Hand in hand with the great Stephen King?

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Recently in my creative writing class we carried out an exercise, adding to the beginning or end of a fragment of text we’d been given by our tutor. I was excited by the start of the story and piggybacked my text on to it.

Below is an extract from Stephen King’s “Night Shift”…

The guy’s name was Snodgrass and I could see him getting ready to do something crazy. His eyes had got bigger, showing a lot of the whites, like a dog getting ready to fight. The two kids who had come skidding into the parking lot in the old Fury were trying to talk to him, but his head was cocked, as though he was hearing other voices. He had a tight little potbelly encased in a good suit that was getting a little shiny in the seat. He was a salesman and he kept his display bag close to him, like a pet dog that had gone to sleep.

One of the kids was pulling at his sleeve, tugging at him and saying “Mister, Mister? What’s in the bag?” But Snodgrass just kept right on coming. Sick of being ignored the bigger kid started tugging at the bag. Meanwhile his friend started pulling the older boy back like he was getting scared about what might happen. Snodgrass was hauling it back. It was a wild tug of war.

Just as it seemed the kid had the bag, Snodgrass gained some ground, moving it his way. Suddenly the older kid let go and Snodgrass fell backwards. The bag jerked up in the air and opened as he hit the deck. Up from out of the bag came a human hand, rising from its confinement with hideous alacrity! The hand had either been in the bag a number of months, or its former owner had been a long time dead. The skin had turned a grey, green colour. At the wrist the blood was blackened. Amazingly a gold ring still sat on one of the rotten fingers, and chimed dully as they thudded to the floor.