Just after Sunset

Just after Sunset, King's fifth collection, creates a deep atmosphere. I picked it up at my local library one day and just started reading it at home. I finished 90 percent of it while hanging out at Starbucks. It's that good. You lose complete concept of time. So, without further ado, here are my favorites of the bunch.

Willa - A haunting tale about a man trying to find his wife at the train station where he waits, alongside a group of abandoned passengers to locate her. The problem is that no train is arriving and a deeper mystery is at hand.

The Cat from Hell - The only reason why this story makes the list is because I had already seen it. It was part of an adaptation in the 1989 movie Tales from the Darkside, in which a hitman is hired to off a cat who supposedly can't die. Very gruesome story, but it is one that keeps you constantly on edge. I was afraid of cats for a while, not only because of that Pet Semetary movie, but also because of this story.

The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates - A widow receives a phone call from her dead husband, who predicts two tragedies which come true.

A Very Tight Place - This has got to be the grossest story, aside from Guts, that I have ever read. It's a revenge tale involving on man's hatred for another. It involves a gun, a locked door and a tipped over port-o-potty while someone is still in kit. Need I say more? It was very hard to finish this one but I absolutely had to find out what would happen next.

N. - I don't know how King arranges his stories, but this should have been the last one. It's the perfect cap of the whole collection. A man, plagued by constant OCD, confides in his therapist that he must do these things to keep the balance. That, if he doesn't, a beast very well might make it's way into our world and that these checks and balances are the only thing keeping it at bay. Naturally, the therapist thinks the man is having paranoid delusions but he soon dismisses that when his client dies and he starts to feel the strange compulsion of OCD once he visits Ackerman's field; the last place the patient says that the beast was spotted.