 Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Welcome Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode, it's the thriller Thursday and I have a short story from the master of horror himself, Stephen King. And then, after the story, be sure to stick around for a few additional thoughts that Stephen King gives about writing the story and what inspired him to write it. If you're new here, welcome to the show. While you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, to visit sponsors you hear about during the show, sign up for my newsletter, enter contests, connect with me on social media. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, close your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights and come with me into the Weird Darkness. It's so dark that for a while, just how long I don't know, I think I'm still unconscious. Then slowly, it comes to me that unconscious people don't have a sensation of movement through the dark, accompanied by a faint, rhythmic sound that can only be a squeaky wheel. And I can feel contact from the top of my head to the balls of my heels. I can smell something that might be rubber or vinyl. This is not unconsciousness, and there's something too, too, what, too rational about these sensations for it to be a dream. Then what is it? Who am I? And what's happening to me? The squeaky wheel quits its stupid rhythm and I stop moving. There's a crackle around me from the rubber-smelling stuff. A voice. Which one did they say? A pause. Second voice. Four, I think, yeah, four. We start to move again, but more slowly. I can hear the faint scuff of feet now, probably in soft, sold shoes, maybe, sneakers. The owners of the voices are the owners of the shoes. They stop me again. There's a thump followed by a faint whoosh. It is, I think, the sound of a door with a pneumatic hinge being opened. What's going on here? I yell. But the yell is only in my head. My lips don't move. I can feel them and my tongue lying on the floor in my mouth like a stunned mole, but I can't move them. The thing I'm on starts rolling again. A moving bed? Yes, a gurney, in other words. I've had some experience with them a long time ago in Lyndon Johnson's crappy little Asian adventure. It comes to me that I'm in a hospital that something bad has happened to me, something like the explosion that almost neutered me 23 years before and that I'm going to be operated on. There are a lot of answers in that idea, sensible ones for the most part, but I don't hurt anywhere except for the minor matter of being scared out of my wits. I feel fine. And if these are orderlies wheeling me into an operating room, why can't I see? Why can't I talk? A third voice. Over here, boys. My rolling bed is pushed in a new direction, and the question drumming in my head is what kind of a mess have I gotten myself into? Doesn't that depend on who you are? I ask myself. But that's one thing at least I find I do know. I'm Howard Cottrell. I'm a stockbroker known to some of my colleagues as Howard the Conqueror. Second voice from just above my head. You're looking very pretty today, Doc. Fourth voice. Female and cool. It's always nice to be validated by you, Rusty. Could you hurry up a little? The babysitter expects me back by seven. She's committed to dinner with her parents. Back by seven. Back by seven. It's still the afternoon, maybe, or early evening. But black in here. Black is your hat. Black is a woodchuck's butthole. Black is midnight in Persia. And what's going on? Where have I been? What have I been doing? Why haven't I been manning the phones? Because it's Saturday. A voice from far down, murmurs. You were... were... A sound. Walk. A sound I love. A sound I more or less live for. A sound of... what? The head of a golf club, of course. Hitting a ball off the tee. I stand, watching it fly off into the blue. I'm grabbed, shoulders and calves, and lifted. It startles me terribly, and I try to scream. No sound comes out, or perhaps one does a tiny squeak, much tinier than the one produced by the wheel below me. Probably not even that. Probably it's just my imagination. I'm swung through the air in an envelope of blackness. Hey, don't drop me. I've got a bad back, I try to say. And again, there's no movement of the lips or teeth. My tongue goes on, lying on the floor of my mouth. The mole, maybe not just stunned, but dead. Now I have a terrible thought. One which spikes fright, a degree closer to panic. What if they put me down the wrong way, and my tongue slides backward and blocks my windpipe? I won't be able to breathe. That's what people mean when they say someone swallowed his tongue, isn't it? Second voice. Rusty. You'll like this one, Doc. He looks like Michael Bolton. Female, Doc. Who's that? Third voice. Sounds like a young man, not much more than a teenager. He's his white lounge singer who wants to be black. I don't think this is him. There's laughter at that. The female voice joining in a little doubtfully. And as I'm set down on what feels like a padded table, Rusty starts some new crack. He's got a whole stand-up routine, it seems. I lose this bit of hilarity and a burst of sudden horror. I won't be able to breathe if my tongue blocks my windpipe. That's the thought, which has just gone through my mind. But what if I'm not breathing now? What if I'm dead? What if this is what death is like? It fits. It fits everything with a horrid, prophylactic snugness. The dark, the rubbery smell. Nowadays, I'm Howard the Conqueror, stockbroker, extraordinaire, terror of Dairy Municipal Country Club, frequent habit shoe of what's known at golf courses all over the world as the 19th hole. But in 71, I was part of a medical assistance team in the Mekong Delta, a scared kid who sometimes woke up wet-eyed from dreams of the family dog, and all at once I know this feel, this smell. Dear God, I'm in a body bag. First voice, want to sign this doc? Remember to bear down hard. It's three copies. Sounds of a pen scraping away on paper. I imagine the owner of the first voice holding out a clipboard to the woman doctor. Oh, dear God, let me not be dead. I try to scream. And nothing comes out. I'm breathing, though, aren't I? I mean, I can't feel myself doing it, but my lungs seem okay. They're not throbbing or yelling for air the way they do when you swam too far underwater, so