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

First up on the Countdown (see yesterday's post for general intro):

#20. "Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1)"

This brief Skeleton Crew story (which King culled, along with the companion piece, "Big Wheels: A Tale of the Laundry Game," from an aborted novel) packs some potent prose into its five pages.  The narrative opens with the scene of a bucolic neighborhood at daybreak--big maple trees, hopscotch-gridded sidewalks, sparrows sporting in birdbaths, a sky "already bluer than a baby's eye, and patched with guileless little fair-weather clouds...the ones baseball players called 'angels.'"  Such placidness, though, is soon disrupted by the rumble of a milk truck whose journey began somewhere back in the dark.  The vehicle proves to be a rolling nightmare, with a "bloodstained meathook" hanging from the roof of the cab, and a murky rear compartment rife with a "sunken, buggy smell."  And the driver himself is just as sinister.  You see, this milkman (the aptly-named Spike) is a madman, a human monster in a uniform.  Spike likes to give select customers on his route a little something extra...such as a live tarantula in the chocolate milk, acid gel in the all-purpose cream, and belladonna in the eggnog.

King's story is perhaps more surreal than logical (one would think that Spike's misdeeds could be traced back to him fairly easily), yet still chills.  In the conclusion, Spike steps inside a vacant, "crypt-cold" home on his route to observe what the reader must presume is the end result of his handiwork: "A huge splotch of drying blood covered part of one [living room] wall.  It looked like a psychiatrist's inkblot.  In the center of it a crater had been gouged deeply into the plaster.  There was a matted clump of hair in this crater, and a few splinters of bone."  Spike nods in approval of the grue, then exits and resumes his psychopathic route, convinced that "a fine day" is brightening all around.  Morning's normal glory is thus eclipsed, as King succeeds in thoroughly Gothicizing an idyllic American scene.

Milkmen might be obsolete figures in our modern world, but Spike Milligan's commitment to his craft won't be forgotten anytime soon. 

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

As first mentioned last week, Macabre Republic will feature not only single-post QuickLists but also ongoing Top 20 Countdowns.  Well, today I would like to announce that the subject of the inaugural Countdown is Stephen King.  Over the course of twenty posts, I'll be presenting my ranking (including brief analysis/commentary) of what I consider to be the author's premier works of American Gothic short fiction.

The selection process begins with classification--not every story King has written automatically warrants the label "American Gothic" (e.g. a piece such as "Crouch End," which takes place overseas in England, doesn't apply here).  The issue, though, extends beyond mere geographical location.  I'm looking not just for stories set in-country, but for those that evince a strong Gothic sensibility (recall my working definition: American Gothic concerns itself with the horrors hidden behind closed doors, with the animosity underlying smiling facades, with the dark side of everyday life in Anytown, U.S.A.).  Take, for example, "Strawberry Spring," a tale of a fog-shrouded (thanks to the quirks of New England weather) community college campus terrorized by a serial killer.  King's story also features an unreliable, Jekyll-and-Hyde-type narrator who blurs the line between chronicler and perpetrator of horrors.

Secondly, because of King's prolific nature, an element of evaluation is in order--narrowing down his extensive body of short fiction and arranging the chosen twenty pieces in terms of their effectiveness as American Gothic works.  What I'm trying to say is that there's plenty of material that won't make the cut.  For instance, don't expect to find "The Man in the Black Suit" on the Countdown.  This tale of an encounter with a Satanic figure in the Maine woods no doubt qualifies as American Gothic, yet in my estimation the story (its O. Henry Award notwithstanding) falls flat compared to its source text, Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown."  The key phrase here, of course, is "in my estimation."  Any listing such as this is inherently subjective, and while I hope to demonstrate that I've made reasoned choices, I make no pretensions to ultimate authority.  This is simply my take on a Top 20.  I'm hoping the individual posts will elicit comments from readers, as they offer their own thoughts on the selected story or even voice their disagreement with the relative positioning of the piece on the Countdown.

One final note: by "short fiction," I'm referring to short stories, novelettes, and novella-length works.  Narratives that could ostensibly stand alone as novels, such as "The Mist" and the pieces in Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight, have been ruled out here.  The bulk of the selections will be drawn from the collections Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, Nightmares & Dreamscapes, Everything's Eventual, and Just After Sunset, but there'll also be a few surprises thrown in along the way.

So come on back to Macabre Republic tomorrow, when we'll get started with selection #20.  After that, the Countdown will continue every few days over the coming weeks, culminating with the revelation of the greatest work of American Gothic short fiction that King has ever written.

