"Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" is a
short story
A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...
by
Stephen King, first published in the May 1984 issue of ''
Redbook'' magazine, and collected in King's 1985 collection ''
Skeleton Crew
A skeleton crew is the minimum number of personnel needed to operate and maintain an item such as a business, organization, or ship at its most simple operating requirements. Skeleton crews are often utilized during an emergency and are meant to ...
''.
Plot summary
David, friend of a caretaker named Homer, is an elderly man who is spending his later years hanging out at the local gas station in a small town. Homer narrates a tale about Mrs. Todd, who is obsessed with finding shortcuts. Homer admires her persistence but begins to have doubts, as there are only so many shortcuts someone can find. Mrs. Todd's habit of resetting her odometer shows remarkable evidence that something strange is going on. He also discovers evidence that her shortcuts are taking fewer miles than are in a straight line between the trip origin and its destination, something that would be impossible in reality. Mrs. Todd compares the shortcuts to folding a map to bring two points closer together, suggesting she has discovered a warped version of reality, akin to a
wormhole
A wormhole ( Einstein-Rosen bridge) is a hypothetical structure connecting disparate points in spacetime, and is based on a special solution of the Einstein field equations.
A wormhole can be visualized as a tunnel with two ends at separate p ...
.
Mrs. Todd finally convinces Homer to take one of the special 'shortcuts'. Homer loses his hat to the grasping arms of a living tree. Soon, he encounters road signs and bizarre animals which he cannot explain. Frightened, Homer does not wish to take any more rides. Nonetheless, Mrs. Todd is changing and growing younger with each trip she takes, and the appeal of this overwhelms Homer, despite him discovering a horrifying
rodent
Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the order Rodentia (), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are rodents. They are n ...
-like creature on the grill of her car. She brushes this off, seeing the creature as an unfortunate yet normal animal. In the end, Homer, who is looking younger himself, gets into Mrs. Todd's car in front of his friend. It's implied that Mrs. Todd (who by this time is considered to be a
missing person together with her car) will now take him into whatever new world which she has found a shortcut to.
References to other works
A reference to ''
Cujo
''Cujo'' () is a 1981 psychological horror novel by American writer Stephen King about a rabid Saint Bernard. The novel won the British Fantasy Award in 1982 and was made into a film in 1983.
Background
Cujo's name was based on the alias of ...
'' is made when the story mentions Joe Camber getting killed by his own dog.
Reception and significance
The story has been cited as an example of the use of
hyperspace
In science fiction, hyperspace (also known as nulspace, subspace, overspace, jumpspace and similar terms) is a concept relating to higher dimensions as well as parallel universes and a faster-than-light (FTL) method of interstellar travel. ...
space folding travel outside classic stories of interstellar
space travel.
'
See also
*
Stephen King short fiction bibliography
References
Short stories by Stephen King
1984 short stories
Short stories set in Maine
Works originally published in Redbook
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