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Everything's Eventual: 5 Dark Tales

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"Everything's Eventual" features Dinky Earnshaw -- a 19-year-old pizza boy -- who gets hired by a mysterious stranger for a unique and totally "eventual" (awesome) job. Read by Justin Long.

In "Autopsy Room Four," the last thing Howard Cottrell remembers is entering the woods to find his golf ball. He wakes up as he is being rolled into an autopsy room. Read by Oliver Platt.

In "The Little Sisters of Eluria" Roland is a gunslinger in a deserted town when he gets ambushed. Read by Boyd Gaines.

In "Luckey Quarter" Darlene is a single mom struggling to raise two kids on her income as a chambermaid in Reno. When Room 322 leaves her a quarter for a tip, Darlene lets that quarter take her for a ride. Read by Judith Ivey.

"The Road Virus Heads North" tracks an author who buys a creepy painting at a yard sale which was painted by a metal-head neighbor just before he committed suicide. Read by Jay O. Sanders.

Intense, eerie, and instantly compelling, these five stories announce the stunningly fertile imagination of perhaps the greatest storyteller of our time.

8 pages, Audio CD

Published March 1, 2002

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1277 people want to read

About the author

Stephen King

2,452 books887k followers
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.

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5 stars
982 (37%)
4 stars
953 (36%)
3 stars
574 (22%)
2 stars
88 (3%)
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9 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 99 reviews
Profile Image for Julie.
2,561 reviews34 followers
April 23, 2024
Surprisingly, my favorite of these short stories is "The Little Sisters of Eluria," which includes an author's note and is from his The Dark Tower series. I was quickly drawn into the story and remained invested.

My favorite quotes are from the first of the five short stories, Everything's Eventual:

"I thought I was living a life here. Finally getting away from ma and living a life but all I'd been doing was throwing a shadow."

"Any fool who can pucker is apt to whistle past the graveyard."


Profile Image for Sarah Swann.
917 reviews1,084 followers
December 20, 2025
This was ok. I like the premise and the writing was good. But I didn’t like the name of the group of people and it didn’t have an ending. So just middle of the road for me.
Profile Image for Skylar.
497 reviews5 followers
July 27, 2025
knocked a star off because how are you going to record an audiobook with only 5 of the stories? whack. the stories were good but obviously cherry picked from the collection!
Profile Image for Steven Brandt.
380 reviews28 followers
July 27, 2013
The 14 short stories included in Stephen King’s Everything’s Eventual have been published in several audiobook products. Recorded Books published a two-volume set, which contained all 14 stories; you can find links to my audiobook reviews for those below. Simon & Schuster also released two volumes from this anthology, and Everything’s Eventual, 5 Dark Tales is the first.

HIGHLIGHTS:

Autopsy Room 4 narrated by Oliver Platt.
All Howard wanted was a relaxing game of golf on a Saturday afternoon. Searching for his ball in the rough at the fourteenth hole, Howard experiences a sharp, stinging pain on his left calf, and then nothing. Howard wakes from one nightmare, into another that is far worse. He is wheeled into an operating room. There are doctors with sharp instruments hovering over him. Howard is completely paralyzed and cannot make a sound or even blink his eyes. As he watches in silent horror, the doctors prepare to begin the autopsy. This is one of the most chilling stories I’ve ever read. Imagine being alive and conscious, but unable to tell or show anyone as they prepare to perform an autopsy on you! Brr!

Lucky Quarter narrated by Judith Ivey.
Darlene is just a working-class girl, trying to raise her two kids on the wages and tips of a hotel chambermaid in Carson City, Nevada. That’s why, upon discovering that one of the hotel guests has left a single quarter in her tip envelope, all she can do is laugh. Further inspection reveals, however, that the quarter was not the only thing in her envelope. The guest in room 322 also left a note, proclaiming “This is a lucky quarter. It’s true, lucky you!” The note makes Darlene laugh even harder as she wonders how this is going to help her pay for the shoes and braces that her kids need. Deciding that the quarter is bad karma, she vows to get rid of it as quickly as possible and drops it into the slot-machine in the hotel’s lobby. This is merely the beginning of a winning streak that goes far beyond Darlene’s wildest dreams. Lucky Quarter doesn’t offer much to the reader, I’m sorry to say. Only Stephen King could have successfully marketed this story. Its only redeeming value is that it’s so short you barely have time to get bored with it. Luckily for us, Lucky Quarter is probably the worst we will find in the Everything’s Eventual collection.

The Road Virus Heads North narrated by Jay O Sanders.
Travelling home one day, Richard decides to stop when he spots a garage sale. While browsing the items, an unusual painting catches his eye and he decides to buy it. The painting portrays a dangerous looking young man in a souped-up car, but Richard soon notices that this is no ordinary painting. As Richard drives home, the scenery in the painting begins to change into familiar places, and it soon becomes clear that the hoodlum in the painting is following him home. Richard almost convinces himself that his imagination is playing tricks on him, until the souped-up car pulls into his driveway. Stephen King seems to like the idea of spooky paintings; he used the idea in two novels, Rose Madder, and more recently Duma Key. I agree with King, it makes for some creepy subject matter.

