The Shining

by Stephen King

‘It’s a slang term for the claustrophobic reaction that can occur when people are shut in together over long periods of time. The feeling of claustrophobia is externalized as dislike for the people you happen to be shut in with. In extreme cases it can result in hallucinations and violence – murder has been done over such minor things as a burned meal or an argument about whose turn it is to do the dishes.’

High Country Investments – the most anonymous-sounding company Jack had ever heard except for a chain of bike and appliance shops in western New England that went under the name of Business, Inc.

What was this? National Let’s Pick Jack Torrance Apart Week?

This was the big kid’s slide, but the fit was still uncomfortably tight for his grownup ass.

(glad you asked because curiosity killed that cat and it was the HOPE of satisfaction that brought him) up the hall, treading softly over the blue and twisting jungle carpet.

So he pulled the shower curtain back. The woman in the tub had been dead for a long time.

(Nothing there nothing there not there at all NOTHING THERE THERE IS NOTHING!) Time passed. And he was just beginning to relax, just beginning to realize that the door must be unlocked and he could go, when the years-damp, bloat, fish-smelling hands closed softly around his throat and he was turned implacably around to stare into that dead and purple face.

It was his father’s voice. ‘—kill him. You have to kill him, Jacky, and her, too. Because a real artist must suffer. Because each man kills the thing he loves. Because they’ll always be conspiring against you, trying to hold you back and drag you down. Right this minute that boy of yours is in where he shouldn’t be. Trespassing. That’s what he’s doing. He’s a goddam little pup. Cane him for it, Jacky, cane him within an inch of his life. Have a drink, Jacky my boy, and we’ll play the elevator game. Then I’ll go with you while you give him his medicine. I know you can do it, of course you can. You must kill him. You have to kill him, Jacky, and her, too. Because a real artist must suffer. Because each man—’

There isn’t a Seven-Eleven around here, would you believe it? And I thought they had Seven-Elevens on the fucking moon.’

For a moment he lay on the ballroom floor, breathing hard. REDRUM. MURDER. REDRUM. MURDER.