This is one I skipped because I judged a book by the cover and didn’t want to read a “bondage story.” Damn if it wasn’t one of the tightest King books I’ve ever read.
After I had read *The Stand* as a teenager, I told my dad he should read it. He is mildly dyslexic and therefore has a hard time consuming a book unless it is read aloud and this was a couple decades ago when audiobooks were not as readily available and sometimes prohibitively expensive. So I would read aloud quite a lot of different books to my dad at the time, including a good amount of the Dark Tower books.
Anyway, I was about 14, reading to my dad the whole episode with Trashcan Man and the Kid where >!the Kid rapes Trash with the barrel of his gun!< and I remember that made my dad go “What the fuck?!” I imagine having his teenaged son recount to him such a >!graphically sexually violent!< scene added to his discomfort.
I agree with /u/15162842, it's so sweet that you read to your dad, you're a great son.
Your story made me think of my brother in law, who is blind. My sister in law will describe movies and shows to him as they watch, which makes me wonder if they've ever watched something like Mulholland Drive, and how she would describe the scenes there.
For those of us who are, let me say...older, The Kid didn't exist. He was not in The Stand. Unless you wanted to read Complete and Unabridged, he still doesn't exist.
The Kid was cut entirely from the original book. I only read it once, my father had a copy of it and I was curious to see how it was different, but IIRC there's an old man who drives Trashcan Man part of the way west and Trashcan Man was able to fend off his advances. Since *that* scene is one I generally skip when reading The Stand, I thought I might prefer the book without it. But, it turns out I really missed all the stuff that was cut. And quite frankly, The Kid is just so delightfully bat shit crazy that I rather missed him too, *that* scene aside!
I just reread The stand on kindle a few months ago and I was shaking my head half the time. Read the first time in 84’ then the same version again (cause it was mine) in 95’. I had to research that nonsense. Now I wish I hadn’t given away my collection.
Oh man, you gave away the original version of The Stand?? Never mind not being to read it anymore, it might well be worth something now since you can't get the abridged version anymore. That's gotta sting . . .
Yes. Yes it does. We won’t even talk about the original fat paperback dark tower book set I drove all over to get the minute they came out. At least my daughter has those
Just hope she hangs onto them!! I lost a bunch of first edition hard covers that I inherited when my father died. First my mother told me her boyfriend was borrowing them, but when I asked for them back, turns out my mother *gave* him the books and he gave them all away. Cujo, Misery, Desperation, Hearts in Atlantis, and probably more published after 2000. I completely lost my shit when I found out -- even if he thought he owned them, if he didn't want them anymore why the *hell* didn't he offer them to me first??
I loaned daughter in law insomnia. Omg. She got into it with my son and moved out. Left my cast iron skillets (another loaner) and that book on my back patio and didn’t tell me. They literally lived next door in a townhouse complex. It rained for like a week before I found them. I was so glad they broke up.
SAME! i was working and one of the only people in the store at 5am, pulling the top pans off of the dutch pies that were in the oven. I had to take a second to make sure i wasn’t careless to burn myself bc i froze and went “what the fuck”. Walked into the freezer for a minute to try to shake the many complex feelings.
What i was doing was so unrelated but it’s always been weird to me that i remember that moment with such clarity. I remember kinda chuckling to myself and saying “its way too early for this shit”
ETA: audio book listener
This is it for me as well. It has probably been 15 years since I read The Stand, but more than anything I remember reading that part and just thinking "what the fuck?".
I was raised by my grandma, who happened to be blind, so I read her a lot of books, too. She did audiobooks, but it was like special bonding time when I'd read to her. She listened to The Stand on her own, but I got to read her the Dark Tower series and the Flowers in the Attic series. Now that was awkward
The scene in It where dude kills his son with the recoil less hammer. The scene in Salems lot where the trailer park lady beats her baby because it won't stop crying. Any and all king child abuse descriptions always horrifying me. The sexual abuse in heralds game. He doesn't shy away from these real life traumatic topics and it would be tacky if he wasn't so damn good at writing the scenes
For the father in IT, I think that was pennywise given he can pretty much possess other people like Beverlys father. And that's what I was talking about in my post. And no, he does not hold back. His stories reflect human nature and how horrible it is while also being scary and chilling
I never got the impression that Bev's father was possessed in the strict sense of the word. More that, because of the proximity to Pennywise, Derry was a town that brought out the worst in people.
I didn’t read that as possession, per se. More that he was heavily influenced by IT, and that he allowed himself to be because IT’s influence confirmed his own beliefs and fears.
I had the same feeling about the neighbors who refused to see kids in trouble; there’s one who folds his newspaper and goes inside.
Possession implies that the possessed have no volition or responsibility. I’ve always thought that the adults around Derry aren’t actually possessed; they’re influenced to do what they actually want to do already. They share responsibility for what they do.
I've been reading King since 1992, but I somehow missed the Lawnmower Man and basically avoided it because the movie was so bad.
A couple years ago, I got it on audiobook for a road trip.
