Presented by Neon’s The Monkey, Bloody Disgusting is celebrating this Friday’s release of Osgood Perkins’ highly anticipated horror with Stephen King Week. Yesterday, Rachel Reeves dusted off adaptations from King’s Skeleton Crew, and today, Jenn Adams bandages up the most bizarre deaths in King’s Dominion.

The only thing certain in this unpredictable world is that every one of us will eventually die. No matter who we are, where we live, or what circumstances we’re born into, we will all one day reach our inevitable end. What we’re not guaranteed is the way we’ll go out. Perhaps in a quiet deathbed at a ripe old age or a grisly accident shortly after our birth, there’s no way to know how our precious lives will eventually wink out.

Oz Perkins explores this nihilistic idea in his horror comedy The Monkey. Inspired by Stephen King’s iconic short story, the tiny hand of this titular toy descends on an equally innocent drum unleashing jovial music and unthinkable carnage. Gruesome and grisly death scenes abound each time someone winds up the key. With each sequence more unhinged than the last, Perkins delights in creating these macabre fatalities.

Perhaps he’s taking inspiration from King himself? After all, The Master of Horror has no shortage of bizarre and upsetting deaths filling the pages of his massive catalogue. For fifty years, he’s written about every conceivable type of exit, each one a gruesome reminder that the spectre of oblivion is always nearby, just waiting to pounce in surprising ways.

Death by Station Wagon in “Mile 81”

While King is known for writing about vehicular killers, his short story “Mile 81” may just feature the most bizarre—and most deadly—example. On a bright summer day, a nondescript station wagon pulls onto the side of a Maine turnpike. With the passenger door standing ajar, the wagon is caked with alien handprints and mud so thick, it’s impossible to see inside. A passing good samaritan pulls over to help and immediately regrets this altruistic decision. As he places his hand on the open door, sharp pain explodes through his body and the thing that looks like a station wagon begins chewing through the bones in his hand. The poor man is pulled into this vehicle-shaped mouth that contracts and pulses as it swallows its victim. A seemingly endless series of drivers stop to help, falling prey to the venus fly trap-like creature as their cars form a line on the turnpike’s shoulder. There are many dangers lining the roads in King’s vast catalogue, but this sinister wagon may be one of the strangest.

Death by Toy in “Chattery Teeth”

King’s third short story collection, Nightmares & Dreamscapes, is filled with bizarre and nonsensical fatalities, but the most curious involves a wind up toy similar to the Monkey itself. When stopping at a roadside convenience store, travelling salesman Bill Hogan finds himself drawn to the titular novelty item’s unusual size and hefty weight. Though he quickly forgets about this impulsive new purchase, the metal teeth soon become a surprising savior. When a hitchhiker attempts to rob the kindly man, Bill flips his van, leaving them stranded in an approaching dust storm. Before the hitchhiker can take further action, the teeth roar to life and begin chattering away on his crotch and face. As Bill loses consciousness, he sees the strangely sentient toy drag the young man’s body off into the desert where he’ll eventually be found covered in bloody bites. Bill stumbles upon the teeth again nine months later and vows to keep them close by as a source of unexpected protection. This intriguing story and oddly cathartic death exemplifies King’s knack for finding sheer terror in unexpected places and causing us to rethink the mundane elements of our everyday lives.

Death by Leeches in It

The Master of Horror has always been terrified of leeches. The horrifying scene in Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me (adapted from the 1982 novella The Body) in which the boys emerge from a forest pond covered with these blood-sucking worms was inspired by a real-life event from King’s own past. But common sense tells us that if we simply avoid freshwater pools, we should be fine, right? Not if you live in Derry, Maine. After a day of lighting farts in the town’s dump, budding psychopath Patrick Hockstetter visits the abandoned fridge he uses to torture small animals. But seconds after opening the door, he’s swarmed by a horde of flying leeches, each attaching to his skin and sucking his blood. The titular shapeshifting monster has transformed itself into these gruesome pests to claim the life of another child. Of course, Patrick had previously smothered his infant brother several years before so, although certainly horrific, this gruesome demise feels like one murderous monster eliminating another.

