#864 Home Delivery- Stephen King

#864 Home Delivery- Stephen King

I guess you could say this story is about sacrifice, personal growth, dependence. You could say it is about a mother who lives on a literal island that becomes a symbol for the isolation a young widow experiences while she deals with her first pregnancy alone. It could be a story about how community and cooperation can battle the cruelty of the world. You can say it is about a lot of things. But really, this is just a zombie story.

“When you could no longer call the 800 number and order Boxcar Willie records that were not available in ant store, when there were for the first time in her living memory no Operators Standing By, the end of the world was a foregone conclusion.”

Rating: 7-5-5-5 Total= 22

#836 Sneakers- Stephen King

#836 Sneakers- Stephen King

John Tell was a sound technician freelancing around the New York studios. He lived pay check to paycheck, gig-to-gig. He lucked his way into a session with a legendary producer and got to work in an old but famous studio, Music City. There he helped put together his first platinum album…which was shit.

“A platinum-plated dog-turd is still a dog-turd, but a platinum reference is platinum all the way through.”

One day in the third-floor bathroom he spied a pair of filthy sneakers peeking out from under a toilet stall. He paid little attention at first, but as weeks progressed on another gig in that building he would see the same sneakers in the same stall every time he was in there. The only difference was the pile of dead flies kept getting bigger. It was the ghost of an old drug dealer notorious to old timers but rarely seen anymore. The connection to the ghost and his current job helped him find some courage and learn to be himself.

Rating: 7-8-7-7 Total= 29

#807 Chattery Teeth- Stephen King

#807 Chattery Teeth- Stephen King

Bill Hogan is a traveling salesman. He stopped at Scooter’s Grocery and Roadside Zoo to get gas before heading home to Los Angeles. They are in the desert and a big wind storm is headed their way. While paying for gas he spots a pair of Jumbo Chattery Teeth in the novelty display booth. It’s one of those wind up toys that jump around. Normally they are smaller and made of plastic, but these are cast metal. Even though they seem broken he buys them for his son.

The wind has picked up as he leaves the store, and against his better judgment he picks up a hitchhiker who is about to get stuck in a sand storm. Just like his premonition, the hitchhiker tries to rob him at knifepoint. A car crash, a wind storm, a knife-fight later, he barely make sit out alive. He survives, this time with a new look on life and a new friend.

Rating: 7-7-7-7 Total= 28

#781 It Grows on You- Stephen King

#781 It Grows on You- Stephen King

Old legends die hard. The biggest name in the small blue collar town of Gates Mills, Maine is Joe Newell. He was the man who bought the failing Mill  in the early 20^th century and turned it around. But he was not liked. He built a house on his large property and didn’t use local help. He never entered the local shops, nor talked to the local people. He married an unlikely woman who gave birth to a monster that died immediately. 

The resentment towards his riches and secrecy aren’t anything unique to mill towns, nor was his aloofness and snobbery. But what made him a little more odd was his house. He was alone and really didn’t need much space, but over the years he kept building new wings to his estate. “It was considered to be an affront to the sensibilities and an offense to the eye.” 

The property was also considered bad luck, as everyone who lived there, including his child, his wife, his cows, died. Eventually during the market crash he took his own life in a wing that had just been built. The property never stayed in the same hands too long, and caused similar tragedies. Now after all these years, a new wing is being added.

This is the kind of Norman Rockwell meets H.P. Lovecraft story that King usually does so well. However this one just didn’t work for me. The plot unfolded slowly and the payoff wasn’t satisfying. I found the overall style to be scattered and unfocussed. As always the imagery was enjoyable and his description of small town Americana was impeccable. One big problem I had was that the narrator, written in the author's voice (not a described third person), used some questionable language (kike, wop, moron, nitwit) that rang weird not coming from a character. Not sure why that decision was made.

Notable Passage: “Cornstalks stand in leaning rows like soldiers who have found some fantastic way to die on their feet.”

Rating: 6-7-5-4 Total= 22

#751 Popsy- Stephen King

#751 Popsy- Stephen King

Sheridan has a gambling problem, he loved cards. He often got into debt with the wrong people who likely had a crooked game. When he got himself into a jam he couldn’t get out of, Mr. Reggie gave him a name to call and a week to pay him back. The name was a Turk who needed him to pick up a child. Any child really. He was now in kidnapping business.

Debt was paid off, but Sheridan still had a gambling problem, And when addicts find an amount they can pay off, they push that amount further. So, now he has a kidnapping habit. The most recent kid he picked up is different. He’s unbelievably strong, has a razor sharp bite (which now has Sheridan’s hands bleeding) and an increasingly strong odor:

“He could smell the kid. That fear had an odor was something he had learned on his expeditions, but this was unreal—the kid smelled like a mixture of sweat, mud, and slowly cooking battery acid.”

By the time, he realizes what this kid is, “Popsy” has caught up with him and he has no chance. Standard King fare, a little campy with the description of Popsy.

Rating: 7-6-7-6 Total= 26

#723 The Night Flier- Stephen King

#723 The Night Flier- Stephen King

Richard Dees was a reporter, or at least he thought himself one. He wrote sensationalized tabloid stories for a print rag called the Inside View.

“There were many things the Inside View was not—literate, for one, overconcerned with such minor matters as accuracy and ethics for another—but one thing was undeniable: it was exquisitely attuned to horrors.”

