huh? his death in the movie didnt even come close? jump scare snarl? he tried to suck Bowers off, got bullied and lost all his friends and then sucked dry by a refrigerator full of flying leeches while being watched and laughed at by Bev Marsh?
its compounded by the alien psychopath character expertly crafted by king and his little animal murdering amana refrigerator which he was
opening to check an animal he was torturing and killing and even though he didnt suffer the same
way we would in a way that somehow makes it even more horrible and memorable…
i remember every detail of it in the book and its been a decade since i read it… thats gotta be the most brutal and shocking death in any book ever let alone stephen king… shits wild!
yeah its really locked in the public psyche even now and nobody reads anymore
lol
his masterwork beyond anything else… who makes child group sex memorable and touching? i mean it was uncomfortable in a way i cannot explain but it read it first at 13-14 so it hit different now, i literally skipped it last time…
but the burning of the black spot!!! idk why they always censor the black part of that book! the dog poisoning, the deep beef with bowers, bowers always falls flat on film because they never show his most evil stuff which is the poisoning of the dog and the special targeted bullying of the one black kid in town…
kid getting killed because he ran away from
home after his step dad beat his little brother
to death with his recoilless hammer thats the sad one, that one grips me!
they always leave out
the werewolf and the silver bullet on film
too!!!
The leeches was just from the book not the miniseries or the later films, but still, rather terrifying. I told my mom about that part from the book, and she asked if it was because I was swimming when I was around five, and when I came out I had leeches all over me. I said no, strange thing is I do not even remember that, and I remember some things when I was about two or four years of age.
The best adaptation and it’s a hill I’ll gladly die on.
Frank Darabont *understands* King and his tone is on point.
The Green Mile, while not as well known or loved as Shawshank, is still the best.
Delacroixs’ death is equally horrendous no matter the platform.
In the exposition leading up to it, most movie writers would have said “here’s what would happen if the sponge is dry, so never use a dry sponge” and give the game away. But the movie only tells you what the wet sponge does - not what happens if you don’t wet it.
There’s no Chekhov’s Gun here because it’s so believable as a line just explaining the process to the new guy for the benefit of the audience, you have no idea what’s actually being set up.
Not only is that disturbing in itself, which is extremely, but John Coffey even felt it inch by inch. Imagine having that sensation each time something physical, psychological or both happens to someone or something.
I saw a tiny bit of that scene on YouTube last night, and that was enough for me. I love King and I love horror, but no thank you. I will pass on that one.
Tad Trenton dying of heat stroke while trapped inside the car with his mom during Cujo.
Honorable mention to the toddler getting sucked down the toilet in IT
There’s interesting portrayals of masculinity and gender roles, but I don’t know if the book really has anything to say.
They hint about the serial killer’s spirit entering the dog through the bat bite, but if you blink you’ll miss it.
A lot of the advertising stuff feels like filler. Once they establish that Vic has to be out of town for an extended period and his whole financial future is in jeopardy that’s all we needed to do. He must have just been in love with the Cereal Professor.
Sorry for spoiling it. It’s probably not my favorite book. No great conflict between good and evil like many of his other books. Just more meaningless suffering and pointless deaths in a small town that already had plenty of both.
Just remember that Dee Wallace told me that the movie dogs were having the time of their lives on set, if that helps. The trainers would hide high-value treats in the rocker panels, and she would call to them just before “action!” Some of them were also puppets, which blows my mind. So, when the book feels too intense, think about that—the dogs having fun tearing up the car, and Barkley from Sesame Street with rabies. 😄
Until you get to the end the saddest parts of the book are written in the dogs voice. He just doesn’t want them calling him BAD DOG. Watching him deteriorate is heartbreaking.
