My Pretty Pony

My Pretty Pony is a short story by Stephen King. Originally published in 1989 as an oversized, slipcased edition (with stainless steel faced boards and digital clock inset into front cover) commissioned for the Whitney Museum in New York as a coffee table book, it was later included in King's collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes. An elderly man, his death rapidly approaching, takes his young grandson up onto a hill behind his house and gives the... more

My Pretty Pony is a short story by Stephen King. Originally published in 1989 as an oversized, slipcased edition (with stainless steel faced boards and digital clock inset into front cover) commissioned for the Whitney Museum in New York as a coffee table book, it was later included in King's collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes. An elderly man, his death rapidly approaching, takes his young grandson up onto a hill behind his house and gives the boy his pocketwatch. Then, standing among falling apple blossoms, the man also "gives instruction" on the nature of time: how when you grow up, it begins to move faster and faster, slipping away from you in great chunks if you don't hold tightly onto it. Time is a pretty pony, with a wicked heart. In his note on the story in Nightmares and Dreamscapes, King says the piece was originally a flashback scene included in a full-length novel-in-progress in which the grandson was now a brutal hitman reflecting on his childhood. The novel was... less