Okay look Stephen King: You just fucking stop it.
Why do I fucking read these books? Why do I seek out this terror? This book was so fucking stressful.
And I’m going to spoil things, so you are warned. I have to spoil things because I need to channel this energy of rage this book gave me into a posting because I CAN’T BE ALONE WITH THESE FEELS.
Let me first tell you what I thought this book was about:
A psychotic dog that eats people. Thought it was possessed or something.
Here’s what the book is actually about:
A sweetheart of a dog that gets poisoned when he chases a rabbit down into a cave that is full of sick bats. Rabies type virus ensues.
Sweetheart dog starts to feel sick. We get to see into his thoughts as well (thanks a lot for THAT Stephen King.). We get to see it take him. Which is so fucking heartbreaking. Moreso than if that was happening to a human because dogs are little rays of light in an otherwise dark and stormy world.
How dare you come after a dog Stephen King!!!
I’m going to be cursing him until the day I die.
Anyway. There are a few players in this book that circle each other (and I DO forget their names so I’ll just describe them.) :
One: Hapless husband who goes on business trip. Gets calls from wife nightly for updates on life.
Two: Menacing Mechanic, owner of Cujo, altogether unsavoury asshat.
Three: Mechanics wife and son, who leave for a vacation with her sister. Son is the true owner/friend of Cujo. Kid is a sensitive sweetheart, wife wants out of her life.
Four: Neighbour and only friend of menacing mechanic.
Five: The cops. More or less useless.
Six (and most important.): Hapless Husbands wife and four year old son. Wife needs car fixed, is sent to mechanic by husband. Car breaks down there.
And hell fucking breaks loose.
Now here’s how things went: Dog got sick. Dog turns slowly but surely. He eats mechanics friend. Then Mechanic goes to visit his friend because they are supposed to go fishing or something because the wife and kid went on vacation. Mechanic gets eaten at some point.
Hapless husband forgets to check in with wife and son and after DAYS finally notices she hasn’t been calling either and calls the cops.
Mechanics wife and kid are having a grand old time, although the kid just KNOWS something is wrong with Cujo even from afar.
Cut to: The hapless families wife and son are packing up snacks and whatnot for a small drive to the mechanics out of town just in case the car breaks down on the side of the road before they can even get to the farmhouse.
And this is stressful for me because at the time I was looking after my four year old cousin and I couldn’t even fathom how a mother wouldn’t do EVERYTHING in her power to save her fucking kid.
The heat rose to excruciating heights. Kid is dehydrated, dog keeps attacking car, but is getting more and more vicious by the hour. They are both dying. Everyone is dying. The mom knows there’s a phone in the house, knows the dog is in the garage in the cold. She tries once to run for the phone…but the dog gets her leg, then she gets stuck back in the car.
Eventually all the things collide: someone at the police station finally believed the dad that his family was missing and they sent a cop to go look around. Cop sees note that the wife left saying where she was going. (A note she wrote for no one by the way. She just “had a feeling”.)
Cop gets eaten.
Wife and kid still. stuck. in. the. fucking. car. The kid is delirious. Like straight up heat stroke, had seizure, etc.
Eventually the cops notice that their other cop didn’t come back.
And everything explodes.
Hapless dad comes back before the cops get there, he finds the wife who (in her delirium and idiocy) goes for a bat instead of the cops rifle/radio, and is now beating the dog to death.
Cops swarm, wife thinks husband saved her (which was annoying), and guess the fuck what.
THE KID FUCKING DIES ANYWAY.
After all that. I fucking threw the book.
How dare that end in the death of that sweet little four year old.
Fucking Stephen King. A plague on both your houses.