Death by Garbage Disposal in Firestarter

One of the most upsetting deaths in King’s 1980 sci-fi classic has nothing to do with fire at all. Charlie McGee may have been born with pyrokinesis, but her father has a somehow more sinister talent. After taking part in a college experiment gone dreadfully wrong, Andy McGee now possesses the power of mental domination. He’s able to “push” people into doing his bidding with intense thought and concentration. Unfortunately, these external intrusive thoughts sometimes cause a dangerous phenomenon known as a “ripple.” When Andy pushes his way into a mind, the victim sometimes finds himself fixated on an obscure memory or inconsequential object until it slowly tears his consciousness apart. After being pushed, Dr. Herman Pynchot cannot stop thinking about an incident in his fraternity kitchen and begins to equate sexual excitement with his garbage disposal. When he can no longer bear these uncontrollable thoughts, he dresses in fine lingerie and jams his arm down into the appliance’s gnashing gears. Anyone with a trash compactor of their own has likely imagined this horrifying end, but King expands on the gruesome details. Not only does Dr. Pynchot die of blood loss and shock, when removed from the sink, what remains of his bloody arm resembles a freshly sharpened pencil.

Death by Gardening in Under the Dome

While many fatal accidents occur when the dome comes down on Chester’s Mill, perhaps the most devastating departure plays out in the Evans’ vegetable garden. This mysterious forcefield descends in a flash around the idyllic burg, severing anything that happens to stand in its way. A deer is decapitated while munching on grass across the town line and a woodchuck is cut cleanly in half. Myra Evans suffers a similar fate when she reaches for a squash growing just a foot outside this invisible border. With her right hand now severed in neighboring Motton, Myra cradles the stump and calls to her terrified husband for help. Despite a makeshift tourniquet, he’s unable to stop the gushing blood and Myra bleeds to death on the kitchen floor, becoming one of the first casualties of the aptly named “Dome Day.” Of course considering what happens to those still trapped inside the translucent prison, this relatively quick and painless exit could be considered a blessing in disguise.

Death by Vending Machine in Maximum Overdrive

This 1986 cult classic is known for two things: its King’s sole directorial turn and it begins with a string of unbelievable deaths. The world-famous author opens the film with a brief cameo in which an ATM calls him an asshole followed by a drawbridge opening on its own. Cars, vans, and trucks filled with watermelon all topple down the steepening slope crashing into anyone not able to get out of the way. As machines come to life all across the US, more brutal and bizarre accidents are yet to come. A coach attempts to buy sodas for his little league team when the strangely malfunctioning vending machine begins shooting out heavy cans. Hoping to save their dying leader, the young players wind up becoming the disaster’s next victims. Some fall to the carbonated rockets while others manage to escape the assault only to be felled by a driverless steamroller bursting through the gates. It’s a smorgasbord of strange fatalities targeting a piece of American iconography and an endearingly ridiculous reminder that no matter who we are or how innocent we appear, death may befall us at any time.

Death by Self-Cannibalism in “Survivor Type”

Amidst a sea of hideous ends, King’s most grisly death occurs in the same short story collection in which “The Monkey” resides. “Survivor Type” is based on a series of journal entries from mob-connected surgeon Richard Pine who attempts to smuggle heroin onto a doomed cruise ship. As the boat sinks off the shore of a deserted island, Richard finds himself stranded with only the water, sewing kit, and first aid supplies he found in the lifeboat. After fracturing his ankle, Richard amputates the wounded appendage and finds an unexpected solution to his growing hunger. Dipping into his stash of heroin, the doctor begins slicing off and eating more and more of his body while slowly losing his grip on reality. We leave Dr. Pine on an ominous note with little left of his dwindling frame. He’s already eaten both of his legs and most recently dined on his own severed earlobes. The last line of this harrowing journal sees him rave about something that tastes like lady fingers, implying which piece he’s most recently cleaved off. Though we don’t see Richard’s inevitable demise, the final image of a grinning corpse gleefully eating his own left hand remains one of the most disturbing images in King’s vast catalogue.

The Monkey is now playing in theaters everywhere. Get tickets now and enter to win an exclusive 1/50 resin sculpt made from the original Monkey.