The greatest horror novel Stephen King never wrote: “I could never figure out what the hell was going on”
Stephen King is one of the most prolific authors who has ever lived. In his career, he has published more than 75 novels and novellas, as well as 200 short stories that have been collected in various volumes over the years. In addition, King also writes screenplays and comic books when the notion takes him, meaning his body of work is incredibly varied and expansive. Interestingly, though, King has many works that became lost or abandoned along the way, either because he didn’t think they turned out to his satisfaction, or because he simply couldn’t crack them. He even told Conan O’Brien about one in the ’90s – and it may be the greatest horror novel King never wrote.
Throughout his career, King has always maintained his relentless output for one simple reason: he treats writing like a job. He has never been one to wait for the muse to strike him, or spend extended periods agonising over minor details and endlessly rewriting with no end point in sight. Instead, he writes for three or four hours every single day with the goal of producing six “fairly clean” pages in that time. By maintaining that schedule, he can write a good first draft of a 360 page book in only two months.
In his hallowed tome On Writing, which countless professional scribes swear by, King insisted there’s no special trick to his success and no shortcuts to fame and fortune. “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others,” King stated. “Read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of.”
This blue-collar attitude to writing ensures King is rarely precious about his ideas, and if he feels something isn’t working, he’ll just move on to the next thing. This doesn’t mean he won’t occasionally ponder what could have been, though, such as when he told O’Brien about a dynamite idea he had for a terrifying tale set at Stapleton International Airport in Denver, Colorado.
“What the story was going to be was this guy and his wife are on their way to their plane, and the woman says, ‘Hun, I gotta use the ladies’ room,'” King explained. “‘Okay, but remember, five minutes, and we gotta be at the gate.'”
To the husband’s puzzlement, though, after his wife goes into the bathroom, she doesn’t emerge for a long time. He begins to get nervous and even starts to feel a strange, foreboding atmosphere in the airport. Soon, another couple arrives, and the woman also uses the bathroom. When she doesn’t return, either, the tension only rises.
“Soon, there’s a third guy and a fourth guy,” King continued, “and finally, one of them says, ‘Well, screw it, I’m gonna go in there and get her,’ and just as he goes, this thing slides closed – this pneumatic door – and he hears screams from inside.”
From this point on, an animated King revealed that more and more women become trapped in the washroom of bloodcurdling screams. This prompts the state militia, army, FBI, and governor to step in, but no one can figure out what is happening to the women in the bathroom.
Unfortunately, though, the characters in the story weren’t the only ones who couldn’t crack the case: King couldn’t make heads or tails of it, either. “I could never figure out what the hell was going on in there,” King chuckled, prompting O’Brien to burst out laughing.
So, the tale of Stapleton Airport and its ladies’ restroom of unfathomable horror went unfinished, with King choosing to turn his attention to one of his many other scary stories. Maybe he’ll return to it one day, though. We just need to hope a lightbulb finally goes off in his head and he realises what was causing those bowel-loosening screams.
