Did I tell you how much I LOOOOOOOVE Stephen King. If I was a vampire, I would marry him. When I was a kid, we would always watch movie adaptations of Stephen King's books. You may as well remember the horrifying clown in IT, or the window-scratching vampire in SALEM'S LOT. As it is, my family and I enjoy scaring ourselves, and I am always in a look-out for great horror-fest.

Stephen King for me is the only writer of this kind that is worthy of notice (although as kids, I spent my time reading RL Stine, and although King himself didn't like to be typecast as 'Horror writer'). The thing about King is, he always has this knack of reaching into the deeper part of people's consciousness and puting it into words. Like for example in his short story Gramma, when the little boy just found out his creepy gramma -whom he was left with alone to take care of- just died, he went out of her room and waited till his mom came home, but while thinking about mom coming home (as he is scared of his creepy gramma dead no less than when she was alive) his other conscience remind him (in King's classic way);

You forgot to cover her face!
She's dead and you didn't cover her face!

And of course he doesn't want to go inside her room again to cover her face! But isn't it an uncomfortable feeling knowing that you are in a house with a dead person whose face isn't covered? What if she opens her eyes?

I love reading those conscience thing cuz we always have that. Do you ever feel so scared that you're having goosebumps and your jaw hurts, but at the same time your conscience were saying things like "It's here. It's here. Oh my God it's here" and another voice in your head were doing stupid thing like singing KFC ad or asking you to shake your ass? It's difficult to express that craziness of human mind but King EXCELL in that.

In Night Shift (which is an antology of his works, like 'Everything's Eventual' and 'Skeleton Crew'), he gathered all his short stories on every day horror. King always plays with 'What If's'. Like, "What if your vehicles started to have its own life and take over your world?" (as written in 'Trucks') or "What if the man who mows your lawn really loves grass, like REALLY loves it?" (as in 'The Lawnmower Man')

Actually, I prefer 'Everything's Eventual' when talking about King's short stories collection. It gives me the creeps more than Night Shift. And unlike 'Everything's Eventual' King did not write his thoughts on the subject of his stories (which is a shame, I love reading the excerpts of his thoughts on why he chose to write about this or that). Here, King mostly talks about how life can turn around in an event where everything is unexpected. There are about 20 stories altogether but I will choose only five of my likings;

1. Jerusalem's Lot
I think it's a prequel of some sort to the hit adaptation 'Salem's Lot'. It was written in 19th century letters-style, where a guy called Charles Boone who inherited his uncle's home wrote to his friends about a haunted place called Jerusalem's Lot where two of his uncle has a dark history with and a book called De Vermis Mysteriis that was the cause of the tragedy. He later on believes that the book and his existence as the last heir of the Boone family should be ended in order to end the curse in Jerusalem's Lot. Unbeknownst to him that a hundred years later, he wasn't the last heir!

2. The Boogeyman
A guy came to a counsellor to tell all before he submit himself to the police; about how all of his three kids was afraid of the closet in their bedroom and told him there was something in it but was ignored by him until each one of them died in a same manner and all with the same situation; the door to the closet being opened an inch. It made him terrified of any room with a door. He resolved to go to jail because jail doesn't have any doors. He didn't realize there was something fishy about the counsellor and his clean closet...

3. Sometimes They Come Back
What happens if the bullies who killed your brother came back to the school that you teach twenty years later but are still in their teenage kids form and thinks you still owe them?

4. Children of the Corn
A man and his wife were lost while driving to their relatives house and accidentally hit a kid who was stabbed by someone before thrown to the street. While stopping in a corn-farming town to report about it and to dispose the body, they realized that the town is deserted although the corns look fresh and golden, and the only population of the place are children who actually want them to stop so they could present them as a sacrifice to the corn.

5. One For The Road
Still on the subject of Jerusalem's Lot, an old guy reminisce the time when long ago in a snow-stormy night a guy came to his favorite bar and asked him and the bar owner to help him as his car broke down near Jerusalem's Lot where his wife and seven years old daughter are in the car. Both of them, knowing a secret about Jerusalem's Lot came to his assistance as fast as they can, shuddering at the thought at what would happened when the car's battery finally dead and the two ladies got out to find shelter inside the place...      

As King always said; "Let's talk, you and me, let'stalk about fear..."