The NoSleep Podcast - Penpal ~ Part II

Episode Date: December 17, 2011

The six tales told by Dathan Auerbach (Redditor 1000Vultures) have had a phenomonal effect on Reddit.com’s Nosleep forum. To celebrate this series, we are releasing a special extended two-part set of recordings that feature all six stories.Part II features the final three stories:MapsScreensFriendsAll stories are narrated by Sammy Raynor (Redditor sammysimplicity). Additional narration featuring Wendy Stolyarov. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The No Sleep Podcast is proud to present part two of our special two-part extended edition, featuring the epic series of stories written by the Redditor known as 1,000 vultures. To lead you on the journey, the author himself will introduce you to his series entitled Pen Pal. My name is Dathan Auerbach. on the author of a series of six stories posted on No Sleep that I've come to title Pen Pal. For this special two-part extended edition of the No Sleep podcast, I will be introducing each story to give you some background that will hopefully help you understand a little bit more about why I wrote them.

In part two, the final three stories in the series will be presented. Each story is narrated by Sammy Raynor. More story in the series is entitled Maps. There was a comment in the forum for boxes that made, me remember an event from my childhood that I always took as odd, but never considered it to be related to any of these stories. I now know that it is. It's funny how memories work. The details might all be present in your mind, those scattered and disarrayed, and then a single thought can stitch them back together almost instantly. I never thought of these events much because I was

focused on the wrong details. I went back to my mom's house and went through my old childhood schoolwork looking for something that I think is important. I couldn't find it. but I'll keep looking. Most old cities, and the neighborhoods in them, weren't planned with the thought that the population would begin to grow exponentially and it would have to be accommodated. The layout of the roads is generally originally in response to geographical restrictions and the necessity of connecting points of economic importance. Once the connecting roads are established, new businesses and roads are positioned strategically along

the existing skeleton, and eventually the paths carved into the earth are immortalized and asphalt, leaving room only for minor modifications, additions, and alterations, but never a dramatic change. My childhood neighborhood must have been old. If straight lines move as the crow flies, then my neighborhood must have been built based on the travels of a snake. The first houses built must have been placed around the lake, and gradually the inhabitable area increased as new extensions were built off the original path, but these new extensions all ended abruptly at one point or another. There was only one entrance or exit for the entire neighborhood. Many of these extensions were limited by a tributary, which both fed and drank from the lake, and passed right

by what I came to call, and have called in these stories, the ditch. Many of the original homes had enormous yards, but some of those original plots had been divided, leaving properties with smaller and smaller boundaries. An aerial view of my neighborhood would give one the impression that an enormous squid had once died in the woods, and some adventuring entrepreneur found the corpse and paved roads over its tentacles only to withdraw its involvement and lead time, greed, and desperation to divide up the land among prospective homeowners, like an embarrassing attempt at the golden ratio. From my porch, you could see the old houses that surrounded the lake, but the house of Mrs. Maggie

was my favorite. She was, as best as I can remember, around 80 years old, but despite that, she was one of the friendliest people I'd ever met. She had a head of loose set white curls and always wore light dresses with floral patterns. She would talk to me and Josh from her back porch when we were swimming in the lake and she would always invite us in for snacks. She said that she was lonely because her husband, Tom, was always away on business, but Josh and I would always decline her invitation because as nice as Mrs. Maggie was, it was still something a bit odd about her. Every now and then, when we would swim away, she would say, Chris and John, you're welcome here anytime, and we could hear her still yelling

that when we were walking back into my house. Mrs. Maggie, like many of the older homeowners, had a sprinkler system that was on a timer, though at some point over the years her timer must have broken because the sprinklers would come on at various points during the day, and often, even at night, all year. Well, it never got cold enough to snow very much, several times each winter, I would go outside in the morning to see Mrs. Maggie's yard transformed into a surreal Arctic paradise by the frozen water. Every other yard stood sterilized and dry by the biting frost of the winter's cold, but right there, in the middle of the bleak reminder of savagery of the season,

was an oasis of beautiful ice hanging like stalactites from every branch of every tree and every leaf of every bush. As the sun rose, it reflected off, and each piece of ice splintered the sun into a rainbow that could only be viewed, briefly before it blinded you. Even as a child, I was struck by how beautiful it was, and often Josh and I would go over there to walk on the iced grass and have sword bites with the icicles.

I once asked my mom why she left it on like that. My mom seemed to search for an explanation before she said, Well, sweetie, Mrs. Maggie is sick a lot, and sometimes when she gets really sick, she gets confused. That's why she messes up yours and Josh's name sometimes. She doesn't mean to. but sometimes she just can't remember. She lives in that big house all by herself,

so it's okay if you talk to her when you swim in the lake. But when she invites you in, you should keep saying no. Be polite. Her feelings won't get hurt. But she'll be less lonely when her husband comes home, though, right? How long will he be away on business? It seems like he's always away. My mom seemed to struggle, and I could see that she had become very upset.

Finally, she answered, Honey, Tom's not going to come home. Tom's in heaven. He died years and years ago, but Mrs. Maggie doesn't remember. She gets confused and forgets, but Tom's not ever coming home. If someone moved back in with her, she might even think it was Tom, but he's gone, sweetie. I would have only been around five or six when she told me that, and while I didn't understand it completely, I was still profoundly sad for Mrs. Maggie.