When the reveal happens midway through (you know the one) I actually started giggling out loud like I was in middle school again.
It was so wild, so unexpected, so deeply King from *that era* of his career. I just fucking loved it. I sometimes go to sleep with the audiobook on because it tickles me so much.
Me too, although the Dresden files is also a nice choice to sleep. The voices of these two actors are just so amazing and I’m so familiar with the stories that I just slide on off to sleep.
I don't remember reading the book either... I do remember the terrible movie though. I was a kid so I was disappointed that the movie wasn't about some guy running around mowing down people
I call 90's King his "metal" era just because he wrote some of his wildest shit then: Desperation and The Regulators being the best examples. The most fun stuff!
The scene in duma key when the dad shoots the harpoon to hit the creature taking his daughter, but instead impales his own daughter through the eye. He screams so hard his eyes bleed. That scene haunts me to this day and was a total WHAT THE FUCK moment
Thank you for the correction. Read it in 2009. Yes either way, just as terrifying and horrendous scene. Definitely one of the biggest WTF moments I've ever read.
I stopped reading King long ago, except for rereads of my favorites. His later works got hard for me to read without a dictionary by my side....I mean, I KNOW you are a great writer now, but do you HAVE to use a thesaurus on every sentence?....some of us are not that intelligent, even though we love your work, plus a lot of his work seemed to start running along the same storylines...pretty much the same reason I quit reading Koontz.
But yeah, mostly, I could not do horror anymore after I got a certain age, with certain life experiences that happened, I have not even been able watched a horror movie in 30 years at least, much less delve into a horror novel.....my imagination has always been too much for me and horror movies by the time I reached my 40s......the movie Alien really did me in....I didn't sleep much for awhile after that, and still watched horror after Alien, but still suffered sleepless ness a lot afterwards. Silly, I know, but there it is.
*That* scene is the one that, to me, balances and makes sense of the scene between Bev and the boys in the tunnels under Derry.
Her father’s violence, and this unnamed but potent threat of sexual violation that exists around Bev, is rejected in the decision she makes later.
That part actually made me feel sick. That and the scenes with the abusive husband, especially during and after he discovers her affair and the chapter is going through what everyone is having for dinner. Just… No.
Yep, that was the most disturbing scene for me in all of the 40 or so King books I’ve read so far. Pet Sematary is probably just as bad, but I read that one when I was 16, versus reading Salem’s Lot as an almost-40 father of two. Truly, parenthood opens up new vistas of fear.
patrick hockstetter suffocating his baby brother in IT. his part of the novel haunts me to this day.
also, the part of the stand that involves a pistol, the kid, and trashcan man.
Everything involving Patrick Hockstetter was a WTF moment for me. Just every bit because of how damn crazy it was.
Also, you tell me, I tell YOU! I just finished a re-read of the Stand and had forgotten about the Kid and the insanity of his part.
right? he is the definition of a child sociopath! very scary stuff.
hahaha your animation about the second part made me laugh! but seriously…it’s insane! what a fucked up part of the story. i feel so bad for trashy but at the same time, it’s so hard to.
agreed! i’ve listened to the audiobook version and HONESTLY i had to turn the volume down so much i could barely hear that specific part (i’d read it before, so i knew what happened). so unsettling because yes, steven weber does a phenomenal job at narrating that story! he really paints a picture of
Patrick was so frighteningly *absent* that even IT had a hard time finding something that scared him. It took a while for the physical manifestations of IT to assume a form with Patrick.
For some reason the most brutal scene I can think of in King is in The Stand. It's one of the early chapters with Lloyd, when he was running around with Poke Freeman. They wanted to fake a robbery or something, so they tied some guy up, taped his mouth shut. Then Lloyd, all faking sadness and regret was like, shit there's nothing we can do for this guy--and taped up his nose. They just stand there watching him suffocate.
That's like.. the worst thing I can imagine happening to me lol. The realization that comes over the guy when he realizes he's helpless and knows they're gonna kill him. So fucked.
See it’s always the possible things that scare me. I mean I get scared by the supernatural stuff, but it doesn’t haunt me afterwards.
But the possible…
For me the worst is the Oatley Tap in The Talisman. It’s an actual, real-life trap a person can fall into.
And the first part of Desperation… before you get to know for sure about the cop… some of the scariest writing I’ve ever read because it *can* and probably *has* happened.
Ya it’s honestly indefensible 😂 there could have been another way to re-establish their connection and get them out of the sewers. Oh well, just one strange part of an overall excellent novel
I find it defensible. As a kid (11ish?) reading it, it made sex seem powerful, mysterious, something to be careful and sacred with. It honestly was a great introduction to the idea of intimacy.
Yes, it hits different through adult eyes, but it gave me a heathier attitude to sex than, say, watching a bunch of porn.
Brave decision that it was published though.
I don't like this scene at all, but I can see an argument for saying that, as an abused girl, it gave Bev her own power back over her body and made sex an act of love and friendship rather than destruction for her.
