 [Larger view] | Riding the Bullet
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Average user rating:  | |
 My Two Cents | |
| Again, King has impressed me with ability to tell those tales. I found this story to be eerie,which is unusual for me as I read a lot of horror. And as Bram Stoker stated in Dracula, "Denn die Todten reiten Schnell" (For the dead "travel" fast) | |
 Great book! | |
| Riding the Bullet was a great book. It was exciting from the beginning to the end. There was never a time where I was bored or when the book was dull. It got right to the action and it was "short but sweet". It was about a man who gets a phone call saying that his mother had a stroke and is in the hopital. Even though he is told it is nothing serious, the man is very worried because his mother is an overweight smoker who is in her mid fifties. The hospital is 100 miles away and his car does not work. He decides to hitch a ride. An old man picks him up. he drives him about halfway there and drops him off near a graveyard. The man begins to walk through the graveyard. As he is doing this, he is also thinking about his mother, and all the things she used to say. One of her favorite sayings was "Fun is fun and done is done". The man looks at a tombstone. It says someone's name, and the date that he died. Underneath of that it said "Fun is fun, and done is done". The man is startled and falls backward. He gets up and then finds a ride with a young man about his age. The man has a button on his shirt that says " I rode The Bullet at Thrill Village." There is something strange about the man. It smells like chemicals in his car, and there is a huge scar going all around his neck. The man soon finds out that the man giving him a ride is dead. The dead man locks the car doors and speeds up. He starts questioning the man. The dead man knows all about the other man and his mother. He knows that she is sick and in the hospital. When the man asks the dead man who he is, the dead man replies, " I am like a messenger, except my job is worse than that of an angel." The dead man tells the other man that he must decide between his mother and him. Whichever one the man chose would live, and the other one would die. The man struggled to think but in the end he said "Take her. Take my mother. Spare me." The dead man reached back and touched the other man's chest. He then pushed him out of the car. When the man woke up he was back in the graveyard. He figured it was just a dream, but then he looked down at his chest and saw a button; the same button that the dead man was wearing. The dead man pinned it on his shirt just before he threw him out of the car. The man is scared and he hitches a ride to the hospital. As he walks in he doesn't know what to think; "Is she alive? Is she dead?" You'll have to read the book to find out how it ends. This was a great book and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes exciting horror books. If you like authors like Stephen King or R.L. Stine then you will love this book. | |
| Possibly the best modern short story | |
| I must say that I am disappointed with most of the reviews I have read for this story. I am most disappointed because I understand why most do not like it. This is the type of story that you would expect to read for an English class. It may not be all that exciting, or extremely intense, but that should not mean that it is not a good story to read. I don't care how many can say that they did not enjoy this story. What you have to remember is that for something to be good it will often be required to be unenjoyable. The themes of this story were beautifully put forward. They were all told by the main character's actions and feelings. Most people I know would not be able to stand this story simply because only about 20% of it was the exciting portion of the story. The climax was practically in the middle. However, so much could be shown by this small portion that there was no way for King to end the story at that point. You may not find this to be an enjoyable work, but I would still suggest it for that reason. When the enjoyment is not the focus of a story, then the focus is placed on the part that will truly matter after it has been read. |
