by Rocky Wood
It is virtually impossible to find an original Onan copy, except at very high price through a specialist King bookseller. Heavy Metal is generally available from the same sources. Those visiting the Special Collections Unit of the Raymond H. Fogler Library of the University of Maine at Orono may request a photocopy of the Onan version. There are no links from this story to King’s other fiction.
Early in the story King introduces himself as the author. It is a rarity for King to mention himself in his fiction and in this case it is very deliberate and self-conscious. It’s interesting that he chose not to remove or rework these interjections when the story was republished. They have an air of pretension that is most unlike King and while in the original publication (which also carried a King poem, In the Key-Chords of Dawn …) this may have been appropriate; it fails completely in Heavy Metal. Other critics are kinder toward the story38. King’s first interjection reads in part:
My own name, of course, is Steve King, and you’ll pardon my intrusion on your mind – or I hope you will. I could argue that drawing aside the curtain of presumption between reader and author is permissible because I am the writer; ie, since it’s my story I’ll do any goddam thing I please with it – but since that leaves the reader out of it completely, that is not valid. Rule One for all writers is that the teller is not worth a tin tinker’s fart when compared to the listener. Let us drop the matter, if we may. I am intruding for the same reason that the Pope defecates: we both have to … You should know Gerald Nately was never brought to the dock … I invented him first during a moment of eight o’clock boredom in a class taught by Carroll F. Terrell of the University of Maine English faculty … It is desperately important that the reader be made cognizant of these facts
(this last was removed entirely from the Heavy Metal version).
In a later and more interesting, if still heavy-handed, interjection:
Most horror stories are sexual in nature. I’m sorry to break in with this information, but I feel I must in order to make the way clear for the grisly conclusion of this piece, which is (at least psychologically) a clear metaphor for fears of sexual impotence on my part … In the works of Edgar A. Poe, Stephen King, Gerald Nately, and others who practice this particular literary form, we are apt to find locked rooms, dungeons, empty mansions (all symbols of the womb); scenes of living burial (sexual impotence); the dead returned from the grave (necrophilia); grotesque monsters or human beings (externalized fear of the sexual act itself); torture and/or murder (a viable alternative to the sexual act). These possibilities are not always valid, but the post-Freud reader and writer must take them into consideration when attempting the genre. Abnormal psychology has become part of the human experience.
And, again:
Part of the inspiration for this story came from an old E.C. horror comic book, which I bought in a Lisbon Falls drugstore. In one particular story, a husband and wife murdered each other simultaneously in mutually ironic (and brilliant) fashion … He shoved the hose of an air compressor down her throat and blew her up to dirigible size … In a horror story, it is imperative that the grotesque be elevated to the status of the abnormal.
It seems very unlikely that this story will appear in a mainstream King collection. It is not of high quality, pretentious (even the tool-shed is described “…after the manner of Zola”), self-admittedly derivative and quite unrepresentative of King’s style (even for the time it was written).
In the actual story a writer rents a seaside cottage in Maine from a deceased friend’s wife. When Gerald Nately arrived at Mrs. Leighton’s nearby house, he found her to be a very large woman. He became obsessed with her weight and wrote a story about her, The Hog.
Nately showed signs of mental instability in the two or three months he lived in the cottage and debated with himself whether to let Mrs. Leighton read the story. He had actually decided to do so but found her reading it without his permission. He snapped when Mrs. Leighton laughed at him:
“Oh Gerald … This is such a bad story. I don’t blame you for using a pen name, it’s … it’s abominable! … You haven’t made me big enough, Gerald. That’s the trouble. I’m too big for you. Perhaps Poe, or Dostoyevsky, or Melville ... but not you, Gerald. Not you. Not you.”
Nately hit her with a gun and then forced the hose of the blue air compressor down her throat and turned it on, causing her to explode. He then cut the body up, buried it under the floor (Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart is mentioned) and called the police to report her missing.
The majority of the story takes place in either Mrs. Leighton’s home or in the cottage, with the murder taking place in the cottage’s tool shed, where The Hog had been hidden. Conveniently for the plot, this is also where the blue air compressor was kept.
Leaving the scene of the murder, Nately rewrote The Hog in Bombay and gave it the new title, The Blue Air Compressor, then traveled to Kowloon some time before buying an ivory-figured guillotine, which he then used to cut off his own head! This last is perhaps the most interesting and apparently original part of the story.
No year is given for the story but Nately lived in the cottage from September to early December. It is unclear how much later Nately’s death in Kowloon occurred but it was probably after quite some time, as Nately had time to write “…four twisted, monumental, misunderstood novels.” (“Misunderstood” was edited out of the Heavy Metal version, presumably on the basis the author realized the novels had most probably not been read by anyone else).
