The Collective Read online

  STEPHEN KING

  The Collective

  A collection of Poems, Short Stories, and other

  Works by Stephen King

  Phantom Press

  2000

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  This collection is a work in progress. As more items are

  discovered, they will be added. All items in this book are short

  stories, poems, and other items published by Stephen king, but not

  found in any book released by his publishing company at this point

  in time. The purpose of this book is to have one archive for all of

  the material.

  xxXsTmXxx

  THIS COPY IS DATED:

  06/2000

  FOR

  PATTY

  STEPHEN

  KING

  An Evening at GODs

  A one minit play, 1990

  DARK STAGE. Then a spotlight hits a papier-mache globe,

  spinning all by itself in the middle of darkness. Little by little, the

  stage lights COME UP, and we see a bare-stage representation of a

  living room: an easy chair with a table beside it (there's an open

  bottle of beer on the table), and a console TV across the room.

  There's a picnic cooler-full of beer under the table. Also, a great

  many empties. GOD is feeling pretty good. At stage left, there's a

  door.

  GOD a big guy with a white beard is sitting in the chair,

  alternately reading a book (When Bad Things Happen to Good

  People) and watching the tube. He has to crane whenever he wants

  to look at the set, because the floating globe (actually hung on a

  length of string, I imagine) is in his line of vision. There's a sitcom

  on TV. Every now and then GOD chuckles along with the laugh-

  track.

  There is a knock at the door.

  GOD (big amplified voice)

  Come in! Verily, it is open unto you!

  The door opens. In comes ST. PETER, dressed in a snazzy white

  robe. He's also carrying a briefcase.

  GOD

  Peter! I thought you were on vacation!

  ST. PETER

  Leaving in half an hour, but I thought I'd bring the papers for you

  to sign.

  How are you, GOD?

  GOD

  Better. I should know better than to eat those chili peppers. They

  burn me at both ends. Are those the letters of transmission from

  hell?

  ST. PETER

  Yes, finally. Thank GOD. Excuse the pun.

  He removes some papers from his briefcase. GOD scans them,

  then holds out his hand impatiently, ST PETER has been looking

  at the floating globe. He looks back, sees GOD is waiting, and puts

  a pen in his out-stretched hand. GOD scribbles his signature. As he

  does, ST. PETER goes back to gazing at the globe.

  ST. PETER

  So Earth's still there, Huh? After All these years.

  GOD hands the papers back and looks up at it. His gaze is rather

  irritated.

  GOD

  Yes, the housekeeper is the most forgetful bitch in the universe.

  An EXPLOSION OF LAUGHTER from the TV. GOD cranes to

  see. Too late.

  GOD

  Damm, was that Alan Alda?

  ST. PETER

  It may have been, sir I really couldn't see.

  GOD

  Me, either.

  He leans forward and crushes the floating globe to powder.

  GOD (inmensely satisfied)

  There. Been meaning to do that for a long time. Now I can see the

  TV..

  ST. PETER looks sadly at the crushed remains of the earth.

  ST. PETER

  Umm... I believe that was Alan Alda's world, GOD.

  GOD

  So? (Chuckles at the TV) Robin Williams! I LOVE Robin

  Williams!

  ST. PETER

  I believe both Alda and Williams were on it when

  you..umm...passed Judgement, sir.

  GOD

  Oh, I've got all the videotapes. No problem. Want a beer?

  As ST. PETER takes one, the stage-lights begin to dim. A spotlight

  come up on the remains on the globe.

  ST. PETER

  I actually sort of liked that one, GOD Earth, I mean.

  GOD

  It wasn't bad, but there's more where that came from. Now let's

  Drink to your vacation!

  They are just shadows in the dimness now, although it's a little

  easier to see GOD, because there's a faint nimbus of light around

  his head. They clink bottles. A roar of laughter from the TV.

  GOD

  Look! It's Richard Pryor! That guy kills me! I suppose he was...

  ST. PETER

  Ummm... yessir.

  GOD

  Shit. (Pause) Maybe I better cut Down on my drinking. (Pause)

  Still... It WAS in the way.

  Fade to black, except for the spotlight on the ruins of the floating

  globe.

  ST. PETER

  Yessir.

  GOD (muttering)

  My son got back, didn't he?

  ST. PETER

  Yessir, some time ago.

  GOD

  Good. Everything's hunky-dory, then.

  THE SPOTLIGHT GOES OUT.

  (Author's note: GOD'S VOICE should be as loud as possible.)

  Before The Play

  Stephen King

  Copyright 1982 by Stephen King.

  'Before the Play,' was first published in Whispers,

  Vol. 5, No. 1-2, August 1982.

  A BEDROOM IN THE WEE HOURS OF THE MORNING

  Coming here had been a mistake, and Lottie Kilgallon didn't like to

  admit her mistakes.