Right? I read it when I was 12 and wasn't traumatized. I already knew a couple kids who had been sexually active at that age. I was taken back by it being all of them but I got over it pretty quick.
I personally saw it that way as an adult reading the book.. I mean yeah it's fucked up and bold that he wrote it but it made sex seem like a very powerful thing.. I totally agree with you.
I feel like I’ve commented this before on a similar post but when Christine breaks into Darnell’s house and comes up some stairs to get him. Blew my fucking mind and was the main thing I would have wanted to see in the movie but the whole Darnell subplot is cut. Honorable mention to when the eyes open on the narrators chest at the end of I am the doorway. Can’t remember which short story collection.
I did post asking what was the most disgusting thing in a Stephen King book but now I wanna know the most fucked up thing (IDK if that's the same thing) but I agree.
Brady Hartsfield on several occasions... But the intro to Mr. Mercedes is pretty gruesome. also Norman Daniel's throughout Rose Madder. He is a horrible human..
Different kind of "what the fuck" but that moment in Insomnia where you find out Atropos is responsible for Gage Creed getting killed in Pet Sematary made me stop and just go "oh fuck you" to Stephen King.
Same. I felt like I spent hours listening to all this entire man’s boring life story on the promise that the ending was superb, only to be very disappointed. I don’t believe in an afterlife, plus the description was so over the top that it was laughable. I did love what happened to all those who had been healed in the end. I wasn’t expecting that.
The first time I read Pet Cemitary, i threw the book across the room.
... when the boy was hit by the truck, and then wasn't... and then was.
SK got me but good on that one.
Omg this scene caused me to have to put down the book and I haven’t been able to bring myself back to it to this day (tbf that was during the pandemic and my brain decided at that point it wanted mUCH lighter material to pass the time) I’ll get back to it eventually
I’ll never lose the image of when Nadine Got R***d by Flagg and he transformed into a fucking Demon with yellow eyes. Only thing I’ve read by King that’s so fucked I wish I hadn’t.
There’s definitely one of those moments in every king novel I’ve read so far though lol.
the other thing that got me about that passage was that afterward "he couldn't remember exactly *what* he had done to her." but he thinks "oh well she's just an incubator anyway". 💀💀
I'd never read this one before and just finished the audiobook two days ago! I was not expecting anything remotely close to what happened, and I just sat there and cried afterwards. It didn't help that while reading this part, the audiobook narrator was... I don't even know what words to use... intense and breathless?
I was enjoying it at least for the stuff about AA and recovery (the MC may be the least interesting character he’s ever written) but then BAM, one of the worse things I’ve ever read happens. I did the audiobook like you did, and he… really went for it.
No one I know has read it though, and even if they had, no one would want to talk about it. Glad I can finally rant a little about it.
I'm currently reading The Waste Lands, and Idk man, the part where Susannah gets raped by the demon stands out strong. I always expect some effed up plot points from King but was not expecting that one.
Tad is the little boy of the two main characters in the story. I agree Cujo is a lot. Have you read pet cemetery? That one hits a lot harder as a parent then it did before I was 😅
It still hits horribly hard and Cujo will do the same. But if you do decide to try it some day, just know he was a good dog. He just got delt a really, really bad hand 🥺
Most fucked up I read in 30+ King books
Short stories: The Lawnmower man. What a joy to read
Novel: Pet Sematary - see below
>! Undead Gage stabbing Judd while screaming "I will fuck you like you fucked me". For a moment I thought Judd had molested Gage, but I'm not sure this had happened as Gage was merely a suit and was possessed by an evil spirit. !<
The descriptions of what the boogyman did to little babies and the sounds they made were brutal for me. (I did read that one for the first time when my first child was 1 years old so that most likely made it affect me more personally)
I listen to SK in my car. I regularly say "what the fuck, Stephen!". It's mostly when something insanely gory comes out of nowhere, or when it literally goes from 0 to 100. I'll be driving, enjoying my chapter, there's *some* suspense, then suddenly someone's head's blown off/their intensines left the window/etc.
Desperation scene with the two characters who are having hallucinations about having violent sex with spiders, wolves, scorpions, snakes etc
That was a wild audiobook listen
Almost all of Pet Semetary. That book hit me hard when I first read it. It may just be the tone or something else but it hit me harder than anything someone could consider more disturbing.
For me, the murder in 1922. It was just so visceral and disturbing, so unnatural. I could not imagine the trauma the boy was going through. Just crazy.
Everything mentioned already but it always makes me giggle and wtf to myself when he describes men getting erections of penises for NO reason. Like in a newer novella he's describing a character and he says, "skinny penis swinging" was listening to the audiobook on a road trip with my husband and we both lost it.
“The grey Mercedes” in Mr. Mercedes. Brian Rusk in Needful Things and how he sees his end. Raider in Needful Things. (Spoilers coming) The part in Fairytale where he asks the girl “is that your c*nt I’m smelling or your ass?” And she says “probably both”. The entire character of Brady Hartsfield honestly.
