Beloved around the world for his terrifying tales, Stephen King is the uncontested master of literary horror, however he’s also arguably the master of the short story.
King has written hundreds of short stories over the decades, with some of the most celebrated adaptations of his work – including The Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me, The Mist and 1408 – being based on his shorter works rather than his novels.
If you’re looking for a single serving of Stephen King, here are seven short stories that only span a few pages – tales the average reader should be able to devour in fifteen minutes or less.
We’re going to try to avoid spoiling the very endings of the stories below, but if you want to read them sight unseen, our headers will include both the short story name and the collection in which you can find them for yourself.
The Ledge | Collected in Night Shift
Not every Stephen King story is outright horror, and ‘The Ledge’ may actually be closer to a thriller… unless you have a problem with heights.
The story sees protagonist Stan Norris captured by a gangster with a very personal grudge against him. Either Norris walks all the way around the exterior of the building, walking on its tiny exterior ledge, or the gangster will frame him for drug possession and get him locked up for life.
A gust of wind hit me, snapping the collar of my jacket against my face, making my body sway on the ledge. My heart jumped into my throat and stayed there until the wind had died down. A strong enough gust would have peeled me right off my perch and sent me flying down into the night. And the wind would be stronger on the other side.
The taut story follows Stan as he walks the ledge, encountering tiny obstacles that could nevertheless cost him his life. King’s narrative is flawless as it finds new ways to taunt and test Stan (including a tempting balcony that could offer a way out of the wager), terminating in a satisfyingly gritty twist ending.
Here There Be Tygers | Collected in Skeleton Crew
In a kind of horror fairy tale, schoolkid Charles enters the school bathroom only to realize there’s a tiger lying in wait. While Charles spots the predator before being eaten himself, he now finds himself burdened by terrible responsibility.
How can he convince his schoolmates and teachers that there’s a tiger waiting to devour them? Is it better to leave the bathroom unattended and seek help, or wait and fend off anyone who might be about to wander in without knowing?
‘Here There Be Tygers’ is a particularly short story that will take you a few minutes to read, but plumbs the depths of childhood insecurity to retrieve some incredibly relatable dread.
That Bus Is Another World | Collected in The Bazaar of Bad Dreams
Stephen King has made cars, houseplants and topiary scary, so why not the bus? After catching a taxi to an important business meeting, protagonist Wilson spots something horrific taking place on a passing bus… or perhaps it wasn’t actually what it looked like?
King plays with the ways we convince ourselves to dismiss horrible situations as none of our business, as Wilson attempts to talk himself out of taking responsibility for the shocking thing he believes he witnessed:
I could call, Wilson thought, but the guy will probably be off the bus and long gone before the police can get there. Probably? Almost certainly.
He turned to look behind him. The bus was way back there now. Maybe, he thought, the woman cried out. Maybe the other passengers are already piling onto the guy, the way passengers piled onto the Shoe Bomber when they figured out what he was up to.
‘That Bus Is Another World’ is a nasty splinter of a tale that will lodge under your skin, pricking your conscience and making sure you keep your eyes forward the next time you’re stalled in traffic.
The Dune | Collected in The Bazaar of Bad Dreams
‘The Dune’ is a tight story with an intriguing premise. As retired judge Harvey Beecher drafts his will, he spills a long-held secret he’s been carrying since childhood. The secret is a mysterious sand dune that displays the names of those who will soon die, written in the sand by an unseen presence.
For such a short story, King gets the most out of the premise, with several dark vignettes – like the day Beecher visits the sand dune to find it absolutely covered in names. The story builds to a mean-spirited sting in the tail that retroactively justifies how King chose to present his darkly playful narrative.
Survivor Type | Collected in Skeleton Crew
Entering the last three entries on our list, it’s worth noting that each of these final entries is a world-class short story you should take the time to experience – our pick for the greatest short stories by an author who has absolutely mastered the form.
In one of his grossest stories, King depicts a surgeon stranded on a desert island, surviving by expertly vivisecting his own body. King consulted with actual doctors to enhance the story’s medical realism, and even cleverly games the premise to make the horror go on longer (the surgeon is smuggling heroin, which he can use as an anesthetic.)
However, the body horror isn’t what makes ‘Survivor Type’ great. The story is written as a diary kept by the surgeon, and the joy of the tale is in how he presents and withholds information, as well as his gradual mental collapse as he wreaks horror on his own body.
Suffer the Little Children | Collected in Nightmares and Dreamscapes
Suffer the Little Children’ follows Miss Sidely – a strict teacher who is talented at scaring her students into reluctant compliance… at least until she meets Robert.
King plays with Sidely as an unreliable narrator – is Robert actually a sinister presence, or is the teacher’s unraveling sanity causing her to victimize an innocent kid? This story showcases one of King’s best tricks – hiding a spine-chilling moment in plain sight, where only the protagonist understands its true meaning:
‘Tomorrow’ she pronounced clearly. ‘Robert, you will please use the word ‘tomorrow’ in a sentence.
Robert frowned over the problem. The classroom was hushed and sleepy in the late-September sun. The electric clock over the door buzzed a rumor of three o’clock dismissal just a half-hour away, and the only thing that kept young heads from drowsing over their spellers was the silent, ominous threat of Miss Sidley’s back.
‘I am waiting, Robert.’
‘Tomorrow a bad thing will happen,’ Robert said.
The story plays with the question of who’s really to blame until the very end, while also exploring the horror of encountering a terrifying thing in everyday life and knowing that no-one else will believe you.
The Jaunt | Collected in Skeleton Crew
Widely acknowledged as Stephen King’s most terrifying short story – and perhaps his most disturbing story of all time – ‘The Jaunt’ is a genuinely unmissable work you should read at least once in your life.
The sci-fi story follows Mark Oates as he and his family prepare to undertake cross-planetary travel. The technology achieves instant transportation on the physical level, but if you’re conscious when it happens, it badly distorts your sense of time.
As Oates explains with a potted history of the technology, all living beings who have experienced the Jaunt conscious have either died instantly or gone irrevocably insane, suggesting that the trip is experienced as thousands of years of consciousness in a totally blank void.
Of course, something goes wrong, but the payoff isn’t just about what happens, it’s about the utterly chilling way that King writes it, depicting an unfathomably awful fate beyond any mere ‘death’ he’s written before or since.
Those are seven flawless Stephen King stories you can finish in fifteen minutes – let us know in the comments what you think of our picks, as well as what other King stories belong on this list.
- Birthdate
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September 21, 1947
- Birthplace
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Portland, Maine, USA
- Height
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6 feet 4 inches
- Professions
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Author, Screenwriter, Producer, Director, Actor