Interestingly King had this to say in a Danse Macabre footnote (first published the year the second version of this tale was released):
My all time favorite [of “bad end” tales]: A crazed husband stuffs the hose of an air compressor down his skinny wife’s throat and blows her up like a balloon until she bursts. “Fat at last,” he tells her happily just moments before the pop. But later on the husband, who is roughly the size of Jackie Gleason, trips a booby-trap she has set for him and is squashed to a shadow when a huge safe falls on him. This ingenious reworking of the old story of Jack Sprat and his wife is not only gruesomely funny; it offers us a delicious example of the Old Testament eye-for-an-eye theory.
Readers will note there is no mention of King’s reworking of the tale.
38 See, for instance, The Shorter Works of Stephen King, Michael Collings and David Engebretson, Starmont.
But Only Darkness Loves Me and I Hate Mondays (Undated)
These stories were first rediscovered by Rocky Wood in King’s papers at the Special Collections Unit of the Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine in Orono, during a 17-day research trip in 2002.
A significant number of stories of which there was no record in published King research came to light. Research undertaken with the help of King’s office determined which of the manuscripts were genuine and which had been written by others (the most likely “suspects” being his wife, Tabitha and the King children). Among those manuscripts eliminated by King himself during this process are Imaginary Places (an intriguing poem), Loon Call (a bittersweet short story), History Lesson and The Shepherd and His Flock (suspiciously un-King in tone).
But Only Darkness Loves Me and I Hate Mondays were two of the ten stories rediscovered and announced to the world in early 2003. Each of these stories are collaborations with one of his sons and they form two of the few occasions King is known to have jointly written prose with another writer.
But Only Darkness Loves Me
This two page story fragment is headed “By Stephen and Joseph King.” Part One is The Most Beautiful Girl in the World but only part of Chapter One, Section One survives. Of the two pages the first is typed and the second handwritten. The two pages are to be found in Box 1012 of the Special Collections Unit of the Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine at Orono. This story can be accessed by any member of the public attending the Library, as it is not held in a Restricted Box.
Joseph Hillstrom King is Tabitha and Stephen’s oldest son an
d one of three children, the others being Naomi Rachel and their brother Owen Phillip. Joseph King is now a successful writer39 using the pseudonym Joe Hill. King and Joe Hill co-authored Throttle (2009)40, a riff on the Richard Matheson story Duel, adapted under the same title by Stephen Spielberg.
In the few words from this story left to us a boy is talking to a beautiful girl in a bar in Ledge Cove, Maine. She is too beautiful to look at directly, except in quick glances. She invites him back to her hotel but he only agrees to go to the lobby, not her room. To the reader the few words are mysterious and contain a Nona-like quality.
There is no indication when this piece was written and no dates for the action contained in it are provided. In such a short fragment there is little to report. The “boogie band” at The Ledge Cove Bar in Ledge Cove, Maine (this town is not mentioned in any other King story) play Mellencamp’s The Authority Song. Due to its Maine setting it is classified as a Maine Street Horror tale. There are no direct links from this story to any other King fiction.
I Hate Mondays
This complete five page story is headed “By Stephen and Owen King.” The manuscript is held in Box 1010 at the Special Collections Unit of the Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine at Orono. Written permission from Stephen King is required to access this story. Owen Phillip King, now also a published author41, is Tabitha and Stephen’s youngest son.
I Hate Mondays is written in a very immature manner and was probably no more than a bit of fun for Stephen and Owen. It is very unlikely that it will ever be published in any form. It is unclear when this piece was written and no dates for the action contained in it are provided.
In the story goons attack a man. Spike’s wife has been kidnapped and is being held because she holds the combination to a bank’s safe. The goons capture Spike by telling him they are holding her. Spike and Rita escape, killing most of the bad guys but in the process Rita is also killed. Finally, Spike kills the ringleader: “And that was that.”
Readers learn a little about the characters during the story. Spike was wounded while escaping (and seemed to have little real remorse over his wife’s death, despite having originally gone to her rescue). Rita worked at the National City Bank and was captured by the goons, as she was one of only three people with the combination to the bank’s big safe. She was shot in the head and killed while she and Spike were escaping the goons. Spike and Rita had kids and Spike wondered what would happen to them now that Rita was dead.
Spike had some interesting habits, for instance he kept a razor blade under his shirt collar. Rita used it to free them. Later he used a pocket knife to deflect a bullet! Then again, one of Rita’s earrings also deflected a bullet, which might otherwise have killed her! While attempting to escape Spike and Rita ducked into a barber shop, run by Tom. The goons shot up the shop, killing a customer.
The chief goon was nicknamed “Dr. Mindbender” as he looked like the Dr. Mindbender of the cartoons. When Spike killed him he “flew back and spiked himself against a cross. And that was that.” All the other goons were killed, mostly by gunfire, although Spike did for one by throwing a hand-carved knife into his eye.
The town or city in which the story is set is unclear, leaving it to be classified as an America Under Siege tale. There are no direct links from this story to any other King fiction.
39 His first collection, 20th Century Ghosts (William Morrow, 2007) won the Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Collection; and his first novel, Heart-Shaped Box (William Morrow, 2007) appeared on The New York Times best-seller list and won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. He also writes the Locke & Key graphic novel series.