Two moments in Rose Madder. The first when Rose mentions Norman violating her with his tennis racquet and the second is when the reader is in Norman’s perspective and he drops the bomb that he was Sexually abused. Actually had to stop to just digest WTF I’d just heard.
There was a whole other thread about Survivor Type but yeah that one. Man slowly eats himself a piece at a time while stranded and starving, and oh goody, he keeps a diary documenting his descent into madness.
The ending of "The Jaunt" was pretty messed up too.
Patrick Hockstetter in "IT" when he puts the dog in the fridge to die and repeatedly comes back to check if it's dying. Horrific. It still makes me feel physically awful to this day. He was a horrifying character.
Like the entirety of Geralds Game isn’t a giant WTF lol
So I heard and I got it in my collection, I don't know if I should be anticipating to read it or anxious
Yes.
It was a great read but my Lord did it get under my skin.
I see what you did there. I read extreme horror but this is the only time I’ve had to take a break to breathe during a book.
When I first read it, I did not expect it to be as extreme as it is. One of my favorites, though.
This is one I skipped because I judged a book by the cover and didn’t want to read a “bondage story.” Damn if it wasn’t one of the tightest King books I’ve ever read.
The part where the husband's face gets eaten got me.
After I had read *The Stand* as a teenager, I told my dad he should read it. He is mildly dyslexic and therefore has a hard time consuming a book unless it is read aloud and this was a couple decades ago when audiobooks were not as readily available and sometimes prohibitively expensive. So I would read aloud quite a lot of different books to my dad at the time, including a good amount of the Dark Tower books. Anyway, I was about 14, reading to my dad the whole episode with Trashcan Man and the Kid where >!the Kid rapes Trash with the barrel of his gun!< and I remember that made my dad go “What the fuck?!” I imagine having his teenaged son recount to him such a >!graphically sexually violent!< scene added to his discomfort.
I think it’s super sweet that you read books to your dad! And I’m not surprised by his reaction to that part lol
I agree with /u/15162842, it's so sweet that you read to your dad, you're a great son. Your story made me think of my brother in law, who is blind. My sister in law will describe movies and shows to him as they watch, which makes me wonder if they've ever watched something like Mulholland Drive, and how she would describe the scenes there.
I remember reading that part too and having the same reaction. I remember I immediately reread it to make sure I read that correctly 🤣
Literally came here to say this!
This is the one and only scene that truly wtf’s me out of all of King’s stories 😂
For those of us who are, let me say...older, The Kid didn't exist. He was not in The Stand. Unless you wanted to read Complete and Unabridged, he still doesn't exist.
I don't understand this statement.....
The Kid was cut entirely from the original book. I only read it once, my father had a copy of it and I was curious to see how it was different, but IIRC there's an old man who drives Trashcan Man part of the way west and Trashcan Man was able to fend off his advances. Since *that* scene is one I generally skip when reading The Stand, I thought I might prefer the book without it. But, it turns out I really missed all the stuff that was cut. And quite frankly, The Kid is just so delightfully bat shit crazy that I rather missed him too, *that* scene aside!
I just reread The stand on kindle a few months ago and I was shaking my head half the time. Read the first time in 84’ then the same version again (cause it was mine) in 95’. I had to research that nonsense. Now I wish I hadn’t given away my collection.
Oh man, you gave away the original version of The Stand?? Never mind not being to read it anymore, it might well be worth something now since you can't get the abridged version anymore. That's gotta sting . . .
Yes. Yes it does. We won’t even talk about the original fat paperback dark tower book set I drove all over to get the minute they came out. At least my daughter has those
Just hope she hangs onto them!! I lost a bunch of first edition hard covers that I inherited when my father died. First my mother told me her boyfriend was borrowing them, but when I asked for them back, turns out my mother *gave* him the books and he gave them all away. Cujo, Misery, Desperation, Hearts in Atlantis, and probably more published after 2000. I completely lost my shit when I found out -- even if he thought he owned them, if he didn't want them anymore why the *hell* didn't he offer them to me first??
I loaned daughter in law insomnia. Omg. She got into it with my son and moved out. Left my cast iron skillets (another loaner) and that book on my back patio and didn’t tell me. They literally lived next door in a townhouse complex. It rained for like a week before I found them. I was so glad they broke up.
Oh dear god . . . please tell me she at least had the decency to leave them under cover??
I literally remember where I was and what I was doing when I read that scene. Shit stuck w me
SAME! i was working and one of the only people in the store at 5am, pulling the top pans off of the dutch pies that were in the oven. I had to take a second to make sure i wasn’t careless to burn myself bc i froze and went “what the fuck”. Walked into the freezer for a minute to try to shake the many complex feelings. What i was doing was so unrelated but it’s always been weird to me that i remember that moment with such clarity. I remember kinda chuckling to myself and saying “its way too early for this shit” ETA: audio book listener
This is it for me as well. It has probably been 15 years since I read The Stand, but more than anything I remember reading that part and just thinking "what the fuck?".
Just remember: never let a kink become a festish.
