To Kill A King by ShaunAllan

He was meant to be retiring. That's what he'd said. What the reports and papers told you. Not the world or your friends and neighbours. No. You. They were speaking directly to you.

Retiring. Hanging up his pen and keyboard like old coats which had kept him warm and dry throughout so many cold winters but were now threadbare and needed to be relegated to the cupboard under the stairs. He'd said it before, of course. You initially thought, after the last time, the books he was releasing were old ones, kept in the safe at the publisher until it was their time to grab the spotlight and be loved by millions. But this time it was real this time he meant it. You could feel it in the gravity of his words. The depth of his stare as he announced he was leaving the world of horror behind.

You cried at first. How could you not? He was the best. He was the King!

You read the newspaper article for the fourth time, not quite believing what it was saying. Your mind still tripped over the words, struggling to make sense of it.

Stephen King invites YOU into his home! Learn from the true Master of Horror!

‘YOU’ it said. YOU.

You are no Annie Wilkes, you know that.  You're not his greatest fan, though you feel no-one could love him or his work as much as you.  There'd always be someone who would profess to adore every single stroke of his pen or touch of his keys and that adoration may well exceed your own.  But yours was real.  It was something you could grab hold of with both your hands and feel and, even, taste.  The others were really pretenders to your king's throne.  You didn't just love him, you wanted to be him.

Of course, this was impossible.  You'd tried to write.  You couldn't.  The ideas weren't coherent enough.  Whenever you attempted to put them down on paper, longhand to be typed up at a later date when the scribbles and edits had been remade countless times, they lacked coherence.  They seemed to be a jumble of nonsense which paled when compared to his.

But, now was your chance.  Now you could possibly not only meet him, but learn from him.  Feel his guiding hand on yours as he leads you through the shadowy halls of his imagination to pass on his legacy as he shuts the doors for good.
The prospect made you shiver with excitement.  You read on.  The closing date was soon, with the winner to take the prize at Halloween.  Of course!  When else?  Could it be more perfect?

The entry requirements were simple.  Write about why you liked Stephen King's books.  The only real problem was where to start.  They filled your days with wonder and your nights with dark dreams.  You lost hours whilst reading them as if you held a time machine which kept hiccuping you into the future.  From Carrie onwards, through On Writing and The Dark Tower, you were under his spell.  When Dr. Sleep woke your Shining obsession, you were positively giddy.  You wrote your letter stating exactly that.  You had no need to fancify or elaborate.  You just told it how it was.

And you waited.  And waited.  And let life get in the way of your waiting so you didn't forget but didn't remember.

Then you won.

The letter was plain where you thought it should have been emblazoned with the word WINNER!  You almost left it on the side until later.  It wasn't a bill and nor was it junk mail.  It'd wait until you got round to it.  But, as you walked away, something stopped you.  Curiosity killed your step with a stab of wonder.  You took hold of the envelope, your grip stopping your breath from escaping.

Carefully, for if it was the letter, you'd want to preserve both it and the envelope it came in, you prised it open.  Simple white paper.  Elegant but reserved letterhead.  A brief paragraph, but one in which each word held the weight of your world on its shoulders.

You've won.  At first your reaction is as quiet as the statement.

"We are pleased to inform you..."

As if it happened every day.  As if they were ordering a cheeseburger, fries and a drink, no ice.
The excitement built slowly, as if it were bursting at the seams of your control.  Then it broke them and you.  The tears flowed.  Your hands clapped and your legs jumped.  The glass of water smashed, knocked from the table as you hit it whilst spinning across the kitchen.  It remained ignored until later when you'd calmed down enough to contain the thrill.  You cut yourself on a piece of glass and bled onto the floor.  You couldn't help but smile, the pain feeling appropriate somehow.  The master of horror had invited you to his home.  Blood was surely the cream on a spine-chilling cake.

You wondered what he was like.  Of course, you'd read the articles and interviews, watched the television spots.  You knew him as much as any fan might know their idol, but you realised that probably wasn't the whole story.  He had his private side.  Once an addict and now a family man, he would always, you were sure, hold something back.  Would you see it?  Would you be brought into his inner sanctum - either physically or emotionally?

No.  Don't get ahead, you told yourself.   It may well be little more than a meeting with the man himself and a signed copy of On Writing.  The memoir was one of your most read books and you had used the advice therein to try and hone your craft.  To... not mimic his, but to... pay homage to.  Your writing, though it might be a shadow to his sun, was your tribute and your alter to his literary perfection.
You didn't sleep that night.  The next morning, you called the number given and made the arrangements.  You didn't sleep that night either and, for the following week, you could only catch a few hours of slumber amid the constant stream of thoughts flowing through your mind like the Falls of Niagara.  Possibilities.  Potential conversations.  The meals.  The laughter.  The passing of his magic touch onto you.

