Willa

by Stephen King

Originally published in a December 2006 issue of Playboy.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Literature, Audiobook

24 pages, Unknown Binding

First published December 1, 2006

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 4 out of 5]

انت برنس اقسم بالله
برنس ايه يا ابنى انا كنج
اه و الله يا عم ستيفن

كان ذلك في ابريل 2017
التجربة الأولى و بالصدفه البحته اشتريت الكتاب الذى وجدته امامى و ترددت بينه و بين IQ84,#1
الطريف اننى و بعد قراءة عشرين صفحة من النسخة الورقية القيتها جانبا و حملت نسخة الكترونية و اكملت القراءة
ليس سهلا ان تعود الى القراءة الورقية بعد ثلاث سنوات من دلع القراءة الألكترونية
نعود الى القصة القصيرة التى جاءت فى مجموعة بعنوان بعيد الغروب

ويلا

الخارجون عن السكه
مجموعه من الموتى العالقين فى محطة قطار حيث سقطت عربتهم بعد ان خرجت عن الطريق منذ عدة سنوات
يظل القانون قانونا
اذا خرجت عن الطريق فستتحول الى شبح و تبقى الى الأبد فى محطة لا تريدها فى انتظار قطار لا يجىء

جمع بين الفلسفة و الاثارة و التفاصيل الإنسانية و الرومانسية فى قصة قصيرة مرعبة
عظيم جدا الراجل ده

[فايز غازي Fayez Ghazi · Rating 3 out of 5]

- قصة قصيرة، خفيفة قد تؤخذ بسحرية الخيال المكتوبة به، او بالإسقاط الحقيقي على الواقع المعاش، لكن في كلتا الحالتين ستكون قصة جميلة جداً.

- سيأخذك ستيفان كينج الى عالم الأشباح، ليس ذلك العالم المخيف الدموي الذي اعتادت القصص على تصويره، بل العالم الذي تتاتبع الحياة فيه بنسخة كربونية عن الواقع، ولو كان الواقع مغطى بضبابية خفيفة، العالم الذي يخلّد الحب بين اثنين، ويكمل ما ابتدأ في الحياة الفعلية...

- على صعيد الإسقاطات فقد تكون القصة بجلّها عن الخيارات (القطارات) الصحيحة والسيئة التي نتخذها في حياتنا وعن النتيجة (محطة الوصول) في النهاية.

[Calista · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short story to begin the collection Just After Sunset originally published in 2006. It's about 22 pages or so, easily read in one sitting. There's no way to discuss this without spoilers, so:

Spoilers:




I figured there would be a twist in this story and I was waiting for it. I wasn't sure what it would be, but the payoff was good. We start off in a train station and a husband needs to find his wife who walked off. Her name is Willa. The people talk about not walking at night because there are wolves and it's dangerous. I thought it was going to be something about wolves, or werewolves or surviving among them. That was the twist I expected.

They find a honkey tonk, the territory is Wyoming, a place I've never been and I've never read a story about it either. The big bang is that these people are all dead. BOOM! I so loved that surprise. It gave me the good feels. There was nothing scary about it. It was a bit spooky and a bit sad.

I'm a fan of this story. I'm excited to read more.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

A man is looking for his wife. Where has she gone? He's starting at the station and meets all kind of strange people. There are far too many characters in this story. It is also very confusing since you don't know if the folks mentioned here are alive or dead. To be honest, I didn't like this story and found it very tedious and stretched. The story is included in the anthology Just After Sunset. There are far better stories by one of the greatest story tellers ever!

[Karla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Story 2.75 stars**
Audio 4 stars**
Narrator Holter Graham

I thought it was an interesting story. I liked the concept. My rating was low only because it’s a short story. ❤️

[Mohamed Shoaib · Rating 3 out of 5]

كيف تخبر اشباح ميتون انهم كذلك إذا كنت واحد منهم ؟
قصة ليست بالرائعة .. جيدة ربما.

[Nadin Doughem · Rating 3 out of 5]

كلٌ يكمن في كلمتين .. الملاحظة .. والتوقع ..

[Stephen Alff (AlffBooks) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the kind of story one can tell over a camp fire in the middle of a dark forest(I would go with a haunted forest if there is one nearby).

I liked the story. It is interesting. It does take a moment to get into the story, because the characters in the story don't really know or want to know what situation they are in, but it is interestingly done and sure did keep my attention all the way through. It's short and simple and doesn't really go into any sort of detail which would have been nice but might also have been rambling, all in all it was well written.

[Niffty · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

There is very little that i can say about this book because of spoilers. The twist was crazy like the kind of twist that people come up with online. I didn’t feel connected to the story. Everything was ok and not that much stood out to me. The story wasn’t scary but it was almost like the kind of story that someone would tell over the camp fire.

The book is slow in the beginning but gets kinda interesting. It is short and simple but it works for the kind of story that Stephan King is trying to tell.

[Rubius Allerton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven’t read stephen king in a while, i took a break after hyper fixating for a year or so! but this short story was such a beautiful way to fall back in love with his writing, this story has a wonderful twist, and such a beautiful ending - his writing never fails to make me excited! i didn’t find it scary, more shocking, but the overall tone of David’s love for Willa made this such a beautiful story to read.

[Kateryna Kryvoviaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the loveliest stories I've ever read by Stephen King. Despite of it's creepy topic, it's kind of romantic
way of thinking about afterlife and ghosts. It can be a nice read for the ones who believe in eternal connection between two lovers even after death.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Without giving too much away, I really enjoyed this short story and felt the topic really thought-provoking. Worth a read and you can probably get through it in a few minutes. I read it in the collection Just After Sunset.