FULL LIST OF STORIES ON THIS AUDIOBOOK:

Everything’s Eventual
Autopsy Room 4
The Little Sisters of Eluria
Lucky Quarter
The Road Virus Heads North


Steven Brandt @ Audiobook-Heaven
Profile Image for Ellen Lowe.
483 reviews9 followers
October 10, 2023
A couple of stories in this one are just meh for me....and a couple of them are awesome...Autopsy, Room 4 in particular is prime horror...lol...and I loved the Gunslinger story as well...
Profile Image for T.E. Grau.
Author 30 books414 followers
May 7, 2015
Five bites of King's good but slightly uneven collection, which contains some great stories, such as "Lucky Quarter," with the best piece being "The Little Sisters of Eluria," which is a novella set in his THE DARK TOWER (which I have just recently started reading) cycle. I love me some Weird Western, and King shows his talents in this mixture of horror, fantasy, and the Old West. "The Road Virus Heads North" is a classic Stephen King tale, embodying what he does and where he does it. I love the concept of the title story (which brought to mind Lawrence Block and Thomas Ligotti), but wasn't quite sold on the execution.

Overall, well worth the money and the time. Unfortunately, I just couldn't give more than three stars to a collection that had two different scenes of paralysis erections in five total stories. Come on, Steve...
Profile Image for Jessie.
9 reviews3 followers
November 4, 2016
I loved the first two stories and the rest I could have done without.
Profile Image for Marc Rocket.
100 reviews
November 23, 2016
It has a good tale about Roland and that made it worth reading, for me.
Profile Image for James Biser.
3,777 reviews20 followers
January 28, 2023
This is a fantastic collection of eerie tales by Stephen King. The five stories are brief enough that this book can be experienced rather quickly and written in a way that each is a thrilling metaphorical ride.
Profile Image for Jayo Leavesby.
101 reviews3 followers
September 25, 2024
Weird collection of stories, some more enticing than others to me personally. Going to have to find the 14-story version too. Stephen King's classic style, but maybe only one or two that I'll keep with me for a while.
Profile Image for Craig.
6,353 reviews177 followers
October 30, 2017
Everything's Eventual is not my favorite of King's collections, but this audio book collects what probably may be the five best stories from the volume. The Road Virus Heads North is my favorite of the group, a traditional King-style horror tale that's a riff on Dorian Grey. Lucky Quarter is a nice literary piece, but lacks a satisfactory conclusion. Little Sisters of Eluria is a Roland/Dark Tower tale that's pretty good but would be better served by appearing in a Dark Tower book. The least of the group is Autopsy Room Four, which seems like a refugee from a mid-1970s underground comic, and the titular story, which is interesting enough though it hasn't aged well. It's a fun group of stories to listen to, but I wouldn't call any of them essential King.
Profile Image for Bob Ireland.
17 reviews
June 24, 2024
Five Dark Tales (audio) - Loved going back to Roland's world in Little Sisters of Eluria! Another DT link with Everything's Eventual as we learn about Dinky Earnshaw and his amazing abilities. Autopsy Room 4 was a quaint tale - enjoyable listening to. The Road Virus Heads North was a gripping tale that kept you wondering what the outcome could possibly be. Lucky Quarter was the weakest of the five tales.
Profile Image for William.
1,045 reviews50 followers
August 1, 2019
audio with ebook Like many compendiums, the enjoyment is up to the reader.
1,991 reviews
May 27, 2022
I really liked Autopsy Room 4 and the Lucky Quarter, but the rest were a mixed bag of interesting parts and dullness.
Profile Image for Michael Sorbello.
Author 1 book316 followers
November 8, 2025
Five short stories from the larger anthology of tales: Everything’s Eventual

***

Everything’s Eventual

A 19-year-old high school dropout named Dinky that has the ability to influence the minds and temptations of other living beings from faraway gets hired by a secret government agency that tasks him with assassinating evil men without leaving any traces behind. It gets much more complicated than that.

Very cool story with subtle ties to Hearts in Atlantis and The Dark Tower.

4/5

***

Autopsy Room Four

A morbid suspense story about a soon-to-be premature burial that's... surprisingly hilarious.

Howard Cottrell wakes up to find himself paralyzed in an autopsy room after being bitten by a snake with a group of immature young doctors getting ready to dissect him. He's butt naked and defenseless, fully aware and feeling everything. He dreads all the poking and prodding, knowing it's eventually going to end with him being sliced open alive. He does everything he can to try and get the attention of the doctors while they're busy goofing off before it's too late.

The story definitely didn't end how I expected. It was surprisingly funny from beginning to end.

3/5

***

The Little Sisters of Eluria

A fun pulpy Dark Tower story that takes place before the first novel in the main series.

Before Roland’s quest to chase down the wicked Man in Black, he was a wandering vagabond searching for a trail to follow. He stumbles upon a haunted village filled with slow mutants, dead bodies and a mad dog bearing the sign of a cross, a foreboding warning that the town is hiding a darker evil beneath its surface. Monstrous antics ensue as Roland struggles to fight his way out with all the odds stacked against him.

