In the cabinet of death
In the Cabinet of Death (English title Everything's Eventual ) is the title of a short story collection by Stephen King from 2002 and at the same time the title of one of the stories themselves. The collection contains 14 stories.
Stories
Autopsy Room Four ( English Autopsy Room Four )
Forty-four-year-old stockbroker Howard Cottrell comes to himself in a body bag and gradually recalls being bitten by a snake on the golf course. The poison paralyzes him so that he can neither move nor make a sound. Doctors believe him dead, and Howard is forced to listen and watch them prepare for his autopsy . Just as one of the two doctors is about to make an incision in the abdomen, an assistant rushes in to clarify the matter: A snake has crawled out of Howard's golf bag, so Howard could still be alive. The point of the story is that Doctor Katie Arlen had just examined Howard's penis and a large scar next to it. Nobody can miss his erection. The story gets its special intensity for the reader from the fact that Howard tells everything from his limited first-person perspective. With Richard Thomas in the leading role, the story was filmed in the series Nightmares & Dreamscapes: Based on the Stories of Stephen King , which has not yet aired in Germany .
The man in the black suit ( english The Man in the Black Suit )
1914: Nine year old Gary suffers greatly from the death of his older brother Dan, who suffocated after an allergic reaction to a bee sting the year before. One summer day, Gary goes fishing in a small river by himself and meets the man in the black suit, the devil himself, who makes him believe that at that very moment his mother will also die as a result of a bee sting. For fear of being eaten by the uncanny, Gary flees and finds his mother unscathed - but the fear of the incarnate person's return accompanies him into old age: he recounts the experience in retrospect at the age of over 90. For this story, King received the O. Henry Award for Best Short Story in 1996 .
Everything you love is taken from you ( english All that you love will be carried away )
Disaffected frozen food salesman Alfie Zimmer decides to commit suicide in a remote motel. His little notebook, of all things, makes this last step difficult for him: Over the years, Alfie has been collecting partly funny, partly mysterious sayings that he had found on the walls of public toilets on his travels. What, he wonders, would be the reaction of his family, acquaintances and the police if they found his body and then these seemingly absurd records? He doesn't dare to hide the book, nor does he want to destroy it out of sentimentality. So he decides to give his life another chance; however, the story remains open.
In a side note to the story, Stephen King later writes that he once also collected toilets on long motorway drives.
The Death of Jack Hamilton ( English The Death of Jack Hamilton )
On the run from the police, the gangsters Jack Hamilton, Johnnie Dillinger and the narrator Homer Van Meter are embroiled in a shootout in the 30s in which Jack Hamilton is seriously injured. For days he hovers between life and death while his gangsters try everything to find a doctor. Homer and Johnnie try to cheer Jack up and laugh with two acrobatic feats. But in the midst of roaring laughter, he dies.
Everything's Eventual ( English in the Death Room )
Somewhere in South America, the journalist Fletcher is shown in an interrogation and torture room. The government employees want to elicit information about the plans of an opponent of the government with electric shocks. When Fletcher smokes his supposedly last cigarette after an initial electric shock during interrogation, he attacks his guard with the glow stick. Surprisingly, he manages a spectacular escape, during which he kills his captors. The story was first published in the audio book Blood & Smoke .
The Little Sisters of Eluria ( English The Little Sisters of Eluria )
The story is chronologically before the first volume in the Dark Tower series, Black , and tells of Roland's imprisonment with the Little Sisters of Eluria, vampire-like creatures who care for the sick and injured in order to then suck them out. With the help of one of the sisters, Roland manages to escape. The story is the longest in the short story collection. It adds nothing to the actual Dark Tower series ( The Dark Tower ).
Everything final ( English Everything’s Eventual )
Richard "Dinky" Earnshaw has an innate gift: he can use occult symbols to kill animals and drive people to suicide. That is why he is being recruited by an organization that claims to help rid the world of the worst villains. Dinky now sends his deadly messages mainly by email and rarely by post. Little by little, he finds out more about his victims - and none of them seem evil. Now the story-telling Dinky is only thinking of getting out somehow. The story is closely related to the series the Dark Tower ( The Dark Tower linked): Dinky is traced from the Lower men and immersed in Volume 7 again.
LTs Theory of Pets ( English L.Ts Theory of Pets )
In King's personal favorite story in this book, LT describes a four-person relationship in a humorous way: he and his wife gave each other a dog and a cat and the animals keep them busy. In the end, however, the wife and dog leave LT. His theory of cuddly toys is based on this: If dogs and cats get along better than masters and mistresses, then a farewell letter will soon be hanging on the refrigerator. The story suddenly takes a turn when LT becomes scared that the wife and dog may have fallen victim to a serial killer. In the original English audio book, Stephen King reads the story live in front of an audience in London.