I must be okay, right? Except if you're dead, the deep voice murmurs, they wouldn't be crying out for air, would they? No, because dead lungs don't need to breathe. Dead lungs can just kind of take it easy. Rusty, what are you doing next Saturday night, doc? But if I'm dead, how can I feel? How can I smell the bag I'm in? How can I hear these voices? The doc now saying that next Saturday night she's going to be shampooing her dog, which is named Rusty. What a coincidence, and all of them laughing. If I'm dead, why aren't I either gone or in the white light they're always talking about on Oprah? There's a harsh ripping sound, and all at once I am in white light. It is blinding, like the sun breaking through a scrim of clouds on a wintery day. I try to squint my eyes shut against it, but nothing happens. My eyelids are like blinds on broken rollers. A face bends over me, blocking off part of the glare which comes not from some dazzling astral plane, but from a bank of overhead fluorescence. The face belongs to a young, conventionally handsome man of about 25. He looks like one of those beach beefcakes on Baywatch or Malrose Place. Marginally smarter, though. He's got a lot of dark, black hair under a carelessly worn surgical green cap. He's wearing the tunic, too. His eyes are cobalt blue, the sort of eyes girls reputedly die for. There are dusty arcs of freckles high up on his cheekbones. Hey, gosh, she says. It's the third voice. This guy does look like Michael Bolton. A little long in the old tooth-a-roo, maybe. He leans closer, one of the flat-tie ribbons at the neck of his green tunic tickles against my forehead. But yeah, I see it. Hey, Michael, sing something. Help me is what I'm trying to sing. But I can only look up into his dark blue eyes with my frozen dead man's stare. I can only wonder if I am a dead man, if this is how it happens, if this is what everyone goes through after the pump quits. If I'm still alive, how come he hasn't seen my pupils contract when the light hit them? But I know the answer to that, or I think I do. They didn't contract. That's why the glare from the fluorescence is so painful. The tie, tickling across my forehead like a feather. Help me! I scream up at the Baywatch beefcake, who's probably an intern or maybe just a med school brat. Help me, please! My lips don't even quiver. The face moves back. The tie stops, tickling, and all that white light streams through my helpless to look away eyes and into my brain. It's a hellish feeling, a kind of rape. I'll go blind if I have to stare into it for long, I think, and blindness will be a relief. Look! The sound of the driver hitting the ball, but a little flat this time. And the feeling in the hands is bad. The ball's up, but veering, veering off, veering toward. Crap. I'm in the rough. Now another face bends into my field of vision. A light tunic instead of a green one below it. A great untidy mop of orange hair above it. Distress sale IQ is my first impression. It can only be rusty. He's wearing a big, dumb grin that I think of as a high school grin. The grin of a kid who should have a tattoo reading born to snap bra straps on one wasted bicep. Michael, Rusty exclaims, geez, you're looking good. This is an honor. Sing for us, big boy. Sing your dead head off. From somewhere behind me comes the Doc's voice. Cool. No longer even pretending to be amused by these antics. Quit it, Rusty. Then in a slightly new direction. What's the story, Mike? Mike's voice is the first voice, Rusty's partner. He sounds slightly embarrassed to be working with a guy who wants to be Andrew Dice Clay when he grows up. Found him on the fourteenth hole at Dairy Munna. Of course, actually, in the rough. If he hadn't just played through the foursome behind him and if they hadn't seen one of his legs sticking out of the pucker brush, he'd be an ant farm by now. I hear that sound in my head again. Walk. Only this time it's followed by another, far less pleasant sound. The rustle of underbrush as I sweep it with the head of my driver. It would have to be fourteen, where there is reputedly poison ivy. Poison ivy and Rusty is still peering down at me. Stupid and avid. It's not death that interests him. It's my resemblance to Michael Bolton. Oh, yes, I know about it. I've not been above using it with certain female clients. Otherwise, it gets old in a hurry. And in these circumstances... Damn. Attending physician, the lady doc asks. Was it Cazalian? No, Mike says. And for just a moment he looks down at me. Older than Rusty, by at least ten years. Black hair with flecks of gray in it. Spectacles. How come none of these people can see that I'm not dead? There was a dog in the forest on the found him, actually. That's his signature on page one, see? Rifle of paper, then. Geez, Jennings, I know him. He gave Noah his physical after the arc grounded I'm out error at. Rusty doesn't look as if he gets the joke. But he braised laughter into my face anyway. I could smell onions on his breath. A little leftover lunch stink. And if I can smell onions, I must be breathing. I must be, right? If only... Before I can finish this thought, Rusty leans even closer and I feel a blast of hope. He's seen something. He's seen something and means to give me mouth to mouth. God bless you, Rusty. God bless you and your onion breath. But the stupid grin doesn't change. And instead of putting his mouth on mine, his hand slips around my jaw. Now he's grasping one side with his thumb and the other side with his fingers. He's alive, Rusty cries. He's alive and he's going to sing for the room for Michael Bolton Fan Club. His fingers pinch tighter. It hurts and they distant, coming out of the novocaine way and begin to move my jaw up and down, clicking my teeth together. If she's bad, he can't see it. Rusty sings in a hideous atonal voice that would probably make Percy Sledge's head explode. She can do no wrong. My teeth open and close at the rough urging of his hand. My tongue rises and falls like a dead dog riding the surface of an uneasy waterbed. Stop it! The lady dock snaps at him. She sounds genuinely shocked. Rusty, perhaps sensing this, does not stop but goes gleefully on. His fingers are pinching into my cheeks now. My frozen eyes stare blindly upward. Turn his back on his best friend, if she put him down. Then she's there, a woman in a green