Read Online The Collective by Stephen King - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Stephen King
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condoms in a quiet box and the lady used to say (before she passed away)
- If you can't be an athlete, be an athletic supporter.
The moon is set.
A cloud scum has covered the stars. A man with a gun has passed this way BUT -
we do not need your poets. Progressed beyond them to Sony
Westinghouse Cousin Brucie the Doors and do I dare
mention Sonny and Cher ?
I remember Mickey Rooney as Pretty Boy Floyd
and he was the shortest Pretty Boy Floyd on record
coughing his enthusiastic guts out in the last reel.
We have not spilt the blood. They have spilt the blood. A little girl lies dead On the hopscotch grid No matter - Can you do it? She asked shrewdly With her Playtex living bra cuddling breasts
softer than a handful of wet Fig Newtons.
Old enough to bleed Old enough to slaughter The old farmer said And grinned at the white Haystack sky With sweaty teeth
(radiation radiation your grandchildren will be monsters) I remember a skeleton In Death Valley
A cow in the sunbleached throes of antiseptic death and someone said:
- Someday there will be skeletons
on the median strip of the Hollywood Freeway staring up at exhaust-sooty pigeons amidst the flapping ruins of Botany 500
call me Ishmael. I am a semen.
- Can you do it? She asked shrewdly When the worms begin their midnight creep
and the dew has sunk white to milk the grass...
And the bitter tears Have no ducts The eyes have fleshed in. Only the nose knows that A loser is always the same.
There is a sharp report.
It slices the night cleanly
And thumps home with a tincan spannnng!
Against the Speed Limit sign down the road.
Laughter
The clean clear sound of a bolt levered back...
Silence...
Spannng!
"Aileen, if poachers poached peaches, would the poachers peel the peaches to eat with poached eggs poached before peaches?"
oh don't don't
please touch me but don't don't
and I reach for your hand
but touch only the radiating live pencils
of your bones:
-- Can you do it?
----
IN A HALF WORLD OF TERROR
Stephen King
First appeared in Stories Of Suspense, a.k.a. I Was A Teenage Graverobber 1966
It was like a nightmare. Like some unreal dream that you wake up from the next morning. Only this nightmare was happening. Ahead of me I could see Rankin's flashlight; a large yellow eye in the sultry summer darkness. I tripped over a gravestone and almost went sprawling. Rankin whirled on me with a hissed oath.
"Do you want to wake up the caretaker, you fool?"
I muttered a reply and we crept forward. Finally, Rankin stopped and shone the flashlight's beam on a freshly chiseled gravestone. On it, it read:
DANILE WHEATHERBY
1899 - 1962
He has joined his beloved wife in a better land.
I felt a shovel thrust into my hands and suddenly I was sure that I couldn't go through with it. But I remembered the bursar shaking his head and saying, "I'm afraid we can't give you any more time, Dan. You'll have to leave today. If I could help in any way, I would, believe me ..."
I dug into the still soft earth and lifted it over my shoulder. Perhaps fifteen minutes later my shovel came in contact with wood. The two of us quickly excavated the hole until the coffin stood revealed under Rankin's flashlight. We jumped down and heaved the coffin up.
Numbed, I watched Rankin swing the spade at the locks and seals. After a few blows it gave and we lifted the lid. The body of Daniel Wheatherby looked up at us with glazed eyes. I felt horror gently wash over me. I had always thought that the eyes closed when one died.
"Don't just stand there," Rankin whispered, "it's almost four. We've got to get out of here!"
We wrapped the body in a sheet and lowered the coffin back into the earth. We shoveled rapidly and carefully replaced the sod. The dirt we had missed was scattered.
By the time we picked up the white-sheeted body, the first traces of dawn were beginning to lighten the sky in the east. We went through the hedge that skirted the cemetery and entered the woods that fronted
- If you can't be an athlete, be an athletic supporter.
The moon is set.
A cloud scum has covered the stars. A man with a gun has passed this way BUT -
we do not need your poets. Progressed beyond them to Sony
Westinghouse Cousin Brucie the Doors and do I dare
mention Sonny and Cher ?
I remember Mickey Rooney as Pretty Boy Floyd
and he was the shortest Pretty Boy Floyd on record
coughing his enthusiastic guts out in the last reel.
We have not spilt the blood. They have spilt the blood. A little girl lies dead On the hopscotch grid No matter - Can you do it? She asked shrewdly With her Playtex living bra cuddling breasts
softer than a handful of wet Fig Newtons.
Old enough to bleed Old enough to slaughter The old farmer said And grinned at the white Haystack sky With sweaty teeth
(radiation radiation your grandchildren will be monsters) I remember a skeleton In Death Valley
A cow in the sunbleached throes of antiseptic death and someone said:
- Someday there will be skeletons
on the median strip of the Hollywood Freeway staring up at exhaust-sooty pigeons amidst the flapping ruins of Botany 500
call me Ishmael. I am a semen.
- Can you do it? She asked shrewdly When the worms begin their midnight creep
and the dew has sunk white to milk the grass...
And the bitter tears Have no ducts The eyes have fleshed in. Only the nose knows that A loser is always the same.
There is a sharp report.
It slices the night cleanly
And thumps home with a tincan spannnng!
Against the Speed Limit sign down the road.
Laughter
The clean clear sound of a bolt levered back...
Silence...
Spannng!
"Aileen, if poachers poached peaches, would the poachers peel the peaches to eat with poached eggs poached before peaches?"
oh don't don't
please touch me but don't don't
and I reach for your hand
but touch only the radiating live pencils
of your bones:
-- Can you do it?
----
IN A HALF WORLD OF TERROR
Stephen King
First appeared in Stories Of Suspense, a.k.a. I Was A Teenage Graverobber 1966
It was like a nightmare. Like some unreal dream that you wake up from the next morning. Only this nightmare was happening. Ahead of me I could see Rankin's flashlight; a large yellow eye in the sultry summer darkness. I tripped over a gravestone and almost went sprawling. Rankin whirled on me with a hissed oath.
"Do you want to wake up the caretaker, you fool?"
I muttered a reply and we crept forward. Finally, Rankin stopped and shone the flashlight's beam on a freshly chiseled gravestone. On it, it read:
DANILE WHEATHERBY
1899 - 1962
He has joined his beloved wife in a better land.
I felt a shovel thrust into my hands and suddenly I was sure that I couldn't go through with it. But I remembered the bursar shaking his head and saying, "I'm afraid we can't give you any more time, Dan. You'll have to leave today. If I could help in any way, I would, believe me ..."
I dug into the still soft earth and lifted it over my shoulder. Perhaps fifteen minutes later my shovel came in contact with wood. The two of us quickly excavated the hole until the coffin stood revealed under Rankin's flashlight. We jumped down and heaved the coffin up.
Numbed, I watched Rankin swing the spade at the locks and seals. After a few blows it gave and we lifted the lid. The body of Daniel Wheatherby looked up at us with glazed eyes. I felt horror gently wash over me. I had always thought that the eyes closed when one died.
"Don't just stand there," Rankin whispered, "it's almost four. We've got to get out of here!"
We wrapped the body in a sheet and lowered the coffin back into the earth. We shoveled rapidly and carefully replaced the sod. The dirt we had missed was scattered.
By the time we picked up the white-sheeted body, the first traces of dawn were beginning to lighten the sky in the east. We went through the hedge that skirted the cemetery and entered the woods that fronted
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