Is a festish a fetish that festers?
I was raised by my grandma, who happened to be blind, so I read her a lot of books, too. She did audiobooks, but it was like special bonding time when I'd read to her. She listened to The Stand on her own, but I got to read her the Dark Tower series and the Flowers in the Attic series. Now that was awkward
The way Trash had all those opportunities to flee were painful to read.
The scene in It where dude kills his son with the recoil less hammer. The scene in Salems lot where the trailer park lady beats her baby because it won't stop crying. Any and all king child abuse descriptions always horrifying me. The sexual abuse in heralds game. He doesn't shy away from these real life traumatic topics and it would be tacky if he wasn't so damn good at writing the scenes
The baby Randy parts turned my stomach like nothing else I’ve ever read.
For the father in IT, I think that was pennywise given he can pretty much possess other people like Beverlys father. And that's what I was talking about in my post. And no, he does not hold back. His stories reflect human nature and how horrible it is while also being scary and chilling
I never got the impression that Bev's father was possessed in the strict sense of the word. More that, because of the proximity to Pennywise, Derry was a town that brought out the worst in people.
I didn’t read that as possession, per se. More that he was heavily influenced by IT, and that he allowed himself to be because IT’s influence confirmed his own beliefs and fears. I had the same feeling about the neighbors who refused to see kids in trouble; there’s one who folds his newspaper and goes inside. Possession implies that the possessed have no volition or responsibility. I’ve always thought that the adults around Derry aren’t actually possessed; they’re influenced to do what they actually want to do already. They share responsibility for what they do.
I just assumed he was possessed because it was after the first time they hurt pennywise so he used Him to kill Beverly.
Pennywise doesn't posses anyone. It's more like a sickness that seeps into the town more subtly that makes them do terrible things.
There's also the fact that the only way they got out of the sewer at the end was by having sex with Bev... All of them.
The entirety of the Lawnmower Man
I've been reading King since 1992, but I somehow missed the Lawnmower Man and basically avoided it because the movie was so bad. A couple years ago, I got it on audiobook for a road trip. When the reveal happens midway through (you know the one) I actually started giggling out loud like I was in middle school again. It was so wild, so unexpected, so deeply King from *that era* of his career. I just fucking loved it. I sometimes go to sleep with the audiobook on because it tickles me so much.
High Five. I love going to sleep with audiobooks on. For me, it works much better than white noise or music. It's almost always King.
Me too, although the Dresden files is also a nice choice to sleep. The voices of these two actors are just so amazing and I’m so familiar with the stories that I just slide on off to sleep.
And the movie isn’t even *close* to the story.
They share the same title, that's it.
King actually had to sue to get his name taken off that abomination
I don't remember reading the book either... I do remember the terrible movie though. I was a kid so I was disappointed that the movie wasn't about some guy running around mowing down people
I call 90's King his "metal" era just because he wrote some of his wildest shit then: Desperation and The Regulators being the best examples. The most fun stuff!
Imagine reading this after having seen the movie
Imagine seeing the movie after reading the short story.
Imagine not having seen the movie at all (me 🙈)
This is good.
It is one of his most bizzare stories. Totally wtf vibes
Looked it up just because you said this. *What was that* *What drugs was King taking at that point*
some good grass 😉
The scene in duma key when the dad shoots the harpoon to hit the creature taking his daughter, but instead impales his own daughter through the eye. He screams so hard his eyes bleed. That scene haunts me to this day and was a total WHAT THE FUCK moment
I have entirely blanked this out from my mind, that's not how I remember it ending at all!
That's not the ending 🫤
That's fun 🥰☺️
I just finished this and she gets shot through the throat, not the eye. Fucked up either way. Book was a page turner though.
Thank you for the correction. Read it in 2009. Yes either way, just as terrifying and horrendous scene. Definitely one of the biggest WTF moments I've ever read.
Note to self: ...don't read THIS damn book.....
You gotta, it’s a great read! My all time favourite King book. Sunlit horror just hits different
I stopped reading King long ago, except for rereads of my favorites. His later works got hard for me to read without a dictionary by my side....I mean, I KNOW you are a great writer now, but do you HAVE to use a thesaurus on every sentence?....some of us are not that intelligent, even though we love your work, plus a lot of his work seemed to start running along the same storylines...pretty much the same reason I quit reading Koontz. But yeah, mostly, I could not do horror anymore after I got a certain age, with certain life experiences that happened, I have not even been able watched a horror movie in 30 years at least, much less delve into a horror novel.....my imagination has always been too much for me and horror movies by the time I reached my 40s......the movie Alien really did me in....I didn't sleep much for awhile after that, and still watched horror after Alien, but still suffered sleepless ness a lot afterwards. Silly, I know, but there it is.
Patrick Hockstetter, his baby brother, Henry Bowers, and a junkyard
Bev hiding in the car, terrified, because she knew they'd do *something* to her with their *things* scared the shit out of me.