gown with her cap tied around her throat and hanging down her back like the Cisco kid's sombrero. Short brown hair swept back from her brow. Good looking but severe. More handsome than pretty. She grabs Rusty with one short nailed hand and pulls him back from me. Hey! Rusty says indignant, get your hands off me. Then you keep your hands off him, she says. And there's no mistaking the anger in her voice. I'm tired of your sophomore class wit, Rusty, and the next time you start in, I'm going to report you. Hey, let's all calm down, says the Baywatch hunk, Doc's assistant. He sounds alarmed as if he expects Rusty and his boss to start duking it out right there. Let's just put a lid on it. Why should be such a jerk to me? Rusty says. He's still trying to sound indignant, but he's actually whining now. Then in a slightly different direction. Why are you being such a witch? Yo, your period, is that it? Doc, sounding disgusted, get him out of here. Mike, come on Rusty, let's go sign the log. Rusty, yeah, and get some fresh air. Me, listening to all this like it was on the radio. Their feet squeaking toward the door. Rusty now all huffy and offended, asking her why she doesn't just wear a mood ring or something so people will know. Soft shoes squeaking on tile, and suddenly that sound is replaced by the sound of my driver, beating the bush for my damn ball. Where is it? Didn't go too far in, I'm sure of it. So where is it? I hate 14. Supposedly there's poison ivy, and with all this underbrush there, it could easily be... and then something bit me, didn't it? Yes, I'm almost sure it did. I'm a left calf, just above the top of my white athletic sock. A red hot, darning needle of pain, perfectly concentrated at first, then spreading. Then darkness. Until the gurney, zipped up snug inside a body bag and listening to Mike. Which one do they say? And Rusty. Four, I think, yeah, four. I wanna think it was some kind of snake, but maybe that's only because I was thinking about them while I hunted for my ball. It could have been an insect. I only recall the single line of pain, and after all, what does it matter? What matters here is that I'm alive and they don't know it. It's incredible, but they don't know it. Of course, I had bad luck. I know Dr. Jennings. Remember speaking to him as I played through his foursome on the eleventh hole. A nice enough guy, but vague and antique. The antique had pronounced me dead. Then Rusty with his dopey green eyes and his detention hall grin had pronounced me dead. The Lady Doc, Mrs. Cisco Kid, hadn't even looked at me yet. Not really. When she did, maybe. I hate that jerk, she says when the door is closed. Now it's just the three of us. Only, of course, Mrs. Cisco Kid thinks it's just the two of them. Why do I always get the jerks, Peter? I dunno, Mr. Melrose Place says, but Rusty's a special case, even in the annals of famous jerks. Walking brain death. She laughs and something clanks. The clank is followed by a sound that scares me badly. Steel instruments clicking together. They're off to the left of me, and although I can't see them, I know what they're getting ready to do. The autopsy. They're getting ready to cut into me. They intend to remove Howard Cottrell's heart and see if it blew a piston or threw a rod. My leg, I scream inside my head. Look at my left leg. That's the trouble, not my heart. Perhaps my eyes have adjusted a little after all. Now I can see it, at the very top of my vision, a stainless steel armature. It looks like a giant piece of dental equipment, except that thing at the end isn't a drill. It's a saw. From someplace deep inside, where the brain stores the sort of trivia you only need if you happen to be playing Jeopardy on TV, I even come up with the name. It's a Giggly saw. They use it to cut off the top of your skull. This is after they've pulled your face off like a kid's Halloween mask, of course, hair and all. Then they take out your brain. Clink, clink, clunk. A pause. Then a clank, so loud I jump if I were capable of jumping. Do you want to do the pericardial cut? She asks. Pete, cautious. Do you want me to? Dr. Cisco, sounding pleasant, sounding like someone who is conferring a favor and a responsibility. Yes, I think so. Alright, he says. You'll assist. Your trusty copilot, she says, and laughs. She punctuates her laughter with a snick-snick sound. It's the sound of scissors cutting the air. Now panic beats and flutters inside my skull like a flock of starlings locked in an attic. The gnom was a long time ago, but I saw a half a dozen field on top seas there, but the doctors used to call tent show postmortems, and I know what Cisco and poncho mean to do. The scissors have long, sharp blades, very sharp blades, and fat finger holes. Still, you have to be strong to use them. The lower blade slides into the gut like butter, then snip up through the bundle of nerves at the solar plexus and into the beef jerky weave of muscle and tendon above it, then into the sternum. Then the blades come together this time. They do so with a heavy crunch as the bone parts in the rib cage pops apart like a couple of barrels which have been lashed together with twine. Then on up with those scissors that look like nothing so much as the poultry shears supermarket butchers use, snip, crunch, snip, crunch, snip, crunch, splitting bone and shearing muscle, freeing the lungs, heading for the trachea, turning Howard the Conqueror into a Thanksgiving dinner no one will eat. A thin, nagging wine, this does sound like a dentist's drill. Pete, can I? Dr. Cisco actually sounding a bit maternal. No, these. Snick, snick, demonstrating for him. They can't do this, I think. They can't cut me up, I can feel. Why? he asks. Because that's the way I want it, she says, sounding a lot less maternal. When you're on your own, pity boy, you can do what you want, but in Katie Arland's autopsy room, you start off with the pericardial shears. Autopsy room. There. It's out. I want to be all over goosebumps, but of course nothing happens. My flesh remains smooth. Remember, Dr. Arland says, but now she's actually lecturing. Any fool can learn how to use a milking machine, but the hands-on procedure is always best. There's something vaguely suggestive in her tone. Okay? Okay, he says. They're going to do it. I have to make some kind of noise or movement, or they're