The one Steve King tale that left and indelible impression was the Langoliers.
The Langoliers.
A group of airline passengers wake up after a nap to find the plane has landed but everyone else in the world is gone. Time seems frozen, food tastes like cardboard, batteries are dead, and the sky feels wrong. They realize theyve slipped into a place outside normal time and are in a leftover world that exists just after the present moves on.
Then come the Langoliers. Monstrous creatures that eat these abandoned remnants of reality. The group races to escape before theyre devoured while one unhinged passenger has an extreme breakdown.
Time moves on and in the present time life exists, living things are normally not left in the universe in the past. Anything left behind, living or not, gets eaten literally by the Langoliers.
Steve's pic here (thumbnails seem broken ATM), has those crazy eyes.
View attachment 8505919