by Jay Wilburn
The plan is to reread all of Stephen King’s works in the order that they were published. Richard Chizmar of Cemetery Dance had the vision. I’m doing it because I am a writer and I want to improve my fiction. And I love Stephen King’s stories. I think there is something to be learned through this process.
You can also go back to the beginning and read Before Carrie or any of my other posts up through this one and beyond by checking out this link to the Master List of all my #StephenKingRevisited posts.
I can’t place the year. I know it was after I read It which was after I saw the miniseries. I know when The Dark Half was published and it would have been during a Thanksgiving break that I read it. I want to say it was when I was already driving, but not during the years I was kicked out of my parents’ house.
At any rate, my family spent Thanksgiving for a number of years going to Vicksburg, Mississippi to see my mom’s parents and that side of the family. My family stayed at their small house. The rest of the family came in from Tennessee and Louisiana and stayed a local Holiday Inn which I think eventually became a Hampton Inn. As I got older, some nights I would go stay with one of them. We would play around the hotel area. Probably kept other guests up and awake half the night.
We started playing the video games they had in the hotel lobby. One of them was some generic fighting game. You could use more quarters to continue your game or power back up your character. We killed so much money in that machine one Thanksgiving trying to get to and then beat the final boss.
During a lull, I walked into the giftshop of the hotel and picked up a copy of the paperback for The Dark Half off a rack. I stood there and read several pages while my cousins continued with the game. Later, I came back a read a little more.
Then, as uncles or aunts would give us more money to go play video games and leave them alone, I started pocketing my quarters. In the rush to pump quarters into the machine, I would pantomime putting mine in so my cousins didn’t know I was stiffing them.
As we were about to die fighting the final boss, I said, “Keep fighting him. I’ll put in the quarters!”
I took their quarters and started pumping them into the machine, but then pocketed a couple dollars worth. I “selflessly” allowed my character to die so that they could keep fighting. Even handed them a few quarters back as the game was won and cycled back to the beginning for them to keep playing. So, it all looked legit.
Later, when they were messing around in the weight room, I went back to the giftshop and bought The Dark Half with all quarters. I had just enough.
I finished reading the whole book on the drive from Vicksburg, Mississippi back to Atlanta, Georgia.
I was certainly hooked on Stephen King.
My next post will be After The Dark Half which will be linked on the Master List of all my Stephen King Revisited posts.
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