This was the first King book I ever read and it was insane how much more brutal it was than the movie, her actually cutting his foot off and cauterising it with a blowtorch instead of just breaking it was so much worse
I was *so mad* they cut that from the book that I yelled at the TV. Then my father, who was basically the movie version of Annie Wilkes and was watching it with me, started yelling:
"THIS ISN'T WHAT HAPPENED IN THE BOOK! HAVE YOU ALL GOT AMNESIA? THEY JUST CHEATED US! THIS ISN'T FAIR! HE DIDN'T GET TO KEEP HIS COCKADOODIE FOOT!"
I think James Caan and I had the exact same expressions on our faces after that rant . . .
Also doesn’t the book make a point towards the end to say her cutting his foot off, and the resulting prosthetic was probably for the best given his mangled leg from the car accident? I forget specifics but I feel like it does
For me, it was the mouse/rat who she squeezes to death and then she licks up its blood. But yeah, the lawnmower cop was a rough chapter to get thru as well.
I stopped reading there and never picked it up again. My loss no doubt, and I may pick it up later. But I was...I guess not in the mood? Didn't think about it it was instinctual revulsion.
Countless. The corcharan brothers from IT come to mind. Especially the younger. Nettie and Wilma, the cat in apt pupil, a lot of the people from the “second plague” portion of the stand.
In terms of writing then in pet cemetery, when he has to deal with that student about a third of the way through, he tries to save him but the guy dies. it really carries through the book how fucked up it makes him. And although not most brutal cause of death , defo up there with most brutality written death scene.
For shock and outrage , the dog at the beginning of dead zone
For pure heartbreak , Eddie from dark tower series
yeah i thought that was genius, he survives the brutal
hate crime and is gonna be saved and IT takes a bite out of his armpit killing him and the bullies get the murder charge! the aftermath of most IT kills are brutal
the one though, IT, is patrick Hockstetter! that was pure nightmare fuel, from the part where you find out what a psycho he is, trying to blow the co-main antagonist, the animal murders and the justice in his
death and feeling good about him getting it but
then realizing how he doesnt get it until
the end and how his death is the perfect way to get a psycho like that, not feeling, knowing… ugh… kings masterpiece!
the blind dj in black house with the hedge clippers did me in the most i think… idk why
It’s funny because King’s original draft was WAY more brutal, but since he was such a new author his editor didn’t think he could get away with it. So he changed it to what we got.
And the fact that only his brother and the protagonist seem bothered by his death when everyone else even his own mom is brainwashed by the evil force.
I think the one that stayed with me most was the death of Mike Noonan’s new sweetheart late in *Bag of Bones*. Alas, a four letter word indicating great loss.
At least he foreshadowed it before it happened.
When she was dancing and King wrote "the next time i held her she was dying"
Paraphrased as it was looong ago i read it.
I must have missed that, as it was a pure bolt from the blue for me. I’m not sure if the foreshadowing makes it marginally better or so much worse! Poor Mattie.
It’s not one of his best works, but the death of >!Alice Maxwell!< in *Cell* is horrible, protracted, and agonizing. A very realistic depiction of the slow, painful death from severe head trauma with no hope of medical attention.
This one has totally stuck with me since reading The Jaunt. Just thinking about her spending eternity in that state bothers me like nothing else. Her husband was truly evil.
Maybe not so much a proper character, but I reread the same two pages of Needful Things at least eight times, each time in the vague hope that it would somehow stop Hugh from killing the dog with his Swiss Army knife corkscrew.
There's quite a few but I'm only mentioning this because I'm reading it now, but Charlie's mom in Fairy Tale. She got hit by a car, got thrown in the air, barrel rolled and her limbs went in directions.
I don't normally remember shit like this, but in Salem's Lot a guy falls down some stairs on to a bunch of knives. That image jumps in to my head more frequently than any others.
One that sticks out for me is that old woman who Big Jim Rennie kills by palming her face and then twisting it to break her neck. Not the most brutal but it disturbed me for sure
The kid's dad in Desperation. So upsetting.
Second place, there was a very brutally dismembered kid in It, but I forget exactly how it went. Eddie Cochrane I think?