This story is creepy, enjoyable and gruesome, but doesn’t add much to the overall world, story, lore or characters of the main series. It’s just an enjoyable one-off side story with cannibalistic mutants, vampire ladies and gross bug creatures. I enjoyed it for what it is.

3/5

***

Luckey Quarter

Darlene Pullen is livid when she is tipped a measly quarter with a note attached to it after her miserable shift as a hotel maid comes to a close for the day. The note promises her that it will bring her great fortune in the near future if she invests it wisely, so she decides to go gambling. The quarter certainly changes her future, but not in the way she envisioned.

A funny short story with a hopeful ending. Darlene is a mother of two and down on her luck but a single quarter opens up many new possibilities for a bright future.

3/5

***

Road Virus Heads North

A cool short story that gave me the same type of vibes as H.P. Lovecraft’s Pickman’s Model, though not quite as good in my opinion.

A horror author named Richard Kinnel picks up a creepy painting called The Road Virus Heads North at a yard sale on his way back home from a literary conference. The painting portrays the unsettling portrait of a sinister man smiling devilishly with filed teeth while driving a red car down a bridge. Every time Richard looks at the painting, small details change and grow increasingly more disturbing, almost as if it’s a living entity playing tricks on his mind. After discovering the tragic fate of the tortured artist who created the piece, he fears a similarly gruesome fate is in store for him.

This one really captures that vintage pulp fiction horror story vibe. Short, sweet, a little cheesy but hits home with the chilling visuals and haunting atmosphere.

3/5
Profile Image for Meg.
113 reviews1 follower
May 16, 2025
Another dark anthology of King's short stories. Autopsy room four was the most frightening story.

EVERYTHING'S EVENTUAL:
Weirdly perfect life but absolutely no meaning.
But then it got dark... what's his name turns out to be quite evil.


AUTOPSY ROOM FOUR:
A lot of people's biggest fear... Having surgery while you're awake, and being paralyzed but thought dead. Terrifying.


THE LITTLE SISTERS OF ELURIA:
This one has Roland from The Dark Tower series. Weird.
The sisters seem like insidious medieval nuns who are also nurses. Strange little love story, though...

LUCKEY QUARTER:
I found myself hoping that Darlene would actually win in life as a maid.
A quarter began this crazy winning streak.
Very anticlimactic. She wins all kinds of money, and then passes the quarter on? I was hoping for at least some horror... Still, it was well written.

THE ROAD VIRUS HEADS NORTH:
He's obsessed with this terrifying painting, so of course the painting comes to life.
The blonde kid with the tattoo and the teeth... Is this supposed to be him when he was younger? Or evil incarnate? I don't know. I'm really sick right now, so deep thoughts are out of the question.
Profile Image for Chrisman.
420 reviews15 followers
July 24, 2025
Good group of short stories.

Read it just for The Little Sisters of Eluria, for its Dark Tower tie-ins. A story about Roland getting himself into and out of a jam. I'd love a bunch of Roland short stories like this. Random glimpses of his adventures before the Drawing.

The title story was Dark Tower ish too. The kid was definitely a Breaker. From my notes:

> wait wait wait wait wait. sharpton is a recruiter for Trans Corp? and the recruits are called trannys? they just keep saying it: "i'm a real tranny! i'll be the best tranny i can!" is this just king's newest form of queerphobia?

Profile Image for Steve.
900 reviews275 followers
August 24, 2023
I read this around the time it came out. I recall it being uneven, but that there were no bad stories, and a number of really good ones. King is a master of the short form, and you'll find solid proof of that in this collection.
Profile Image for Marnie Bebej.
614 reviews9 followers
June 7, 2024
Audiobook- of the five stories they included in the audiobook I only found one interesting and to the scale of the Stephen King books I enjoy. It did let me know I have no interest whatsoever in reading the Dark Tower series.
Profile Image for karine alves.
196 reviews3 followers
December 31, 2025
realmente eventual e um pouco decepcionante kkkkkk eu queria ler uma história específica, mas não está inclusa nessa versão e só descobri quando terminei. também acho que o king funciona mais sendo lido do que narrado, atrapalha um pouco a experiência geral.
Profile Image for Diane.
258 reviews34 followers
June 17, 2023
King doing what he does best. All of these were excellent.
Profile Image for Daniel.
58 reviews9 followers
July 30, 2023
Solid little collection of stories
Profile Image for Kai.
120 reviews
October 31, 2024
I liked this little collection. I wasn’t the whole collection, but the ones that pertained most to my Dark Tower reading and a few extras. The stories within were really enjoyable and fascinating.
Profile Image for Amanda.
463 reviews
November 1, 2024
The audio is a bit hard to get into, but the stories are pretty good! I'm probably going to reread a physical copy instead.
Profile Image for Lorna.
714 reviews9 followers
November 3, 2024
Loved most of the stories. I’m not a big fan of short stories, most end with me wanting more. Worth the read
Profile Image for Maddy Mickels.
68 reviews1 follower
November 18, 2024
My favorites were “Autopsy Room 4” and “The Road Virus Heads North”. Leave it to King to bring my unrealized fears to light. 🖤
Displaying 1 - 30 of 99 reviews

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