Fairy Tale

by Stephen King

There was a rhythm to our lives during those three years. Maybe not a good rhythm, not the sort you’d want to dance to, but one I could count on.

He looked up at me with an expression I’d never seen before, even after Mom died. I hate to say this, but I’m going to because it’s what I thought then: it was the expression of a dog that has taken a shit on the floor.

And something else I don’t remember from any animated cartoon or Little Golden Book: the giant’s sleeping chamber is littered with the bones of children. The giant’s name gave me a chill, deep and premonitory. Gogmagog.

“In the Bible, Gog and Magog are the warring nations of the world. Did you know that?”

My old resentments were mostly gone, but not entirely. Fright and loss leave a residue.

“In the end, it seems to me that one or two good months are better than six bad ones.

Whiskey doesn’t smell the same as gin… yet it does. All alcohol smells the same to me, of sadness and loss.

“Where did you get the belt?” I had certainly never seen it. “At the gettin’ place. Just do it,

“I promise, for Chrissake. Now put an egg in your shoe and beat it.”

(it’s funny how we pick our spots and keep to them)

paralyzed with fear. Of what? The unknown, which is the scariest thing there is.

but I had no intention of feeding myself into the war machine somewhere in France. I reckoned that machine had enough blood to drink without adding mine,

I was insubstantial, and I remember thinking that we all are, really, just ghosts on the face of the earth trying to believe we have weight and a place in the world.

Kids shouldn’t have to face terrible things. I knew that from experience.

There are a thousand slogans and mottos in AA, and one of them is you’re only as sick as your secrets.

a quote from Benjamin Franklin: Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

But Radar would have barked and she was deeply asleep, whuffling her way through some unknowable dream of her own.

if you know what that one means even with its headlights on, you’re a better man than I am.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

“You can’t take credit for sobering him up, because he did that. And if he starts drinking again, you can’t take the blame, because he’d do that, too.”

A whining note had come into his voice, the tone of someone who had—in AA lingo—a ring around his ass from sitting on the pity-pot.

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and wished now I had chosen anything else, because the lines were just too apt: Like one, that on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread, and having once turned round walks on, and turns no more his head… “Because he knows, a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread,” I finished aloud.

she looked into the fire as if deciphering its secrets.

Sometimes we look because we have to remember. Sometimes the most horrible things are what give us strength.

I knew the chances were slim, but you know what they say about hope: it’s the thing with feathers.

“Here comes a candle to light you to bed. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.”

Sometimes Hedda beat her like a redheaded stepchild, sometimes like a rented mule, sometimes a big bass drum. There are phrases you never forget.

I think tempus est umbra in mente is a better one. Roughly translated, it means time is a shadow in the mind.”

The routines of prison are sad but simple.

“Why would I talk to those who will soon be dead?

big knees cracking like knots in a fire,

I could feel him looking at me, as if his stare had weight.

Flight Killer spoke in a clotted voice

There’s a dark well in everyone, I think, and it never goes dry. But you drink from it at your peril. That water is poison.

He wants no flowers in his garden, only weeds.”

“I think there’s always a reason for love, but sometimes hate just is. A kind of free-floating evil.”

expect nothing but never lose hope.

They might not even need to collide for them to be destroyed; their mutual attraction might pull them to pieces. As sometimes happens in human lives.”

guns are like cheap cameras, all you have to do is point and shoot.

forever, to laugh but smile no more.

Then I thought of King Midas, who died of starvation—according to the fairy tale—because everything he tried to eat turned to gold when he touched it.

It was very beautiful, as broken things sometimes are.

but shame is like laughter. And inspiration. It doesn’t knock.