The road virus moves north ( English The Road Virus Heads North )
Horror writer Richard Kinnell buys a picture at a flea market with the title The Street Virus Moves North , which shows a young man in a car who appears to be baring his teeth. It is the only picture that was not destroyed by the young artist who recently took his own life. On Kinnell's drive north, the painting changes: not only does the man show different facial expressions - the background repeatedly shows places that Kinnell has just passed. And in its wake there are murders that even the news reports. Kinnell tries repeatedly to destroy the picture. But it chases him until it hangs in his living room and the mysterious driver finally catches up with him. This story was filmed in a modified form in the series Nightmares & Dreamscapes: Based on the Stories of Stephen King , which has not yet been broadcast in Germany .
Lunch at the Gotham Café ( English Lunch at the Gotham Café )
Steven Davies meets with his wife Diane and her lawyer at the Gotham Café to pre-negotiate some of the details of the couple's upcoming divorce. Suddenly the head waiter goes mad and runs amok: He holds Steve's umbrella for the dog that robs him of sleep every night and attacks the three with a knife. Steve and Diane manage to escape. The head waiter, Guy, is arrested. But Steve telling this story cannot forget the madman anytime soon.
This feeling you can only express in French ( English That feeling you can only say what it is in French )
On the journey of her Silver Wedding, Carol is trapped in a permanent state of déjà-vu. Reality, memories and premonitions blur and are relived over and over again. She desperately tries to influence the course of events. Stephen King says: "Some people think that hell is their fellow human beings. I think more that eternal repetition is hell."
1408 ( English 1408 )
Mike Enslin is the author of the popular '10 Nights in ... 'series and is researching the bestsellers '10 Nights in 10 Haunted Houses' and '10 Nights in 10 Haunted Castles' for his next book about hotels that are supposedly haunted - and Hotel Dolphin's room 1408 is high on his list. So far he had exposed every alleged ghost as a pipe dream. Hotel manager Olin tries in vain in the first part of the story to prevent Mike from staying in room 1408 for a night. But Mike is not deterred by the suicides and above-average natural deaths in 1408. He himself experienced a short but extremely intense horror trip in the room, in the course of which he was increasingly fascinated by room 1408. Mike survives badly injured when he sets himself on fire to escape hypnosis. The events in the hotel room will haunt him for a lifetime.
The story is part of the audio book Blood & Smoke . The film adaptation of Zimmer 1408 with John Cusack as Mike Enslin and Samuel L. Jackson as Olin came out in 2007.
Roller coaster ( English Riding the Bullet )
When Alan's mother suffers a stroke, he immediately makes his way to the hospital. While hitchhiking, he falls into the clutches of George Staub, an undead who forces him to make a decision. George is a messenger of death and has to take one with him: Alan or his mother. Alan finally decides in favor of his mother - and comes to in an old cemetery. When he finally arrives at his mother's, she is still alive, but his experience was not a dream, as he always carries proof of George Staub's existence with him. For years he was tormented by the fact that he was a coward at the crucial moment and betrayed his mother. He writes the story down in order to come to terms with his conscience.
Stephen King broke new ground with this story, as it was initially only available as an e-book on the Internet, where it was very popular. The film adaptation Riding the Bullet adds so much to the short story that it is only partially recognizable.
The Glüggsbringer ( English Luckey Quarter )
Chambermaid Darlene receives a lousy quarter as a tip, but an attached note with spelling problems describes him as a real "lucky charm". In a long fantasy that takes up almost the entire short story, Darlene imagines how she clears away with the quarter in the hotel casino, first at the one-armed bandit and finally at the roulette table - only later does the reader find out that none of this really happened. Darlene gives the quarter to her son, who casually throws it into a one-armed bandit - and clears it away. Will the rest of the story come true too?
Audio book
The complete collection, read by David Nathan , was published in 2014 as an audio book by Random House Audio .
All stories from In the Cabinet of Death are available in the original English as audio books. However, they are divided into different editions and have the following titles: Collections of 3 to 5 stories are Blood & Smoke (3), Everything's Eventual (5), The Man in the Black Suit (4), Single editions are Riding the Bullet and LT's Theory of Pets .
E-books
In 2000, the story Riding the Bullet was made available as a downloadable file ( e-book ) on King's website . It caused a stir because Stephen King released it before the release of the film of the same name based on this short story . More than 700,000 internet users took up this offer. In retrospect, however, King complained in the foreword to the short story collection "In the Cabinet of Death" that most readers were only interested in the way it was published and not in the story itself. In the same year he published another e-book The Plant .
literature
- Stephen King: Everything's Eventual . 14 Dark Tales. Hodder & Stoughton, London 2007, ISBN 978-1-416-54985-7 .
- Stephen King: In the Cabinet of Death. Dark stories. Unabridged edition, 1st edition. Ullstein, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-548-26316-X ( Ullstein 26316).
Web links
- The KingWiki contains detailed table of contents for the following stories: