Rest Stop

by Stephen King

Originally published in the December 2003 issue of Esquire.

Genres: Short Stories, Horror, Fiction, Audiobook

24 pages, Unknown Binding

About the author

Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.

Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.

He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.

Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.

In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.

Reviews

[BookHunter M ُH َM َD · Rating 2 out of 5]

لا أدرى لماذا توقعت أن تنقلب الأحداث رأسا على عقب و يكون الأمر بالكامل خدعه الا ان الأمور لا تحدث دائما كما نتوقع

قصة عادية عن رجل ... لا بل عن امرأة ... ربما رجلان و امرأة و طفله ... هل قلت طفله ... نعم ربما طفله أيضا

ربما لم تكن هناك قصة من الأساس فالكحول هو أعظم كاتب فى تاريخ الكون و لكنه دائما يكتب على الماء فيصبح كلامه ككلام الليل

[فايز غازي Fayez Ghazi · Rating 1 out of 5]

- ليس هناك الكثير هنا، فإما انها هلوسات سكّير ظنّ ان هكذا أحداث حصلت معه، واما انها "الشخصية" المكبوتة في ظلّ رجل جبان حفزتها الكحول للخروج والتصرف بكل سادية تحت عنوان الدفاع عن حياة إمرأة فأستلّذ صرخات الألم وجنح من "الإنقاذ" الى "التعذيب".. وإما انها لا هذا ولا ذاك!!... بجميع الأحوال لم أحسها بالمستوى..

[Karla · Rating 2 out of 5]

Story 2.5 stars**
Audio 3.75**
Narrator Denis O’Hare

This one left me like “huh.” I guess I was expecting something sinister or eerie I don’t know. To be fair I know not all SK books are. Anyway, I did read what inspire this particular scene so it did kinda help me understand why he wrote it and it is a situation that would make a lot of people wonder what would you do?! ❤️

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fine story about a character with a split personality. On the one hand he writes hard boilded stories (like Richard Stark, another King novel) on the other hand he's a teacher. Now at a rest stop he ear witnesses a scene of a man (Lee) teaching his wife (Ellen) a lesson in the women's rest room. He intervenes with his author personality. Excellent descriptions, well drawn characters, tight setting, domestic violence shown in the darkest way possible. You get fantastic insight into the psychology of the main character here as only Stephen King is able to do. The story is included in the anthology Just After Sunset. Great story, highly recommended!

[Nadin Doughem · Rating 2 out of 5]

كيف ستتصرف عند المواقف الصعبة، هل ستكون بشخصيتك التي تتوقعها حينها، أم انك ستفاجأ بشخصية أخرى!

[Calista · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a tough story to read. It’s about domestic violence that happened at a rest stop. What would you do if someone was getting hurt badly and you were the only one around? I don’t know what I would do besides call 911.

I know this sort of thing happens in the world, it’s rather happens everywhere, sadly. I simply don’t like to read about it. I don’t know that there is an answer to stuff like this to make abuse stop, sadly. The ending was not bad, but I didn’t really enjoy reading this story either.

The protagonist is a writer and I do enjoy reading about King’s character’s who are writers. I love that. This was well written, just not for me.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dyksra=English Professor
Hardin=Alter ego

[Benjamin Uke · Rating 2 out of 5]

John Dykstra, a mild-mannered writer encounters a disturbing situation while taking a late-night break at a highway rest stop. After a successful book tour, Dykstra, who writes under the pseudonym Rick Hardin, stops at the deserted rest area and hears a violent altercation coming from the women's restroom...
The protagonist is a writer who can afford basic necessities, dates the work. Otherwise fairly conventional.

[Mohamed Shoaib · Rating 3 out of 5]

كاتب يدعى جون ديكستر يكتب تحت الأسم المستعار"ريك هاردن" بعد حفلة و شرب العديد من زجاجات الجعة يريد فقط التوقف في استراحة و الدخول للحمام و عندما يصل يسمع صوت صراخ قادم من حمام الشيدات يتوقف ليسترق السمع فيسمع رجل يشتم امرأة و يصفعها والمرأة تطلب منه ألا يؤذها .. ماذا يفعل ؟ هل يهرب ؟ ام يقتحم و يحاول انقاذ السيدة ؟ ماذا لو كان الرجل ضخمًا ؟ هو لن يستطيع ان يجابهه .. الكحول يجعله يتخيل انه الشخص الأخر"الاسم المستعار" الذي يكتب به فيستجمع شجاعته و .. كفى اعتقد اني اتقربت من حرق القصة 😃

[Ruthie Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who will you become when the situation becomes desperate, when the situation calls for a hero? Will that other person inside you be a true hero or a bully? Is that line so easily crossed when you really didn't want to get involved in the first place?

[Keira-christina Demchenco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is breathtaking

[Abeer Abdelhamid · Rating 2 out of 5]

كاتب اثناء توقفه فى استراحة على الطريق يسمع صوت اعتداء رجل على امرأة حامل بالضرب والقصة تدور حول رد فعله
يمكن لو كانت القصة فى تصنيف اخر عير قصص الرعب كانت ممكن تكون قصة نفسية

[Niffty · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wasn’t interested in this story. It was about the narator seeing a man beat his wife. It wasn’t that fun to read.