I know now that Mrs. Maggie had Alzheimer's. She and her husband Tom had had two sons, Chris and John. The two had worked out payment plans with the utility companies and paid for Mrs. Maggie's water and electricity, but they would never visit her. I don't know if something happened between them, or if it was the illness, or if they just lived too far away, but they never came around. I have no idea what they looked like, but there were times when Mrs. Maggie must have thought, Josh and I looked like they did when they were children. Or maybe she saw what some part of her mind so desperately wanted her to see, ignoring the images transmitted down her optic nerve,

and just for a little while, showing her what used to be. I realize only now how lonely she must have been. During the summer after kindergarten, before the events of balloons, Josh and I had taken to exploring the woods near my house, as well as the tributary of the lake. We knew that the woods between our houses were connected, and we thought it would be neat if the lake near my house was something, connected to the creek around his, so we resolved ourselves to find out. We were going to

make maps. The plan was to make two separate maps, and then combine them. We would make one map exploring the area around the creek near his house, and make another following the outflow from my lake. Originally, we were going to make one map, but we realized that wasn't possible since I had started drawing the map of my area so huge that the route from his house wouldn't have been to scale. We kept the map from the lake at my house and the map from the creek at his house, and we would add to each when we stayed the night with each other. For the first couple of weeks, it went really well. We would walk through the woods along the water and pause every couple of minutes to add to the map, and it seemed like the two maps would come together any day. We had no equipment needed for the job, not even a compass, but we tried to make do.

We had the idea to impale the earth with a stick when we had reached the end of adventure, so that if we came upon the stick from the other direction the next weekend, we would know we had joined the maps. We might have been the world's worst cartographers. Eventually, however, the woods became too thick near the water coming from the lake, and we were unable to proceed any further. We lost interest in the whole project for a bit and reduced our exploration significantly, though not completely, when we started selling snow cones. After I showed my mom all the pictures I had taken home from school, and she took away my snow cone machine, our interest in the maps revitalized.

We had to come up with another plan. Although I didn't understand why, my mom had placed what I consider to be extremely severe restrictions on what I could do and where I could go when I had to check in frequently if I went outside to play with Josh. This meant that we couldn't stay in the woods for hours

and continue to look for a new path. We thought we could just swim when we got to the cutoff in the woods, but that clearly wouldn't work since the map would get wet. We tried going faster when we were coming from Josh's house, but we eventually ran into the same problem. Then we had a brilliant idea.

We'd build a raft. Due to the construction in the neighborhood, there was a large amount of scrap building material that the company would set in the ditch to keep it out of the road and off-site since they no longer needed it for building. We originally conceived a formidable ship complete with a mast and an anchor, but this quickly diminished into something more manageable. We set aside the wood and took several large pieces of styrofoam. that were backed with foam board and tied them together with rope and kite string.

We launched our vessel a little down water from Mrs. Maggie's and waved a farewell to her as she motioned us to come back her way, but there was no stopping us. The raft worked very well, and while we both behaved and spoke as if the functionality of the raft was a given, I know at least I was a little surprised. We each had a fairly long tree branch to use as a paddle, but we found it was easier to simply push against the land under the water than I actually used them as intent. When the water became too deep, we'd simply lie on our stomachs and use our hands to paddle the water, which still worked, albeit less well. The first time we had to resort to that method of propulsion, I remember thinking that from far above, it must have looked like a colossally fat man with tiny arms was out for a swim.

It actually took us several trips to get the raft to the impassable patch of woods that marked the farthest we had made it. After we had come up with the idea of marking the ground with the stick, we had taken to running through the mountain through the woods until we got to the stick and then as carefully and precisely as we knew how, charting our course. This meant that the impasse was actually quite a bit away, so to sail from around my house all the way to the blockade in the woods was taking longer than expected. We'd sail for a bit and then dock the raft, and then next time we'd run through the woods to the raft and go a little further.

We continued this well into the first grade. Josh and I were assigned to different groups that year, so since we didn't really see each other during the school day, our parents were more willing to let us hang out all weekend each week. What's more, Josh's dad had taken on a lengthy construction job that required him to work over the weekends, and his mother was on call, so this meant that Josh would stay at my house most every weekend for weeks on end. We should have been making excellent progress, but when we finally made it to the impasse and had the opportunity to explore past it, we couldn't find a place to dock the rap.

The woods were simply too thick, and the waterhead eroded the land to the land to the the point that there was nearly a two-foot rise of earth over the tributary, which exposed the twisting and damp roots of trees above. We'd have to turn back every time and leave the raft at the same thick of trees that prompted us to build it in the first place. Even worse, winter had arrived, so we couldn't justify leaving the house in our swimsuits. We were getting nowhere. We always had to come home before we could gain much ground. On a Saturday, around 7 p.m., Josh and I were playing when one of my mom's co-workers knocked on our door. Her name was Samantha, and I remember her well now because I would propose to her a couple years later when I was visiting my mom at work.

My mom said that she had to go to work to fix a problem that had arisen and that she'd be back in about two hours. Her car was being repaired so she'd have to ride with Samantha, but I gather that the problem was the Samantha's fault and discussing it in the car was why it would take only two hours. She said that under no circumstances were we to leave the house or open the door for anyone, and she was in the middle of explaining that she would call every hour when she got there to check in, but she ended that statement prematurely when she remembered that our phone had been turned off for delinquent payments. This was why Samantha had just come by unannounced. She looked me dead in the eye as she was closing the door and said, Stay put. This was our chance.

We watched her drive down the serpentine road toward the exit, and as soon as the car rounded the less visible bend, we ran back to my room. I dumped my backpack out while Josh grabbed the map. Hey, do you have a flashlight? Josh chined. No, but we'll be back way before dark. I was thinking just in case, we should have one. My mom has one, but I don't know where she keeps it. Wait! I ran into my closet and pulled a box down from the top shelf.

You have a flashlight in there? Josh asked. Not exactly. I opened the box and revealed three Roman candles that I had taken from the pile that my mother had amassed for the 4th of July that past summer, along with a lighter that I had managed to take from her some months before. This would ensure that we had at least some light if we needed it. This was a little before I had been given an opportunity to be afraid of the woods at night, so it wasn't fear that motivated our search for a light source, only practicality.

