The Collective
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.
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