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Stephen King/Nightmare Fuel: Difference between revisions
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** Mentioned and not dwelt upon, but far worse, is using the Jaunt device (with no exit) as a murder weapon. Technically, the victim never dies. Ever. She is cut off from all external stimuli, alone, with no way of ever escaping. (But the court convicted him anyway.) The defense attorney made that exact argument (that it wasn't really murder since the wife wasn't dead), but when the jury thought of [[And I Must Scream|a human being stuck in that state forever]] it pretty much [[Complete Monster|cemented the husband's conviction.]]
* "[[1408]]", another short story. A haunted hotel room. It's more psychedelic than Gothic and ghostly, but the imagery (and the protagonist's increasingly disjointed comments) will still make you sleep under the covers. Same with the descriptions of the room's "effects" on visitors. Even if you're not creeped out by the long (''very'' long) beginning sequence where the hotel manager tries his best to convince Our Hero that he should just walk away, the room itself starts messing with reality before we've even seen the inside of it:
{{quote|
Not by a lot, but it was crooked, all right, canted just the tiniest bit to the left.
...
He pushed RECORD [on his minicorder] as he straightened up, saw the little red eye go on, and opened his mouth to say, "The door of room 1408 offers it own unique greeting; it appears to have been set crooked, tipped slightly to the left."
He said ''The door'', and that's all. If you listen to the tape, you can hear the words clearly, ''The door'' and then the click of the STOP button. Because the door ''wasn't'' crooked. It was perfectly straight. Mike turned, looked at the door of 1409 across the hall, then back at the door of 1408. Both doors were the same, white with gold number-plaques and gold doorknobs. Both perfectly straight.
Mike bent, picked up his overnight case with the hand holding the minicorder, moved the key in his other hand towards the lock, then stopped again.
The door was crooked again.
This time it tilted slightly to the right. }}
** Stephen King actually reads 1408 on an audiobook called Blood and Smoke. It's even worse hearing his weird, creepy voices than it was reading the text!
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** ''Jang-jang-jang-jang'', who's dead this time?
* ''Trucks'': In which trucks rebel and destroy humanity, blaring demands to their new slaves via Morse code.
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* ''[[The Regulators]]''. {{spoiler|The most graphically detailed description of [[Your Head Asplode|an exploding head]] since ''[[Scanners]]''.}}
** The scene where Tak "sweetens up" Audrey will make you never want to eat honey again.
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* From "Skeleton Crew", a number of stories: "The Reaper's Image", especially the ending with the narrator waiting for his buyer to reappear. "Uncle Otto's Truck" had the eponymous vehicle ''slowly'' creeping up on Otto until it was ''right outside his fucking window''. His death was also pretty fucked. And "Morning Deliveries" had the most fucked up milkman I have ever seen.
* ''Autopsy Room 4'', from ''Everything's Eventual''. Live burial is a common horror subject, but leave it to King to come up with {{spoiler|live-[[And I Must Scream|but-paralyzed]] ''autopsy''}}. The funnier bits may seem to lighten up the story until you consider the protagonist's final comments:
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And similar to some mentions above, you may not able to listen to the Rolling Stones for a while after reading this.
* Pretty much the whole plot of ''[[The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon]]'', involving a small girl lost in the woods for several days with little food, being pursued by '''something''', {{spoiler|later '''ambiguously''' revealed to be a bear}}, but especially this little gem:
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