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Information about Gray Matter

"Gray Matter"
AuthorStephen King
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)Horror, science fiction
Published inCavalier (1st release),
Night Shift,
Arbour House Necropolis
Publication typeMagazine
Media typePrint
Publication dateOctober 1973
Gray Matter is a short horror sci-fi story by Stephen King, first published in Cavalier in October 1973. It was re-published in his Night Shift collection in 1978 and again in Arbour House Necropolis in 1982. It is set in the same area as King's novel Dreamcatcher.

Plot summary

The story, told from the perspective of an older "local" man, begins as he is sitting around at a convenience store with a group of his friends during a heavy snowstorm. A young boy runs in, deathly afraid. The men recognize him as the son of Richie Grenadine, a local man who was injured some time ago in a work accident, and was given lifetime worker's compensation. With no need to support himself, Richie became a recluse, rarely seen outside the confines of his apartment except to purchase the cheapest of beer, although lately, he had been sending his son out to purchase his beer for him.

After speaking privately with Richie's boy, the owner (Henry) and a few other regulars decide to take the beer to Richie personally. On their way, Henry relates some of the terrifying experiences the kid had told him — of how one day his father drank a "bad" can of beer and since has been slowly transforming into an inhuman blob-like abomination that detests light and craves warm beer. Spying on him one night, the boy saw his father eat a dead cat, causing him to finally seek help.

Arriving at Richie's home, the men confront him from behind his closed door, demanding that he come out and show himself. The odor pouring out from behind the door convinces the group that Richie was eating more than dead cats, speculating that he may be responsible for a recent rash of missing people, as well.

The men are horrified when Richie opens the door, and shambles out. No longer resembling anything human, Richie is more fungus than man. Worse yet, he appears to be in the process of dividing. The rest of the men run off, as Henry stands his ground, firing his pistol at the creature.

The story ends with the narrator calculating the exponential growth the creature is capable of, as they sit at the convenience store, waiting to find out who survived, Henry or the creature.

External links

Stephen King

Stephen King
Pseudonym: Richard Bachman
John Swithen
Born: September 21 1947 (1947--) (age 60)
Portland, Maine, U.S.
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English}}} 
Writing system: Latin (English variant) 
Official status
Official language of: 53 countries
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: en
ISO 639-2: eng
ISO 639-3: eng  
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Horror fiction is, broadly, fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle, or horrify the audience. Historically, the cause of the "horror" experience has often been the intrusion of an evil—or, occasionally, misunderstood—supernatural element into everyday human
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worldwide view of the subject.
Please [ improve this article] or discuss the issue on the talk page.


Science fiction (abbreviated SF or sci-fi
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Cavalier is a magazine launched by Fawcett Publications in 1952 and continuing for decades, eventually evolving into a Playboy-style men's magazine. It has no connection with the Frank Munsey pulp, The Cavalier, published in the early years of the 20th Century.
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Night Shift

Author Stephen King
Country USA
Language English
Genre(s) Horror
Publisher Doubleday Books
Publication date 1978
Media type Print
Pages 368
ISBN ISBN 0-385-12991-2


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-1973- 1974 1975 1976  1977 .  1978 .  1979 .  1980  . 1981  . 1982  . 1983 

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worldwide view of the subject.
Please [ improve this article] or discuss the issue on the talk page.


Science fiction (abbreviated SF or sci-fi
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Stephen King

Stephen King
Pseudonym: Richard Bachman
John Swithen
Born: September 21 1947 (1947--) (age 60)
Portland, Maine, U.S.
..... Click the link for more information.
Cavalier is a magazine launched by Fawcett Publications in 1952 and continuing for decades, eventually evolving into a Playboy-style men's magazine. It has no connection with the Frank Munsey pulp, The Cavalier, published in the early years of the 20th Century.
..... Click the link for more information.
-1973- 1974 1975 1976  1977 .  1978 .  1979 .  1980  . 1981  . 1982  . 1983 

..... Click the link for more information.
Night Shift

Author Stephen King
Country USA
Language English
Genre(s) Horror
Publisher Doubleday Books
Publication date 1978
Media type Print
Pages 368
ISBN ISBN 0-385-12991-2


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-1978- 1979 1980 1981  1982 .  1983 .  1984 .  1985  . 1986  . 1987  . 1988 

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-1982- 1983 1984 1985  1986 .  1987 .  1988 .  1989  . 1990  . 1991  . 1992 

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Dreamcatcher

Author Stephen King
Cover artist Cliff Nielsen
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Horror novels
Publisher Scribner
Publication date 2001
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A convenience store is a small store or shop. They are often located alongside busy roads, or at gas/petrol stations. This can take the form of gas stations supplementing their income with retail outlets, or convenience stores adding gas to the list of goods that they offer.
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winter storm is a meteorological event in which the dominant varieties of precipitation are forms that only occur at cold temperatures, such as snow or sleet, or a rainstorm where ground temperatures are cold enough to allow ice to form (i.e. freezing rain).
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Workers' compensation (colloquially known as workers' comp in North American English or compo in Australian English) provides insurance to cover medical care and compensation for employees who are injured in the course of employment, in exchange for mandatory
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recluse is someone in isolation who hides away from the attention of the public, a person who lives in solitude, i.e. seclusion from intercourse with the world. The word is from the Latin recludere, which means "shut up" or "sequester".
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Beer is the world's oldest[1] and most popular[2][3] alcoholic beverage. It is produced by the fermentation of sugars derived from starch-based material — the most common being malted barley; however, wheat, corn, and rice are also widely
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Abomination may refer to:
  • Abomination (Bible), covering Biblical references
  • Abomination (Dune), from Frank Herbert's Dune series, a fetus who has become conscious before birth

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F. s. catus

Trinomial name
Felis silvestris catus
(Linnaeus, 1758)

Synonyms
Felis lybica invalid junior synonym
Felis catus invalid junior synonym[2]

The cat (
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Eukarya
Whittaker & Margulis, 1978
(unranked) Opisthokonta

Kingdom: Fungi
(L., 1753) R.T. Moore, 1980[1]

Subkingdom/Phyla

Chytridiomycota
Blastocladiomycota

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Editing of this page by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled due to vandalism.
If you are prevented from editing this page, and you wish to make a change, please discuss changes on the talk page, request unprotection, log in, or .
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In mathematics, exponential growth (or geometric growth) occurs when the growth rate of a function is always proportional to the function's current size. Such growth is said to follow an exponential law (but see also Malthusian growth model).
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