We threw it all in the backpack and bolted out the back door, making sure to close the close it so boxes wouldn't get out. We had one hour and 50 minutes. We ran through the woods as fast as we could and made it to the raft in about 15 minutes. We had our bathing suits on under our clothes, so we stripped off our shirts and shorts and left them in two separate piles about four feet from the edge of the water. We untied the raft from the tree, grabbed our branch paddles, and cast off. We tried to move rapidly to reach a point beyond the contents of our ever-expanding map, as we didn't have time to waste seeing old sites. We knew that we were slower in the raft than on land, and that we would be in the raft for

quite a while after the cutoff since the woods were too thick to walk through, and there wasn't a place to dock. This meant that we'd have to ride the raft back to the original docking site, even if we found a new place to dock it further ahead. After we passed the last charted part on our map, the water began to get really deep, and eventually we could no longer touch the bottom with our tree branches. so we lay on our stomachs and paddled with our hands. It was getting darker, and as a result, it was becoming harder to distinguish the trees from one another,

and we were both becoming slightly unnerved. In the interest of making good time, we were paddling fast with our arms, but this caused a lot of noise as our hands repeatedly confronted and then broke through the water's surface tension. During these periods, we could both hear the crunching of dead leaves and the snapping of fallen sticks in the woods to our right, As we would slow our pace and quiet our actions, the rustling in the woods would cease, and we began to wonder if it was really ever there at all. We didn't know what kinds of animals resided this far into the woods,

but we did know that we didn't wish to find out. As Josh amended the map that I was illuminating with the lighter, we were suddenly confronted with the fact that the sounds were not imagined. Rapidly and rhythmically, we heard crunch, snap, crunch. It seemed to be moving, slightly away. away from us, pushing through the woods just beyond our map. It had become too dark to see. We had misjudged how long the sun would linger.

Nervously I called out, Hello? There was a brief moment of breathless tension as we lay static in the water. This silence was suddenly broken by laughter. Hello? Josh cackle. So what? Hello, Mr. Monster in the Woods? I know you're sneaking around, but maybe you'll answer to my

Hello? Hello? I realized how stupid it was. Whatever animal it was, it wouldn't respond. I hadn't even realized I'd said it until afterwards, but if anything was actually out there, I obviously wouldn't get a reply. Josh continued. Hello!

In a high falsetto. Hello, I countered in a deep baritone as I could manage. Hello, that mate. Hello, beep pop. Hello! We continued mocking each other and we're in the process of turning the raft around to head back when we heard. It was whispered and forced as if it were powered by the last breath in a pair of deflating lungs, but it didn't sound sickly. It had come from the spot just off the map, which now sat behind us since we had turned the raft around.

I slowly shifted on the raft and faced the direction of the sound as I fumbled with the Roman candle. handle. I wanted to see. What are you doing? Josh hissed, but I had already lit it. As the sparking fuse sunk into the wrapper, I held it toward the sky. I never actually shot one of these myself and thought to just use it like a flare in the movies. A glowing green orb rocketed out toward the stars and then quickly extinguished. I lowered my arm more towards the horizon. I could remember that there were several colors, but I couldn't remember how many times

one of these fired before being depleted. A second ball of red light burst out and fizzled above the trees, but I still saw nothing. Let's just go, man, Josh pressed as he turned to face the direction back home and began paddling desperately. Just one more. Lowering my arm directly at the woods in front of me, another red ball of fire was launched from the tube. It traveled straight ahead until it collided with a tree, briefly exploding the light in a much greater diameter. Still nothing. I dropped the firework in the water and watched as one more struggling fireball burst free only to quickly die, suffocated by the water.

As we began paddling in the direction toward my house, we heard loud and unconcealed rustling in the woods. The breaking of branches and the trampling of fallen leaves overpowered the sound of our splashing. It was running. In our panic, we jostled the raft too violently, and I felt one of the ropes under my chest loosened. Josh, be careful, but it was too late. Our raft was breaking. Before too long, it had completely fallen apart. We each held on to a separate piece of styrofoam,

but the pieces weren't big enough to keep us up completely, and our legs dangled beneath us in the winter water. Josh, quick! I yelled as I pointed out the water right next to him. He scrambled, but it was too cold to move quickly, and we both watched as the map floated away. I'm cold, man, Josh shuddered dejectedly. Let's get out of the... Water.

We approached the shore, but each time we attempted to pull ourselves up, we'd hear the frantic rustling, thundering toward us from the woods just above. Eventually, we were too cold and weak to even try anymore. Steadily, we kicked our legs and found ourselves nearing the dock site. We toppled off the debris and tried to pull it on land, but Josh's piece slipped away and floated in the direction of the lake. We took up our swimsuits, and were desperate to get into dry clothes to shield us from the biting chill of the air. I slid on my shorts, but there was something wrong. I turned to Josh.

Where's my shirt, man? He shrugged and suggested maybe it got knocked into the water and floated into the lake. I told Josh to go back to my house and to say that we were playing hide and seek if my mom was home. I had to try and find my shirt. I ran behind the houses and peered out over the water and scouted along the shoreline. It occurred to me that with any luck maybe I could find the map too. I was moving pretty fast because I needed to get home and was about to give up when my concentration was interrupted by a sound coming from just behind me. Hello? I whipped around. It was Miss Maggie. I had never seen her at night before and in this poor light she looked extremely frail. The usual warmth that wrapped her manner seemed to have been snuffed out by the chill.

I couldn't remember ever seeing her without a smile, and so her face looked strange. Hello, Mrs. Maggie. Oh, hi, Chris, the warmth and smile had returned to her, even if her memories had not. I couldn't see it was you in the dark there. Jokingly, I asked her if she was going to invite me in for a snack, but she said maybe some other time. I was too busy looking for my map and the shirt to really engage her, but she sounded happy, and so I didn't feel bad. She said a couple other things, but I was too distracted to pay attention. I said good night and ran down her driveway toward my house.

Behind me, I could hear her walking across the frozen yard, but I didn't turn around a wave. I had to get home. I made it home a couple minutes before my mom did, and by the time she came in, Josh and I had already changed and warmed up. We'd gotten away with it, even though we'd lost the map. Couldn't find it? Nah, but I saw Mrs. Maggie. She called me Chris again. I'm telling you, dude, just be glad you've never seen her at night.