[Siobhan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I normally rate Stephen King stories at 3 stars if not higher, but this short story seems more like it should have been a chapter or scene from a novel. There was not really enough meat to it. And it was kind of anti-climatic at the end.

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rest Stop was a slight improvement. I still didn’t like it very much, but it did pose an interesting question about courage, and whether we – as everyday people – are capable of using it in such situations where it might save the life of someone else. I would like to think that in this particular situation, I would have done the “noble” thing.
But unlike Stephen King, I wouldn’t go ahead and testify to that. I would have preferred this story if the protagonist had just walked away. Dark, depressing, but tragically truthful. But no, instead we have to witness this common English professor unleash his inner Jack Reacher and beat the living shit out of the nasty prostitute-beater.
And I like how Stephen King refers to his alleged “wild-side” as his inner Richard Bachman. Really? Richard Bachman was not the fucking ruthless anti-hero that Stephen seems to regard him as. The only difference between the King books and the Bachman books was that Bachman usually didn’t like happy endings. Oh man, that’s just so fucked up. What a dark creature.

[James Biser · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great story of a writer who finds a man abusing his wife at a rest stop and decides to intervene. The writer moves on and his perception of the reality around him has changed dramatically.

[Josh Olds · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Rest Stop” is another story in Just After Sunset that had potential but never quite reached it. In this case, the problem is the short story genre. Nothing that King writes is bad. It’s a strong story, but it leaves the reader with more unanswered questions. It’s not that unanswered questions are bad, it’s which questions King decides to leave unanswered. He gives a full description of the most banal parts while never so much as acknowledging the unusual.

The story is simply about a rest stop. John Dykstra, an author, has to pee. He stops at a rest stop where he hears the sound of a domestic argument and then fighting. Dykstra wants to intervene but is too scared, until, this is, he calls upon his alter-ego Hardin to step in. Hardin attacks the man with a tire iron, calls the police, and orders the man’s wife to drive away.

Dykstra/Hardin drives away before the police arrive and, after a safe distance away, the Hardin personality leaves and Dykstra vomits on the side of the road. There a number of interesting threads to pull, but King pulls none of them, ending the story and moving on. Interesting premise, good setup, zero follow-through.

[Antonio Imperato · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well written story, but it desperately needed a twist at the end.
The story is about a man running into another guy beating a pregnant woman. Most of the story is our protagonist trying to decide what to do. When he finally decides to intervene he stops the bad guy from beating the woman by hitting him from behind and threatening him while he's down on the ground. Meanwhile, the protagonist is seriously thinking about really hurting, possibly even killing this guy.

*spoilers about the ending*

And then nothing happens. The protagonist just leaves and goes home. So it's just a random story about a guy stopping another guy from beating a woman. I thought the story was going to end with the protagonist being revealed to be a serial killer and this violent man being just another one of his victims. Or maybe the whole part about the protagonist going home was actually him disassociating and hallucinating while in reality he's killing the violent guy. None of it. No twist. The protagonist stops the antagonist, threatens him, goes home. So anticlimactic!

[Trilce]

I racconti sono inserimenti alternativi in uno spazio vuoto. La concretezza non permette un'interiorità indeterminata, né fa spazio a falsari nell'immaginazione. Pensano un po' troppe cose nei momenti di tensione, fa pensare agli americani come esseri molto pronti al peggio, e informati in fatto di coerenza rispetto alle leggi e sulla gestione criminale soggettiva, da farsi da soli una sentenza. La scrittura è praticamente giovanile, i personaggi sono paranoici e persino infantili. Argomenti casuali per estensione, discernenti davanti all'immediatezza. Ignorando un po' le voci, alcuni personaggi senza distinguerli a questo punto, sembrano di complimentarsi. Nella brevità è questa una parte importante, creare tra loro una specie di personalità fuorvianti dagli altri. Sono proprio dei pazzi scatenati che valutano tutto in modo perverso in un continuo leitmotiv dispettoso.

[Rolf · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting thought experiment similar to the Stanford Prison Experiment--if you are suddenly in a position where you can exercise power, will you?--but the characters are written as pretty broad stereotypes, and the level of violence and detailed abuse seems gratuitous when the story doesn’t really seem to have anything to say.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good an interesting short story by Stephen King. In this story a writer is driving home allowing his mind to flit between characters within stories he has written. He needs to stop to use a Petrol Station Toilet and comes across a man beating up his wife. So, what does he do?

[Auribelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

That was pretty good. Not sure if underlying psychological issue or an interpretation of what a work does to an artist... Which was the point, knowing Kings themes.

[Cris · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐

[Charity · Rating 5 out of 5]

King so understands people.

[🖤 Beth 🖤 · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️

[Madeleine Caine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was good, the ideas were great!

[Edward Davies · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically a story about a man becoming his pseudonym to tackle a man abusing his wife. Interesting enough but there wasn’t much to it.