Whoever said walking is good for health hasn't read The Long Walk (1979). Written by Stephen King under his Richard Bachman pseudonym, The Long Walk is set in an alternate America with unusual attributes: April has 31 days, there are 51 states, and every year, the Long Walk is held.
Each year, 100 teenage boys enter the competition hoping to win the prize. The Long Walk has no finishing line or time limit.
Its rules are simple: keep walking above four miles per hour; any slower and you receive a warning.
Those who accumulate three consecutive warnings are given a ticket and are out. This being Stephen King, that means being shot dead by soldiers who accompany the walkers on the road.
The goal is to outwalk the other 99 boys. The last boy walking wins the prize, which is anything in the world he wishes for.
While the prize represents the ultimate form of wish fulfilment, most of the boys wish for astonishingly mundane or macabre things, like new feet to replace the ones they are wearing down to bloody stumps.
Ray Garraty, 16, joins the Long Walk as number 47 and feels fairly confident about his chances. Garraty forms friendships with several boys like McVries, Olson and Stebbins.
Throughout the competition, their friendship keeps them going emotionally and mentally. But as the numbers dwindle, the pressures of competition strain relationships and they eventually make a pact not to help one another.
Ironically, Garraty becomes deathly afraid of losing his new friends.
Even though he understands that the only way he can win is if the others die, his friends have become so integral to his survival that he cannot bear losing them.
Garraty believes that as long as his magic circle of friends remains intact, he will not die. Their presence keeps him from falling into despair, but their individual deaths bring him to the edge of madness.
The endless walk presents many physical and psychological challenges.
As the boys cannot stop walking, they must perform their bodily functions publicly.
Garraty experiences intense shame when he has to drop his trousers and relieve himself on the road in front of spectators. He also deplores the crowd for witnessing their deaths.
He feels death should be private, yet their deaths are spectacularised for the crowd's viewing pleasure.
The boys are also disturbed by the crowd's ghoulish enthusiasm for collecting anything the walkers leave behind, including their rubbish, blood and droppings. There's a powerful allure of possessing items that come from people who are doomed.
The boys realise that while walking is easy, it becomes psychologically unbearable when there is no end-point.
Stebbins theorises the difference between being tired and exhausted. He argues that an average housewife may walk 16 miles a day doing housework and feel tired, but not exhausted.
But what if she was forced to walk that distance before she could stop? Garraty believes the hypothetical housewife would feel exhausted, not tired, but Stebbins disagrees.
Stebbins remarks: "A mule with a carrot spends a long time being tired."
To Garraty's dismay, Stebbins insists they haven't even begun to feel exhausted yet because although the prize has lost its incentive, the fear of death keeps them motivated, so they can expect to keep walking.
Stebbins marvels: "It's amazing how the mind operates the body… how it can take over and dictate to the body."
As their bodies collapse, their minds take over to keep their feet moving. But when their minds deteriorate, some of the boys burrow deeply into themselves to escape the reality of this death march.
Garraty observes Olson slowly transforming into the walking dead. Although Olson's body is dying, his mind refuses to stop.
Olson becomes a zombified husk resembling the Flying Dutchman, a ship that keeps moving without its crew.
Garraty grows convinced that those who walk the edge of death, like Olson, gain insights into the truth of life, death and everything in between.
Garraty's greatest fear is that at the end of the Long Walk, "[t]here is no winner, no prize" and "[e]veryone loses".
This ultimately proves true because even after the walk concludes, the winner is so mentally destroyed that he finds it impossible to stop walking.
The writer hopes to share insights into books and films to inspire appreciation for the power of stories
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times