We both laughed, and he asked me if she invited me in for a snack, joking that the snacks must be terrible since she couldn't even give them away. I told him that she didn't, and he was surprised. And now that I had time to think back about it, so was I. Literally, every time we had seen her, she invited us in for snacks. And here I had, albeit sarcastically, invited myself, and she said no. As Josh talked more about Mrs. Maggie, I suddenly realized that the lighter might still be in my pocket and that it would be disastrous for my mom to find. I grabbed the shorts off the floor and padded my pockets.

I felt something, but it wasn't the lighter. From my back pocket, I slid out a folded piece of paper and my heart left. The map, I thought, but I watched it float away. As I unfolded the paper, my stomach turned as I tried to understand what I was seeing. Drawn on the paper, inside of a large oval, were two stick figures holding hands. One was much bigger than the other, but neither had faces. Paper was torn, so a part of it was missing, and there was a number written near the top right corner. It was either 15 or 16.

I nervously handed Josh the paper and asked him if he had put it in my pocket at some point, but he scoffed at the idea and asked why I was so upset. I pointed toward the smaller stick figure and what was written next to the picture, and what was written next to it. It was my initials. I shook it off and told Josh the rest of the conversation between Mrs. Maggie and I. I had always attributed the odd exchange

to her being sick until revisiting the events in my mind all these years later. As I think about it now, a feeling of profound sadness for Mrs. Maggie returns, but it is augmented by a looming feeling of despair

when I think about why she said maybe another time. I knew what she had said, but I didn't understand what it meant that night. I didn't understand what her words had meant weeks later when I watched men in strange orange suits, biohazard suits, carried what I thought were black bags full of garbage out of her house,

or why the whole neighborhood smelled like death that day. I still didn't understand when they condemned the house and boarded it up a little while before I moved, but I understand now. I understand why her last words to me were so important, even if neither she or I realized it at the time. Mrs. Maggie had told me that night that Tom had come home, but I know now who had really moved in.

Just as I now know why I never saw her body brought out on a stretcher, the bags weren't filled with garbage. The story is entitled Screens. I've intentionally withheld some details from a lot of my stories. I've let my hopes concerning the way things might have been influenced my evaluation of the way they have. actually are. I don't think there's any point to that anymore. At the end of the summer, between kindergarten and first grade, I caught the stomach flu.

This has all of the components of the regular flu. However, with the stomach flu, you throw up into a bucket and not the toilet because you're sitting on it. The sickness gets purged from both ends. This lasted for about 10 days, but just before it had passed, the sickness was granted an extension in the form of pink eye. My eyelids were so fused together by the dried mucus generated during the night that the first day I awoke with the infection, I thought I had gone blind. When I started first grade, I had a kink in my neck from ten days of bed rest and two swollen bloodshot eyes.

Josh was in another group and didn't have my lunch, so in a cafeteria bursting with two hundred kids, I still had a table to myself. I started keeping spare food in my backpack that I would take into the bathroom to eat after lunch since my school meals were usually confiscated by older kids who knew I wouldn't stand up to them since no one would stand with me. This dynamic persisted even after my condition cleared up since no one wants to be friends with the kid who gets bullied, lest they have some of that aggression directed towards themselves. The only reason this stopped was due to the actions of a kid named Alex. Alex was in third grade and was much bigger than most of the other kids

in any grade. Around the third week of school, he started sitting with me at lunch, and this put an immediate end to the shortage of my food supply. He was nice enough, but he seemed kind of slow. We never really talked at length, except for when I finally decided to ask why he had been sitting with me. He had a crush on Josh's sister, Veronica. Veronica was in fourth grade and was probably the prettiest girl in the school. Even as a six-year-old, who fully endorsed the notion that girls were disgusting, I still knew how pretty Veronica was. When she was in third grade, Josh told me two boys had actually gotten into a physical fight which erupted out of an argument concerning the significant of the messages she had written on their yearbooks.

One of the boys eventually hit the other in the forehead with the corner of his yearbook and the wound required stitches to close. Well, not one of those two boys, Alex wanted her to like him and confess that he knew Josh and I were best friends. I gathered that he had hoped that I would convey his ostensibly philanthropic deed to Veronica and that she would presumably be so moved by his selflessness that she'd take an interest in him. If I told her, he would continue to sit with me for as long as I needed him to. Because this was during the time when Josh mostly stayed at my house building the raft and navigating tributary with me, I didn't have the chance to bring it up to Veronica because I simply didn't see her. I told Josh about it, and he made fun of Alex, but said that he would tell his sister since I wanted him to.

I doubted that he would. Josh was annoyed that people seemed to be so taken with his sister. I remember him calling her an ugly crow. I never said anything to Josh, but I remember wanting to say, even then, that she was pretty and would one day be beautiful. I was right. When I was 15, I was seeing a movie at a place my friends and I had come to call the Dirt Theater. It was probably nice at some point, but time and neglect had weathered the place severely. The theater had movable tables and chairs.

on a level floor, so when the theater was full, there were very few places you could sit and see the whole screen. The theater was still open, I imagine, for three reasons. One, it was cheap to see a movie there. Two, they showed a different cult movie twice a month at midnight. And three, they sold beer to underage kids during the midnight showings. I went for the first two. And that night they were showing scanners by David Cronenberg for $1. My friends and I were sitting in the very back.

I wanted to sit closer to the front for a better view, but Ryan had driven us, so I relented. A couple minutes before the movie started, a group of girls walked in. They were all pretty attractive, but whatever beauty they might have had was eclipsed by the girl with the dirty blonde hair, even though I had only caught a glimpse of her profile. As she turned to move her seat, I caught a full view of her face, which gave me the feeling of butterflies in my stomach. It was Veronica. I hadn't seen her in a long time.