40 First published in He Is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson, edited by Christopher Conlon (Gauntlet Press)
41 We’re All in this Together: A Novella and Stories (Bloomsbury, 2005)
The Cannibals (2009)
King originally attempted to write The Cannibals in 197842. His second attempt was a novel of about 450 pages, composed as a rewrite of an earlier novel written while filming Creepshow in July to December 1981. King previously had this to say in a footnote to his Full Disclosure in Blaze:
In my career I have managed to lose not one but two pretty good novels-in-progress. Under the Dome was only 50 pages long at the time it disappeared, but The Cannibals was over 200 pages long at the time it went MIA. No copies of either. That was before computers, and I never used carbons for first drafts – it felt haughty, somehow.
King’s assistant, Marsha DeFilippo indicated in posts on his official message board in April 2008 that, “We had sections, but not the complete draft, of The Cannibals in the office.” As part of promoting Under the Dome King released the first 61 pages of the second manuscript on his official website on 15 September 2009; and a further 63 pages on 4 October the same year.
In June of 2008, after the announcement King was rewriting Under the Dome Marsha DeFilippo reported on the official message board King had this to say:
Those stories were two very different attempts to utilize the same idea, which concerns itself with how people behave when they are cut off from the society they’ve always belonged to. Also, my memory of THE CANNIBALS is that it, like NEEDFUL THINGS, was a kind of social comedy. The new UNDER THE DOME is played dead straight.43
The two sections King released form part of an America Under Siege Tale. The first section, a scan of King’s original typewritten manuscript, with handwritten corrections, is comprised of the first three chapters and the first two subsections of the fourth chapter from Part One of the novel.
Part One is titled Yellow Morning (actually in King’s handwriting, crossing out three other words) and Chapter I is The Tennis Club. We are introduced to the Tennis Club Apartments, whose residents are immediately portrayed as isolated from society – upper middle-class, white collar people “who lived mostly for themselves in the era of withdrawal from commitment” (the story is actually set at some point in the 1980s).
Chapter II is Tom Hill in the Lobby and features the first resident “to encounter the problem which arose on July 19th.” A TV station executive on the way up, Hill is heading to work around 4:45am and proceeds to the apartment buildings’ foyer and pulls on the outer door, which does not open, in fact when he pulls the door again it doesn’t budge even slightly. Hill notices the approaching daylight is more suited to one hour later in the morning (a nice piece of foreshadowing). Only slightly irritated and investigating, Hill finds the building phone is not working and decides to head upstairs.
In Chapter III (Pulaski) another character is introduced, arriving in the lobby just as Hill headed back up in the elevator. We learn Dennis Pulaski is a twice-divorced Korean War veteran, a hunter and something of a “man’s man.” This section contains quite a bit of sexual content, mostly designed to establish the rigidity of Pulaski’s world-view. He’s also a racist. Pulaski discovers he too is unable to open the building’s front door.
Meanwhile, Hill knocks on the door of the building office, looking for Ronnie Bamford, the night security guard. But there’s no answer. Returning downstairs, he meets Pulaski, who informs him the back doors are also locked. They consider exiting through the alarmed fire door, which leads to the nearby sports complex but when they try, “The square of metal did not move at all. It did not move an inch, a half-inch, not so much as a silly millimetre. The alarm did not sound. And the fire door did not open.” This disturbs the two men, who understand that locking a normal door is one thing, locking a fire escape is serious indeed.
When they return to the lobby quite a few more residents have appeared and are milling about. Pulaski rings the building superintendent, Rinaldi, briefly advises the situation and demands he come downstairs immediately. We learn that Rinaldi is a pompous control freak and not easily intimidated. As the residents wait for the superintendent to appear Pulaski also notes the daylight, he “could not remember ever having s
een a daylight quite like this one – thin, watery, almost wavery.” Rinaldi finally appears and also tries to leave the building. When he cannot it is revealed the external doors cannot be locked, as in fact they have no locks.
Chapter IV is Jo’s Bible; Rinaldi’s Call; Pulaski’s Bat and begins with another in the growing cast of characters – a deeply religious Joanne Page. By the time she reaches the lobby, Rinaldi, Hill and Pulaski have left for Rinaldi’s office. Rinaldi’s jaundiced, perhaps realistic view of the building’s occupants is revealed – they are each classified in his mind as Busybodies, Good Tenants, or Troublemakers. Careful to preserve his authority with the residents, and mindful of not looking incompetent to his employers, Rinaldi begins by calling the security guard’s company on a dedicated line, but not before the first of what is likely to be many clashes with Pulaski. The security company answers and Rinaldi can hear the operator, Bo Franklin, but Franklin most certainly cannot hear Rinaldi. The three men begin to show concern, in Tom Hill’s case, “he felt something pierce his confusion and harried annoyance at being late. He found nothing welcome about the new emotion. It was fear.” And so ends the first manuscript segment.