really going to do it. If blood flows or jets up from the first punch of the scissors, they'll know something's wrong, but by then, it will be too late. Very likely that first snip crunch will have happened, and my ribs will be lying against my upper arms, my heart pulsing frantically away under the fluorescence in its blood-glossy sack. I concentrate everything on my chest. I push or try to, and something happens. A sound. I make a sound. It's mostly inside my closed mouth, but I can also hear and feel it in my nose, a low hum. Concentrating, summoning every bit of effort, I do it again, and this time the sound is a little stronger, leaking out of my nostrils like cigarette smoke. It makes me think of an old Alfred Hitchcock TV program I saw a long, long time ago where Joseph Cotton was paralyzed in a car crash and was finally able to let them know he was still alive by crying a single tear. And if nothing else, that minuscule mosquito whine of a sound has proved to myself that I'm alive, that I'm not just a spirit lingering inside the clay effigy of my own dead body. Focusing all my concentration, I can feel breath slipping through my nose and down my throat, replacing the breath I have now expended, and then I send it out again, working harder than I ever worked, summers for the laying construction company when I was a teenager, working harder than I ever worked in my life, because now I'm working for my life, and they must hear me, dear God, they must. You want some music? The woman doctor asks. I've got Marty Stewart, Tony Bennett. He makes a despairing sound. I barely hear it, and take no immediate meaning from what she's saying, which is probably a mercy. All right, she says, laughing, I've also got the Rolling Stones. You? Me. I'm not as square as I look, Peter. I didn't mean he sounds flustered. Listen to me! I scream inside my head as my frozen eyes stare up into the icy white light. Stop chattering like magpies and listen to me. I can feel more air trickling down my throat, and the idea occurs that whatever has happened to me may be starting to wear off. But it's only a faint blip on the screen of my thoughts. Maybe it is wearing off, but very soon now recovery will cease to be an option for me. All my energy is bent toward making them hear me, and this time they will hear me. I know it! Stones then, she says, unless you want me to run out and get a Michael Bolton CD in honor of your first pericardial. Please no, he cries, and they both laugh. The sound starts to come out, and it is louder this time. Not as loud as I'd hoped, but loud enough. Surely loud enough, they'll hear. They must. Then, just as I begin to force the sound out of my nose like some rapidly solidifying liquid, the room is filled with a blare of fuzz-tone guitar and Mick Jagger's voice bashing off the walls. I know it's only rock and roll, but I like it. Turn it down, Dr. Sisko yells, comically overshouting, and amid these noises my own nasal sound, a desperate little humming through my nostrils is no more audible than a whisper in a foundry. Now her face bends over me again, and I feel fresh horror as I see that she's wearing a plexa eye shield and a gauze mask over her mouth. She glances back over her shoulder, I'll strip in for you, she tells Pete, and bends toward me with a scalpel glittering in one gloved hand, bends towards me through the guitar thunder of the Rolling Stones. I hum, desperately, but it's no good. I can't even hear myself. The scalpel hovers, then cuts. I shriek in my own head, but there is no pain, only my polo shirt falling in two pieces at my sides. Sliding apart is my ribcage will after Pete unknowingly makes his first pericardial cut on a living patient. I am lifted, my head lolls back, and for a moment I see Pete upside down, donning his own plexi eye shield as he stands by a steel counter, inventorying a horrifying array of tools. Chief among them are the oversized scissors. I get just a glimpse of them, of blades glittering like merciless satin. Then I'm laid flat again, and my shirt is gone. I'm now naked to the waist. It's cold in the room. Look at my chest, I scream at her. You must see it rise and fall no matter how shallow my aspiration is. You're an expert for crying out loud. Instead, she looks across the room, raising her voice to be heard above the music. I like it, like it, yes I do, the stones sing. And I think I'll hear that nasal idiot chorus in the halls of hell through all eternity. What's your pick, boxers or jockeys? With a mixture of horror and rage, I realized what they're talking about. Boxers, he calls back. Of course, just look at the guy. Jerk, I wanna scream. You probably think everybody over 40 wears boxer shorts. You probably think when you get to be 40, you'll... She snaps my Bermuda's and pulls down the zipper. Under other circumstances, having a woman as pretty as this, a little severe, yes, but still pretty, do that, would make me extremely happy. Today, however, you lose, she says. Jockeys, dollar in the kitty. On payday, he says, coming over. His face joins hers. They look down at me through their plexi masks like a couple of space aliens looking down at an abductee. I try to make them see my eyes, to see me looking at them, but these two fools are looking at my undershorts. Ooh, in red, Pete says, a shving. I call them more of a wash pink, she replies. Hold him out for me, Peter. He weighs a ton. Don't wonder he had a heart attack. Let this be a lesson to you. I'm in shape, I yell at her, probably in better shape than you. My hips are suddenly jerked upward by strong hands. My back cracks. The sound makes my heart leap. Sorry, guy, Pete says, and suddenly I'm colder than ever as my shorts and red underpants are pulled down. Upsidaisie wants, she says, lifting one foot and Upsidaisie twice, lifting the other foot. Off come the mocks and off come the socks. She stops abruptly and hope seizes me once more. Hey, Pete. Yeah? Do guys ordinarily wear Bermuda shorts and moccasins to play golf in? Behind her, except that's only the source, actually, it's all around us, the Rolling Stones have moved on to emotional rescue. I will be your knight in shining, ah, man, Mick Jagger sings. And I wonder how funky he danced with about three sticks of high-core dynamite jammed up his skinny. If you ask me, this guy was just asking for trouble, she