Sleeping Beauties

by Stephen King

you wondered why in the hell the world had been created in the first place. Good things were in short supply, and so much of the rest was downright rancid.

The girl’s expression had been half-amused, half-impressed, and cataclysmically dumb. Even as a child Frank had recognized that black hole of incurable stupid.

It was tiresome, and there was so much high school left before he could escape.

It was a cliché, but for all-weather company, you couldn’t do better than a dog. Couldn’t do better than a dog, period. Dogs didn’t know any better; they just made the best of it. They made the best of you.

Deep down he was afraid she would seize any weakness he showed, turn it into a crowbar, pry him wide open, and eat his heart. His tender heart.

Watching The Daily Show instead of the news when the biggest thing in history was happening, how stupid could you get? But that was the former Elaine Nutting of Clarksburg, West Virginia. That was Elaine right down to the ground. High on judgmental pronouncements, low on information.

Shannon had been gorgeous and she’d been clever and she had her own boatload of problems and Clint thought maybe she’d saved his life.

“You have the most symmetrical face I have ever seen.” Garth paused and cleared his throat. “Can you stop saying scary things now?”

How many men have hurt you? Plenty, I imagine. I’ve worked with women like you for my entire adult life. I know you didn’t just walk into prison on your own. A man pushed you.” “Lady,” Jeanette said, offended by the idea that one look at her could tell anyone anything that mattered. “You don’t know me.”

She did not know exactly what it was that she wanted, but it was not to be understood.

One night, unable to sleep, he Googled the name of his second patient, Paul Montpelier, he of the “sexual ambition.” An obituary popped up. Paul Montpelier had died five years before, after a long battle with cancer. There was no mention of a wife or children. What had his “sexual ambition” gained him? A very short and sad obituary, it seemed. Clint cried for him, too. He understood this was a well-known psychological phenomenon known as transference, and didn’t care.

When my children were small, we had some friends spending the weekend with us, and they had kids who were Joe and Naomi’s age, around nine and eleven. And one night after dinner, the kids were looking for a VHS tape to watch, and what they came up with was Christine. And the mother of our guests said, “No, you can’t watch that. It’s rated R. You’re not allowed to watch R-rated movies.” So they went back to get something else, and I happened to be walking by and I overheard the older kid saying to Joe, “I am so embarrassed by that, God. You guys get to watch R-rated movies and we don’t and it’s really embarrassing.” And my son Joe was very sober and he said, “Listen, my dad writes horror stories. We’ve lived with horror our whole lives.”