The Reaper's Image

This story is about two men who were transporting an antique mirrow from the

first floor of an old museum to the fifth.  Their names were Spangler and Carlin.  This

mirror had a history of being haunted, and some people would look into the mirror and see

a hooded figure standing behind them.  This figure was presumed to be Death, and

whenever someone would see this figure they were never seen again. 

Carlin spends the

whole story trying to convice Spangler that this is really true, but Spangler just calls Carlin

crazy.  Finally, near the end of the story, Spangler looks in the mirror and sees a dark

inperfection in the corner, which he mistakes for friction tape.  When Carlin tells him that

there is no friction tape on the mirror, Spangler becomes sick and leaves for the bathroom.

The story ends with Carlin waiting for Spangler to return.

I thought that this story was very good, because it started off really slow and

worked it's way into a really interesting plot.  I liked the end because it never really

finished, it left the ending up to the reader.  This seems to be a common theme in a lot of

Stephen King's stories.  He likes to leave the reader in suspense, and keep them

wondering.

Here There Be Tygers

This story is about a little boy named Charles who is in elementary school.  He has

to go to the bathrrom really bad, but he is afraid to ask because the teacher does not like

him.  Finally the teacher sees him squirming and asks him if he needs to use the restroom.

He says yes and is very embarassed in front of the class, so he leaves quickly.  When he

steps into the bathroom, he sees a tiger lying in the corner, and it looks hungry.  He goes

back outside and sits there for a while wondering what he should do.  His friend Kenny

finally comes up to him because his teacher noticed that he was gone a long time.  Charles

tells him that there is a tiger in the bathroom, but Kenny does not believe him.  Kenny

goes into the bathroom and does not come back out.  Then even later, his teacher comes

and starts yelling at him.  She goes into the bathroom and she doesn't come back out

either.  The story ends with Charles coming back to class and reading a story about a

rodeo.

This is another story that ends really abruptly.  It was strange because after

knowing that his friend and his teacher were both killed by a tiger, he goes back to class

and begins reading his book.  I thought that this was a decent story, although I didn't

enjoy it as much as some of the others.  The one part that I did find interesting though,

was the fact that it never really explained why a tiger would be lingering in a bathroom

anyway.  I like that about these short stories, they never really make a lot of sense.

Cain Rose Up

This story is about a guy named Garrish who had just finished finals in college and

was preparing to go home.  His friend and him had taken the test just minutes before the

story began, and both of them felt as if they had not done a good job.  Garrish was a 4.0

student, never doing bad in anything.  His room was always organized and it seemed as

though he had his entire life together.  But the night before the final, Garrish went down

and got his gun and hid it in his dorm room.  After the test, he sits up in his room and

begins shooting people with the idea that if you don't eat the world, the world eats you.

The story ends with Garrish shooting people, and a bunch of Garrish's friends standing

outside his door, and they all think he killed himself.

This was a really odd story.  It starts off really normal, with Garrish speaking with

his classmates about a test that they just took.  He goes to his room like everything is

normal, and then all of a sudden he begins quoting Cain and shooting people from his

window.  A very odd story, if not somewhat disturbing, much like most of his other short

stories.

The Wedding Gig

This story is about a man who was in a jazz group of five musicians.  One day

while they are playing in their usual club, a ganster comes in and pulls aside the main

character.  The gangster Mike Scollay asks the main character if he and his band will play

for the wedding of his sister.  He will pay two hundred dollars for this, which was a lot of

money in the 1930's.  When asked what the catch is, Scollay proceeds to tell him that his

sister is extremely fat, and she is marrying an Italian while she is Irish.  Scollay warns him

that he hates it when people laugh, so the main character tells the band this before they go

to the wedding.  At the wedding everything was going fine until about 8pm, when

someone from a rival gang of Greeks came in and delivered a message from the boss.  He

said that this marriage was a joke, and everyone laughed at his sister.  Scollay runs out and

gets killed by the Greeks waiting outside.  Then the story moves into the future, where it

turns out that the over wieght sister became a crime boss and was responsible for the

death of theGreek boss, and overturned two other rival gangs.

This was the one story that was really different from the other ones.  He wrote this

story in a more understandable fashion.  I think that the main theme to this story was

revenge, because after recieving ridicule and having her brother killed, she goes on a

killing rampage and gets back at all the people that crossed her at one point in time or

another.

Morning Deliveries

This story is about a sick twisted milkman who enjoys savotaging the items that he

delivers to peoples houses.  This story is different because it kept describing very minute

details, such as the ant finding food, or the squirell finding some material for a nest.  This

milkman seems perfectly normal, but as the story progressing he starts putting tarantulas

in chocolate milk and poisonous gases inside "empty" milk bottles.  This story was very

strange and confused me.

This story was extremely strange and somewhat disturbing.  It didn't make any sense to

me, and out of the blue some psychotic milkman is dropping tarantulas in peoples

chocolate milk.  This story is a perfect example of Stephen King's sick, yet very

interesting mind.  It was really odd, but I thought it was a decent play short story.