goes on. I thought they had these special shoes, very ugly, very golf-specific, with little knobs on the soles. Yeah, but wearing them's not the law, Pete says. He holds his gloved hands out over my upturned face, slides them together, and bends the fingers back. As the knuckles crack, talcum powder sprinkles down like fine snow. Hell, he's not yet. Not like bowling shoes, they catch you bowling without a pair of bowling shoes, they can send you to state prison. Is that so? Yes. Do you want to handle temp and gross examination? No, I shriek. No, he's a kid. What are you doing? He looks at her as if this same thought had crossed his own mind. That's not strictly illegal, is it, Katie? I mean, she looks around as he speaks, giving the room a burlesque examination, and I'm starting to get a vibe that could be very bad news for me, severe or not. I think that Cisco, alias Dr. Katie Arlen, has got the hots for a pity with the dark blue eyes. Dear God, they've hauled me paralyzed off the golf course and into an episode of General Hospital, this week's subplot titled, Love Blooms in Autopsy Room 4. Gee, she says, and a hoarse little stage whisper, I don't see anyone here but you and me. The tape? Not rolling yet, she said, and once it is, I'm right at your elbow every step of the way, as far as anyone will ever know anyway, and mostly I will be. I just want to put away those charts and slides, and if you really feel uncomfortable, yes, I scream up at him out of my unmoving face, feel uncomfortable, very uncomfortable, too uncomfortable. But he's 24 at most, and what's he going to say to this pretty severe woman who's standing inside his space, invading it in a way that can really only mean one thing? No, mommy, I'm scared. Besides, he wants to. I could see the wanting through the plexi eye shield, bopping around in there like a bunch of overage punk rockers pop going to the stones. Hey, as long as you'll cover for me, if sure, she says, gotta get your feet wet sometime, Peter, and if you really need me to, I'll roll back the tape. He looks startled. You can do that? She smiles. We have many secrets in our topsy-room for my heir. I bet you do, he says, smiling back, then reaches past my frozen field of vision. When his hand comes back, it's wrapped around a microphone which hangs down from the ceiling on a black cord. The mic looks like a steel teardrop. Seeing it there makes this horror real in a way it wasn't before. Surely they won't really cut me up, will they? Pete is no veteran, but he has had training. Surely he'll see the marks of whatever bit me while I was looking for my ball in the rough, and then they'll at least suspect, they'll have to suspect. Yet I keep seeing the scissors with their heartless satin shine, jumped up poultry shears, and I keep wondering if I will still be alive when he takes my heart out of the chest cavity and holds it up, dripping in front of my locked gaze for a moment before turning to plop it into the weighing pan. I could be, it seems to me. I really could be. Don't they say the brain can remain conscious for up to three minutes after the heart stops? Ready, doctor? Pete says, and now he sounds almost formal. Somewhere, tape is rolling. The autopsy procedure has begun. Let's flip this pancake, she says cheerfully, and I'm turned over just that efficiently. My right arm goes flying out to one side and then falls back against the side of the table, banging down with the raised metal lip, digging into the bicep. It hurts a lot. The pain is just short of excruciating, but I don't mind. I pray for the lip to bite through my skin, pray to bleed, something bonafide corpses don't do. Whoopsidaisy, Dr. Arlen says. She lifts my arm up and plops it back down at my side. Now it's my nose I'm most aware of. It's smashed against the table, and my lungs for the first time send out a distress message, a cottony, deprived feeling. My mouth is closed, my nose partially crushed shut. Just how much I can't tell. I can't even feel myself breathing, not really. What if I suffocate like this? Then something happens, which takes my mind completely off my nose. A huge object. It feels like a glass baseball bat is rammed rudely up my rectum. Once more, I try to scream and can produce only the faint, wretched humming. Tamp in, Peter says. I put on the timer. Good idea, she says, moving away, giving him room, letting him test drive this baby, letting him test drive me. The music has turned down slightly. Subject is a white Caucasian age 44, Pete says, speaking for the mic now, speaking for posterity. His name is Howard Randolph Cottrell. Residence is 1566 Laurel Crest Lane here in Derry. Dr. Arlen is some distance. Mary Mead. A pause, then, Pete again, sounding just a tiny bit flustered. Dr. Arlen informs me that the subject actually lives in Mary Mead, which is split off from Derry, in enough with the history lesson, Pete. Dear God, what have they stuck up my butt? Some sort of cattle thermometer? If it was a little longer, I think I could taste the bulb at the end. And they didn't exactly go crazy with the lubricant. But then why would they? I'm dead, after all. Dead. Sorry, Dr. Pete says. He fumbles mentally for his place and eventually finds it. This information is from the ambulance form, originally taken from a main state driver's license. Pronouncing Dr. was, um, Frank Jennings. Subject was pronounced at the scene. Now it's my nose that I'm hoping will bleed. Please, I tell it, bleed. Only don't just bleed. Gosh. It doesn't. Cause of death may be a heart attack, Pete says. A light hand brushes down my naked back to the crack of my ass. I pray it will remove the thermometer, but it doesn't. Spine appears to be intact. No, attractable phenomena. Attractable phenomena? Attractable phenomena? What the heck do they think I am, a buglight? He lifts my head, the pads of his fingers on my cheekbones, and I hum desperately, knowing that he can't possibly hear me over Keith Richards screaming guitar, but hoping he may feel the sound vibrating in my nasal passages. He doesn't. Instead, he turns my head from side to side. No neck injury apparent, no rigor, he says, and I hope he'll just let my head go, let my face smack down onto the table. That'll make my nose bleed, unless I really am dead. But he lowers it gently, considerably, mashing the tip again and once more, making