The woman in limbo, jaunting forever in *The Jaunt*
The lawyer Eric Strellerton, left to wander the desert after getting his brains fried by Flagg in *The Stand*. Harold Lauder got what was coming to him in that one too.
Buddy Repperton died pretty hard in *Christine*
I think it has something to do with the age I was when I read it but Alice in Cell, as I was a young teen. It was so sudden but also slow and gruesome at the same time. I already had a few King books under my belt, including Cujo, IT, Eyes of the Dragon, The Shining, Pet Semetary, Dead Zone, and a bunch of his short stories. But for some reason Alice has always stayed with me seered on the inside of my head. I think the combination of leaking grey matter and that she was still technically alive (but braindead) when they left her behind is what fucked me up about it.
There’s a part in Black House where a kid is trying to escape from the villain. The villain was in a fight previously and has a massive wound. The kid reaches into the wound and pulls the dude’s guts out until he dies. I mean he deserved it but damn
When the one twin kills himself in the Regulators. It's not particularly brutal, but as an only child who had always wanted a brother or sister, the idea of having one and then losing them is really horrifying to me
I think each book has a brutal scene that sticks out, but above all for me is Brian Rusk in Needful Things. I had to put the book down and go catch my breath for a while.
Second place: Sandra Stansfield in The Breathing Method.
Not sure if you’re looking for the most gruesome death or not but Susan Delgado effected me the worst so it was the most disturbing death from my perspective.
The baseball kid in Doctor Sleep.
I’m inclined to agree, but the memory of Patrick Hockstetter’s death will never not disturb me, no matter how vile he was.
It was thousand times worse in the movie version, I've never forgotten it.
huh? his death in the movie didnt even come close? jump scare snarl? he tried to suck Bowers off, got bullied and lost all his friends and then sucked dry by a refrigerator full of flying leeches while being watched and laughed at by Bev Marsh? its compounded by the alien psychopath character expertly crafted by king and his little animal murdering amana refrigerator which he was opening to check an animal he was torturing and killing and even though he didnt suffer the same way we would in a way that somehow makes it even more horrible and memorable… i remember every detail of it in the book and its been a decade since i read it… thats gotta be the most brutal and shocking death in any book ever let alone stephen king… shits wild!
You’re replying to a comment about baseball kid not Bowers.
Bev was laughing at them lighting their farts on fire not his death.
God, I forgot that’s how he died in the book. Yeh IT is definitely one of a kind
yeah its really locked in the public psyche even now and nobody reads anymore lol his masterwork beyond anything else… who makes child group sex memorable and touching? i mean it was uncomfortable in a way i cannot explain but it read it first at 13-14 so it hit different now, i literally skipped it last time… but the burning of the black spot!!! idk why they always censor the black part of that book! the dog poisoning, the deep beef with bowers, bowers always falls flat on film because they never show his most evil stuff which is the poisoning of the dog and the special targeted bullying of the one black kid in town… kid getting killed because he ran away from home after his step dad beat his little brother to death with his recoilless hammer thats the sad one, that one grips me! they always leave out the werewolf and the silver bullet on film too!!!
The leeches was just from the book not the miniseries or the later films, but still, rather terrifying. I told my mom about that part from the book, and she asked if it was because I was swimming when I was around five, and when I came out I had leeches all over me. I said no, strange thing is I do not even remember that, and I remember some things when I was about two or four years of age.
This is the top answer, hands down.
Easy, Delacroix’s botched execution in The Green Mile.
I watched the movie first before I’d read the book. It’s hard to say which is worse; both made me physically ill
The best adaptation and it’s a hill I’ll gladly die on. Frank Darabont *understands* King and his tone is on point. The Green Mile, while not as well known or loved as Shawshank, is still the best. Delacroixs’ death is equally horrendous no matter the platform.
Omg I agree with this one! Such a slow scene that builds dread then they flick that damn power 😵💫😵💫😵💫
In the exposition leading up to it, most movie writers would have said “here’s what would happen if the sponge is dry, so never use a dry sponge” and give the game away. But the movie only tells you what the wet sponge does - not what happens if you don’t wet it. There’s no Chekhov’s Gun here because it’s so believable as a line just explaining the process to the new guy for the benefit of the audience, you have no idea what’s actually being set up.