Josh and I saw progressively less of one another after we snuck out to my old house that night when we were ten and usually when I'd visit him she'd be out with friends while everyone stared at the screen I stared at Veronica only looking away when the feeling that I was being a creep overcame me but that feeling would quickly subside and my eyes would return to her she really was beautiful

just like I had thought she'd be when I was a kid when the credit started to roll my friends got up and left There was only one exit, and they didn't want to be trapped waiting for the crowd to clear. I lingered in hopes of catching Veronica's attention. As she and her friends walked by, I took a chance. Hey, Veronica. She turned toward me and looked a little startled. Yeah?

I got out of my seat and stepped a little into the light coming in through the open door. It's me, Josh's old friend from way back. How, how have you been? Oh my God, hey, it's been so long. She motioned to her friends that she'd be out in a second. Yeah, a few years at least. Not since the last time I stayed over with Josh. How is he anyway?

Oh, that's right. I remember all you guys' games. Do you still play Ninja Turtles with your friends? She laughed a little, and I blushed. No, I'm not a kid anymore. Me and my friends play X-Men now. I was really hoping she'd laugh. She did.

You're cute. Do you come to these movies every time? I was still reeling from what she said. Does she really think I'm cute? Did she just mean I was funny? Does she think I'm attractive? I suddenly realized that she'd asked me a question, and my mind grasped for what it was.

Yeah, I said much too loudly. Yeah, I tried to anyway. What about you? I come every now and then. My boyfriend didn't like these movies, but we just broke up. so I plan on coming from now on. I was trying to be casual, but failed.

Oh, well, that's cool. Not that you guys broke up. I just mean that you'd be able to come here more often. She laughed again. I tried to recover. So are you coming the week after next? They were supposed to show Day of the Dead. It's really cool.

Yeah, I'll be here. She smiled, and I was about to suggest that maybe we could sit together when she quickly closed the space between us hug me. It was really good to see you, she said with her arms around me. I was trying to think of what to say when I realized the biggest problem was that I had forgotten how to talk. Luckily, Ryan, who I could hear approaching from the hallway, came in and spoke for me. Dude, you know the movie's over, right? Let's get the fuck out of, oh yeah. Veronica let go and said that she'd see me next time. She was played out of the room by the porn music Ryan was making with his mouth.

I was furious, but it dissipated as soon as I heard Veronica laughing in the lobby. Day of the Dead couldn't come soon enough. Ryan's family was going out of town so he wouldn't be able to drive us, and the other friends I was with that night didn't have cars. A couple of days before the movie, I asked my mom if she could take me. She responded almost immediately by denying my request, but I persisted and she picked on the desperation in my voice. She asked why I wanted to go so badly since I had seen the movie before, and I hesitated before saying that I was hoping to see a girl there.

She smiled and asked playfully if she knew the girl, and I reluctantly told her it was Veronica. The smile disappeared from her face, and she coldly said, no. I decided that I would call Veronica to see if she could just pick me up. I had no idea if she still lived at home, but it was worth a try. But then I realized that Josh might answer. I hadn't talked to him in almost three years, and if he answered, I obviously couldn't ask to talk to his sister. I felt guilty for calling to speak with Veronica and not Josh, but I dismissed the feeling quickly. Josh hadn't called me in years either.

I picked up the phone and dialed the number that was still embedded in my muscle memory from having dialed it so often all those years ago. It rang several times before someone picked up. It wasn't Josh. I felt a mixture of both relief and disembarrassed. appointment. I realized in that second that I really missed Josh. I would call after this weekend and talk to him, but this is my only chance to see if Veronica could or would take me, so I asked for her. The person told me I'd dialed the wrong number. I repeated the number back to her, and she confirmed. She said they must have changed their number, and I agreed. I apologized for

the disturbance and hung up. I was suddenly intensely sad because now I couldn't contact Josh even if I wanted to. I felt terrible for having been afraid that he might answer the phone. He had been my very best friend. I realized that the only way I could be put back in touch with him would be through Veronica, so now, not that I needed one, I had another reason to see her.

I told my mom the day before the movie that I was no longer concerned with going, but was hoping she could drop me off at my friend Chris's house. She relented and dropped me off that Saturday, a couple of hours before the movie. My plan was to watch. from his house to the theater since he only lived about a half mile away. They went to church early on Sundays so his parents would go to sleep early Saturday night

and Chris was fine with not coming with me since he had planned on chatting with his girl he met online. He said that the walk back to his house would be even lonelier after she laughed in my face when I tried to kiss her. I told him not to electrocute himself when he tried to have sex with his computer. I left his house at 11.15. I tried to pace myself so I'd get there just a little before the the movie. I was going all by myself, and so I didn't want to just hang around there waiting. On the way to the theater, I figured that if Veronica showed up at all, it would be too lucky for us to arrive at the same time, so I debated whether I should wait outside or just go in.

Both had their pros and cons. As I was grappling with these concerns, I noticed that the steady stream of streaking car lights that had been overtaking me had been replaced by a single, constant spotlight that refused to pass. The road wasn't illuminated by streetlights, so I was walking in the grass with the road about two feet to my left. I stepped a little more to my right and cranked my neck over my left shoulder to see what was behind me. A car had stopped about ten feet behind me.

All I could see were the violently bright headlights that were cutting through the otherwise Stygian surroundings. I thought that it might be one of Chris's parents. Maybe they'd come to check on us and seem that I was gone. It wouldn't have taken much pressing for Chris to confess. I took one step toward the car, and it broke its pause and started driving toward me at a slow pace. It passed me, and I saw that it wasn't Chris's parents' car, or any car that I recognized for that matter. I tried to see the driver, but it was too dark, and my pupils had shrunk when faced with the blinding lights from the car just moments before.

They adjusted enough so that I could see a tremendous crack in the back window of the car as it drove away. I didn't think much of the whole affair. Some people find it fun to scare other people. I'd often hide around corners and jump out at my mom, after all. I timed it right and got there about ten minutes before the movie. I decided to wait outside until around 1157, since that would give me time to find her inside if she was already seated. As I was considering the possibility that she might not show, I saw her. She was alone, and she was beautiful.