suffocation seem a distinct possibility. No wounds visible on the back or buttocks, he says. Although there is an old scar on the upper right thigh that looks like some sort of wound, shrapnel perhaps fits an ugly one. It was ugly, and it was shrapnel. The end of my war, a mortal shell lobbed into a supply area. Two men killed, one man, me, lucky. It's a lot uglier around front and in a more sensitive spot. But all the equipment works, or did, up until today. Quarter of an inch to the left, and they could have fixed me up with a hand pump and a CO2 cartridge for those intimate moments. He finally plucked the thermometer out. Thank you, the relief. On the wall I could see a shadow holding it up. 94.2, he said. Gee, that ain't too shabby. This guy could almost be alive, Katie. Dr. Arlen? Remember where they found him, she said from across the room. The record they were listening to was between selections, and for a moment I could hear her electrically tones clearly. Golf course? Summer afternoon? If you'd gotten a reading of 98.6, I would not be surprised. Right, right, he said, sounding chastened. Then, is all this going to sound funny on tape? Translation, will I sound stupid on the tape? It'll sound like a teaching situation, she said, which is what it is. Okay, good, great. His rubber-kipped fingers spread my buttocks, then let them go and trail down the backs of my thighs. I would, tense now if I were capable of tensing. Left leg, I send to him. Left leg. Peaty boy, left calf, see it? He must see it, he must, because I can feel it, throbbing like a bee sting, or maybe a shot given by a clumsy nurse, one who infuses the injection into a muscle instead of hitting the vein. Subject is a really good example of what a really bad idea it is to play golf in shorts, he says. And I find myself wishing he had been born blind. Hell, maybe he was born blind, he's sure acting it. I'm seeing all kinds of bug bites, chigger bites, scratches. Mike said they found him in the rough, Arlen calls over. She's making one hell of a clatter, sounds like she's doing dishes in a cafeteria kitchen instead of filing stuff. At a gas, he had a heart attack while he was looking for his ball. Uh, huh. Keep going, Peter, you're doing fine. I find that an extremely debatable proposition. Okay. More pokes and proddings. Gentle, too gentle, maybe. There are mosquito bites on the left calf that look infected, he says. And although his touch remains gentle, this time the pain is an enormous throb that would make me scream if I were capable of making any sound above the low-pitched hum. It occurs to me, suddenly, that my life may hang upon the length of the Rolling Stones tape they're listening to. Always assuming it is a tape and not a CD that plays straight through. If it finishes before they cut into me, if I can hum loudly enough for them to hear before one of them turns it over to the other side, I may want to look at the bug bites after the gross autopsy, she says. Although if we're right about his heart, there'll be no need. Or do you want me to look now? Are they worrying you? Nope, they're pretty clearly mosquito bites. Gimple, the fool, says. They grow bigger over on the west side. He's got five, seven, eight, geez, almost a dozen on his left leg alone. He forgot his deep woods off. Never mind the off, he forgot his digitaling, he says. And they have a nice little yawk together. Autopsy room humor. This time he flips me by himself, probably happy to use those Jim-grown Mr. Strong Boy muscles of his, hiding the snake bites and the mosquito bites all around them, camouflaging them. I'm staring up at the bank of fluorescence again. Pete steps backward out of my view. There's a humming noise. The table begins to slant and I know why. When they cut me open the fluids will run downhill to the collection points at its base. Plenty of samples for the state lab in Augusta. Should there be any questions raised by the autopsy? I focus all my will and effort on closing my eyes while he's looking down into my face and cannot produce even a tick. All I wanted was 18 holes of golf on a Saturday afternoon and instead I turned into snow white with hair on my chest. And I can't stop wondering what it's going to feel like when those poultry shearers go sliding into my midsection. Pete has a clipboard in one hand. He consults it, sets it aside, then speaks into the mic. His voice is a lot less stilted now. He's just made the most hideous misdiagnosis of his life, but he doesn't know it and so he's starting to warm up. I'm commencing the autopsy at 5.49 pm, he says, on Saturday, August 20, 1994. He lifts my lips, looks at my teeth like a man thinking about buying a horse, then pulls my jaw down. Good color, he says, and no patechia on the cheeks. The current tune is fading out of the speaker so I can hear a click as he steps on the foot pedal which pauses the recording tape. Man, this guy really could still be alive. I hum frantically and at the same moment Dr. Arlen drops something that sounds like a bed pan. Doesn't he wish, she says, laughing. He joins in and this time it's cancer I wish on them, some kind that's inoperable and lasts a long time. He goes quickly down my body, feeling up my chest. No bruising, swelling or other exterior signs of cardiac arrest, he says, and what a big surprise that is. Then palpates my belly. I burp. He looks at me, eyes widening, mouth dropping open a little and again I try desperately to hum, knowing he won't hear it over start me up, but thinking that maybe along with the burp he'll finally be ready to see what's right in front of him. Excuse yourself, Howie. Dr. Arlen says from behind me and chuckles, better watch out, Pete. Those post-mortem belches are the worst. He theatrically fans the air in front of his face, then goes back to what he's doing. He barely touches my groin, although he remarks that the scar on the back of my right leg continues around to the front. Missed the big one though, I think, maybe because it's a little higher than you're looking. No big deal, my little Baywatch buddy, but you also miss the fact that I'm still alive, and that is a big deal. He goes on chanting into the microphone, sounding more and more at ease, sounding in fact a little like Jack Klugman on Quincy M.E., and I know his partner over there behind me, the Pollyanna of the medical