‘Falling into the sky’: Stephen King’s Scariest Short Story And I
The first time I read “The Jaunt” was also my first time on an airplane by myself. I was 14 and about to fly from Toronto to Frankfurt. All I have with me are some snacks, a book, and my green iPod Mini. As the plane sits on the tarmac, I’m listening to the Stars album Set Yourself On Fire while anxiously awaiting departure.
It’s not that I’m afraid of flying, per se. I’m not scared of the plane crashing or subsequently dying in a fiery wreck. Instead, I’ve got this mild phobia of open spaces; a sort of agoraphobia. For example, when I’m on a bridge or in an open field, I start feeling panicky … like I’ll lose gravity … and fall right into the sky.
So I’m an anxious teenager sitting on a plane next to a family of Germans that seem keenly aware of my neurotic energy. I take out the only book I have packed, which happens to be Stephen King’s Skeleton Crew.
For the layman, Skeleton Crew is King’s second collection of scary short stories, published in 1985. A few of the universally acclaimed stories in this book include The Mist, The Raft, and Gramma. All of these have theatrical adaptations.
A few hours pass and I’m flying high above the endless, crushing void of the Atlantic ocean. This is when I happen upon a story called “The Jaunt”. I stare down at the first page, hesitating. I’ve skipped over this story a few times already, but I’m running out of new ones, so I start reading.
The terror of travel.
It kicks off in a Kubrickian future where a family prepares to “jaunt” from New York City to Mars. In the world of the story, “jaunting” is a method of intergalactic travel by means of teleportation. It’s made clear that the only way humans can jaunt safely is by first undergoing general anesthesia. It’s the only way to steer clear of what’s known as the “Jaunt-Effect”.
The father in the story spares his nuclear family the gruesome details of the jaunt-effect, but King fills in the blanks for the reader. An eccentric scientist invents teleportation by accident, soon noticing that mice only survive a jaunt if sent through the port unconscious. The first human to jaunt while awake is a test subject — a death-row inmate — who suffers a massive heart attack after emerging, staying alive long enough only to say, “It’s eternity in there…”
Over the course of the story, we discover that anyone sent through the portal awake suffers through an eternity of waking nothingness. Physical bodies arrive in a mere instant, while a human’s consciousness is trapped for billions of years in a void of endless white. All alone with their thoughts in the crushing nothingness, they inevitably go insane. Upon arrival, their hair turns white from experiencing the infinite, inter-dimensional terror of jaunting awake. They die almost immediately from the shock of coming back. I’ll spare you the extremely gruesome ending to this story, but I urge you to seek it out if you’ve never read it.
So this is what I’m reading as I’m rocketing through the air at a height of six miles up. The Germans nearby are looking at me funny because my face is so guffawed as I keep reading this story of unimaginable horror. A horror that resonates deeply with my personal form of agoraphobia. The plane hadn’t even landed in Germany before I was fantasizing about what a movie adaptation of “The Jaunt” could look like.
Fast forward ten years to 2015. Insidious and The Conjuring have disrupted the horror status quo, but it’s still a world of post-World War Z action and CGI. With that said, when Deadline reports Brad Pitt’s company Plan B optioned the rights to make a feature film of “The Jaunt”, I’m excited but hesitant.
Plan B signed emerging (at the time) filmmakers Andy and Barbara Muschietti. All they had to show for themselves back then was their first feature, Mama. I understand that Mama has its fans, but personally, I find it to be underwhelming and way too dependent on CGI. Still, a big-budget adaption of “The Jaunt”? How could I not be curious?
Time goes by.
First one year. Then two. Then three, and there is still no news or updates announced for the project. Andy and Barbara Muschietti move to their IT films, leaving The Jaunt captainless. During this time Brad Pitt wins an Oscar, and the genre films on his dashboard, including World War Z II, do nothing but collect dust.
Catching up to February 2021, a new update on The Jaunt appears. Fear the Walking Dead co-creator Dave Erickson is adapting Stephen King’s “The Jaunt” into a TV series for MRC Television. But nothing has been announced since.
This dead release, among many others, was part of my initial push to start Development Hell, a podcast about unmade horror movies. This podcast would eventually land me at Dread Central, where I am now the managing editor. It’s funny how some things land full circle.
“The Jaunt” still holds a strange and special place in my heart because of how closely the horror parallels my own phobias and anxieties. In a disturbing way, I feel seen by “The Jaunt.” My own brand of agoraphobia seems to lend itself well to the terror within the story that many consider Stephen King’s scariest. Of course, calling it his scariest story is a wild claim, so to be safe I’ll clarify: I find it to be his scariest story. I think there’s a good chance you will, too.
Something about the unspeakable horrors of the “jaunt-effect” also resonates with the idea of development hell. Both are never-ending limbos without death or existence. And neither space allows for closure, only the torture of nothing. Sometimes forever.
Arrival.
While it’s been well over 15 years, I’ll never forget the first time I read “The Jaunt.” Flying all alone across the vast span of the Atlantic Ocean. The next time you fly, bring a copy of Skeleton Crew with you. It’s worth it.
For more insight into “The Jaunt” and its journey toward a possible adaptation, check out my Development Hell podcast episode on the topic. Does this iconic short story freak you out? Let me know on Twitter via @joshkorngut. I’m always around to chat about all things Stephen King.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was first published on June 4th, 2021. It has since been updated.
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