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Riding the Bullet by Stephen King

I've never told anyone this story, and never thought I would-not because I was afraid of being disbelieved, exactly, but because I was ashamedand because it wasit would cheapen both me and the story itself, make it shost story told before lights-out I think I was also afraid that if I told it, heard it with ht start to disbelieve it myself But since my mother died I haven't been able to sleep very well I doze off and then snap back again, wide awake and shivering Leaving the bedside laht think There are so ht, have you ever noticed that? Even with a light on there are so , you think Anything at all

I was a junior at the University of Maine when Mrs McCurdy called aboutto remember him and I was an only child, so it was just Alan and Jean Parker against the world Mrs McCurdy, who lived just up the road, called at the apartotten the nue

"'Twas a stroke," she said in that long and drawling Yankee accent of hers "Happened at the restaurant But don't you go flyin off all half-cocked Doctor says it wa'ant too bad She's awake and she's talkin" "Yeah, but is sheto sound cal room suddenly felt too warm I had the apartment all to myself; it was Wednesday, and bothshe said was for me to call you but not to scare you That's pretty sensible, wouldn't you say?"

"Yeah" But of course I was scared When someone calls and tells you your mother's been taken from work to the hospital in an ambulance, how else are you supposed to feel?

"She said for you to stay right there and mind your schoolin until the weekend She said you could come then, if you didn't have too much studyin t'do"

Sure, I thought Fat chance I'd just stay here in this

ratty, beer-s apartment while my mother lay in a hospital bed a hundredwoman, your ma," Mrs

McCurdy said "It's just that she's let herself get awful heavy these last few years, and she's got the hyperten-sion Plus the cigarettes She's goin to have to give up the smokes"

I doubted if she would, though, stroke or no stroke, and about that I was right- "First thing I did when I got ho, Alan? Sad'dy?" There was a sly note in her voice that suggested she knew better I looked out theat a perfect afternoon in October: bright blue New England sky over trees that were shaking down their yellow leaves onto Mill Street Then I glanced at my watch Twenty past three I'd just been on my way out to

"You kidding?" I asked "I'll be there tonight" Her laughter was dry and a little cracked around the edges-Mrs McCurdy was a great one to talk about giving up the cigarettes, her and her Winstons "Good boy! You'll go straight to the hospital, won't you, then drive out to the house?"

"I guess so, yeah," I said I saw no sense in telling

Mrs McCurdy that there was so with