he grabbed this one , smelling the heavy aroma of frying carpet , and dashed for the stairs ... and still there was time to think about that story , the one he had read as a kid , `` it 's a good life , '' by some guy named jerome bixby , and that had been about a little kid who had enslaved his parents with psychic terror , a nightmare of a thousand possible deaths , and you never knew ... you never knew when the little kid was going to get mad ... charlie was wailing , sitting on her butt at the foot of the stairs .