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The Short Story Lover's Guide to Stephen King: On Quitting Smoking and Freaky Kids

Slowly closing in on the final pages of King's debut short story collection The Night Shift, this penultimate look will be all about chain smokers (Quitters, Inc.), uncanny stalkers (I Know What You Need) and creepy kids (Children of the Corn), possibly even about creepy kids who smoke and stalk, who kows! Let's go!

It would be good for you to read along the stories I'm discussing in this column, because I'll spoil everything!

Quitters, Inc. (Previously unpublished)

Drastic times, or habits, call for drastic measures, and smoking is definitely a drastic habit which is very, very hard to quit - I'm speaking from experience. It is important to note that every kind of substance and emotional addiction is a pain to get rid of, I've known people who are addicted to alcohol, various drugs, gambling, visiting prostitutes, shopping, to self harm, to their lovers, or a combination of many of those, but my own struggle was, and possibly will always be, with nicotine, which is so so so so hard to quit. After having been a smoker for most of my life, around the age of 37 I started getting sick more often when smoking, and that's basically why I quit. To be truthful, if I found a way to smoke cigarettes without being sick, I'd probably start again.

So, to me, it's inconceivable how people quit smoking with the sheer power of their will, without depending on sickness or nausea to cut their thirst.

Richard "Dick" Morrison is one of those people who could have gone through life as a smoker without any wish to change anything, if he hadn't, per chance, encountered his old college roommate Jimmy at the airport. Jimmy had always been a heavy smoker, but has now quit and is apparently doing brilliant. His secret is Quitters, Inc. who finally helped him quit the nasty stick of death, and recommends Dick do the same. The company, though small, has a success rate of 98% and guarantees that all their clients have quit smoking so far (even and especially the 2% who ended up dead).

Some time goes by and Dick finds himself in a rut and decides to give Quitters, Inc. a chance. And boy, months down the road, does he wish he hadn't... He is introduced to Victor Donatti who will be his counselor and will literally follow his case for the upcoming months, and years, and a life time, if necessary. Because every time Dick has a relapse, his loved ones will be punished for it, and the punishment is nasty.

Yes, of course we would do anything to protect our loved ones, but would we also profess self-control?

What keeps the suspense upright in this short story is an ethical dilemma: Dick's psychological wish (because he is passed the physical need pretty quickly) to puff a smoke and to relax in a relapse clashes with the absolutely horrific idea of his family being radically punished for it. But the humor permeating the story, such as Dick's paranoiac thoughts, the casual acceptance of their new situation through his wife and friends, and the sheer absurd nature of this contract he entered consensually with Quitters, Inc. constitutes another important part which keeps the story going..

For the first time in this collection, King also enters white collar territory. While he's routinely content to portray working class or lower middle class characters in his previous stories, he now jumps to circles in which people can afford to stop smoking, circles to which he probably belonged himself too. The satiric portrayal of the attendants of the party he drank a lot, but smoke none; Quitters Inc. carefully curating its clients; the dinner parties at which the hidden missing limbs of beloved wives just barely catch the eye, plus, of course King's own (well-known) struggle with addiction, alcohol, cocaine, nicotine; all these assemble to hint at a shift of focus in King's writing in this successful attempt at self-referential humor.

Quitters, Inc. has been adapted into a short movie for the 1985 horror anthology Cat's Eye. There's a Dollar Baby short film* you can find here and a decent audiobook here.

I Know What You Need (Cosmopolitan 1976)

Well, who would have guessed that King was writing horror stories about "nice guys" who turn nasty once rejected by the girl they have been so nice to, as early as the 70s , some forty years before they became an internet meme.

The relationship between popular girl Elizabeth Rogan and outlier Ed Hamner is marked not only by Ed being the nice guy, but also him stalking her relentlessly, buying her the ice cream that she likes, helping her with her exam notes, and also by killing her boyfriend so he can replace him and practicing voodoo for her to love him and for everybody he hates to die a painful death. Even his own religious mom stabs him, accusing him of being the "devil's henchman". 

I know it's disgusting to stalk people and it's very creepy and dishonest, but the part of Ed being into voodoo and manipulating his life by practicing magic is kind of awesome to me (but of course, that is, unless I'm affected, lol). Unfortunately I can't say the same thing about this short story, this is one of the weakest of the anthology, if not my least favorite, thus not really worth talking about for me. There are two Dollar Baby short film productions.

Children of the Corn (Penthouse 1977)

Married couple Burt and Vicki are on the verge of divorce and on their way to a vacation to save their marriage. They stumble upon a village surrounded by cornfields in rural Nebraska, Gatlin, which looks deserted except for a nearby church. Here, Burt finds writings and artwork, along with an organ's pipes stuffed with corn husks, and from the death records he finds out that everyone here died on their 19th birthday. So he geniusly concludes that the children of Gatlin have been killing the adults for twelve years (I personally would have been clueless, honestly). 

A game of cat and mouse begins once he discovers the creepy children dressed in Amish-like clothing and armed with farmer utensils who not only don't want adults, but also sacrifice them to their corn god, the monster with huge red eyes, He Who Walks Behind the Rows.

Children of the Corn might be more timely than it appears. King is an absolute master in depicting especially religious fanaticism. His most imposing stories almost always include some kind of extreme religious people, and most of his heroes usually are on the atheistic side of things. A group of people who feel neglected being picked up and lead by a yellow or red or orange God figure into being a cult which actively rejects certain people, and eliminates those it deems its adversaries, is something to beware in our day and age too. Young people acting gradually more hostile and hateful towards people older than themselves is just another thing recognizable from our present.

Thanks to the 1984 film adaptation, characters like Malachi and scenes like "Outlander!" have found a place in popular culture, though, unless you're a super fan, I wouldn't recommend any of the five hundred seventy three sequels and remakes that came after, the OG is enough. You can watch the full movie here. There is also a wonderful audiobook narrated by the late Bradley Lavelle right here

*Talking about Stephen King short stories and their movie adaptations, the expression "Dollar Baby" is quite unavoidable. It was a project that ran between 1977 and 2023 in which Stephen King granted film students or aspiring filmmakers the permission to film one of his short stories for $1. The resulting films are usually on a budget so low it can't even be called shoe string, so the end results were in the majority of the cases not overwhelming, but still nice in some cases.

Stephen King Wiki provides a full list of the Dollar Baby films by the year.

Next up we will finish up Night Shift with the remaining stories The Last Rung on the Ladder, The Man Who Loved Flowers, One for the Road and The Woman in the Room. Stay safe until then!

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