I cannot read Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut without hearing Fred Gwynn as the old man. Maybe it’s just me.
Of course, having seen (and adored) The Shawshank Redemption, I can’t re-read that without hearing Morgan Freeman, even though in the book, the character is a runty Irish guy! 
In Night Shift, Grey Matter came pretty close, for me, to being as good as Survivor Type. And The Boogeyman was just downright scary!
The Mist (despite the fact it is more a novella than a short story, but the battle in the pharmacy next door to the grocery story seriously squicks me out every time I read it), followed by The Jaunt which seriously creeps me out even today, years later (longer than you think, indeed!), and The Raft, which I gleefully used to remind my fellow ‘drunks on a raft’ of every summer down at our lake. They’d just roll their eyes at me and hand me another beer. 
Apropos of nothing, ‘TheLast Rung on the Ladder,’ from Night Shift, is a particularly poignant piece of storytelling. One of my favorites from that collection.
Oh, and Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut is good all by itself on another level of creepiness just under the prose. Excellent work.
Brother Cadfael said it best:
Oh yeah. That’s good for a few shivers…:eek:
“The Reach” - can’t believe it’s only gotten 2 other votes!
I guess I’m in the minority, because I LOVED The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet.
Anybody who knows anything at all about human nature knows that the best way to get people to touch something is to tell them not to touch it. You can’t depend on people to not do what they’re told not to do; you can basically count on them to do what they are not to do. We didn’t come down out of the trees because we weren’t curious.
I don’t like the story “Surivor Type” - it’s too creepy to read again. Ick.
Hey, which story is is that has the Fornits? That word has stuck with me - I call my cats varmints, and I varmint me some varmints most days.
The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet I believe.
“The Reach” – for me, that one came out of nowhere. It wasn’t horror, but it had plenty of enjoyable King elements; particularly the little details about life on an isolated island.
I thought it particularly amusing that they kept the line about when asked “Why do they call you Red?” and Red replied “Probably because I’m Irish.”
I chose Survivor Type, but could have easily picked The Jaunt, The Raft or The Mist.
And Morgan Freeman totally pulled it off.
I’ve always maintained that Morgan can convincingly play anything but a 19YO white girl, and even that, he might give a run for the money!
Loves me some Morgan Freeman!
Haven’t read it in twenty years, but “Longer than you think, Dad!” is ingrained in my skull from The Jaunt.
That’s what I find so much more haunting in The Jaunt than almost anything else King has written. I don’t deal with boredom very well, so the idea of being imprisoned in your own, unblinking mind for relatively a billion years (apparently even longer, according to Ricky ) terrifies me on a primal level.
The story was a lot of fun, but surely dated now. In fact, it’s probably not realistic at all to have the awake Jaunters to even be able to talk. They’d probably have turned into mindless, insane vegetables after the first “100 years” or so. But, damn… such haunting words when they come out. It’s stuck with me since I first read it 24 years ago.
Decided to answer without Googling any of the stories. I must have read this 15 or so years ago, but that’s the only one I clearly remember by name (and every time I eat ladyfingers).