightmare, no loving, reassuring embrace in which to find comfort and relief, for the nightmare was now all that there was, and the only embrace that she would ever again know intended to betroth her forever to itself within the solemn bonds of its somber depths, to have and to hold her from this day forth for all time. “It’s pulling me in, ooh-hoooh-hooohh-hooohh!” she wept despondently, her frightened tears overtaking her again as she felt herself slipping deeper into the pit, the last of her strength steadily waning as the quicksand slowly gathered her to itself. “I’m so tired—ahhh!” she groaned weakly as her arms fell heavily into the mud before her, her heart sinking under the weight of the awful certainty of her impending ruin, “I’m fucking crazed—I can’t do this!”

Sarah crumbled and finally broke as crushing waves of utter hopelessness overwhelmed her. Spasms of tortured sobs wracked her body as she reflexively tried to cry and breathe at the same time. It would not be long now.

“Ahh…! I can’t... uh—” Sarah gasped strenuously through her tears, struggling to inhale against the mass and pressure of the thick mud enclosing her chest as the onerous ooze began licking at the lobes of her ears. It seemed to her that she was getting less air with each flagging breath. “Uhh-uh... uhh-huhn... nooo-o-o-o-ohh...” she protested feebly as she groped in vain at the miry surface, her eyes widening in mortal dread as the quicksand rose over her chin and started climbing toward her lower lip. Her unnerved brain objected increasingly to the dearth of oxygen to which it was now being subjected, and she felt herself growing dizzy, lightheaded; her vision began sliding in and out of focus, and the world seemed to be spinning off its axis around her. Coherent thought was becoming more and more difficult. “Uhhh... plea-ea-ease... some... I can’t... uhm... uhh-huhm...”

Sarah’s voice tapered off as the remainder of her strength at last gave way and her depleted body fell limp. Her arms rested wearily in the dark morass before her; her unkempt bangs lay matted with sweat against her forehead. Faint streaks of mascara traced the paths that her tears had taken down her face. Her head lay back deeply in the ooze, which now threatened to overrun and invade her ears at any moment. She could barely summon the wherewithal to breathe, her body slowly falling and rising in the quicksand to the ebbing rhythm of her diaphragm. I’m so fucked, she grieved in quiet despair as she felt the soppy muck saturating the back of her scalp. Beneath the surface, her body was sunk deeply, encased within a miry grip that afforded her little leeway to move, much less to try to escape. Her mud-soaked top and jeans clung leadenly to her form in the dense quag, while the tips of her shoes pointed downward toward the frigid, unfathomed depths of the pit in the futile wish for a solid bottom that was nowhere to be found. She could envision no possibility of rescue, no hope for salvation, no future but the grimy, acrid taste of the sodden earth that was slowly swallowing her. Around and above her, insects flew and birds called to one another in the soft stillness of the warm air, unmindful of the plight of the young woman trapped and sinking in the mire below. As moments passed in silence, a muted calmness began to settle upon the clearing that encircled the pit. Something in the hushed solitude of her surroundings began to have an allaying effect on her beleaguered mind, and Sarah gradually became aware that the stark terror that had been wholly consuming her was now subtly and strangely subsiding as she hung, unmoving, in the quicksand’s confining keep. “Huh-umm,” she breathed slowly, once, and then once again. “Ohh, fuck…” she exhaled quietly as her eyelids closed in exhaustion, “uhhm... uhhm... ohhh...” She felt as though she could almost drift off to sleep at any moment.

Almost... but not quite. She wasn't ready. It wasn't time.

“Please,” Sarah whispered softly as her eyes flickered open again, “I can’t do this.” She exhaled shallowly as she bobbed precariously in the ooze, with only her head and her lower arms, held languidly toward the sky, still visible. She looked around herself as she floundered failingly in the quag, now almost eye-level with the surface, incredulous over the miry menace in which she had so recklessly ensnared herself. How had this day — for that matter, how had her life — brought her to this? she wondered in disbelief as with each weakening breath she felt herself slipping further into the muck. Further. The word wafted tenuously through her wavering consciousness. Just a little bit further, she had said to herself so surely, so confidently, only minutes before – or had it now been a lifetime? She would jump one more time, she had promised herself, and then she would go on her merry way. Yes… her merry way. That’s what she would do… or, at least, that’s what she would have done… if there had been anything else that she could have done. The “dare spot” had obviously had other ideas.