*That* scene is the one that, to me, balances and makes sense of the scene between Bev and the boys in the tunnels under Derry. Her father’s violence, and this unnamed but potent threat of sexual violation that exists around Bev, is rejected in the decision she makes later.
And then the part where the baby was dead and she was trying to feed him.
Salems lot
Yeah. It was in Salem's Lot. That part gave me chills.
That part actually made me feel sick. That and the scenes with the abusive husband, especially during and after he discovers her affair and the chapter is going through what everyone is having for dinner. Just… No.
Yep, that was the most disturbing scene for me in all of the 40 or so King books I’ve read so far. Pet Sematary is probably just as bad, but I read that one when I was 16, versus reading Salem’s Lot as an almost-40 father of two. Truly, parenthood opens up new vistas of fear.
It sure does!
40something mother of four. Listened to Salem’s Lot last year, don’t even remember that scene. That’s how lackluster that book was to me.
patrick hockstetter suffocating his baby brother in IT. his part of the novel haunts me to this day. also, the part of the stand that involves a pistol, the kid, and trashcan man.
Everything involving Patrick Hockstetter was a WTF moment for me. Just every bit because of how damn crazy it was. Also, you tell me, I tell YOU! I just finished a re-read of the Stand and had forgotten about the Kid and the insanity of his part.
right? he is the definition of a child sociopath! very scary stuff. hahaha your animation about the second part made me laugh! but seriously…it’s insane! what a fucked up part of the story. i feel so bad for trashy but at the same time, it’s so hard to.
Steven Weber opting in the audiobook to just read that straight with no inflection to illustrate the hollowness of Patrick was haunting.
agreed! i’ve listened to the audiobook version and HONESTLY i had to turn the volume down so much i could barely hear that specific part (i’d read it before, so i knew what happened). so unsettling because yes, steven weber does a phenomenal job at narrating that story! he really paints a picture of
Patrick was so frighteningly *absent* that even IT had a hard time finding something that scared him. It took a while for the physical manifestations of IT to assume a form with Patrick.
For some reason the most brutal scene I can think of in King is in The Stand. It's one of the early chapters with Lloyd, when he was running around with Poke Freeman. They wanted to fake a robbery or something, so they tied some guy up, taped his mouth shut. Then Lloyd, all faking sadness and regret was like, shit there's nothing we can do for this guy--and taped up his nose. They just stand there watching him suffocate. That's like.. the worst thing I can imagine happening to me lol. The realization that comes over the guy when he realizes he's helpless and knows they're gonna kill him. So fucked.
See it’s always the possible things that scare me. I mean I get scared by the supernatural stuff, but it doesn’t haunt me afterwards. But the possible… For me the worst is the Oatley Tap in The Talisman. It’s an actual, real-life trap a person can fall into. And the first part of Desperation… before you get to know for sure about the cop… some of the scariest writing I’ve ever read because it *can* and probably *has* happened.
That’s bad but I’d say what The Kid does to Trashy with his gun is worse
Yep. Every time someone in this sub says "happy crappy" I remember that scene.
I honestly don't remember this.
wasn't in the original, was only in the expanded version
I mean if you have a choice between being sexually assaulted or murdered...
Didn't he call it pokerized. My last read of this was probably 20 years ago but this part stuck with me.
He did. And that made it even more fucked up for some reason.
Exactly. Poke was fucked up.
The random running of a train on Bev in the sewers. Classic “wtf did I just read” 😂
I don’t think we needed to know that Ben’s dick was bigger than the other boys’ either. 😆
I read that as a kid and it was borderline traumatic.
Ya it’s honestly indefensible 😂 there could have been another way to re-establish their connection and get them out of the sewers. Oh well, just one strange part of an overall excellent novel
I find it defensible. As a kid (11ish?) reading it, it made sex seem powerful, mysterious, something to be careful and sacred with. It honestly was a great introduction to the idea of intimacy. Yes, it hits different through adult eyes, but it gave me a heathier attitude to sex than, say, watching a bunch of porn. Brave decision that it was published though.
I don't like this scene at all, but I can see an argument for saying that, as an abused girl, it gave Bev her own power back over her body and made sex an act of love and friendship rather than destruction for her.
Right? I read it when I was 12 and wasn't traumatized. I already knew a couple kids who had been sexually active at that age. I was taken back by it being all of them but I got over it pretty quick.
I did not read the book as a kid, so I can understand how that would change your perspective on it. It’s objectively weird though.
I personally saw it that way as an adult reading the book.. I mean yeah it's fucked up and bold that he wrote it but it made sex seem like a very powerful thing.. I totally agree with you.
I read it for the first time as a teen, and had a very similar reaction to yours.
The part with Raider in Needful Things got me pretty good. Had to stop for a moment before continuing.
I always skip it. Same with the animal scenes in Apt Pupil.
You just gave me another reason to skip over that one.
I really hated that part
I feel like I’ve commented this before on a similar post but when Christine breaks into Darnell’s house and comes up some stairs to get him. Blew my fucking mind and was the main thing I would have wanted to see in the movie but the whole Darnell subplot is cut. Honorable mention to when the eyes open on the narrators chest at the end of I am the doorway. Can’t remember which short story collection.
