Reply #2: Yes, this is by THE Stephen King.

[BlueIris]

It's from his "Skeleton Crew" (which I still think of as his best collection of short fiction, aside from "Everything's Eventual"). Stephen King's youngest son is named Owen. Owen, incidentally, became a writer, too, and wrote a GREAT novel about the perils of political zealotry in America called "We're All In This Together." (King's other son, Joseph, is also a novelist now—but he writes horror fic, like Dad. He had been writing under the pen name Joe Hill for a number of years, but recently sort of "came out" as an author, and will now be publishing fiction under his real name.)