  And I won't admit this one, she thought with determination as she

  stared up at the ceiling that glimmered overhead

  Her husband of 10 days slumbered beside hen Sleeping the sleep

  of the just was how some might have put it. Others, more honest,

  might have called it the sleep of the monumentally stupid. He was

  William Pillsbury of the Westchester Pillsburys, only son and heir

  of Harold M. Pillsbury, old and comfortable money. Publishing

  was what they liked to talk about because publishing was a

  gentleman's profession, but there was also a chain of New England

  textile mills, a foundry in Ohio, and extensive agricultural holdings

  in the South - cotton and citrus and fruit. Old money was always

  better than nouveau riche, but either way they had money falling

  out of their assholes. If she ever said that aloud to Bill, he would

  undoubtedly go pale and might even faint dead away No fear, Bill.

  Profanation of the Pillsbury family shall never cross my lips.

  It had been her idea to honeymoon at the Overlook in Colorado,

  and there had been two reasons for this. First, although it was

  tremendously expensive (as the best resorts were), it was not a

  "hep" place to go, and Lottie did not like to go to the hep places.

  Where did you go on your honeymoon. Lottie? Oh, this perfectly,

  wonderful resort hotel in Colorado - the Overlook. Lovely place.

  Quite out of the way but so romantic. And her friends - whose

  stupidity was exceeded in most cases only by that of William

  Pillsbury- himself - would look at her in dumb - literally! - wonder.r />
  Lottie had done it again.

  Her second reason had been of more personal importance. She had

  wanted to honeymoon at the Overlook because Bill wanted to go to

  Rome. It was imperative to find out certain things as soon as

  possible. Would she be able to have her own way immediately?

  And if not, how long would it take to grind him down? He was

  stupid, and he had followed her around like a dog with its tongue

  hanging out since her debutante ball, but would he be as malleable

  after the ring was slipped on as he had been before?

  Lottie smiled a little in the dark despite her lack of sleep and the

  bad dreams she had had since they arrived here. Arrived here, that

  was the key phrase. "Here" was not the American Hotel in Rome

  but the Overlook in Colorado. She was going to be able to manage

  him just fine, and that was the important thing. She would only

  make him stay another four days (she had originally planned on

  three weeks, but the bad dreams had changed that), and then they

  could go back to New York. After all, that was where the action

  was in this August of 1929. The stock market was going crazy, the

  sky was the limit, and Lottie expected to be an heiress to

  multimillions instead of just one or two million by this time next

  year. Of course there were some weak sisters who claimed the

  market was riding for a fall, but no one had ever called Lottie

  Kilgallon a weak sister.

  Lottie Kilgallon. Pillsbury now at least that's the way I'll have to

  sign my checks, of course. But inside I'll always be Lottie

  Kilgallon. Because he's never going to touch me Not inside where

  it counts.

  The most tiresome thing about this first contest of her marriage

  was that Bill actually liked the Overlook. He was up even, day at

  two minutes past the crack of dawn, disturbing what ragged bits of

  sleep she had managed after the restless nights, staring eagerly out

  at the sunrise like some sort of disgusting Greek nature boy. He

  had been hiking two or three times, he had gone on several nature

  rides with other guests, and bored her almost to the point of

  screaming with stories about the horse he rode on these jaunts, a

  bay mare named Tessie. He had tried to get her to go on these

  outings with him, but Lottie refused. Riding meant slacks, and her

  posterior was just a trifle too-wide for slacks. The idiot had also

  suggested that she go hiking with him and some of the others - the

  caretaker's son doubled as a guide, Bill enthused, and he knew a

  hundred trails. The amount of game you saw, Bill said, would

  make you think it was 1829, instead of a hundred years later. Lottie

  had dumped cold water on this idea too.

  "I believe, darling, that all hikes should be one-way, you see."

  "One-way?" His wide Anglo-Saxon brow crippled and croggled

  into its usual expression of befuddlement. "How can you have a

  one-way hike, Lottie?"

  "By hailing a taxi to take you home when your feet begin to hurt,"

  she replied coldly,

  The barb was wasted. He went without her, and came back

  glowing. The stupid bastard was getting a tan.

  She had not even enjoyed their evenings of bridge in the

  downstairs recreation room, and that was most unlike her. She was

  something of a barracuda at bridge, and if it had been ladylike to

  play for stakes in mixed company, she could have brought a cash

  dowry to her marriage (not that she would have, of course). Bill

  was a good bridge partner, too; he had both qualifications: He

  understood the basic rules and he allowed Lottie to dominate him.

  She thought it was poetic justice that her new husband spent most

  of their bridge evenings as the dummy.

  Their partners at the Overlook were the Compsons occasionally,

  the Vereckers more frequently. Dr. Verecker was in his early 70s, a

  surgeon who had retired after a near-fatal heart attack. His wife

  smiled a lot, spoke softly, and had eyes like shiny nickels. They

  played only adequate bridge, but they kept beating Lottie and Bill.

