I chuckled out loud the first time I saw him. He wasn’t at all what I expected. Not what one would call attractive. Kind of geeky, really, Bugs Bunny teeth and Coke-bottle glasses. Shallow of me, I know, but I was young. Only seventeen. He was much older.
I never dreamed that I would relate to him so easily. We were so different. I was nobody, a young girl still in high-school. He was a King, revered and loved by so many. There were some, though, who said he was troubled, twisted. And perhaps they were right. I thought he was brilliant. I fell under his spell and soon we were inseparable.
So many nights I lie in bed shivering in his sick embrace, frightened, yet unable to push him away, my heart racing, by blood pumping. So alive.
And, oh, the adventures he took me on, worlds so very different from my own. So many distant lands, all dark and dangerous. And the things he introduced me to. I shudder to think of them. Monsters do exist. They really do. He made sure of that.
Horrible, horrible. I should have spurned him, but the seduction was too powerful. Instead, I would count the hours, the minutes till we could be reunited.
The years flew by. Ten to be exact. Finally, I decided to move forward with my life. I married and had four children in quick succession. I loved my husband, and my four sons kept me very busy. Still, the lure was strong, and when the opportunities arose, I would slip away to be with him, a stolen hour while the babies napped in the afternoons, clandestine meetings in the dead of night while my husband was sound asleep.
I just couldn’t let him go. Didn’t want to. He had a gruesome grip upon my soul that would pull me back time and again. The excitement of the unknown, the horrid nightmares conjured; blood-sucking vampires, ghosts, demons, the very devil himself. Awful. So very awful.
I loved it. We were two of a kind, this King and I.
I learned of his death quite by accident.
Curled up on my leather sofa one fine morning, I was surfing through the channels when I happened upon the tail-end of a news report. I was shocked to see his picture. Though he was famous worldwide, he wasn’t in the news very often. He was a private sort. I tuned in to what the reporter was saying, something about the cause of his death, some malady. I couldn’t fathom what I was hearing.
I felt my heart turn cold. Could it be? My beloved King? Dead? With a lump lodged firmly in my throat, I scanned the other stations. Nothing.
I was caught off guard at the emotions that consumed me. I didn’t know this man. Not really. I didn’t love him. Not like that. I loved his unusual mind, loved the countless hours we shared. So many late nights, so many dark adventures. There would be no more.
The tears came, the floodgates swinging wide. I wept openly, loud enough to draw my sons away from their morning cartoons.
There they stood, toddlers in diapers, gawping.
I managed to force out that ‘I was fine’ past all the sobbing. This satisfied them enough to send them back to their Ninja Turtles.
Oh, the emptiness I felt. He’d had a greater impact on me than I’d realized. I mourned the loss of a masterful mind. I mourned my King.
Bleary-eyed and broken-hearted, I pulled out my laptop to learn the details.
You can only imagine the relief I felt when I discovered he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead at all!
You see, he’d been struck by a careless driver years earlier while out for a morning walk. It had almost killed him. The news station had simply been reporting the death of the man who had run over him, while flashing a picture of his famous victim.
I was embarrassed at my blunder, but relieved. The King of horror lived! My beloved Stephen King was alive and well.
It’s been many years since the day I mourned Stephen King. I love him still. I think more than ever.
Think I’ll spend a little time with him tonight. His newest novel is calling my name. It’s a thick one. Hours of late-night thrills await me.
It took me a while to catch on for some reason. I thought Elvis for a moment and then dismissed it. I surveyed all the nasty kings like the King of Thailand but couldn't find one that fits the bill, especially in Tennessee.
I like some of Stephen King's work like Misery, very much. And others, that get into too much supernatural unreal. A fellow author here tells me that he hires other authors to write for him using his name.
A true story. When I was in the hospital in 2012, I met a young nurse who said she wanted to write her story. She said she was marrying the grandnephew of Mme. Chiang Kai-shek whose mother was Deborah Paget. After she married Greg Kung, two weeks later, I saw her once at the hospital, still working. Lost touch with her after that, but I hope she writes her story of marrying into Chinese and Hollywood royalty.
Rosetta was born in 1909 as the youngest of ten children. The family had more laughter than money and neighbors would knock on their door to ask, "Can we come in and laugh, too?"
Sherlyn Powell opens up about her love and devotion to her family and the overwhelming repercussion when communication breaks down. Heartbroken and distraught she learns to release her prayer and realize with faith God would reunite her family.
I chuckled out loud the first time I saw him. He wasn’t at all what I expected. Not what one would call attractive. Kind of geeky, really, Bugs Bunny teeth and Coke-bottle glasses. Shallow of me, I know, but I was young. Only seventeen. He was much older.
