10 Stephen King Universe Fates Worse Than Death

10. 11/22/63

11/22/63 deals with time travel and, specifically, a man returning to the past to prevent the assassination of JFK. The catch: there is one time window, and it only ever brings the traveller back to the same moment in history - so Jake, the lead character, must live out several years in the past before he reaches 1963.

While Jake is waiting for time to pass, he integrates with the world and falls in love with Sadie - a fellow teacher in the school he ends up working at. They get together and begin a life - which leads to great tragedy.

King is an expert at creating threads in his stories that, when pulled, unravel everything for the worse. His main idea here is that by changing history, history fights back and balances the scales. Jake manages to have a happy and loving relationship with Sadie but, by first succeeding in preventing the assassination, he loses her.

After accidentally making the future worse, he needs to undo his own actions, and in the process loses the woman he loves. He is tormented with the knowledge of knowing that there was another life he could have lived, with a love he now can never know.

Jake Epping learned he can travel through time, but that same knowledge ruins his life.