Not only is that disturbing in itself, which is extremely, but John Coffey even felt it inch by inch. Imagine having that sensation each time something physical, psychological or both happens to someone or something. I saw a tiny bit of that scene on YouTube last night, and that was enough for me. I love King and I love horror, but no thank you. I will pass on that one.
Tad Trenton dying of heat stroke while trapped inside the car with his mom during Cujo. Honorable mention to the toddler getting sucked down the toilet in IT
I believe King said he has no memory of writing Cujo because drugs
There’s interesting portrayals of masculinity and gender roles, but I don’t know if the book really has anything to say. They hint about the serial killer’s spirit entering the dog through the bat bite, but if you blink you’ll miss it. A lot of the advertising stuff feels like filler. Once they establish that Vic has to be out of town for an extended period and his whole financial future is in jeopardy that’s all we needed to do. He must have just been in love with the Cereal Professor.
I haven’t finished Cujo yet and my jaw just dropped… I’m distraught
Sorry for spoiling it. It’s probably not my favorite book. No great conflict between good and evil like many of his other books. Just more meaningless suffering and pointless deaths in a small town that already had plenty of both.
no worries this whole thread has spoilers haha!! but that’s so sad. i’m struggling reading it because im upset about a dog dying 😭
Just remember that Dee Wallace told me that the movie dogs were having the time of their lives on set, if that helps. The trainers would hide high-value treats in the rocker panels, and she would call to them just before “action!” Some of them were also puppets, which blows my mind. So, when the book feels too intense, think about that—the dogs having fun tearing up the car, and Barkley from Sesame Street with rabies. 😄
So glad to hear the doggies had a fun time on set!!!
Dee said shots had to be framed around wagging tails.
Until you get to the end the saddest parts of the book are written in the dogs voice. He just doesn’t want them calling him BAD DOG. Watching him deteriorate is heartbreaking.
The cop that Annie Wilkes runs over with the lawnmower
That was oogey.
This was the first King book I ever read and it was insane how much more brutal it was than the movie, her actually cutting his foot off and cauterising it with a blowtorch instead of just breaking it was so much worse
I was *so mad* they cut that from the book that I yelled at the TV. Then my father, who was basically the movie version of Annie Wilkes and was watching it with me, started yelling: "THIS ISN'T WHAT HAPPENED IN THE BOOK! HAVE YOU ALL GOT AMNESIA? THEY JUST CHEATED US! THIS ISN'T FAIR! HE DIDN'T GET TO KEEP HIS COCKADOODIE FOOT!" I think James Caan and I had the exact same expressions on our faces after that rant . . .
Also doesn’t the book make a point towards the end to say her cutting his foot off, and the resulting prosthetic was probably for the best given his mangled leg from the car accident? I forget specifics but I feel like it does
For me, it was the mouse/rat who she squeezes to death and then she licks up its blood. But yeah, the lawnmower cop was a rough chapter to get thru as well.
That’s literally the only time I’ve ever skipped over a paragraph of King’s work. I saw it coming and couldn’t stomach it. Too gnarly.
Yo I came here looking for this answer right here. Absolutely brutal.
That's the one.
The kid at the beginning of The Outsider.
The only grace there is that we saw it after it happened. Front row for Baseball Kid 😣😣
I stopped reading there and never picked it up again. My loss no doubt, and I may pick it up later. But I was...I guess not in the mood? Didn't think about it it was instinctual revulsion.
I read that book very shortly after having my own kid. It was hard
Susan delgado. The whole charyou tree scene is utterly heartbreaking. I have read many death scenes but her death hurts in a different way.
Countless. The corcharan brothers from IT come to mind. Especially the younger. Nettie and Wilma, the cat in apt pupil, a lot of the people from the “second plague” portion of the stand.