She was going to die, Sarah grimly realized as she gazed dolefully at the trees that towered over her. There was no escaping it. She was going to drown in quicksand. She would gulp one final, futile lungful of air as the encompassing ooze closed over her face, she would slip beneath the surface, and then, maybe after a minute or so of smothering blackness, her oxygen-starved brain and body would at last betray her… and she would drown. The quicksand didn’t even have to be “bottomless” the way the old movies made it out to be; it just had to be deeper than she was tall. Nothing more.

“Ohhh-ohh,” Sarah moaned as her fearful whimpers returned. Bitter tears fell from her eyes and mournful cries from her lips as she slowly sank deeper into the ooze, the grasping muck now encircling her lower jaw and reaching toward the corners of her mouth as her arms and hands dropped thickly into the fluid earth before her, splashing small, sticky beads of wet mud onto her face, as if the sepulchral quagmire meant to inter her beauty while her trembling lips still drew breath. Far above, oblivious to her suffering, the summer sun at last emerged from behind the obscuring clouds, once more casting its bright, warming rays through the trees onto the surface of the bog around her, but she found no solace in the celestial orb’s belated return, its shining presence overhead now but a cruel mockery of the black fate awaiting her. The naive, playful curiosity that had drawn her like a child to the “dare spot” had long since perished deep within her heart, sucked into a swamp of sinking emotion, and she felt nothing now but a boundless abyss of sadness. Before this hour, before this moment, she would never have imagined that this would be how her story would end, that the joyful, uplifting melody of her hopes and dreams, the buoyant, vibrant song of her very self, would be senselessly stifled and stilled forevermore in the cold finality of the choking depths of a loathsome, miserable pit of… fucking quicksand. “Fuck...” Sarah conceded weakly in tearful resignation, vacantly clutching and releasing weary handfuls of dripping ooze. She could no longer resist the inevitable. “Oh, please...” she at last yielded in a spent voice of surrender, “I can’t fight it anymore.”

There was nothing more to be done – nothing more that could be done – but to wait.

Time seemed to have ground to a standstill, and Sarah sighed dispiritedly as her thoughts began to drift. She wondered if she would linger indefinitely at the surface of the mire, hovering interminably between life and death, and she imagined that this must have been how the psalmist had felt when he implored his god not to abandon his soul to the pit. Sheol now beckoned her as well. Another verse, heartrending in its trusting assurance of innocent faith that she had long since outgrown, arose from her childhood memories of Sunday school: He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure… A vague recollection of a poem that she had once read in a college literature class surfaced, something about the process of dying as the reverse of being born, and it certainly felt as if she were now being drawn into the womb of the earth, from the dirt and mud of which, ancient tradition avowed, all of humankind had been born. But she knew that for her there would be no second birth from the folds of this miry womb; instead, the sloughy depths engulfing her would hereafter become her tomb. She would soon disappear forever, forsaken of all the living, with no memorial to mark the place of her passing, no flowers cast in parting sorrow by those who loved her, no eulogy to recount and commend to others her valiant struggle not to go gentle into that good night.

No one would ever know what had become of her.

She was alone.

“Aawww-uhh,” Sarah groaned forlornly, again lifting her hands upward as her anguished mind sought some small mercy before the end. “I want to go home... I want to go home...” she wept in a small, broken voice of hopeless misery as she slipped deeper into the pit. She had now lost all sensation in her lower body, and it felt as though the bitter chill of the clinging depths were leaching the remaining warmth from her very core, draining the last reserves of her strength as her breathing became even slower and shallower. “Huhn... huhn...” she exhaled faintly, no longer even trying to fight the mire’s hold on her body. “Ohh... fuck…” she then murmured as muscle fatigue set in and her hands sank limply to the surface. She felt herself descending even further — just a little further! — and instinctively tilted her head back to prevent the quicksand from entering her mouth as her ears finally succumbed to the ooze. The quiet noises of the woods around her, the buzz of insects, the songs of birds, the gentle rustle of leaves in the breeze, were immediately silenced, and the only sound that Sarah could now hear was the heavy beating of her own heart. She was surprised at how loud it seemed inside her head. The first sound that she had ever heard long ago within her mother's body, she mused achingly, would now be the last sound that she would ever hear. Dying really was the reverse of being born.

Sarah sobbed quietly as she gradually settled more deeply into the mire, her grief now beyond words. It was becoming difficult to keep her mouth above the surface, and she strained her neck backward even more so to hold her face free for as long as possible as the enveloping darkness drew her unyieldingly into its domain. Her left hand had already vanished into the muck, and the fingers of her right opened and closed reflexively as it too descended slowly from sight. Her entire world had shrunk to little more than the perimeter of the clearing itself, and as she opened her eyes she found herself staring straight up from the nadir of the pit, through the canopy of leaves and branches above her, to the zenith of the blue sky beyond. She could still feel the warmth of the sun on her face. A delicate acquiescence came over her. How long had she been hanging here, suspended upon this soft surface between time and eternity? Minutes? Hours? Always? She couldn't remember.

