SHINING IN THE DARK

STEPHEN KING

The Blue Air Compressor

About the story:
In this most self-conscious of all King's stories (he even intrudes, by name, directly into the narrative, introducing himself and reminding us that "Rule One for all writers is that the teller is not worth a tin tinker's fart when compared to the listener"), we are introduced to Gerald Nately, a would-be writer who write a story about his enormous seventy-year-old landlady Mrs. Leighton. When she laughs at his manuscript he fetches the blue air compressor...

The idea for the story:
- I love the irony in the E. C. Comics. I remember one story about a fat man married to a thin woman. Both of them were plotting to kill the other. Finally, the fat man stuffed an air compressor hose down his wife's throat and blew her up like a dirigible until she burst all over everything. After committing the murder, he's walking upstairs where she'd rigged this safe to fall on him. Splat! It flattens him out. So, the thin one gets fat, the fat one gets thin. It offers us a delicious example of the Old Testament eye-for-an-eye theory. Or, as the Spanish say, revenge is a dish best eaten cold.
(Stephen King in "Novelist Loves His Nightmares" and "Danse Macabre")

Photo credit: Shane Leonard • More: stephenking.com

Order the book at Hodder & Stoughton