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18-AUG-2025 | Excerpt from Stephen King’s “Bag of Bones”

Author

Dan Bogachek
August 18, 2025

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Excerpt from Stephen King’s “Bag of Bones”

On a very hot day in August of 1994, my wife told me she was going down to the Derry Rite Aid to pick up a refill on her sinus medicine prescription -- this is stuff you can buy over the counter these days, I believe. I'd finished my writing for the day and offered to pick it up for her. She said thanks, but she wanted to get a piece of fish at the supermarket next door anyway; two birds with one stone and all of that. She blew a kiss at me off the palm of her hand and went out. The next time I saw her, she was on TV. That's how you identify the dead here in Derry — no walking down a subterranean corridor with green tiles on the walls and long fluorescent bars overhead, no naked body rolling out of a chilly drawer on casters; you just go into an office marked PRIVATE and look at a TV screen and say yep or nope. 🏁 

This is the first paragraph of the book. What sticks out to me:

  • It sounds like someone thinking out loud or talking to you. You can really feel the voice.

  • King’s classic omission of quotation marks.

  • The slow roll of “she was on TV” to land the fact that she’s dead. Chilling.