The Man in the Black Suit

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"The Man in the Black Suit"
Author	Stephen King
Country	USA
Language	English
Genre(s)	Horror
Published in	Six Stories, Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales
Publication type	Anthology
Publisher	Philtrum Press
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Publication date	1995

"The Man in the Black Suit" is a short story by Stephen King. In 1995, it won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction and the O. Henry Award. In 1997, it was published in King's anthology Six Stories. In 2002, it was published in the collection Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales; in the latter text, King described the piece as an homage to Nathaniel Hawthorne's story "Young Goodman Brown". He also states that the story evolved from one his friend told him, in which the friend's grandfather had come face to face with Satan himself in the form of an ordinary man. It was adapted into a short film with the same title in 2004 by Nicholas Mariani.

[edit] Plot Summary

The story tells of Gary, a nine year-old boy, whose brother had died not long ago. One day Gary goes out fishing and falls asleep. When he awakens, he discovers an orange-eyed man in a black three-piece suit looming over him. The man--whose body odor smells like burnt match heads-- tells Gary terrible things: that his mother has died while he was away, and that the man intends to eat him. Gary does not believe at first, but soon realizes that this man is actually the devil, and makes his escape by throwing his caught fish at the stranger; he then runs off as the creature swallows the fish whole and pursues the boy to the outskirts of the forest. The things the man said were false, but Gary is still haunted by the incident for the rest of his life.

Gary tells the story from his perspective as an old, terrified man. He is haunted by his belief that he only escaped from the devil by either pure luck or his own skill. At the end of the story, he is frightened by the possibility of death. Will he go to God, whom he has prayed to all his life? Or will the man in the Black Suit return to take him away, now that he is too old to run away from him again?