And then came the eve of Hallow's Eve.  The flight was smooth.  You loved flying and didn't travel anywhere near enough.  The car which picked you up at the airport was nice but not extravagant.  Still, you felt like a celebrity being driven to the premier of a movie where there'd be a red carpet and flashing cameras.  You were to stay in a hotel for the night, with the plan to meet Stephen King the next day.  Hotels were for others.  For people with money.  You once had a long weekend in a caravan on a holiday camp.  It wasn't the same, you could tell as soon as you entered the room.  Knowing you'd have a sleepless, excited night, you laid on the much-bigger-than-yours bed.  You didn't close your eyes, they closed on their own.  You woke the next morning.

Frantically, you showered and changed.  You'd planned to set an alarm, but hadn't.  You'd intended to go through the notes and questions you'd written, hoping to drop them into conversations.  You hadn't.

And now, the car would be there in ten minutes.
You grabbed everything and ran down to the front desk.  A quick coffee would wake you up properly and calm your nerves.  When you entered the lobby of the hotel, you barely missed knocking a man off his feet.  You turned without stopping to offer an apology, then you saw the man's face and your feet lost track of the direction you'd intended them to go.  You tripped and fell.

The man smiled and leaned forward, his hand out to help you up.  For a long moment, you sat there, staring at it.  You couldn't quite bring yourself to touch it.

"Are you planning on staying there all day?" he asked.  "I hope not as we've got a lot of work to do."

You reached up slowly.  You expected sparks or a shock from the touch as you took his hand.  There were none.  He wasn't a giant though, at over six feet, he was definitely tall.  He looked... normal.

"Thank you, Mr. King," you managed to say.

"Call me Stephen," he said.

The journey to his home in Bangor, Maine, with Stephen driving, was a whirlwind of chat and questions where your mouth spoke faster than your mind could process your situation.  You were sure you spoke a steady stream of gibberish but he smiled or laughed at the right places and seemed genuinely interested in you.  There was much more talk about you than him, in fact.  It was as if you actually were the celebrity you'd felt like and he was visiting you!  You needed to turn it around, however.  You were meant to be learning from and about him.  Your stay was only short and you were desperate to take as much from it as you could.  If you spent the time talking about yourself, your boring, mundane life, you'd walk away unchanged.  That couldn't happen.  You had to take this opportunity to burn away your previous life - your previous you - and rise again, the King's knight on a steed of words.

You diverted the conversation away from yourself, causing the dual rivers of dialogue to change course and converge on him.  He didn't seem to mind and spoke at length about both his stories and his feelings about them.  He told you intimate details about the characters, speaking as if they were living people who might pass by for a game of cards and a few beers.  It was a long time before you both realised you'd arrived at his house and had been sitting in the car for at least half an hour.
He invited you in.  You crossed the threshold with trepidation.  The air tasted different inside.  Richer.  Fuller.  You could feel the inspiration.

"I want to retire," he told you over dinner.  "I want to hang up my pen.  It's almost out of ink and I don't know that I'll be able to refill it anymore.  I have my wife and family and music.  That's a lot."

You didn't say anything at first.  You knew he wanted to retire.  You'd shed tears at the announcement.  You let him continue, though, restraining the impromptu accusation of breaking your heart which bubbled in your throat.  Now was not the time to point the finger.  Now was the time to hold the hand and walk along with him.  You nodded, instead.

"So, that's why you're here," he said.

"I am?"  It was a waste of a phrase.  He was Stephen King.  Your idol.  You could have said so much more in the pause.  He was offering you that space to speak and you dropped the ball to utter two words which simply showed how nervous and probably undeserving of this honour you were.

"You are."  He smiled, apparently ignorant of your uselessness.  "I want to teach you.  I want to pass on my crown."

You both laughed.  Crown.  King.  It was hilarious.
"Thank you," you said.  Again the ball drop.  This wasn't a kids game of piggy-in-the-middle.  This was life.  This was your future.  Pick the ball up and run with it!  Score!

"I'd say you're welcome, but you may not like what I'm going to offer.  You might decide you don't want to take part."

"I doubt that," you said, your eyes wide.  "It's my dream!"

"Dreams can swiftly turn to nightmares.  I've made a career out of such things.  You could well choose to leave."

"What would happen then?" you asked.  Maybe someone else would get the chance you gave up.  You couldn't accept that.

"I'd have to kill you," he said.

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THIS IS ONLY A PREVIEW, FULL STORY AVAILABLE ON THE AUTHOR'S PERSONAL PAGE, ShaunAllan