Utter Photesquerie

Today I'm introducing a new feature, Photesquerie: Snapshots of the Macabre Republic.  At first I'll be posting pictures I've taken myself, but as the blog grows I hope to include photos that readers have submitted from their own neck of the M.R. woods.

The snapshot above was taken on a main road in the nearby town of Clifton, NJ.  I have no idea if that's kudzu or some other form of aggressive vegetation that has grown along the wire stretching across the street.  All I know is that it creeps me out: I tense up every time I drive underneath, half-expecting the vines to come swooping down like some living, Lovecraftian netting.

And after reading Scott Smith's The Ruins, I figure it's time to find an alternate route through Clifton...

A Sad Farewell to Happy Town

So long, Happy Town.  We barely got a chance to know you.

This promising ABC drama--the most compelling work of American Gothic to air on television in years--was felled by the network axe earlier this summer.  ABC hardly gave the show a chance to grow, temporarily pulling it from the schedule after only three episodes, and then announcing shortly thereafter that it would not be picked up for the coming fall season.  The network burned off the remainder of the eight total episodes in June and July, but by that point Happy Town had lost much of its audience, as viewers understandably refrained from investing in a story they knew would not be completed.

Still, those who jumped ship after Happy Town first hit rocky ground did miss some highly entertaining programming (note: the final five episodes are available for online viewing on the show's website).  The inevitable comparisons have been to Twin Peaks, as a superficially idyllic community becomes the home of dark crimes (five years earlier, the town of Haplin, Minnesota, was plagued by a serial kidnapper dubbed the Magic Man [due to his seeming ability to cause his victims to vanish into thin air], and now he may have returned to resume his reign of terror).  But there's also a Salem's Lot vibe to Happy Town: the urbane foreigner (played magnificently by Sam Neill) who curiously chooses to set up shop in Haplin; the bread factory on the hill looming over the town a la King's Marsten House.  And like Salem's Lot, Happy Town features a broad cast of colorful characters with seemingly darker undersides.  There are false identities and secret machinations aplenty, and the storylines brim with mystery and misdirection--at different points you'll be convinced one character or another is the infamous Magic Man.  As if that weren't enough, Happy Town also includes Gothic maguffins (an ornate, Barnabas Collins-esque cane) and sinister creatures (the possibly-occult black bird called Cicero that haunts the Haplin scenery).

The identity of the Magic Man is revealed at the conclusion of the eighth episode, making for a whopper of a plot twist.  Many other mysteries, though, remain unsolved.  What were the reasons behind the so-called Magic Man's crimes?  Where are the kidnapping victims hidden, and are they still alive?  What's the significance of that creepy German black-and-white film (The Blue Door) that various characters obsess over?  And perhaps most centrally, what's the true nature of the town's ruling family, the Haplins--are they predators, or ultimately protectors?

Alas, we'll never have definitive answers, much like we'll never know just how long Happy Town could have kept unspooling its story.  But one thing I can state with certitude: the show's thread was cut much too soon.

"Bed and Breakfast"

I've been in a zombie frame of mind, so to speak, ever since reading The Reapers Are the Angels and interviewing Alden Bell.  So I thought I'd post a poem of mine called "Bed and Breakfast," which appeared in a great little volume published last year by Coscom Entertainment, Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes: Zany Zombie Poetry for the Undead Head.  It was a treat to have my piece included in the anthology; the only problem was that layout issues necessitated that my favorite part of the poem (the line numbers) be excised.  So here's the text restored to its original state.

Nothing like breakfast in bed on a Sunday morning, right?  If you haven't eaten yet, here's a little something to whet (okay, maybe spoil) your appetite.


Bed and Breakfast

Reuben lies filling the bed and craving his namesake sandwich
(Just where the hell is his sister with today's groceries?)
When the local news cuts into General Hospital to document Armageddon:
A decadent horde roams the streets, making a gory smorgasbord of the living.
Reuben watches it all with his jaws gaping and his jowls sagging,
Wondering if his spinster sister has become today's groceries.
Then either the televised horror or his lardy arteries stops his heart,
Transmuting his gross bundle of life into so much dead weight.                                               [8]

 When a semblance of sentience returns, he feels an unprecedented hunger
Panging through his soulless carcass.  His fresh appetites are as
Outsized as he is; if he could only get up and trundle outside
Cannibalistic bliss awaits.  He grunts and rocks yet remains
Turtled on his back, frustratingly resurrected, undead but bedridden.
He puddles drool on the coverlet, sees but one way out of this plush bear-trap.
So showing more willpower than his static forerunner ever did, zombie
Reuben presses a hammy arm to his maw and finally commits to reducing.        [and 8]