community, isn't thinking she'll have to roll the tape back over this part of the exam, other than missing the fact that his first pericardial is still alive, the kid's doing a great job. At last, he says, I think I'm ready to go on, doctor. He sounds tentative, though. She comes over, looks briefly down at me, then squeezes Pete's shoulder. Okay, she says, on with a show. Now I'm trying to stick my tongue out, just that simple kid's gesture of impudence, but it would be enough, and it seems to me I can feel a faint prickling sensation deep within my lips, the feeling you get when you're finally starting to come out of a heavy dose of novocaine. And I can feel a twitch. Now, wishful thinking, just yes, yes, yes, but a twitch is all, and the second time I try, nothing happens. As Pete picks up the scissors, the Rolling Stones move on to hang fire. Hold a mirror in front of my nose! I scream at them. Watch it fog up! Can't you at least do that? Snick, snick, snickety-snick. Pete turns the scissors at an angle, so the light runs down the blade, and for the first time, I'm certain, really certain, that this mad charade is going to go all the way through to the end. The director isn't going to freeze the frame, the ref isn't going to stop the fight in the 10th round. We're not going to pause for a word from our sponsor. Petey Boyz is going to slide those scissors into my gut while I lie here helpless, and then he's going to open me up like a mail-order package from the Harchow collection. He looks hesitantly at Dr. Arlen. No! I howl, my voice reverberating off the dark walls of my skull, but emerging from my mouth, not at all. No! Please! No! She nods. Go ahead. You'll be fine. Um, you want to turn off the music? Yes! Yes! Turn it off! Is it bothering you? Yes, it's bothering him! It screwed him up so completely he thinks his patient is dead! Well, sure, she says, and disappears from my field of vision. A moment later, Mick and Keith are finally gone. I try to make the humming noise and discover a horrible thing. Now, I can't even do that. I'm too scared. Fright has locked down my vocal cords. I can only stare up as she rejoins him, the two of them gazing down at me like pallbearers looking into an open grave. Thanks, he says. Then he takes a deep breath and lifts the scissors, commencing pericardial cut. He slowly brings them down. I see them. Then they're gone from my field of vision. A long moment later, I feel cold steel nestle against my naked upper belly. He looks doubtfully at the doctor. Are you sure you don't? Do you want to make this your field or not, Peter? She asks him with some asperity. You know I do, but then cut. He nods, lips firming. I would close my eyes if I could, but of course, I cannot even do that. I can only steel myself against the pain that's only a second or two away now. Steel myself for the steel. Cutting, he says, bending forward. Wait a sec, she cries. A dimple of pressure just below my solar plexus eases a little. He looks around at her, surprised, upset, maybe relieved that the crucial moment has been put off. I feel her rubber-gloved hand slide around my penis as if she meant to give me some bizarre hand job. Safe sex with the dead, and then she says, you missed this one, Pete. He leans over, looking at what she's found. The scar in my groin, at the very top of my right thigh. Glassy, no poor bowl in the flesh. Her hand is still holding my stuff, holding it out of the way. That's all she's doing. As far as she's concerned, she might as well be holding up a sofa cushion so someone else can see the treasure she's found beneath it. Coins, a lost wallet, maybe the catnip mouse you haven't been able to find, but something is happening. Dear wheelchair Jesus on a chariot-driven crutch, something is happening. And look, she says. Her finger strokes a light, particularly lying down the side of my right testicle. Look at these hairline scars. His testes must have swollen up to damn near the size of grapefruits. Lucky he didn't lose one or both. You bet your you knows, she says, and laughs that mildly suggestive laugh again. Her gloved hand loosens, moves, then pushes down firmly, trying to clear the viewing area. She is doing by accident what you might pay 25 or 30 bucks to have done on purpose, under other circumstances, of course. This is a war wound, I think. Hand me that magnifier, Pete. But shouldn't I, in a few seconds, she says, he's not going anywhere? She's totally absorbed by what she's found. Her hand is still on me, still pressing down, and what was happening feels like it's still happening, but maybe I'm wrong. I must be wrong. Or he would see it, she would feel it. She bends down and now I can see only her green clad back, with the ties from her cap trailing down at like odd pigtails. Now, oh my, I could feel her breath on me down there. Notice the outward radiation, she says. It was a blast wound of some sort, probably ten years ago at least. We could check his military wreck. The door bursts open. Pete cries out in surprise. Dr. Orlin doesn't, but her hand tightens involuntarily. She's gripping me again, and it's all at once like a hellish variation of the old naughty nurse fantasy. Don't cut him up! Someone screams, and his voice is so high and wavery with fright that I barely recognize Rusty. Don't cut him up! There was a snake in his golf bag and it bit Mike! They turn to him, eyes wide, jaws dropped. Her hand is still gripping me, but she's no more aware of that. At least for the time being, Van Peteyboy is aware that he's got one hand clutching the left breast of his scrub gown. It looks like he's the one with the clapped out fuel pump. What are you? Pete begins. Knocked him out flat, Rusty was saying, babbling. He's gonna be okay, I guess, but he can hardly talk. Little brown snake, I never saw one like it in my life. It went under the loading bay. It's under there right now, but that's not the important part. I think it already bit that guy we brought in. I think, holy crap, DACA! What you trying to do? Stroke him back to life? She looks around dazed at first, not sure of what he's talking about. Until she realizes she's now holding my mostly erect junk. And as she screams and snatches the shears out of Pete's limp, gloved hand, I find myself thinking again of that old Alfred Hitchcock TV show. Poor old Joseph Cotton, I