Stephen King's Danse Macabre

Despite the title, it's non-fiction. Why have I chosen to read this book instead of his other works? Because I'm so daft that I can't tell that the book's non-fiction even by reading the back cover. (See? This is what happens when I don't go on Wikipedia to look up book's summary beforehand.).

Anyway, the book is basically King's commentary on the Horror/Suspense genre, touching on books (Lovecraft, Poe, and some of his own works, along the way), TV (like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits), film (mentioning a few of the many movie adaptations from his books, plus Rosemary Baby's and The Stepford Wives (1975)).

Surprisingly, I found that I was able to 'read on', so to speak, as I very, very much prefer woven tales of enchantment and mystical lands, or anything made-up, for that matter. Might be because I could identify with most of what King was talking about, since I do pride myself on my knowledge of pop culture. Yay, pop culture!

All in all, it was a pretty good book. One bit that caught my attention was his summary of this movie called X – The Man With The X-Ray Eyes. Yes, it sounds corny, but what made it, well, rather eerie (for me) was the inclusion of the rumoured alternate ending in King's retelling. X is about this scientist (Dr. Xavier. Get it? Dr. X... Emphasis on the X... Hahaha.) who creates eye drops that enables him to heighten his sense of sight, and occasionally, being your typical man, cheat in poker and see through women's clothing. Initially, he's able to control it, but as he keeps using the drops, he finds out that he's slowly losing control over his X-Ray ability, and towards the end, his eyesight has increased exponentially, enabling him to see even up till the edges of the universe. What he doesn't like seeing is this, massive glowing entity of sorts (I can't describe it; I'm still looking for the movie on YouTube) that seems to have taken notice of him (because usually, when you can see something, it sees you pretty well, too). And that doesn't sound very nice now, does it?

So, at the end of the movie, he drives out into the desert, takes his sunglasses off (he uses them to hide his eyes, which by now, has gone totally black, devoid of any pupil) and gouges his own eyes out. They even show you the bloody sockets (if I'm not mistaken).

"If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out..."

And here I was thinking that he was just gonna blow his brains out. Well, whaddaya know.

King describes the alternate ending for his readers: Supposedly after Dr. X takes his eyes out, there's a wee bit of footage that got cut out of the final ending because apparently, it was 'too much', so to speak. (At that point I was thinking, hellooo, bloody sockets, what else could there beee?).

Anyway, that bit of footage is rumoured to be, that after removing his eyes, X looks up, and screams, "I can still see!"

Okay, now that part really scared the crap out of me. I know, it's not much to go by, but seriously, when you think about it, it's like, the chemicals from the drops had seeped in WAY beyond the sight nerves(?), and onwards to the brain (yeah, my Biology sucks. Happy?), meaning that he doesn't NEED his eyes to see anymore, and that he can't ever escape the sight of Mr. Glowing-Entity looking right back at him (as they say, ignorance is bliss). Which, in my most humble opinion, is the most terrifying fate he would have to live with for the rest of his life.

(That is, until he gets that gun.)