Free Uncollected Stories 2003 by Stephen King

underwear," he said, lighting a new
Mexican cigar. He stared at the cooling bodies of Sam Columbine and
Polly Peachtree, and a great wave of sadness swept over him. He threw
away his cigar and lit a joint. Then he walked over to where he had
tethered Stokely, his black stallion. He wrapped his arms around
Stokely's neck and held him close.
"At last, darling," Slade whispered. "We're alone."
After a long while, Slade and Stokely rode off into the sunset in search
of new adventures.
THE BLUE AIR COMPRESSOR
A gruesome short story King wrote when he was in college and then revised a
decade later for a reprint in Heavy Metal . First published in Onan in 1971.
    T
he house was tall, with an incredible slope of shingled roof. As he
walked up toward it from the shore road, Gerald Nately thought it was
almost a country in itself, geography in microcosm. The roof dipped and
rose at varying angles above the main building and two strangely-angled
wings; a widow's walk skirted a mushroom-shaped cupola which looked
toward the sea; the porch, facing the dunes and lusterless September
scrubgrass, was longer than a Pullman car and screened in. The high
slope of roof made the house seem to beetle its brows and loom above
him. A Baptist grandfather of a house.
    He went to the porch and after a moment of hesitation, through the
screen door to the fanlighted one beyond. There was only a wicker
chair, a rusty porch swing, and an old discarded knitting basket to watch
him go. Spiders had spun silk in the shadowy upper corners. He
knocked.
    There was silence, inhabited silence. He was about to knock again
when a chair someplace inside wheezed deeply in its throat. It was a
tired sound. Silence. Then the slow, dreadfully patient sound of old,
overburdened feet finding their way up the hall. Counterpoint of cane: Whock...whock...whock... The floorboards creaked and whined. A
shadow, huge and unformed in the pearled glass, bloomed on the
fanlight. Endless sound of fingers laboriously solving the riddle of
chain, bolt, and hasp lock. The door opened. "Hello," the nasal voice
said flatly. "You're Mr. Nately. You've rented the cottage. My husband's
cottage."
"Yes," Gerald said, his tongue swelling in his throat. "That's right.
    And you're – "
"Mrs. Leighton," the nasal voice said, pleased with either her
quickness or her name, though neither was remarkable. "I'm Mrs.
Leighton."
    this woman is so goddam fucking big and old she looks like oh jesus
christ print dress she must be six-six and fat my god shes fat as a hog
can't smell her white hair long white hair her legs those redwood trees
she could be a tank she could kill me her voice is out of any context like
a kazoo jesus if i laugh i can't laugh can she be seventy god how does
she walk and the cane her hands are bigger than my feet like a goddam
tank she could go through oak oak for christs sake.
"You write." She hadn't offered him in.
    "That's about the size of it," he said, and laughed to cover his own
sudden shrinking from that metaphor.
"Will you show me some after you get settled?" she asked. Her eyes
seemed perpetually luminous and wistful. They were not touched by the
age that had run riot in the rest of her
wait get that written down
    image: "age had run riot in her with luxuriant fleshiness: she was like a
wild sow let loose in a great and dignified house to shit on the carpet,
gore at the Welsh dresser and send the crystal goblets and wine-glasses
all crash-atumble, to trample the wine colored divans to lunatic puffs of
springs and stuffing, to spike the mirrorbright finish of the great hall
floor with barbarian hoofprints and flying puddles of urine" okay shes there its a story i feel her
    body, making it sag and billow.
"If you like," he said. "I didn't even see the cottage from the Shore
Road, Mrs. Leighton. Could you tell me where – "
"Did you drive in?"
"Yes. I left my car over there.'' He pointed beyond the dunes, toward
the road.
A smile,