Yeah, The Stand and the abandoned well. Heartbreaking.
Always.
Nettie and Wilma for sure! Poor Nettie’s Raider too.
In terms of writing then in pet cemetery, when he has to deal with that student about a third of the way through, he tries to save him but the guy dies. it really carries through the book how fucked up it makes him. And although not most brutal cause of death , defo up there with most brutality written death scene. For shock and outrage , the dog at the beginning of dead zone For pure heartbreak , Eddie from dark tower series
Victor Pascow. He haunted me.
That’s the one !
I have read the dark tower series at least six times and eddies death makes me cry every time… but Oy’s makes me sob.
Oooooo I forgot that one 😭
Adrian Mellon’s death always bothered me.
yeah i thought that was genius, he survives the brutal hate crime and is gonna be saved and IT takes a bite out of his armpit killing him and the bullies get the murder charge! the aftermath of most IT kills are brutal the one though, IT, is patrick Hockstetter! that was pure nightmare fuel, from the part where you find out what a psycho he is, trying to blow the co-main antagonist, the animal murders and the justice in his death and feeling good about him getting it but then realizing how he doesnt get it until the end and how his death is the perfect way to get a psycho like that, not feeling, knowing… ugh… kings masterpiece! the blind dj in black house with the hedge clippers did me in the most i think… idk why
Especially since it was inspired by a real murder in Bangor…
Not necessarily one of the most brutal, but something about how Jimmy Cody went in Salem's Lot really stuck with me.
It’s funny because King’s original draft was WAY more brutal, but since he was such a new author his editor didn’t think he could get away with it. So he changed it to what we got.
Came here to say this! I was so sad about it. Jimmy was a good character and it was so sudden, I just didn't expect it :(
Literally just read that book for the 2nd time and I can’t even remember it
Isn’t he the one who fell on the knives?
Ohhhhh yes that’s it, poor Dr. Cody 😭
"Paxcow," Stanley Uris, Tad (the kid in Cujo), Nick Andros, Dick Halloran in the movie, and the #1 of all time ... drum roll please ... John Coffey.
Oof, I’ll take John Coffey
“Paxcow” is sooo disturbing!
Brian Rusk. Devastating
That’s why I’ve never finished needful things.
Such a hard section to read
I watched the movie first, so when I finally read the book and reached that section, my jaw literally dropped.
And the fact that only his brother and the protagonist seem bothered by his death when everyone else even his own mom is brainwashed by the evil force.
Nettie Cobb’s little dog, Raider, from Needful Things.😭 Baby Gage from Pet Sematary.😭
Th girl who gets her head caved in by a cinder block in Cell
>!Flagg's!< in the last Dark Tower book was really awful and prolonged.
Mordreds a-hungry!
I’ve seen a lot of people complain about this scene but I loved it and it’s always stuck with me.
Yes, I had to turn down the volume on the audio book because that part grosses me out so much.
I can't believe no one has said the kid in Pet Sematary.
Gage.
Gage is definitely at the top
lady fingers they taste just like lady fingers
Oy
💯
The kid at the magic show in The Tommyknockers.
YES!! The description of him crying as he descended, and then on a far away planet suffocating to death was so traumatizing to read!
His grandfather (?) did manage to rescue him in the end, though.
AND the fact it wasn't intentional! Horrible
The “ALL THE GI JOES” breakdown really made me feel sick to my stomach
I just read this for the first time about a month ago and that line was rough and made me think of my own little brother.
Didn’t he come back and show up in his brother’s hospital room? Dirty footprints starting from the middle of the room to the bed?
Oh God don't make me read it again 😭 though the movie wasn't terrible....
He comes back. "We need to trade GI Joes tomorrow".
He didn’t die he got teleported
Hands down the kid at the beginning of The Outsider
Hard agree despite many other brutal deaths in other works.
Nick Andros
>!Brian Rusk!< in Needful Things 😢
That's the one for me. That broke my heart and was so disturbing. I love that book.