She felt herself floating dimly between dreaming and wakefulness as her breathing became more erratic, while the cold mud stole silently up the sides of her upturned face, merging with her remaining tears as it prepared at last to claim her as its own. Sarah barely noticed. Her receding thoughts were already journeying elsewhere. Perhaps she really was dreaming after all, she wondered hazily as endless seconds passed in stillness. Yes, that must be it. She was dreaming. She would wake up, she imagined as she exhaled softly, and all of this would have been only a dream. That would be nice. She exhaled once more. Now a new memory emerged, rising tenderly from her subconscious as her body hung motionless, cradled within the bosom of the quicksand. Or was it another dream? She could no longer tell the difference. She felt herself drifting away as her vision began to fade and a new scene slowly opened within her mind...



She was safe at home in her own bed, snuggled with her favorite stuffed animals, her sheets and quilt wrapped warmly and reassuringly around her. She had always felt most secure when she was burrowed deep beneath her covers, with only a small opening remaining at her pillow through which she could breathe comfortably as she slumbered. But she couldn't drift off to sleep just yet. She had to be ready to go. She couldn't slip away without first being gently tucked in, without saying her Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, without receiving her goodnight kiss, without her bedside lamp being switched off for the night. All these things had to happen first, and only then would she at last be ready. And when the time finally came, all that little Sarah had to do was to close her eyes and call out for her...


"Mommy!—"

_____________________________________

[water_bug_62208]

Again, a wonderfully enjoyable story!

Thank you for your detailed descriptions of Sarah's struggling, especially when it came to describing the difficulty of trying to free her stuck legs from the mud. The inclusion of her arms getting stuck in the mud after her last attempt to jump was a wonderful touch... loved how her efforts to free her arms did little but to drive her legs deeper into the mud. And, I liked how being stuck was just a casual annoyance to her until she realized how deep her legs had been driven into the mud and how hopelessly stuck her legs and feet were... only then did she start to worry.

The flashbacks to her childhood were a nice touch as she struggled and strained to get free of the mud, her efforts only sinking her deeper and deeper. Overall, a well-written, leggy, struggle-filled story featuring a sexy, well-toned, athletic woman.

Thanks for sharing!

[bogbud]

Very good read and lots of effort for all the details. As I already have the video and also the photos, this narrative is a great addition.

Very well done!

[JSample]

Again, a wonderfully enjoyable story!

Thank you for your detailed descriptions of Sarah's struggling, especially when it came to describing the difficulty of trying to free her stuck legs from the mud. The inclusion of her arms getting stuck in the mud after her last attempt to jump was a wonderful touch... loved how her efforts to free her arms did little but to drive her legs deeper into the mud. And, I liked how being stuck was just a casual annoyance to her until she realized how deep her legs had been driven into the mud and how hopelessly stuck her legs and feet were... only then did she start to worry.

The flashbacks to her childhood were a nice touch as she struggled and strained to get free of the mud, her efforts only sinking her deeper and deeper. Overall, a well-written, leggy, struggle-filled story featuring a sexy, well-toned, athletic woman.

Thanks for sharing!

Thank you again, Waterbug! I really worked to capture what I imagined that "Sarah" might have been thinking and feeling as she sank, especially as she slowly realized that there would be no escape. All of this, of course, is thanks to the masterful performance that Sarah Michelle exhibited in the video. The "childhood memory" and flashbacks to her past were directly inspired by Sarah's final cry for her "mommy" as she went under in the video, and in fact that moment was what inspired me to imagine what her character's backstory might have been as I explored what would have been her true, foundational motivation for seeking out the "dare spot." I'm very glad that you enjoyed my story.

[JSample]

Very good read and lots of effort for all the details. As I already have the video and also the photos, this narrative is a great addition.

Very well done!

Thank you, Bogbud! I really did want my story to be able to stand up as a credible retelling of and expansion upon the video as I explored my own emotional and psychological responses to Sarah Michelle's performance, and it's gratifying to learn that others think well of my efforts. Of course, this story couldn't have worked as it did apart from her powerful performance, and in many ways I feel that in writing this story my own imagination and creativity were merely piggy-backing on the depth of her acting talent and experience.