I waved to her and walked to close the distance. She smiled and asked if my friends were already inside. I said that they weren't and realized that this must seem like I was trying to make this a date. She didn't seem bothered by that, nor was she bothered when I handed her the ticket I'd already bought. She looked at me quizzically and I said, don't worry, I'm rich. She laughed and we went inside. I bought us one popcorn and two drinks and spent most of the movie debating whether or not I should time reaching my hand into the popcorn bag when she reached in so they would touch.

She seemed to enjoy the movie, and before I knew it, it was over. We didn't linger in the theater, and because this was at midnight, we couldn't loiter in the lobby, so we walked outside. The parking lot of the theater was big because it connected with a mall that had gone out of business. Not wanting the night to be over just yet, I continued the conversation while casually walking toward the old mall. As we were about to run the corner and leave the theater out of sight,

I looked back and saw that her car wasn't the only one left in the parking lot. The other one had a large crack in the back window. My immediate uneasiness turned to understanding. That makes a lot of sense. The driver of that car works here and must have figured I was on my way to the movie. Injecting real horror into the life of a horror fan seemed like an obvious move. We walked around the mall and talked. about the movie. I told her that I thought Day of the Dead was better than Dawn of the Dead,

but she refused to agree. I told her when I called her old number and about my dilemma about who would answer the phone. She didn't find it as funny as I now did, but she took my phone and put her number in it. She commented that it might be the worst cell phone she'd ever seen. Her evaluation wasn't rescinded when I told her I couldn't even receive picture messages on it. I called her so she'd have my number and she programmed it in. She told me that she was graduating, but she hadn't done well in school so far that year, so she wasn't sure if she'd even get into college. I told her to attach a picture of herself to the application and they'd pay her to go there

just so they could look at her. She didn't laugh at that one, and I thought she might be offended. She might have thought I was implying that she couldn't get in based on her intelligence. I nervously glanced at her, and she was just smiling, and even in this poor light I could see that she was blushing. I wanted to hold her hand, but I didn't. As we walked down the final side of the mall back toward the theater, I asked her about Josh.

She told me she didn't want to talk about it. I asked her if he was at least doing a right and she just said, I don't know. I figured Josh must have taken a wrong turn somewhere and started getting into trouble. I felt bad. I felt guilty. As we approached the parking lot, I noticed that the car, with the cracked back window was gone and that her car was now the only one in the parking lot. She asked me if I needed a ride and even though I really didn't I said that I'd appreciate it. I had drunk my whole soda during the movie and all the walking was putting pressure on my bladder.

I knew that I could wait until I was back at Chris's but I had decided that I was going to try to kiss her when she dropped me off and I didn't want this biological nagging to rush me out of the car. This would be my first kiss. I could think of no ruse to conceal what I needed to do. The theater had long closed, and so I only had one option. I told her that I was going to go behind the theater to piss, but that I'd be back in two shakes. It was obvious that I had thought it was hilarious, and she seemed to laugh more at how funny I found it than how funny it clearly was. On the way toward the theater, I stopped and turned toward her.

I asked her if Josh had ever told her that kid named Alex had done something nice for me. She paused to think for a moment and said that he had. She inquired as to why I had asked, but I said it was nothing. Josh really was a good friend. When I went to go behind the theater, I realized that there was a chain-link fence extending off and running parallel to the walls of the building. Where I stood, she could still see me, and the fence seemed to stretch on endlessly, so I thought I'd just hop it, duck out of sight, and return as quickly as I could. It may have been too much of an effort, but I thought it polite. I climbed the fence and walked just a little ways until I was out of sight.

sight and urinated. For a moment, the only sounds were the crickets in the grass behind me and the collision of liquid and cement. These sounds were overpowered by a noise that I can still hear when it's quiet and there are no other noises to distract my ears. In the distance, I heard a faint screeching which quickly subsided only to be replaced with a cascade of thundering vibrations. I realized quickly enough what it was. It was a car. The growling of the engine got louder, and then I thought, no, not louder, closer. As soon as I realized this, I started back toward the fence, but before I could get very far at all, I heard a brief, truncated scream, and the roar of the engine terminated in a deafening thud. I started running, but after only

two or three steps, I was tripped by a loose piece of stone and fell hard and fast onto the concrete, my head striking the corner of a chair as I fell. I was dazed from, maybe 30 seconds, but the renewed rumbling of the engine drew my senses back and my equilibrium was restored by adrenaline. I redoubled my efforts. I was worried that whoever had crashed the car might harass Veronica. As I was climbing over the fence, I saw that there was still only one car in the parking lot. I didn't see any evidence of a crash. I thought that I might have misjudged its direction or proximity. As I ran towards Veronica's car, and as my orientation changed, I saw what the car had hit.

My leg stopped working almost completely. It was Veronica. Her car was sitting between us, and as I closed the distance and walked around it, she came fully into view. Her body was twisted and crumpled like a discarded figure meant to represent a catalog of things the human body cannot do. I could see the bone on her right shin cutting through her jeans,

and her left arm was wrapped so hard around the back of her neck that her hand fell onto her right breast. Her head was craned back and her mouth hung widely open toward the sky. There was so much blood. As I looked at her, I actually found it hard to discern whether she was laying on her back or her stomach.

And this optical illusion made me feel sick. When you're confronted with something in the world that simply doesn't belong, your mind tries to convince itself that it's dreaming. And to that end, it provides you with that distinct sense of all things moving slowly, as if through sap. In that moment, I honestly felt that I would wake up at any minute.