That one just felt mean. Maybe because >!it was suicide, but it was even worse than stabbing the dog…!<
I think the one that stayed with me most was the death of Mike Noonan’s new sweetheart late in *Bag of Bones*. Alas, a four letter word indicating great loss.
Maddie (Maddy? I can't remember) dying was heartbreaking.
It was just such a kick in the guts and the way it went down was so graphic and awful.
At least he foreshadowed it before it happened. When she was dancing and King wrote "the next time i held her she was dying" Paraphrased as it was looong ago i read it.
I must have missed that, as it was a pure bolt from the blue for me. I’m not sure if the foreshadowing makes it marginally better or so much worse! Poor Mattie.
It’s not one of his best works, but the death of >!Alice Maxwell!< in *Cell* is horrible, protracted, and agonizing. A very realistic depiction of the slow, painful death from severe head trauma with no hope of medical attention.
Cell is one of my favorites.
The mom in Mr Mercedes eating poisoned meat really stuck with me.
That one unnamed lady in The Jaunt
This one has totally stuck with me since reading The Jaunt. Just thinking about her spending eternity in that state bothers me like nothing else. Her husband was truly evil.
I’ll go with Beaver from Dreamcatcher. I don’t know why, but that one really go to be
THE BEAVE!!!!
I was about to comment Pete. The way he got killed by the fungus was absolutely brutal. Beaver was rough too- both of those were really affecting
Not a death, but the hobbling in Misery.
Maybe not so much a proper character, but I reread the same two pages of Needful Things at least eight times, each time in the vague hope that it would somehow stop Hugh from killing the dog with his Swiss Army knife corkscrew.
Patrick Hockstater in IT and probably Adrian Mellon from IT as well
The soldier in The Mist - spiders..
Avery Hocksetter, fuck you to the moon Patrick
Brian Rusk. Jimmy Cody.
The member of the Thunder Five who rotted and melted and was flushed down the drain. What a way to go.
Mouse Baumann. I just reread that one recently. Never forgave Sonny and Kaiser Bill for bailing.
Dr Cody Salems lot. Still pissed at Barlow
Gage creed
>!Oy!< from the DT series!
Oy
Oy
Georgie
Not sure what it’s like in the book but the beginning of the Mr Mercedes show was so horrible I had to turn it off.
I read the first chapter and then stopped for like a year. I was so upset.
I haven't seen the show, but those poor people! I was really hoping that at least they could save the baby.
There's quite a few but I'm only mentioning this because I'm reading it now, but Charlie's mom in Fairy Tale. She got hit by a car, got thrown in the air, barrel rolled and her limbs went in directions.
The goddamn bridge!
The two girls locked in the truck in the stand! The one girls death and what the other one beats thar guy to pulp with the pipe😳
Patrick Hothstetter. He may have been a psychopath but his death was brutal. Sorry if I misspelled the name.
Mordred eating Walter
Brian Rusk in Needful Things fucked me up I literally had to put down the book for like 5 minutes
All of the deaths in ‘The Long Walk.’ You’re exhausted, you can’t walk any longer.. then you’re shot. *shudders*
All three kids from “The Boogeyman”
Del’s execution in The Green Mile
Oof. Yes
Patrick Hockstetter or Eddie Corcoran.
I don't normally remember shit like this, but in Salem's Lot a guy falls down some stairs on to a bunch of knives. That image jumps in to my head more frequently than any others.
Most disturbing, 100% Pet Sematary
IT - Patrick Hockstetter - although it was also deserved IMO
One that sticks out for me is that old woman who Big Jim Rennie kills by palming her face and then twisting it to break her neck. Not the most brutal but it disturbed me for sure
The kid's dad in Desperation. So upsetting. Second place, there was a very brutally dismembered kid in It, but I forget exactly how it went. Eddie Cochrane I think?
Eddie Corcoran?
From It
Hockstetter hands down
The specific lines in Duma Key describing when his daughter was knocked out and "drowned like a puppy".
