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| "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" | |
|---|---|
| by Stephen King | |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy short story |
| Published in | Redbook (1st release), Skeleton Crew |
| Publication type | Magazine (1st release) |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Publication date | 1984 |
"Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" is a short story by Stephen King, first published in the May 1984 issue of Redbook magazine, and collected in King's 1985 collection Skeleton Crew .
David, friend of a caretaker named Homer, is an elderly man who is spending his later years hanging out at the local gas station in a small town. Homer narrates a tale about Mrs. Todd, who is obsessed with finding shortcuts. Homer admires her persistence but begins to have doubts, as there are only so many shortcuts someone can find. Mrs. Todd's habit of resetting her odometer shows remarkable evidence that something strange is going on. He also discovers evidence that her shortcuts are taking fewer miles than are in a straight line between the trip origin and its destination, something that would be impossible in reality. Mrs. Todd compares the shortcuts to folding a map to bring two points closer together, suggesting she has discovered a warped version of reality, akin to a wormhole.
Mrs. Todd finally convinces Homer to take one of the special 'shortcuts'. Homer loses his hat to the grasping arms of a living tree. Soon, he encounters road signs and bizarre animals which he cannot explain. Frightened, Homer doesn't wish to take any more rides. Nonetheless, Mrs. Todd is changing and growing younger with each trip she takes, and the appeal of this overwhelms Homer, despite him discovering a horrifying rodent-like creature on the grill of her car. She brushes this off, seeing the creature as an unfortunate yet normal animal. In the end, Homer, who is looking younger himself, gets into Mrs. Todd's car in front of his friend. It's implied that Mrs. Todd (who by this time is considered to be a missing person together with her car) will now take him into whatever new world which she has found a shortcut to.
A reference to Cujo is made when the story mentions Joe Camber getting killed by his own dog.
The story has been cited as an example of the use of hyperspace space folding travel outside classic stories of interstellar space travel. [1] : 85
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The Last Unicorn is a fantasy novel by American author Peter S. Beagle and published in 1968, by Viking Press in the U.S. and The Bodley Head in the U.K. It follows the tale of a unicorn, who believes she is the last of her kind in the world and undertakes a quest to discover what has happened to the other unicorns. It has sold more than six million copies worldwide since its original publication, and has been translated into at least twenty-five languages.
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Mrs. Lovett is a fictional character appearing in many adaptations of the story Sweeney Todd. Her first name is most commonly referred to as Nellie, although she has also been referred to as Amelia, Margery, Maggie, Sarah, Shirley, Wilhelmina and Claudetta. A baker from London, Mrs. Lovett is an accomplice and business partner of Sweeney Todd, a barber and serial killer from Fleet Street. She makes meat pies from Todd’s victims.
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This Isn't What It Looks Like is a book by anonymous author Pseudonymous Bosch. It is the fourth book in the pentalogy "The Secret Series", and is the sequel to This Book Is Not Good for You, If You're Reading This, It's Too Late, and The Name of this Book is Secret. The book is based on the sense of sight as the other books are based on scent, sound, and taste. It acts as the continued part of This Book Is Not Good For You, starting just after Cass eats the magic "Time-Travel" chocolate and falls into a coma, searching for her ancestor, the Jester, to find out what the Secret of immortality is, as she recently became the new Secret-Keeper of the Terces Society. Meanwhile, Max-Ernest tries to save Cass with a special monocle, as the book centers around the sense of sight.
11/22/63 is a novel by Stephen King about a time traveller who attempts to prevent the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy, which occurred on November 22, 1963. It is the 60th book published by Stephen King, his 49th novel and the 42nd under his own name. The novel was announced on King's official site on March 2, 2011. A short excerpt was released online on June 1, 2011, and another excerpt was published in the October 28, 2011, issue of Entertainment Weekly. The novel was published on November 8, 2011 and quickly became a number-one bestseller. It stayed on The New York Times Best Seller list for 16 weeks. 11/22/63 won the 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Mystery/Thriller and the 2012 International Thriller Writers Award for Best Novel, and was nominated for the 2012 British Fantasy Award for Best Novel and the 2012 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
Margaret King (1773–1835), also known as Margaret King Moore, Lady Mount Cashell and Mrs Mason, was an Anglo-Irish hostess, and a writer of female-emancipatory fiction and health advice. Despite her wealthy aristocratic background, she had republican sympathies and advanced views on education and women's rights, shaped in part by having been a favoured pupil of Mary Wollstonecraft. Settling in Italy in later life, she reciprocated her governess's care by offering maternal aid and advice to Wollstonecraft's daughter Mary Shelley and her travelling companions, husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and stepsister Claire Clairmont. In Pisa she continued the study of medicine which she had begun in Germany and published her widely read Advice to Young Mothers, as well as a novel, The Sisters of Nansfield: A Tale for Young Women.
"Baby" is the 4th episode of the paranormal drama television series Supernatural's season 11, and the 222nd overall. The episode was written by Robbie Thompson and directed by Thomas J. Wright. It was first broadcast on October 28, 2015 on The CW. Shown entirely from within the Impala, the bottle episode follows Sam and Dean as they travel across America to hunt a previously undocumented species of monster.
I See You is a 2019 American horror thriller film directed by Adam Randall from a screenplay by Devon Graye. It stars Helen Hunt, Jon Tenney, and Judah Lewis.
Fairy Tale is a dark fantasy novel by American author Stephen King, published on September 6, 2022 by Scribner. The novel follows Charlie Reade, a 17-year-old who inherits keys to a hidden, otherworldly realm, and finds himself leading the battle between forces of good and evil.
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