"The Fifth Quarter" is a short story by American author Stephen King, originally published in the April 1972 issue of Cavalier (under the pen name John Swithen) and later collected in King's 1993 collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes. It was filmed as an episode of the TNT miniseries Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King. In the notes for this story, King remarks "Bachman again or maybe George Stark", a reference to his pseudonym Richard Bachman whose "relationship" with him was the basis of the character George Stark for the novel The Dark Half.