The King of Nightmares

  Earlier this evening I had the wonderful opportunity to be part of a group that was invited to a video chat with the literary (literally) King of nightmares, Stephen King. The chat was basically questions and answers about his newly released book, "Full Dark, No Stars", but there where other unrelated questions as well. One of these was what childhood books did Mr. King like. His first answer was a Dr. Seuss book called "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins", about a boy who must remove his hat before the King, but every time he does another hat takes its place. Bartholomew is taken away to the castle for not showing respect to the King. He tries and tries and is threatened with death he gets down to 451st hat and the hats begin to change, he is being taken to the highest tower to be thrown off as they are about to toss him to his death he pulls off the 499th hat and the 500th hat is the most magnificent thing the King has ever seen, so Bartholomew is spared and paid 500 gold pieces by the King for the hat. After that last hat Bartholomew's head is bare. I can see why that and things like "Little Red Riding Hood" (for  the gobbling up of Grand mama and the blood and gore the woodsman causes) would cause King to be a bit twisted.
In my child hood I can recall my father sitting in the family car, and while we waited for my mother to finish the grocery shopping, he would tell us fairy tales of  the Brothers Grimm variety, but the one story that was just for me, I remember being told in the summers when we would go too visit my Grandmother who lived in a large old Farmhouse, that quite frankly kind of scared me sometimes. The story was printed in the 1930's and was called "The Little White Bed That Ran Away". About a small boy who never wanted to go to bed, but instead lay on the floor in front of the fireplace downstairs reading. The bed became dejected and so decided to run away from home because the little boy didn't want him, He put on some shoes and walked down the stairs, thump thump, thump thump, thump thump, thump thump and out the screen door. The little boy who was getting cold went after his little bed and begged and begged for it to come back home. The bed finally said yes and returned with the little boy. My father would tell this story to me, showing me the illustrations and making the sounds of the bed thumping its way downstairs and out the screen door, and I would be absolutely terrified. Its a wonder I ever slept. My father was not all to blame though, oh no, thanks to early cartoonists like Disney and Tex Avery with there animated furniture and there big slobbery jawed wolves wearing zuit suits there was no place safe to hide, especially in my dreams. May yours be sweet unless your as twisted as I or the King. Night