[✿ℎazℯℓ - thℯ ℛock Cℎick ℱairy✿ · Rating 4 out of 5]

When one dies, how does he really know that he's dead?

Would we know for sure?

This book tackles the question of a lifetime.

Is there really a nice after life for us?

[Askou · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 ⭐

[Josh Olds · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the endnotes, King writes that “This probably isn’t the best story in the book” but that he loves it because it began a new era of creativity for him. While I appreciate King’s honesty, I’m curious as to the rationale behind his evaluation. Willa is one of my favorite stories in Just After Sunset, setting the supernatural tone with a supernatural ghost story romance.

In the story, a man finds himself on a train platform after what appears to be a train wreck. He can’t find his fiancée, so he walks to where he thinks she’ll be—in town at the bar. The others try to tell him not leave, warning him that the three-mile trek to the nearest town is through desolate woodlands, but the man must go find his lover.

He finds her in the corner of a honky-tonk and the pair come to the slow realization that they don’t just blend in to their surroundings—nobody can see them because they’re ghosts. It’s love story in a minor key and King plays it for flirtatious romance rather than horror. It’s a story about the eternality of love and it’s quite beautiful.

[Jodi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short Story, but not really his best. I enjoyed the premise of the story quite a lot but couldn't understand why Willa did not press the issue of death with David prior to running off to the 26. I know she tried to make him understand that he simply wasn't seeing properly but was that really enough?

Enjoyable enough though but not my favourite short story of Stephen King that prize is almost guaranteed to stay with Quitters Inc which I just thought was fantastically different. This story seemed like a very average horror-esque tale from a fantastic author that could have done better with it.

[Corey Klauder · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this short story in Steven King's short story collection Just After Sunset. It was the first piece of writing that I remember reading from him. It honestly scared the crap out of me, but at the same time I kind of predicted the end of the story. The writing is phenomenal, the story is creepy, and it leaves you thinking about things you wouldn't usually think about.

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stephen King himself stated this one as not being one of the better stories, and I can heartily agree with him. It wasn’t by any means bad, but it wasn’t all that great either. A very average introduction to what proves to be a fairly hit-and-miss anthology anyway.

[James Biser · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great story about death. It is told from the point of view of the dead who find themselves outside of the world and time as they have known it. This is a great read.

[Susy · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars
Read as part of Just After Sunset

[Zealot1 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here's my review of it in verse:

Oh, Willa
What an extraordinary name, Willa!
Oh, how I've longed to see your face, Willa!
Why are you sitting by yourself
watching how all these strangers dance?

Why did you run off on me like that, Willa?
To have yourself a last romance, per chance?
A fleeting flirt with someone else perhaps
Before the night we two unite

What really happened here to us, Willa?
Just drink with me this final glass, Willa.
Then we depart to catch our train.
We can't remain

I see the answer to my questions in your eyes
And yet I fear the clarity it brings.

How long are we to roam under these stars?
To hear the wolves howling in the dark
To feel the cold slicing at our back?

The moment of revelation is at hand.
The mirrors taunt us with reflections that demand
some kind of rational explanation to this end.

Let us delay the sad conclusion that comes next
And have ourselves another dance.

[Charity · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a tight little story but a little on the nose IMO. The otherworldlyness of the plot itself (people just hanging out hoping the transportation that necessitated the very need for the syncing of clocks may or may not come because whoooo knooows??) Made it obvious this was a ghost story from the beginning. It's not as subtle as his later work and it's pretty obvious this one is from the old guard.

Not saying it's bad, it's a good deal creepier than later King but it's also not as sophisticated or mature as later King. A good example of why the people who say Coked-Out King was better are entirely wrong.

Still cool story, would make a good short picture or Dimension 404 episode

[Ciarra · Rating 4 out of 5]

A simple and sweet short story. A love story, and a ghost story. In fact, I found myself thinking of the film A Ghost Story (which I found similarly thought provoking and impactful). A brief, haunting look at one idea of what happens, or can happen, to folks who die unexpectedly.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting twist

[Auribelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good twist, nothing special though.

[Michael Sorbello · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is great Twilight Zone material.

A group of travelers find themselves stranded at a lonesome station, waiting for a train that never seems to come. David Sanderson begins to grow worried after his fiance Willa wanders into town without telling anyone beforehand. He finds her at a local honkey-tonk, but no one there seems to take any notice of them. Are they being ignored as unwelcome outsiders stranded in the middle of nowhere, or is there something stranger at work?

Trippy and surreal. In spite of the weird dream-like haunting stuff going on, it's actually kind of wholesome and sweet.

[Abeer Abdelhamid · Rating 3 out of 5]

قصة قصيرة حتى نصفها لا تدرى ما هى المشكلة؟؟ هل المشكلة هى ويللا التى رحلت وتركت خطيبها ومجموعة من الناس بعد حدوث حادث للقطار الذى يتستقلونه وانتظارهم لقطار اخر
ام المشكلة فى المجموعة المنتظرة للقطار؟ ام الخطيب المصمم على البحث عن خطيبته

[Mark Aardvark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just read it, and felt the urge to write my first review. Thought it might be about werewolves at one point, but this was so much better, it’s a beautiful little story. King writes relationships better than anyone, it’s always been the part of his writing I’ve enjoyed the most.

[Phil · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars