Countdown: The Top 20 Stephen King Works of American Gothic Short Fiction--#6

[For previous entries, click the "Top 20 Countdowns" label under Features in the right sidebar.]

#6."Trucks"

Don't be fooled by the ultra-moronic film version, Maximum Overdrive; this is a masterful story, one that reads like Duel meets Night of the Living Dead (as a random group of humans holed up in a diner try to fend off the onslaught of massive vehicles come-to-life).  Collected in Night Shift, "Trucks" offers terrific prose (a nervous salesman keeps "his display bag close to him, like a pet dog that had gone to sleep"; a diner door, torn off by a rampaging truck, flies "into the night like something out of a Dali painting") amidst scenes of horrific violence (humans die gruesome deaths, "knocked out of their boots with heavy treadmarks mashed across their guts").  King opens the story with several pages of carnage before providing the kicker (one that proves "Trucks" isn't some rip-off of a Richard Matheson piece): "There was no one in the trucks."  The automobiles are now truly autonomous.

It's tempting to read this story as an OPEC-era allegory, where having to pump gas is a harrowing experience for the average man (as the narrator, forced to fuel up a seemingly endless line of trucks, learns firsthand: "My blisters broke, trickling pus down to my wrists.  My head was pounding like a rotted tooth and my stomach rolled helplessly with the stench of hydrocarbons").  Still, this is more a story of Frankensteinian turnabout: humanity is enslaved by the very technology created to help it master the natural world.  On the last page, the narrator realizes there's no place to hide from the trucks, because "So much of the world is paved now.  Even the playgrounds are paved."

What helps place "Trucks" so high on the countdown, though, is the fact that this is a distinctly American story.  It's telling that no cars (typically the product of overseas engineering) take on a life of their own here.  Anyone who has ever watched a Ford commercial during a football game knows that the truck is an American icon.  At one point during the extended siege of the diner, the narrator lies down to sleep, and counts trucks instead of sheep: "How many in the state," he wonders, "how many in America?  Trailer trucks, pickup trucks, flatbeds, day-haulers, three-quarter-tons, army convoy trucks by the tens of the thousands, and buses."  King, moreover, does not attribute the trucks' sentience to freak
"electrical storms" or the fallout from "nuclear testing" but rather suggests that the changeover is a byproduct of the national sensibility.  In the final paragraphs, the narrator notes that
whatever "mass consciousness" the trucks now possess, "we've given [to] them."  Ultimately, "Trucks" stands as a cautionary tale, a warning that our country's preoccupation with its machinery might someday unleash apocalyptic madness. 

Leslie Nielsen, RIP

The entertainment world suffered a great loss on Monday, when actor Leslie Nielsen passed away at the age of 84.  Nielsen is no doubt best known for his portrayal of the bumbling Lt. Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun, but he also starred in darker fare, such as the classic 1956 sci-fi film Forbidden Planet.  And horror fans will never forget his turn as a sadistic cuckold in 1982's Creepshow.  Check out the pair of clips below from the Creepshow segment
"Something to Tide you Over," in which Nielsen (as Richard Vickers) exacts some unusual seaside vengeance against his cheating wife Becky and her lover Harry.

Most Gothic Place Names in the United States--Arkansas

[For previous entries, click the "Most Gothic Place Names" label under Features in the right sidebar.]

This Deep South state sports an array of intriguing town/city names.  There's Stinking Bay (hard to ignore what's festering beneath the surface of this place), Graphic (quite the violent scene), Killin (come indulge your murderous urges!), Slabtown (where Killin's less fortunate ultimately end up?), Black Cat (no home for ailurophobes), Rocky Mound (a very grave locale), and Faulknerville (a town abounding in dark, decaying mansions).  Besting all of these, though, for the honor of Most Gothic Place Name in Arkansas is...

Strangers Home.  The odd, almost oxymoronic combination of words conjures images of an invasion by outsiders (such as the masked trio who torment/torture Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman in The Strangers).  At the same time, the name evokes the inciting moment of countless Gothic plots--of innocents seeking assistance at a lone domicile (e.g. after their car breaks down).  It's hard to be at ease in the home of strangers, never knowing if you'll be experiencing hospitality, or deadly hostility.

Short Story Spotlight: "The Wheel"

"The Wheel" by Bentley Little

This weird tale (published in Cemetery Dance # 64, which also happens to be a Bentley Little special issue) revolves around a wheel of fortune, but don't expect to find a smarmy Pat Sajak or ageless Vanna White close at hand.  The titular apparatus--wooden, paint-flaking, and studded with nails around its outer rim-- is located in the housing-project apartment of an elderly widow, and its segments are painted with alliterative, politically-incorrect commands such as "Choke the Chink" and "Kick the Kike."  Spinners of the strange wheel (such as the young narrator, who finds himself addicted to its mysteries) must carry out the order, or otherwise suffer a similar violent fate.  The premise makes for a haunting story, one that hints at a bizarre source for seemingly random crimes of racial intolerance in the inner city.

Offbeat but dark, "The Wheel" is quintessential Bentley Little, and is well worth giving a spin.  Fans of this prolific and highly-respected author will also find plenty of other material (as outlined on the magazine cover above) to enjoy in CD's dedicated issue.

The Walking Dead (episode review)

As the fifth of a six-episode arc (and falling between last week's frenetic conclusion and next week's season finale), "Wildfire" figured to be a transitional episode.  And sure enough, tonight's installment of The Walking Dead was all about cleaning up, and moving on.

In the aftermath of the bloody zombie attack, the remaining camp members tend to the dead, burning the toppled "geeks" and burying their murdered loved ones.  Andrea, meanwhile, keeps vigil over her slain sister Amy, whose eventual resurrection as a zombie furnishes perhaps the series' most poignant scene to date.  Bitten on the stomach during the attack on the camp, Jim makes his own slow, feverish transition towards geekdom.  His fate is just another reminder that the zombies of this post-apocalyptic world are not alien monsters but rather humans who have slid along a continuum between life and death (and afterlife), between civility and mindless savagery.

With the camp at the quarry obviously no longer a safe haven, the group has no choice but to pack up and head out.  The dilemma, though, involves the direction they should take.  Rick suggests the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, while Shane proposes they trek to a military base 100 miles away.  After much debate, the group decides to try for the closer destination.  And it's apropos that this transitional episode ends with the image of the survivors standing at a threshold--of the opened doorway of the CDC (although the coming attractions for the season finale intimate that the compound won't provide the sanctuary everyone had hoped for).