But I didn't wake up. I fumbled with my phone to call for help, but I had no signal. I could see Veronica's phone sticking out of what I thought was her front right pocket. I had no choice. Trembling, I reached for her phone, and as I slid it out, she moved and gasped for air so violently that it seemed as if she were trying to breathe in the whole world. This startled me so much that I staggered back and fell onto the asphalt with her phone in my hand. She was trying to adjust her body to get it into its natural position,

but with every spasmament and jerk, I could hear the cracking and grinding of her bones. Without thinking, I scrambled over to her and put my face over hers and just said, Veronica, don't move. Don't move, okay? Just stay still. Don't move. Veronica, please just don't move. I kept saying it, but the words started to fall apart as tears came streaming down my face. I opened her phone. It still worked. It was still on the screen where she had saved my number,

and when I saw that, I felt my heart break a little. I called 911 and waited with her, telling her that she'd be okay, and feeling guilty for lying to her every time I said it. when the sounds of sirens tore through the air, she seemed to become more alert. She had remained conscious since I found her, but now more of the light was coming back into her eyes. Her brain was still protecting her from the pain, though it looked as if it was finally allowing her to become aware that something was terribly wrong with her. Her eyes rolled over to mine, and her lips moved. She was struggling, but I heard her.

Picture, my, my picture, he took it. I didn't understand what she meant, so I said the only thing I could. I'm so sorry, Veronica. I rode with her in the ambulance, where she finally lost consciousness. I waited in the room that they had reserved for her. I still had her phone, so I put it with her purse, and I called my mom from the hospital phone. It was about 4 a.m. I told her that I was fine, but that Veronica was not.

She cursed at me and said that she'd be right there, but I told her I wasn't leaving until Veronica was out of surgery. She said she'd come anyway. My mom and I didn't speak that much. I told her I was sorry for lying, and she said that we'd talk about that later. I think that had we talked more in that room, if I had just told her about boxes or the night with the raft,

if she had just told me more about what she knew, I think that things would have changed, but we sat there in silence. She told me that she loved me and that I could call her whenever I wanted her to come get me. As my mom was leaving, Veronica's parents rushed in. Her dad and my mom exchanged a few words that appeared to be quite serious while Veronica's mother talked to the person at the desk. Her mother was a nurse, but didn't work at this hospital. I'm sure that she had tried to get Veronica transferred, but in her condition it was prohibitive. While we waited, the police came in and talked to each of us.

I told them what happened. They made some notes, and then they left. She came out of surgery and 90% of her body was covered in a thick, white cast. Her right arm was free, but the rest of her was bound like a cocoon. She was still under, but I remember how I felt when I had my cast before kindergarten. I asked a nurse for a marker, but I couldn't think of anything to write. I slept in a chair in the corner. and went home the next day.

I came back every afternoon for several days. At some point, they had moved another patient into her room and set up a screen around Veronica's bed to act as a partition. She didn't seem to be feeling better, but she made more moments of lucidity. But even during these periods, we wouldn't really talk. Her jaw had been broken by the car, so the doctors had wired it shut.

I sat with her for a while, but there was nothing much I could say. I got up and walked over to her. I kissed her on the forehead, and she whispered through her clenched teeth. This surprised me a little, but I looked at her and said, Has he not come to see you? No. I found myself really irritated. Even if Josh had been getting into trouble, he should still come see his sister, I thought.

I was about to express this when she said, No, Josh, he ran away. I should have told you. I felt my blood turned to ice. When? When did this happen? When he was 13. Did he leave a note or something?

On his pillow. She started crying, and I followed her, but I think now we were crying for different reasons, even if I didn't realize it. At this point, there were a lot of things I still didn't remember from my childhood, and there were a lot of connections I hadn't yet made. I told her I had to go, but that she could text me anytime. I got a text from her the next day, telling me not to come back. I asked why, and she said she didn't want me to see her like that again.

I agreed, begrudgingly. We texted each other every day, though I kept this from my mom, because I knew that she didn't like me talking to Veronica. Usually her texts were fairly short, and mostly only in response to more lengthy texts that I would send her. I tried calling her only once. I was sure she was screening her calls, but I hoped I could hear her voice. She picked up, but didn't say anything.

I could hear how labored her breathing was. About a week after, she told me not to come see her anymore. She sent me a text that simply read, I love you. I was filled with so many different emotions, but I responded by expressing the most prevalent one. I replied, I love you too.

She said that she wanted to see me And that she couldn't wait until she could see me again She told me that she had been released and was Convalescing at her house These exchanges carried on for several weeks But every time I asked to come see her she would simply say Soon I kept insisting and the following week she said that she thought she might be able to make it to the next midnight movie

I couldn't believe it But she insisted that she would try I got a text from her the afternoon of the movie be saying, see you tonight. I got Ryan to drive me since Chris's parents had found out what had happened and said I wasn't welcome at their house anymore. I explained to Ryan that she might be in bad shape, but that I really cared about her, so to give us some space.

He accepted that, and we headed down there. Veronica didn't show. I had saved a seat for her right next to me, near the exit, so she could get in and out easily. But ten minutes into the movie, a man slid into the chair. I whispered, Excuse me, this seat is taken, but he didn't respond at all. He just stared ahead at the screen. I remember wanting to move because there was something wrong with the way he was breathing.

I forfeited because I realized that she wasn't coming. I texted her the next day, asking if she was all right, and I inquired as to why she didn't show the previous night. She responded with what would turn out to be the last text message I ever received from her. She simply said, See you again, soon. She was delirious, and I was worried about her. I sent her several replies reminding her about the movie

and saying it was no big deal, but she just stopped replying. I grew increasingly upset over the next several days. I couldn't reach her at her home because I didn't know that number, and I wasn't even sure where they lived anymore. My mood became increasingly depressed, and my mother, who had been really nice as of late, asked me if I was okay. I told her that I hadn't heard from Veronica in days, and I felt all the warmth leave her disposition.

What do you mean? She was supposed to meet me at the movies yesterday. I know it's only been like three weeks since she got hit, but she said she'd try to come, and after that she'd just stopped talking to me altogether. She must hate me. She looked confused, and I could read on her face that she was trying to tell if my mind had simply broken.