How does a car go up the stairs
Read the book but >! It fucking destroys his house. I kinda remember it being described as Christine chewing up the stairs!<
I am the doorway is in Nightshift
I did post asking what was the most disgusting thing in a Stephen King book but now I wanna know the most fucked up thing (IDK if that's the same thing) but I agree.
My Stephen King WTF moment was in The Drawing of the Three in the Dark Tower series: Susannah’s honk mafah tirade. That blew me away.
Oh god yeah that was something… I listened to audiobook and every time was like good god please stop.
Omg yeah I was listening to this book and told my husband. I was like, "this feels racist" haha.
Let's hope if a series gets made, all of that gets seriously downplayed.
The entire description of the kids body in The Outsider was... rough.
Oh yes, it was. I skip it on re-reads, since it already lives in my head, rent free.
Lady fingers taste like lady fingers
hey man I'm just a stoned crab could you spare a dollar
Brady Hartsfield on several occasions... But the intro to Mr. Mercedes is pretty gruesome. also Norman Daniel's throughout Rose Madder. He is a horrible human..
Yes. His brothers last word scene haunts
Different kind of "what the fuck" but that moment in Insomnia where you find out Atropos is responsible for Gage Creed getting killed in Pet Sematary made me stop and just go "oh fuck you" to Stephen King.
The ending of Revival
Made me say "WTF that's it?". I guess I went in with too high of expectations after seeing it constantly hyped in this sub
It's such a leap from a fairly regular run of the mill story. Straight into the deep end of existential apocalyptic crisis!
Same. I felt like I spent hours listening to all this entire man’s boring life story on the promise that the ending was superb, only to be very disappointed. I don’t believe in an afterlife, plus the description was so over the top that it was laughable. I did love what happened to all those who had been healed in the end. I wasn’t expecting that.
This is the best answer. 10000%
So fucking bleak. I think about it late at night sometimes when I can’t sleep
The first time I read Pet Cemitary, i threw the book across the room. ... when the boy was hit by the truck, and then wasn't... and then was. SK got me but good on that one.
> Cemitary This is an amazing misspelling of a word that's *already* misspelled in the title of the book.
The whole The Long Walk. It’s one of y favorites but what the fuck
Junior Rennie in Under The Dome and his dead girlfriends in the closet.
Omg this scene caused me to have to put down the book and I haven’t been able to bring myself back to it to this day (tbf that was during the pandemic and my brain decided at that point it wanted mUCH lighter material to pass the time) I’ll get back to it eventually
Yeah it’s sooooo dark I had to put it down for a minute too. The rest of the book is worth it to pick up again tho I think
Brady Hartsfiled's mom. Ugh the description was horrible. And in Dr. Sleep scene with his one night stand's daughter. Horrific.
I’ll never lose the image of when Nadine Got R***d by Flagg and he transformed into a fucking Demon with yellow eyes. Only thing I’ve read by King that’s so fucked I wish I hadn’t. There’s definitely one of those moments in every king novel I’ve read so far though lol.
Then after he was trying to get her to eat by putting pieces of rabbit in her mouth.
the other thing that got me about that passage was that afterward "he couldn't remember exactly *what* he had done to her." but he thinks "oh well she's just an incubator anyway". 💀💀
The Library Policeman. The scene outside the library in the bushes left me like "WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK"
I'd never read this one before and just finished the audiobook two days ago! I was not expecting anything remotely close to what happened, and I just sat there and cried afterwards. It didn't help that while reading this part, the audiobook narrator was... I don't even know what words to use... intense and breathless?
I was enjoying it at least for the stuff about AA and recovery (the MC may be the least interesting character he’s ever written) but then BAM, one of the worse things I’ve ever read happens. I did the audiobook like you did, and he… really went for it. No one I know has read it though, and even if they had, no one would want to talk about it. Glad I can finally rant a little about it.
The Patrick Hocksetter parts in IT. What a psycho
The ending to under the dome
Yes... Too bad because the rest of the book is seriously amazing!
I'm currently reading The Waste Lands, and Idk man, the part where Susannah gets raped by the demon stands out strong. I always expect some effed up plot points from King but was not expecting that one.
Flying leaches in IT. It is the stuff of nightmares.
Tad 🤷🏻♀️ iykyk
There is a sequel to Cujo in his newest short stories!!! Just read it yesterday, I think it’s called Rattlesnake?
I did not even see that one coming.
I want to know. Elaborate
I don’t wanna spoil of you plan on reading Cujo but >!he dies at the end. Overheats and seizes while his mom is fighting Cujo!<
Who/what is Tad? Also I’ve already decided I’m not reading Cujo because the premise just hits me where it hurts.
