"The Blue Air Compressor" is a short story originally published in the January 1971 issue of Onan Magazine, and later reprinted, after revision, in the July 1981 issue of Heavy Metal. In this most self-conscious of all King's stories (he even intrudes, by name, directly into the narrative, introducing himself and reminding us that "Rule One for all writers is that the teller is not worth a tin tinker's fart when compared to the listener"), we are introduced to Gerald Nately, a would-be writer who write a story about his enormous seventy-year-old landlady Mrs. Leighton. When she laughs at his manuscript he fetches the blue air compressor...