"The Ten O'Clock People" is a short story written by Stephen King and first published in his 1993 collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes.

SummaryEdit

Pearson is a smoker trying hard to quit for health reasons. He discovers a horrible aspect of reality that only those attempting to quit like him are capable of seeing - that many of the people living among us in positions of power, including many police officers and political figures and even the Vice President of the United States, are in fact inhuman monsters disguised as people. A unique chemical balance, caused by the exact amount of nicotine ingested by smoking only on his morning break makes him able to see the true nature of these creatures through their disguises.