Tad is the little boy of the two main characters in the story. I agree Cujo is a lot. Have you read pet cemetery? That one hits a lot harder as a parent then it did before I was 😅
I’m not a parent, so it didn’t have the same impact. If I ever have kids, I do not plan on reading Pet Semetary again
It still hits horribly hard and Cujo will do the same. But if you do decide to try it some day, just know he was a good dog. He just got delt a really, really bad hand 🥺
That’s why it will hit so hard for me. He did nothing wrong. I just can’t
Cried my eyes out at 3am.
When bev banged the entire gang in a sewer
Brady Hartsfield. Like any time you had to get in his head or his perspective, he would say or do something beyond fucked up
Several parts of Apt Pupil. I had to put that book down a couple of times. And Patrick Hocksetter and the fridge. No thank you.
Most fucked up I read in 30+ King books Short stories: The Lawnmower man. What a joy to read Novel: Pet Sematary - see below >! Undead Gage stabbing Judd while screaming "I will fuck you like you fucked me". For a moment I thought Judd had molested Gage, but I'm not sure this had happened as Gage was merely a suit and was possessed by an evil spirit. !<
The descriptions of what the boogyman did to little babies and the sounds they made were brutal for me. (I did read that one for the first time when my first child was 1 years old so that most likely made it affect me more personally)
Dedication, alllll of it.
Is that the one where the maid eats...cream?
I listen to SK in my car. I regularly say "what the fuck, Stephen!". It's mostly when something insanely gory comes out of nowhere, or when it literally goes from 0 to 100. I'll be driving, enjoying my chapter, there's *some* suspense, then suddenly someone's head's blown off/their intensines left the window/etc.
Desperation scene with the two characters who are having hallucinations about having violent sex with spiders, wolves, scorpions, snakes etc That was a wild audiobook listen
Entire book is creepy and awesome. I kinda forgot about that bit til I read ya comment.
The Mist, when they went back to deal with the generator.
Yeah, guess the mist like Pepsi 😂
Almost all of Pet Semetary. That book hit me hard when I first read it. It may just be the tone or something else but it hit me harder than anything someone could consider more disturbing.
For me, the murder in 1922. It was just so visceral and disturbing, so unnatural. I could not imagine the trauma the boy was going through. Just crazy.
Gerald’s Game, all of it. A couple parts of IT with Hockstetter Salem’s Lot with the baby punching.
In *Under the Dome* where people were getting raped left and right.
Junior and his girlfriends in the pantry from under the dome.
The ending of The Jaunt.
When Gage told Judd his wife takes it in the ass in hell, I actually screamed "Holy fucking shit!" In my car at Goodwill parking lot 💀
Lud
What about it? Too many Pubes for your tastes?
Oh my god it's been forever since I've read it. I don't even remember any pubes lol. I mostly remember the rituals...and the soundtrack 😂
Velcro fly
Everything mentioned already but it always makes me giggle and wtf to myself when he describes men getting erections of penises for NO reason. Like in a newer novella he's describing a character and he says, "skinny penis swinging" was listening to the audiobook on a road trip with my husband and we both lost it.
They also randomly piss and shit themselves alllll the time.
Patrick
Obscure one. The dad in The Tommyknockers who…..*traumatic* .. anyway later the older son sends him off to nowhere.
The entire chapter on Patrick Hockstetter.
Zzzip
Dirty Gertie straddling Norman's face and pissing on him. Also Norman giving that guy a handy and then crushing his balls. *Viva ze bool!*
Cat scene from Apt Pupil Death scene from Cat from Hell
The audacity of that death scene in The Cat makes it one of my favorites to this day.
“The grey Mercedes” in Mr. Mercedes. Brian Rusk in Needful Things and how he sees his end. Raider in Needful Things. (Spoilers coming) The part in Fairytale where he asks the girl “is that your c*nt I’m smelling or your ass?” And she says “probably both”. The entire character of Brady Hartsfield honestly.
The whole section with Trashcan Man and the Kid. WTF?
Two moments in Rose Madder. The first when Rose mentions Norman violating her with his tennis racquet and the second is when the reader is in Norman’s perspective and he drops the bomb that he was Sexually abused. Actually had to stop to just digest WTF I’d just heard.
The end of Gearld’s Game where it talks about the life of the Moonlight Man…. Wow… 🤯
Tennis Racket; Rose madder.
All the farting and gas in dreamcatcher. I’m not good with that stuff
Ah the shit weasels
It’s been a long time since I read IT, but didn’t Pennywise try to pull a baby down a toilet,breaking it’s back ?
There was a whole other thread about Survivor Type but yeah that one. Man slowly eats himself a piece at a time while stranded and starving, and oh goody, he keeps a diary documenting his descent into madness. The ending of "The Jaunt" was pretty messed up too.
When Duddits changed into an alien/monster thing in Dreamcatcher. Actually, that whole movie is a “WTF did I just watch,” kinda flick.
The ending of The Body makes my heart hurt…
Patrick Hockstetter in "IT" when he puts the dog in the fridge to die and repeatedly comes back to check if it's dying. Horrific. It still makes me feel physically awful to this day. He was a horrifying character.
Nona. "Do you love?"
IT....the er....group scene