Uncle Otto's Truck
| "Uncle Otto's Truck" | |
|---|---|
| Author | Stephen King |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Horror short story |
| Published in |
Yankee (1st release), Skeleton Crew |
| Publication type | Magazine |
| Media type | Print (Periodical, Paperback) |
| Publication date | 1983 |
"Uncle Otto's Truck" is a horror short story by Stephen King, first published in Yankee in 1983, and collected in King's 1985 collection Skeleton Crew.
Plot summary
The story concerns an abandoned truck owned by Otto Schenck and George McCutcheon, wealthy Castle Rock businessmen in the post-depression era. After Otto deliberately crushes George beneath his derelict vehicle, the murderer becomes fixated on the truck. Otto insists that the truck is not only moving on its own accord, but planning to kill him. At the same time, he becomes a social recluse, living in a house he built across from the truck itself, and generally begins to lose his sanity. His nephew, who tells the story, finally finds him dead–the corpse has been drowned with oil and there is a spark plug rammed down his throat.
The nephew goes on to describe how, on the day he found his uncle dead, he began to see strange happenings with the truck himself. Also, he couldn't accept his uncle's death as a suicide because there was no jug near the body with which Otto could have fed himself the oil. The nephew would dismiss what he saw as a hallucination, were it not for the derelict sparkplug he took away from the corpse and kept as a reminder.
Adaptations
"Uncle Otto's Truck" has been adapted by artist Glenn Chadbourne for the book The Secretary of Dreams, a collection of comics based on King's short fiction released by Cemetery Dance in December 2006.
See also
External links
- Uncle Otto's Truck title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
