Thinner
Stephen King

(2/11/23-2/14/23)

JN:     

        Waking up in the morning, Billy Halleck couldn’t stop thinking about a gypsy repeating the word thinner (roll credits) to him as he left the courtroom. He had been there after accidentally hitting an older gypsy woman (the gypsy’s wife) who walked into the road. Stepping onto the scale that morning, he found he lost weight, weighing 246 pounds (for which the chapter was named. The following chapter is 245), and rewarded himself with an extra helping of bacon that morning, which his wife Heidi made. They had been married for a while and had a fourteen-year-old daughter named Linda, who suffered some harassment at school over Billy's incident. Recently, Billy and Heidi argued about Heidi’s smoking habit and Billy's weight, but their relationship improved with his recent weight loss. That day, Billy, who recently became a partner for his firm, won a major case and decided to celebrate by taking Heidi out to dinner. While traveling home to meet her, Billy kept thinking about one of his gangster acquaintances he met when he was younger, a man named Ginelli, whom Billy wanted to confide in first when he ran over the gypsy. 

        Billy soon forgot all that as he and Heidi went on vacation for several days, rekindling their love for each other. On the third day, Heidi noticed that Billy had gotten significantly skinnier, and making him weigh himself the following day, he was down to 232. On their way back, she admitted that she was concerned about the sudden and unexplainable weight loss, given Billy had changed nothing in his life to warrant it. Billy grew defensive about it, causing Heidi to cry, but agreed to weigh himself at home. When he did, he found he was at 227. Almost twenty pounds had seemingly vanished. Heidi insisted on booking an appointment for him (since sudden weight loss can be a sign of several ailments, including cancer). Billy did his best to forget everything for several days, eating to his heart’s content and hoping it would go away. When he couldn’t put it off anymore, he weighed himself and found it to be 221. Concerned about his health, he promised his wife he would make an appointment.

        Several days later, after all of the blood tests were run, Billy met with his doctor, Houston, to learn that absolutely nothing was wrong with him. While Houston couldn’t explain what caused the weight loss, he explained that the mind was powerful, and it was plausible that Billy unconsciously convinced himself to lose weight. With the doctor’s inclination that his weight, which was 217, would eventually level out, Billy went home and shared the good news with Heidi. 

        That night, he dreamed of a horde of people cursed by the gypsies. A skeleton of a man came up to him, touching him, and Billy woke up. Checking the scale, he found that he had only lost two pounds and believed the doctor was right about the weight loss slowing down. With that belief, he forgot about it until his pants fell one day during court. Running to the restroom, he found that he had run out of holes in his belt and had to fashion a new one with a knife. When he got home to check his weight, he horrifyingly read the scale. He was down to 195. 

As the days rolled by, the numbers on the scale continued to drop to a scary 188. Heidi asked Billy about it, and he was about to tell her about the curse when he thought about how she had jacked him off while he drove that fateful day. His attention had been diverted from the road, and under normal circumstances, he would have stopped before hitting the gypsy woman (so he partly blamed her). Nonetheless, Billy stifled his resentment and agreed to make another appointment with the doctor. While waiting for his appointment, he went to see Cary Rossington, the judge whom Billy was friends with and who left Billy without even a warning after the incident. At the door, his wife Leda greeted him with a look of terror. He asked her twice where Cary was, and she lied both times until he admitted to having lost all of the weight because of the gypsy.

        Letting him inside for a drink, she told Billy how the gypsy woman’s husband had come up to Cary one day while he was in public, touched his face, and said a word (Leda hadn’t found out what it was). Since then, Cary’s skin started slowly turning to scales, and when nothing worked, he went to Mayo Clinic to see if they could somehow help him. Leda told him how the scales began in his chest and traveled down. It only worsened for Cary, however, and by the time he went to Mayo Clinic, his hands had transformed into claws, and his eyes turned yellow and slanted. Leda accused Billy of her husband’s troubles, and he left the house as quickly as he could, coming home to the worried arms of Heidi. 

        The following morning, he told his firm that he would be taking a leave of absence and asked them to try and find the location of the woman gypsy’s husband. He then went to see Hopley, the officer charged with evicting the gypsies from their current location and onto the next. While it took a while for Hopley to open the door, he eventually did. Billy went into his abode in darkness and saw the silhouette of Hopley sitting down. He told Hopley about his experiences and those of Cary and then spoke of his plan to meet with the gypsy in hopes of reversing. Hopley then responded with his own story of being touched by the man and developing pimples here and there. Like the other conditions, his pimples kept getting worse. In his desolate state, he advised Billy to kill the gypsy as he didn't believe the gypsy would listen to reason and reverse his curse. Finally, Hopley turned on the light, and Billy saw ooze seeping out of a mass of pimples of various sizes, affecting every part of his body except his eyes (just imagine a large mess of flesh). Billy left in a hurry. 