  On the occasions when the men played against the women, the

  men ended up trouncing Lottie and Malvina Verecker. When

  Lottie and Dr. Verecker played Bill and Malvina, she and the

  doctor usually won, but there was no pleasure in it because Bill

  was a dullard and Malvina, could not see the game of bridge as

  anything but a social tool.

  Two nights before, after the doctor and his wife had made a bid of

  four clubs that, they had absolutely no right to make, Lottie had

  mussed the cards in a sudden flash of pique that was very unlike

  her. She usually kept her feelings under much better control.

  "You could have led into my spades on that third trick!" she rattled

  at Bill. "That would have put a stop to it right there!"

  "But dear," said Bill, flustered , "I thought you were thin in

  spades."

  'If I had been thin in spades, I shouldn't have bid two of them,

  should I? Why I continue to play this game with you I don't.

  know!"

  The Vereckers blinked at them in mild surprise. Later that evening

  Mrs. Verecker, she of the nickel-bright eyes, would tell her

  husband that she had thought them such a nice couple, so loving,

  but when she rumpled the cards like that she had looked just like a

  shrew.

  Bill was staring at her with jaws agape.

  "I'm very sorry," said Lottie, gathering up the reins of her control

  and giving them an inward shake. "I'm off my feed a little, I

  suppose. I haven't been sleeping well."

  "That's a pity," said the doctor. "Usually this mountain air-we're

  almost 12,000 feet above sea level, you know is very conducive to

  good rest. Less oxygen, you know. The body doesn't-"

  "I've had bad dreams," Lottie told him shortly.

  And so she had. Not just bad dreams but nightmares. She had

  never been much of one to dream (which said something

  disgusting and Freudian about, her psyche, no doubt), even as a

  child. Oh, yes, there had been some pretty humdrum affairs, mostly

  he only one she could remember that, came even close to being a

  nightmare was one in which she had been delivering a Good

  Citizenship speech at the school assembly and had looked down to

  discover she had forgotten to put on her dress. Later someone had

  told her almost everyone had a dream like that at some point or

  another.

  The dreams she had had at the Overlook were much worse. It was

  not a case of one dream or two repeating themselves with

  variations; they were all different. Only the setting of each was

  similar: In each one she found herself in a different part of the

  Overlook Hotel. Each dream would begin with an awareness on

  her part that she was dreaming and that something terrible and

  frightening was going to happen to her in the course of the dream.

  There was an inevitability about it that was particularly awful.

  In one of them she had been hurrying for the elevator because she

  was late for dinner, so late that Bill had already gone down before

  her in a temper.

  She rang f
or the elevator, which came promptly and was empty

  except for the operator. She thought too late that it was odd; at

  mealtimes you could barely wedge yourself in. The stupid hotel

  was only half full, but the elevator had a ridiculously small

  capacity. Her unease heightened as the elevator descended and

  continued to descend ... for far too long a time. Surely they must

  have reached the lobby or even the basement by now, and still the

  operator did not open the doors, and still the sensation of

  downward motion continued. She tapped him on the shoulder with

  mixed feelings of indignation and panic, aware too late of how

  spongy he felt, how strange, like a scarecrow stuffed with rotten

  straw. And as he turned his head and grinned at her she saw that

  the elevator was being piloted by a dead man, his face a greenish-

  white corpselike hue, Ms eyes sunken, his hair under his cap

  lifeless and sere. The fingers wrapped around the switch were

  fallen away to bones.

  Even as she filled her lungs to shriek, the corpse threw the switch

  over and uttered, "Your floor, madam," in a husky, empty voice.

  The door drew open to reveal flames and basalt plateaus and the

  stench of brimstone. The elevator operator had taken her to hell.

  In another dream it was near the end of the afternoon and she was

  on the playground. The light was curiously golden, although the

  sky overhead was black with thunderheads. Membranes of shower

  danced between two of the saw-toothed peaks further west. It was

  like a Brueghel, a moment of sunshine and low pressure. And she

  felt something beside her. Moving. Something in the topiary. And

  she turned to see with frozen horror that it was the topiary: The

  hedge animals had left their places and were creeping toward her,

  the lions, the buffalo, even the rabbit that usually looked so comic

  and friendly. Their horrid hedge features were bent on her as they

  moved slowly toward the playground on their hedge paws, green

  and silent and deadly under the black thunderheads.

  In the one she had just awakened from, the hotel had been on fire.

  She had awakened in their room to find Bill gone and smoke

  drifting slowly through the apartment. She fled in her nightgown

  but lost her direction in the narrow halls, which were obscured by

  smoke. All the numbers seemed to be gone from the doors, and

  there was no way to tell if you were running toward the stairwell

  and elevator or away from them. She rounded a corner and saw

  Bill standing outside the window at the end, motioning her