[JSample]

As I said in my most recent comment on the first part of my "Homecoming" story, I feel gratified by the number of times that story has been viewed since I posted it and by the positive feedback I have received in reader comments. As I did for Part 1, here I want to share a few more "Easter eggs" that I inserted into Part 2, as well as describing a moment of serendipity in the shooting of the video that took me months to notice and which no one involved in its making could have predicted at the time.

The first "egg" appears after Sarah has realized that she is sinking in quicksand and I employ the horror movie trope of having her character imagine for a horrifying moment that the mud pit has now come alive and that what she had referred to moments earlier as "fucking quicksand" has indeed become just that in every imaginable sense of the term (definitely not the kind of "thrill" she'd been looking for when she made her final leap into the pit). This obvious trope is a homage to Sarah Michelle's background and experience of acting in horror movies both before and after she started making quicksand videos.

The second follows on the heels of the first. After Sarah rejects the delirium of thinking that the quicksand had come alive, I write: "With a groan of defiance Sarah pushed against the mindless mud with every ounce of strength that her weight training had imparted to her arms and upper body in an agonized attempt to break the mire's hold on her, but to no avail." At the time that Sarah Michelle made the "Just a Little Further" video with MPV she had embarked on a rigorous self-improvement and fitness regimen that included weight training as part of her exercise program.

The third appears as Sarah has almost lost herself to her terror before reasserting herself and her will to live: "With renewed determination she plunged her right arm and her left into the muddy surface before her and began pulling against it with all her might, groaning and growling vehemently through clenched teeth as she wrestled the mire in a final bid for freedom." More than a decade ago, Sarah Michelle made a career for herself as a professional wrestler in New England and in Mexico.

The final "Easter egg" in my story is a homage to "Fleeing" by Damsels in Distress Video Productions, the very first quicksand video that Sarah Michelle ever made and the very first video of hers that I ever saw back in 2015. Near the end of that video, after she has sunk to her neck, her character hopes against hope that what's happening to her isn't real: "I'm just gonna wake up, and it's gonna be a dream." In the next-to-last paragraph of my story, I put that same thought into Sarah's mind as her final moments approach: "Perhaps she really was dreaming after all, she wondered hazily as endless seconds passed in stillness. Yes, that must be it. She was dreaming. She would wake up, she imagined as she exhaled softly, and all of this would have been only a dream. That would be nice."

As I mentioned above, there is one additional aspect of the video that I want to discuss before closing, an element that neither Sarah Michelle nor the camera crew could have predicted, anticipated, or controlled for while shooting the video and which I didn't even notice until nearly four months after I started writing my story and after I have no idea how many times I had watched the video. I had approached my story as a life-or-death struggle between Sarah and the quicksand, as of course Sarah Michelle and the camera crew did too on the day of the video shoot, but at a critical point in the shooting two more players asserted their presence on the scene: the sun and the clouds. For the playful first part of the video, Sarah, the pit, and the woods are bathed in bright sunlight shining through the trees, so much so that the light reflecting off her hair looks almost angelic at times, and even after the dramatic damsel-in-distress part begins the sun is still shining brightly on the pit, although of course the patterns of light and shadow have changed with the passage of time. But something happens at an especially dramatic point in the video that was completely beyond anyone's control. Immediately after Sarah loudly cries out for help for the last time ("Somebody, help me! I'm in quicksand!"), the sun disappears behind the clouds. The bright patches of sunlight that had been around her up to this point immediately fade into shadow, as if the sun and indeed the universe itself have abandoned her to her fate, and the rest of the video depicts Sarah tearfully struggling for her life against the gloomy backdrop of the dark, brooding surface of the pit as she resists her impending doom. This darkened, shadowy scene holds until near the very end of the video, when Sarah finally resigns herself to her fate. Just as she begins to say, "I can't fight it anymore," the clouds part as if on cue and the sun finally returns, as if to somehow comfort her in her final moments. I had spent so much time concentrating upon capturing her performance in words that I truly did not notice this meteorological element until almost four months into the project.

As everyone can probably tell by now, this video is my very favorite damsel-in-distress quicksand video of all. One early reviewer of it on the forum advocated Sarah's performance in the dramatic part as a "benchmark" for other models to aspire to in their own videos, and I fully agree, although of course I wouldn't expect any model merely to copy another's performance. Speaking for myself, I consider Sarah Michelle's performance here to be the "gold standard" and "holy grail" of quicksand videos. In the decades since I became aware of my quicksand fetish and that I have been watching such videos, before seeing this particular one I could not have said, "I'm looking for these particular elements in a quicksand video," but after one viewing of "Just a Little Further" I could truthfully say, "This is exactly what I've been looking for in a quicksand video!"

Thank you all for indulging my description of my fan-boy fetish.