        The scale read 172 when Billy went to perform his metabolic tests. After multiple days in the hospital with no concrete diagnosis, Billy left despite the doctors pleading him to stay as he knew there was nothing they could do to help him. The following week at home was filled with eating and losing weight (down to 156). Linda left so she didn’t have to see the continuous skeletonizing of her father. Heidi talked with Houston, who spoke with Billy about going to see the doctors. They currently thought some mental disorder afflicted Billy, especially when he wouldn’t stop talking about the gypsy curse and bringing up Cary and Hopley. Houston told Billy that Hopley committed suicide, and the horde of sores that Billy saw on him mostly vanished. He warned Billy that he and Heidi would force him to undergo more tests if he didn’t go willingly. 

        With no one else to turn to, he called Ginelli, who was always happy to talk. Billy didn’t mention the weight but did talk about the gypsy, named Taduz Lemke, and that he was going after him. After the call, he spoke with his former partner at the firm about the investigation and learned that they had almost found the gypsies’ location. He also discovered that the woman he hit was Taduz's daughter, not his wife, since Taduz was 106 years old. Learning this, Billy knew he had to find Taduz quickly, so he wrote a letter to Heidi, explaining that he was going to locate the gypsies and apologize to Taduz and beg him to reverse the curse. He gave his love and promise to go to whatever clinic she wanted to send him to if he returned unsuccessful. 

        Traveling north to Maine, Billy waited for the investigation to give him confirmation that the gypsies were there, and when they did, they also sent pictures of Taduz. He went to the community they were seen at and spoke with an older man who knew them from before. He took this path to another town and followed their trail until finally coming to their camp. He knew that Taduz was expecting him, but down to 130 pounds, Billy didn’t have much other option. Entering the camp, he was immediately greeted with hate and spat on by Taduz’s grandchildren before Taduz came out. When he did, Billy forgot about his apology and lectured him about his messed up version of justice. Casy and Hopley committed suicide, yet hs daughter was still dead. iBilly grabbed an increasingly enraged Taduz, and he responded by asserting that his curse wouldn't stop. One of the grandchildren shot him in the hand with the slingshot, making a clean hole all the way through. Suddenly weak, Billy made up a curse on Taduz, and Taduz believed his curse. Two men then grabbed Billy and threw him, leaving him to crawl back to his car. 

        Getting back to his hotel, Billy called Ginelli and told him about getting shot. Several hours later, one of his men came by with a hospital kit to treat the wound and advised him to take some potassium tablets to stop some problems likely to come from his weight, since it was down to 118. Ginelli arrived a couple of hours later and listened to his story. He then fastened a plan that lasted several days and didn’t tell Billy about it until it was done. He had gotten Billy a meeting with Taduz. 

        With Billy still baffled, Ginelli explained his entire story to him. On the first night, he grabbed several steaks laced with drugs and gave them to the gypsies’ prized pit bulls. The next day, they responded by killing one of Ginelli's hired men, repeating that they wouldn’t reverse the curse. Thus, Ginelli returned the following night with an AK47 and sprayed bullets around the place, making sure not to hit anyone. He stayed and posed as an FBI agent, using this cover to speak to Gina, Taduz’s great-granddaughter. He tricked her to come to his car and beat her up. At this point, he laid down his final offer: he would begin to kill Taduz’s family one by one if he didn’t reverse the curse. He gave her a point of contact, and Gina agreed to relate the message but warned him that Taduz wouldn’t give in. Finishing his story, Ginelli helped Billy get to the car. In the car, Ginelli explained that Gina had called that day and informed him that Taduz finally agreed to take off the curse.

        That night, in a park, Billy walked to a bench and sat down, awaiting whatever was coming. At last, Taduz showed up and sat next to the slightly delirious Billy. He explained to him about the living nature of the curse and that there was no way to completely stop it. Taking out a pie, he grabbed a knife and cut a slit into the pie. He then had Billy cut a slit into his injured hand, causing it to bleed. Once Taduz told him to, Billy put the knife back into the pie and saw to his amazement that both his hand and the slit in the pie were gone, only visible by a small scar in both. Taduz told him that he needed to give the pie to someone else or the curse would come back to him (justice would be claimed somewhere, and consequences would be handed out). Weakened but freed from the curse, Billy walked to the getaway car, where he discovered Ginelli's severed hand (another fatality from Billy's vengeance). He moved the hand and drove the car away, sensing the pulsing of the pie every once in a while. After grabbing some food, already gaining some weight back, he called Heidi to tell her he was coming home. He also talked to Linda to tell her the same, and she was much happier to talk to him, especially knowing that he was getting better. 

        Arriving home, Heidi greeted him happily, profusely apologizing for wanting to get him committed, and fastened him a large meal. He brought in the pie, Heidi's favorite, and offered her a bite, which she refused. He went to bed and listened to her eat it before falling asleep (ruthless). The next morning, Billy went out and looked at the pie, realizing to his horror that Linda also had a piece of the pie. She had come home early and worked out her differences with Heidi over some pie. Not wanting them to go through it alone, he ate a piece as well. (And that is the end of this strange tale. The ending is also up to interpretation, but I imagine it doesn’t end well. Thanks for reading, and stay healthy!)