Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream
He has a vivid dream in which he walks behind a derelict Texaco gas station to find a mongrel dog gnawing on a hand projecting from the ground.Coughlin covers the hand with a trash can to protect it from the dog, then purchases a prepaid cell phone, which he uses to anonymously report the body to the Kansas Highway Patrol.The following Friday, Coughlin is visited by the arithmomaniac veteran inspector Franklin Jalbert and his younger colleague Ella Davis of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, who have traced his call.Adams described the story, as "unfold[ing] like a confounding episode of Law & Order, eschewing supernatural scares for 'ripped from the headlines' horror", adding "King hints at racial and gender-based discrimination, but stops short of fully examining the larger implications of this disturbing premise".[10] Matthew Jackson (writing for Paste) described Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream as "an ambitious balance between paranoia and wonder" and "an attempt to marry the supernatural with the very real threat of false accusations", noting that "while it doesn't work as well as [The Outsider], the scope of it, and the depths of tension into which King dives, make it memorable".[2] Writing for Rolling Stone, Sassan Niasseri suggested "the class of Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream is evident in the superfluity of its paranormal starting point."[12] Similarly, J. Madison Davis (writing for World Literature Today) suggested "the most interesting element of his story is that the dream which provokes it all is never really understood or explained."[13] SFX described Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream as "a tightly written, fascinating character study that also raises questions about fate, and will (almost inevitably) make a great miniseries",[14] while Amanda Mullen described the story as "the ideal pick for a TV adaptation".