The mattress unrolls

Original fiction extract.

The mattress arrived in a box small enough for my brother to carry upstairs alone. He put it in the empty bed frame and read the instructions twice. Our mother watched from the doorway. She had measured the frame herself and did not believe that anything inside the box could possibly fill it.

When the wrapping came away, the mattress began to uncurl like an animal remembering its spine. One corner lifted, slowly at first, then with an unexpected insistence which made us step back. The flat roll became a pale landscape, hills rising where there had been folds. My brother held the empty wrapper in both hands, a defeated flag. Under it, the mattress kept growing into the room’s most confident object. The frame, which had looked enormous a moment before, now seemed to have been waiting for this particular arrival all along.

Our mother pressed one corner with her thumb. It returned almost at once. She went downstairs to fetch the sheet, leaving my brother and me beside something which had changed size without moving anywhere. He folded the box carefully. Neither of us could explain why it looked smaller now that it was empty.

Choose three powerful words or phrases from the extract above. Analyse how the writer uses language to convey the family’s surprise as the mattress expands.

Write about 200 to 250 words.