‘The Lawnmower Man’ – Stephen King

I’m in a bit of a habit, at the moment, of deliberately seeking out the most pointless games (that I can) to download onto my phone, just to wind my kids up really. My eldest daughter just got her first mobile phone and thinks it’s the most amazing thing ever (well, you would really) so to see me download any old rubbish is something that she just can’t get her head round. I love it although I’ll admit this is a sign that lockdown has gone on just a little too long now. I need to get back in the office and be around people. But anyway…

One of the games I’m currently playing is ‘Just Mowing’, a game where you… You don’t really need me to say, do you? Good. Going round this little town, mowing lawns, though has actually turned out to be really relaxing. No worries, no pressure; just mowing lawns. It was also inevitable that ‘Just Mowing’ would get me thinking of Stephen King’s ‘Lawnmower Man’ and that I’d read it and post something about here, right now in fact. That’s just how my mind works on the Tuesday after a bank holiday 😉

So here we are then with Harold Parkette, a man who has experienced lawnmower based trauma (albeit not as bad as the cat did…) and has put off mowing the lawn until it absolutely had to be done. The guy Harold gets in though has his own unique method of disposing of the grass clippings and it’s something that Harold would be wise not to tell anyone else. Except that he does…

‘The Lawnmower Man’ is first and foremost, absolutely nothing like the film, for which we can all be very grateful. Even more so because it’s one of Stephen King short stories where some regular part of American suburban life gets turned upside and viewed through a weird filter. But what could possibly be weird about getting your lawn mowed? Getting your lawn mowed by some jovial nature spirit with a murderous lawnmower, that’s what.

‘The Lawnmower Man’ is only something like nine pages long but really grabs your attention in that short space of time, mostly because King just gives the weirdness to you on a plate and starts feeding you. There’s a small hint that something isn’t quiet right, with our lawnmowing man, but before you have a chance to really grasp that (and Harold certainly doesn’t) we’re off to the back yard and watching our lawnmowing man dispose of the clippings that the lawnmower leaves behind. And it’s not just the clippings, a mole meets it’s end (under the blades) and that’s grim enough but what really struck me was how that was the point where Harold decided that something was wrong. He’s already seen what the man is up to and that the lawnmower deliberately swerved to get the mole but he is too shocked to really twig that something isn’t right. What happens to the mole though… It’s all a great description, by King, of how Harold (and by extension, you and I) just aren’t able to comprehend the weird horror that lurks underneath the most normal things. Harold has one chance to get through this by accepting it and waiting for it to be over; he blows it because he can’t accept that this is happening and tries to exert a little normality, on the situation, by calling the police. The inevitable happens and Harold ends up… well, you can guess how he ends up.

What’s really scary about ‘The Lawnmower Man’ though is a throwaway line that you might not even notice first time round,

‘We keep getting along toward the final stage…’

What is that final stage? There is nothing more ominous than mention of a ‘Final Stage’ and King just breezes past it onto ‘death by lawnmower’… Well played King, well played…

‘The Lawnmower Man’ is a neat little slice of suburban horror that, for a couple of moments, made me glad that I live in a first floor flat; you can find it in Stephen King’s ‘Night Shift’ collection.