THIEVING FROM THE KING

Sometime during the years from 1978 to 1981 I had a promising idea for a short story. At that same time, Twilight Zone Magazine announced a short story contest. This timing seemed ideal.

I called the story- I think- “A Friend in Need ". In my head, as I imagined the story unfolding, I truly thought this might turn out to be the absolute scariest story anyone had ever written. Forget Poe and Lovecraft and Stoker, the stuff playing out in my mind was terrifying. So I plopped down in front of my ancient typewriter and went to work.

I fiddled with it for several days, maybe as long as two weeks, and at the end of that journey I had 32 double-spaced pages of spooky short story.

I was pretty happy with the finished product, thinking I had a good readable story .

One aspect I wasn't sure of, though -- was it scary? Forget “scariest thing ever”, was it scary at all? And those scary visions in my brain? Had they translated to the page, or were they gone? Still hopeful, but definitely unsure, I decided I needed an outside opinion. That was a nervous-making prospect. Critics, after all, can be cruel.

But a second opinion was required and I had only one candidate. I sent a copy of the story to my brother Barry. I thought he'd give me an honest but not nasty opinion. More importantly, he was the smartest person I knew, so I figured that he’d provide a worthwhile opinion.

Barry read the story and called me with his report. I remember his words almost exactly. He said,"If you intended to write a sweet story about childhood and friendship, you did a great job. But if you intended to write something scary, you failed miserably.” The criticism didn’t hurt. It was pretty much what I’d expected and I was pleased that Barry, at least, liked the story for its sweeter virtues.

I mailed the story into the magazine contest, heard nothing, and that was that. Until…

A few days ago I was re-reading Stephen King's PET SEMATARY when it occurred to me for the first time that King's novel shared a significant element with my almost forgotten story. This worried me. Had I unknowingly stolen a plot element from the King of Horror?

I had read PET SEMATARY as soon as it was published and --when was that? Maybe late '70s or early '80s? I had written the story in that same time frame, with 1981 as the latest possible date.

Was it possible that I had read King's then-new novel and unintentionally filched from it? The thought made me a little ill. I mean, it certainly didn't matter. King's book is a modern horror classic, while my story was a never-read, long-missing nothing. Still, I really didn't want to discover that I was, however unknowingly, a plagiarist. Thus, it was that I, with great trepidation, checked the publication date of PET SEMATARY which turned out to be……… 1982! Whew!- I was not a thief.

I think that a copy of “A Friend in Need" still exists somewhere around here. Maybe I'll dig it out. Or maybe I won't. I mean- who wants to learn that the sweet, unscary story he wrote in 1980 stinks to high heaven in 2025?