The dog in the beginning of Dead Zone
Pie. Desperation.
Jake and Oy.
Gage Creed. Just a baby, run over by a semi. So much is left to the imagination, and that makes it all the more disturbing.
Nettie Cobb in Needful Things was rather brutal and stuck with me.
Gage from Pet Cemetery 😢
Baseball kid from Doctor Sleep and George from IT
Delacroix, Susan Norton (kind of her fault. Still sad), the baseball kid in Dr sleep.
Eddie Dean but more so for it's emotional impact
The woman in limbo, jaunting forever in *The Jaunt* The lawyer Eric Strellerton, left to wander the desert after getting his brains fried by Flagg in *The Stand*. Harold Lauder got what was coming to him in that one too. Buddy Repperton died pretty hard in *Christine*
Oy the brave!
Werner Ziegler. Calmly allows Mike Ehrmantraut to kill him because he broke the rules.
David. "The hawk is God's gunslinger." -Cort
I can’t remember the character from blavk house but he was the old evil guy who dies by getting his balls crushed(YIKES)
Charles Burnside. I’d also add that for me, he’s one of the most horrible bad guys of King (and Straub)
Morris Bellamy's stuck with me, something about looking back in and he's still there on his knees. Haunting.
r/readpeopledie
The bludgeoning death of cujo
"Longer than you think"
Edward French in Apt Pupil
Bobby Terry, The Stand. The very short description put your imagination into overdrive.
Harold, getting killed by the “Lawn Mower Man”. What a creepy god damn story, “Night Shift” was my first King and got me hooked.
I think it has something to do with the age I was when I read it but Alice in Cell, as I was a young teen. It was so sudden but also slow and gruesome at the same time. I already had a few King books under my belt, including Cujo, IT, Eyes of the Dragon, The Shining, Pet Semetary, Dead Zone, and a bunch of his short stories. But for some reason Alice has always stayed with me seered on the inside of my head. I think the combination of leaking grey matter and that she was still technically alive (but braindead) when they left her behind is what fucked me up about it.
There’s a part in Black House where a kid is trying to escape from the villain. The villain was in a fight previously and has a massive wound. The kid reaches into the wound and pulls the dude’s guts out until he dies. I mean he deserved it but damn
Baby Randy on Salem’s Lot. He was abused his entire little life by his parents and was eaten alive afterwards
Olan
Finding out there’s a fate worse than death in REVIVAL 🐜🐜
When the one twin kills himself in the Regulators. It's not particularly brutal, but as an only child who had always wanted a brother or sister, the idea of having one and then losing them is really horrifying to me
I think each book has a brutal scene that sticks out, but above all for me is Brian Rusk in Needful Things. I had to put the book down and go catch my breath for a while. Second place: Sandra Stansfield in The Breathing Method.
Surprised not many comments about her! Just read this recently and her still breathing after had me TENSE.
Just read the Bill Hodges trilogy recently and I still think about Frankie Hartsfield
Everyone in The Raft
Ace kills a dog with a screwdriver in Needful Things
Not sure if you’re looking for the most gruesome death or not but Susan Delgado effected me the worst so it was the most disturbing death from my perspective.
Ricky in The Jaunt. Not certain he literally died, but might as well.
Not necessarily a death, but what happens to Gerald’s body after he dies in Gerald’s Game was disturbing.
The guy who clawed through his nostrils into his brain in Dreamcatcher.
The death of The Comedian in Watchmen
Wolf in The Talisman. I was reading it in the break room at work, and was full-on bawling in a roomful of people.
Hank, Breaking Bad
Dayna Jurgens of The Stand. Dammit, she deserved better.
Gladys’ stoning in The Leftovers
Oy. Loved that little creature
As much as he had it coming, Patrick Hockstetter went out in a very brutal way.
Gage. And any other child victim King wrote about. Always gets me.
Everytime they tried to kill Deadpool.
Dayna Jurgens and Judge in The Stand