The following version of the novel was used to create this study guide: King, Stephen. Everything’s Eventual. Scribner, March 19, 2002. Kindle.

In Stephen King’s collection of short stories Everything’s Eventual, King uses everyday nightmares as well as a good dose of the paranormal to present a variety of scary scenarios. Themes in the stories include everyday evils, fears about death, and the paranormal.

In “Autopsy Room Four,” the narrator wakes to find himself being prepared for an autopsy, but unable to move or speak to tell anyone he is alive. Nine-year-old Gary is preyed upon by the Devil, who tells him that his mother has died of a bee sting, just like his brother, in the story “The Man in the Black Suit.”

In the story “All That You Love Will Be Carried Away,” Alfie struggles to decide if he wants to die by suicide or do the hard work of changing his life. “In the Deathroom” Fletcher uses an interrogation as a chance to exact revenge on the people who murdered his sister. “The Little Sisters of Eluria,” a nun-like sect nursed wounded men back to health only to kill them by dining on their blood. In “Everything’s Eventual,” Dinky first brags about his new job, but later admits he has been hired as a murderer because of his ability to kill people by writing letters to them.

In “L.T.’s Theory of Pets,” L.T. reasons that his marriage fell apart because he preferred one family pet while his wife liked another. A painting comes to life in the story “The Road Virus Heads North.” In “Lunch at the Gotham Café,” a maître d’ attacks an estranged man and wife with a knife, an action that kills the wife’s lawyer and helps to define why the couple is incompatible.

In the story “That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French,” Carol suffers her own form of hell as she is forced to live the same series of events over and over again. Mike Enslin, a professed non-believer in the paranormal, is almost killed when he attempts to spend a night in a haunted hotel room in the story “1408.”

In “Riding the Bullet,” Alan Parker hitches a ride with a ghost who demands Alan choose who will live and who will die, Alan or his mother. Even though Darlene wins the jackpot with a “Luckey Quarter” someone left her as a tip, she believes her overall luck in life will not change.