To give you an idea about their level of credibility, their latest cover was about intelligent alien penguins poised to take over the planet! He and his editor however have been tracking what they believe to be a great “legitimate” story. One that would give him fame and respect.  He thinks there is a serial killer on the loose, someone only he knows about. He calls it the Night Flier because the murders all happened at small airports. The twist, what makes this fodder for both the tabloid press—and worthy of a Stephen King anthology—is that the killer may be a vampire.

He tracks the killer down, while himself flying his own plane through a thunderstorm, to a landing strip that has lost power and confronts the man/vampire. At first he wants the story, then all he needs is a photograph, now all he wants is to get out of there alive.

Rating: 7-7-8-7 Total= 29

#688 Suffer the Little Children- Stephen King

#688 Suffer the Little Children- Stephen King

“Kids these days just have no respect, they were so much nicer so many years ago.” This common refrain is often heard by educators who have been teaching a long time. Ms. Sidley is such a teacher. She teaches third grade and has a reputation for being very strict. One of her tricks is to use her glasses to reflect her students actions while her back is turned. She often catches them in unruly behavior this way. Her eyes-in-the-back-of-her-head routine usually shocks them into compliance. But recently she sees more students defying her authority. Robert is such a student. When her back was turned she swore she saw his face morph into something ugly:

“What was it I saw when he changed? Something bulbous. Something that shimmered. Something that stared at me, yes, stared and grinned and wasn’t a child at all. It was old and it was evil…”

She is taken aback but tries to remain calm. But the next day when Robert confronts her and admits his power to change into the monster, and tells her there are many more students that can change, she loses it. Eventually the changlings are everywhere and she decides to take matters into her own hands. 

Is she crazy, or are the students really shape-shifters? The metaphor of students morphing into monsters and leaving their old, more innocent selves buried deep inside, is one most teachers will understand. There gets a point where seeing students as evil monsters may be a sign you should probably retire, before you do something drastic.

Rating: 7-8-8-8 Total= 31

#660 The End of the Whole Mess- Stephen King

#660 The End of the Whole Mess- Stephen King

Geniuses don’t always have the best ideas, in fact they often are some of the most shortsighted. This is a story about a genius that tried to rid the word of aggression and violence and failed miserably. Right off, the opening line is pretty gripping:

“I want to tell you about the end of war, the degradation of mankind, and the death of the messiah.”

The whole story is told as a last statement written by the genius's brother as he has about two hours left to live. He tells about the uncommon brains of his little brother, Bobby:

“Guys like my brother come along only once every two or three generations, I think—guys like Leonardo da Vinci, Newton, Einstein, maybe Edison. They all seem to have one thing in common: they are like huge compasses which swing aimlessly for a long time, searching for some true north and then homing on it with fearful force. Before that happens such guys are apt to get up to some weird shit.”

By the time Bobby was old enough to grasp his own mental abilities and look at the self-destructive tendencies of the human race, he set out to try and fix it. He found towns in Texas like Waco, had an uncommon rate of violent crimes. He studied these populations and discovered something in the water that made them more peaceful and docile.

He thought that if he could get the entire planet to ingest this chemical, he could rid the world of suffering. He set about synthesizing this water into a sort of peace-moonshine, and released in in the atmosphere via a Krakatoa-sized eruption. It worked at first but ultimately was a monumental disaster. Human kind was not meant to be docile, at least not like this. At least the planet was saved:

“We killed all the plants, but at least we saved the greenhouse.”

Notable Passage: “You got a kid trying to pass a mental kidney stone…I could prescribe something for his headaches, but I think the drug he really needs is a typewriter.”

Rating: 8-8-9-8 Total= 33

#583 Dolan’s Cadillac- Stephen King

#583 Dolan’s Cadillac- Stephen King

When I began this project the idea was to try read short stories by authors I hadn’t read before, or at least hadn’t read their short fictions before. Up till now, that’s been the case. I’ve read dozens of new authors like Rebecca Makkai or Luis Alberto Urrea, or I’ve finally read short works by authors I admire like Chuck Palahniuk or Haruki Murakami.

Now that I’m well past the one-year I panned on doing this, I wanted to add an old friend. I am an avid reader of Stephen King, and I’ve especially liked his short stories. Night Shift and Skeleton Crew are two phenomenal collections. King’s novels are great and while read by millions somehow under-appreciated by the tweed-shitting literary snobs that devalue his work. However, I think it’s the short story genre that King’s talents are best showcased. His creativity and ability to conjure situations that are immediately gripping, is only surpassed by his story telling chops.

So, here is the first story from Nightmares and Dreamscapes. It’s a bit on the novella side of things, but it reads fast and should be engulfed in one sitting. Robinson is a grieving widower. Seven years ago his wife was killed by Dolan, a rich gangster she was about to testify against. Now he is hell-bent on revenge. Although he is very much out of his depth in such matters.

“More and more I felt like a man who has jumped out of the bay of a B-52 with a parasol in his hand instead of a parachute on his back.”

The plan for revenge is pretty convoluted and over-the-top insane, but in the heat of the action, that is forgotten. King is wonderful at creating tension and motion in his storytelling. You feel the pace pick up as the plan is carried out. Often you see quotes from favorable critics on dust jackets of mystery novels that say things like  “makes your heart race”—well this one actually did that for me. 

Notable Passage: “Schoolteachers and high-priced hoodlums do not have the same freedom of movement; it’s just an economic fact of life.”

Rating: 8-9-9-7 Total= 33