think. He only got to cry. Afternot. It's been a year since my experience in autopsy room four, and I've made a complete recovery, although the paralysis was both stubborn and scary. It was a full month before I began to get back the finer motions of my fingers and toes. I still can't play the piano, but then of course I never could. That's a joke. I make no apologies for it. I think that in the first three months after my misadventure, my ability to joke provided a slim but vital margin between sanity and some sort of nervous breakdown. Unless you've actually felt the tip of a pair of post-mortem shears poking into your stomach, you don't know what I mean. Two weeks or so after my close call, a woman on DuPont Street called the Dairy Police to complain of a foul stink coming from the house next door. That house belonged to a bachelor bank clerk named Walter Kerr. Police found the house empty of human life, that is. In the basement they found over 60 snakes of different varieties. About half of them were dead, starvation and dehydration, but many were extremely lively and extremely dangerous. Several were very rare and one was of a species believed to have been extinct since mid-century, according to consulting herpetologists. Kerr failed to show up for work at Dairy Community Bank on August 22, two days after I was bitten. One day after the story, paralyzed man escapes deadly autopsy, the headline read, at one point I was quoted as saying I had been scared stiff, broke in the press. There was a snake for every cage in Kerr's basement menagerie, except for one. The empty cage was unmarked and the snake that popped out of my golf bag, the ambulance orderlies had packed it in with my corpse and had been practicing chip shots out in the ambulance parking area, was never found. The toxin in my bloodstream, the same toxin found to a far lesser degree in orderly Mike Hopper's bloodstream, was documented but never identified. I've looked at a great many pictures of snakes in the last year and have found at least one which has reportedly caused cases of full body paralysis in humans. This is the Peruvian boom slang, a nasty viper which has supposedly been extinct since the 1920s. Dupont Street is less than a half-mile from the Dairy Municipal Golf Course. Most of the intervening land consists of scrubbed woods and vacant lots. One final note, Katie Arlen and I dated for four months, November 1994 through February of 1995. We broke it off by mutual consent due to sexual incompatibility. I was impotent, unless she was wearing rubber gloves. Keep listening, up next Stephen King tells us why he wrote this story and what inspired him to do so. Terror began in January by the light of the full moon. The first scream came from the snowbound railway man who felt the werewolf's fangs ripping in his throat. The next month, there was a scream of ecstatic agony from the woman attacked in her cozy bedroom. Now, scenes of unbelievable horror unfold each time the full moon shines on the isolated main town of Tarker's Mills. No one knows who will be attacked next, but one thing is sure, when the full moon rises, a paralyzing fear sweeps through Tarker's Mills. For snarls that sound like human words can be heard wining through the wind, and all around are the footprints of a monster whose hunger cannot be sated. Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King Hear the entire novel absolutely free on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com In the book, Everything's Eventual, the horror anthology that autopsy room four is from, Stephen King includes a note at the end of the story which I found interesting, and I thought you might as well. This is what he wrote. At some point, I think every writer of scary stories has to tackle the subject of premature burial, if only because it seems to be such a pervasive fear. When I was a kid of seven or so, the scariest TV program going on was Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and the scariest Alfred Hitchcock Presents, my friends and I were in total agreement on this, was the one starring Joseph Cotton as a man who has been injured in a car accident. Injured so badly, in fact, that the doctors think he's dead. They can't even find a heartbeat. They're on the verge of doing a post-mortem on him, cutting him up while he's still alive and screaming inside, in other words, when he produces one single tear to let them know he's still alive. That was touching. But touching isn't in my usual repertoire. When my own thoughts turned to this subject, a more, shall we say, modern method of communicating liveliness occurred to me, and this story was the result. One final note. Regarding the snake, I don't like hell if there's any such reptile as a Peruvian boomslang, but in one of her Miss Marple Capers, Dame Agatha Christie does mention an African boomslang. I just liked the word so much. Boomslang, not African. I had to put it in the story. Thanks for listening. If you like to show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. WeirdDarkness.com is also where you can find information on any of the sponsors you've heard about during the show, find all of my social media, listen to audiobooks I've narrated, sign up for the email newsletter, find other podcasts that I host, including Church of the Undead and a retro-style science fiction podcast called Auditory Anthology. You can visit the store for Weird Darkness merchandise and more. WeirdDarkness.com is also where you can find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression or dark thoughts. Also on the website, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on Tell Your Story. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. All stories on Thriller Thursday episodes are works of fiction and you can find links to the stories of the authors in the show notes. Autopsy Room 4 was written by Stephen King from the book Everything's Eventual. Again, there is a link in the episode description. WeirdDarkness is a registered trademark. Copyright Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Revelation 1, verse 8. Whatever situations I face, I will start, continue and finish them with God's Word. And a final thought. The hard times of today are preparing you for the great opportunities of tomorrow. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.