About halfway through the book and whilst pondering if I, in the year '77 of our lord, would've been able to differentiate King from Bachman, was thinking about the characteristic expository monologues thus far, and how they had been lacking as much gumption and odor as are now par for the course for him. Then, lo' and behold: we get the school shooter's introspection about how the date of his conception must've aligned with the brutal death of his dad's sister in law, and how this promptly terminated his parent's sex life – thus we're blessed with the sentence "If a bird shits on your windshield, you wipe it off before it can dry. And I was like bird shit on my dad's windshield"

“What happened then?” Susan Brooks asked breathlessly.

“Not much, ” I said. “It blew over.” Now that it was out, I found myself mildly surprised that it had stuck in my throat so long. I once knew a kid, Herk Orville, who ate a mouse. I dared him, and he swallowed it. Raw. It was just a small fieldmouse, and it didn’t look hurt at all when we found it; maybe it had just died of old age. Anyway, Herk’s mom was out hanging clothes, and she just happened to look over at us, sitting in the dirt by the back step. She looked just in time to see the mouse going down Herk’s throat, headfirst.

She screamed-what a fright it can give you when a grown-up screams!-and ran over and put her finger down Herk’s throat. Herk threw up the mouse, the hamburger he’d eaten for lunch, and some pasty glop that looked like tomato soup. He was just starting to ask his mother what was going on when she threw up. And there, in all that puke, that old dead mouse didn’t look bad at all. It sure looked better than the rest of the stuff. The moral seemed to be that puking up your past when the present is even worse makes some of the vomitus look nearly tasty. I started to tell them that, and then decided it would only revolt them-like the story of the Cherokee Nose Job.

Back half of the book is almost entirely horny adolescent flashback, as well as a single Lord of the Flies-esque mob rule moment which is the true "horror" twist.

"but Mr. Penis wasn't talking"

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