Dedication (short story)

It tells the story of a black house maid working in a New York hotel and an eccentric alcoholic and prejudiced writer who is a frequent guest there. The maid consumes some of the writer's semen which was left on his sheets as part of a possible black magic spell, in the hope that it will pass talent and ability along to her unborn son. The story is told, in part, in the past tense.

King's notes at the end of Nightmares & Dreamscapes state that this story turned out to be a sort of trial for his later novel Dolores Claiborne and that it was partly written to explore the idea of why famous and talented people can sometimes be horrible in real life.[1]

This story was made into two different Dollar Baby short films, both directed by female filmmakers. In 2017, Tyna Ezenma made the very first Dollar Baby of this story, something of a novelty as many stories on the list have accompanying films in the dozens.[2] Selina Sondermann adapted the story in the following year and set it in 2018 Berlin.[3]

• Stephen King short fiction bibliography