I am now afraid of toy soldiers

I have mentioned before just how much I love Stephen King. I have read everything of his at least once and I get SO excited when I see that he has published a new book. It is all I can do to NOT buy it the day it is released.

Needless to say, when I saw that his Nightmares and Dreamscapes had been made into a movie I almost wet myself. That is one of my favorite books; Mr. King's short stories pack a punch in a few short pages. Yes, it is a made for TV series, but he doesn't need blood or gore to scare you silly. He takes real life things and twists them until you are terrified; last night didn't disappoint.

One night a week for the next four weeks TNT is showing two, one-hour stories. I only watched the first one. It wasn't scary. It was intense. I don't do well with intense before bed. I will watch the second one tonight with Carl -- after I re-watch the first one with him.

Like I said, Mr. King takes every day, ordinary things and puts a twist on them. What was his focus last night? Toy soldiers. Yep, those little green guys we all played with as a kid. The same ones we fell in love with in Toy Story... J-man even had his picture taken with one at Disney!

Let me set the scene:

William Hurt plays an assassin that murders the owner/CEO of a toy company. Why? We don't know. (Let me say here that the entire hour-long show had NO dialog. Can you imagine? You are riveted to a show where not one single word is uttered) He sees a picture of the victim's Mom (I think) and takes a toy fairy as a souvenier. Hmmmm...

Ok. So he takes a plane ride, he gets home, and emails whoever paid for the hit that it is done and to transfer the cash. Next thing you know someone is knocking on his door with a package. He is suspicious. He opens the package slowly. It is a case full of toy soldiers, a couple of helicopters and some jeeps. Interesting. He goes to get a drink and the case falls off the counter. He gets suspicious.

Suddenly gunfire erupts from UNDER the couch! It was laughable at first. Then it just got more and more intense. Those little suckers were like the roaches of the toy world. They would not die unless you stepped on them or tore them apart. They had bullets and bombs. They had helicopters that chased him on a ledge (he lived in an apartment on the 40th floor). I'm telling you it was the craziest thing I have ever seen. I wanted to laugh, but I couldn't! I sat there with my hand over my mouth for the last 20 minutes!

I'm not going to tell you how it ended; I'll just say it was typical Stephen King style. Now that I've slept on it and written about it, I can see how some people will call the story dumb. It SOUNDS that way. When you talk about any Stephen King story you sound like a looney tune, but trust me, I'm not. I can't wait to see what Carl thinks about it. I'm going to try to do intense tonight and the next three weeks.

After I throw away J-man's soliders.