When she saw that it hadn't, her eyes began to water and she pulled me toward her, embracing me. She was beginning to sob, but it seemed too intense a reaction to my problem, and I had no reason to think that she particularly cared for Veronica. She drew in a shuddering breath and then said something that still makes me nauseous, even now. She said, Heronica's dead, sweetheart. Oh God, I thought you knew. She died on the last day you visited her Oh baby, she died weeks ago She had completely broken down But I knew it wasn't because of Veronica

I broke the embrace and staggered backwards My mind was still swimming This wasn't possible I had just exchanged messages with her yesterday You'd only think to ask one question And it was probably the most trivial I could ask Then why was her phone still? on. She continued sobbing. She didn't answer. I exploded. Why did it take them so long to shut off

her goddamn phone? Her crying broke enough to mutter. The pictures. I would come to find out that her parents thought that her phone had been lost in the accident, despite the fact that I had put it in her purse the night she was brought to the hospital. When they retrieved her belongings, the phone was not among them. They intended to contact the phone company at the end of the billing cycle to deactivate the line, but they received a call informing them of a message impending charge for hundreds of pictures that had been sent from her phone. Pictures. Pictures that were all sent to my phone. Pictures that I never got because my phone couldn't receive them. They learned that they were all sent after the night she died. They deactivated the phone immediately. I tried not

to think about the contents of those pictures, but I remember wondering for some reason whether I would have been in any of them. My mouth went dry, and I felt the painful sting of despair as I thought of the last message I received from her phone. See you again soon. The story is entitled Friends. Friendship, real friendship, is an amazing thing. There are billions of people on this planet, each alive for such a short time. But we use this fleeting time to build relationships. Friendships are the most precious of these relationships because they're chosen. They are forged with people we aren't related to, people with whom we have no default obligations to,

but we let them into our lives anyway. We make them a part of ourselves. When we do this, we are implicitly saying, My life is better with you in it, and we hope that they feel the same way. I've only ever really had one friend, and now, knowing what I know, I'd like to tell you about him. On the first day of kindergarten, my mother had delected to drive me to school. We were both nervous, and she wanted to be there with me all the way up to the moment I walked into class. It took me a bit longer to get ready in the morning, due to my still mending arm.

The cast came up a couple inches past my elbow, which meant that I had to cover the entire arm with a specially designed latex bag when I should. showered. The bag was built to pull tight around the opening in order to seal out any water that might otherwise destroy the cast. I had gotten really adept at cinching the bag by myself. That morning, however, perhaps due to my excitement or nervousness, I hadn't pulled the strap tight enough and halfway through the shower, I could feel water pulling inside the bag around my fingers. I jumped out and tore the latex shield away, but could feel that the previously rigid plaster had become soft after absorbing the water. Because there is no way to effectively clean the area between your body and a cast,

the dead skin that would normally have fallen away merely sits there. When stirred by moisture, like sweat, it emits an odor, and apparently this odor is proportionate to the amount of moisture introduced, because soon after I began attempting to dry it, I was struck by the powerful stench of rot. As I continued to frantically rub it with the towel, it began to disintegrate. I was growing increasingly distressed. I had put as much effort as a child could into his very first day of school.

I had sat with my mom picking out my clothes the night before. I had spent a great deal of time picking up my backpack, and I had become exceedingly excited to show everyone my lunchbox that had the ninja turtles on it. I had fallen into my mom's habit of calling these children I hadn't met yet, my friends, already. But as the condition of my cast worsened, I became deeply. upset at the thought that surely I wouldn't be able to apply that label to anyone by the time this day was over. Defeated, I showed my mom.

It took 30 minutes to get most of the moisture out while working to preserve the rest of the cast. To address the problem of the smell, my mom cut slivers of bar soap and slid them down into the cast and then rub the remainder of the soap on the outside in an attempt to cocoon the rancid smell inside of a more pleasant one. By the time we arrived at the school, my classmates were already engaged in their second activity, and I was shoehorned into one of the groups. I wasn't made very clear on what the guidelines of the activity were, and within about five minutes I had violated the rules so badly

that each member of the group complained to the teacher, and asked why I had to be in their group. I had brought a marker to school in hopes that I could collect some signatures or drawings on my cast next to my mother's, and I suddenly felt very foolish for having even put the marker in my pocket that morning. Kindergarteners had the lunchroom to themselves at my elementary school, but some of the tables were off limits, so I didn't have to sit alone. I was self-consciously picking at the fraying ends of my cast when a kid sat across from me.

I like your lunchbox, he said. I could tell he was making fun of me, and I grew really angry. In my mind, that lunchbox was the last good thing about my day. I didn't look up from my arm, and I felt a burning in my eyes from the tears that I was holding back. I looked up to tell the kid to leave me alone, but before I could get the words out, I saw something that made me pause. He had the exact same lunchbox. I laughed. I like your lunchbox, too. I think Michelangelo is the coolest, he said while miming Nunchuk moves.

I was in the middle of rebutting by saying that Raphael was my favorite when he knocked his open milk carton off the table. and onto his lap. I tried very hard to stifle my laughter since I didn't know him at all, but the struggling look on my face must have struck him as funny because he started laughing first. Suddenly I didn't feel so bad about my cast and thought that this person would hardly notice now anyway. Just then, I thought to try my luck. Hey, do you want to sign my cast? As I pulled out the marker, he asked me how I broke it. I told him that I fell out of the tallest tree in my neighborhood.

He seemed impressed. I watched him laboriously draw his name, and when he was done, I asked him what it said. He told me it said, Josh. Josh and I had lunch together every day, and whenever we could, we partnered up for projects. I helped him with his handwriting, and he took the blame when I wrote FART on the Wall and Permanent Marker. I would come to know other kids, but I think I knew even then that Josh was my only real friend. Moving a friendship outside of school when you are five years old is actually more difficult than most remember. The day we launched our balloons, we had such a good time that I asked Josh if he wanted to come to my house the next day to play.

He said he did, and that he'd bring some of his toys. I said that we could also go exploring and maybe swim in the lake. When I got home, I asked my mom, and she said it would be fine. My enthusiasm was boundless until I realized that I had no way of contacting Josh to tell him. I spent the whole weekend worrying that our friendship would be dissolved by Monday. When I saw him after the weekend, I was relieved to find that he had run into the same obstacle and thought it was funny. Later that week, we both remember to write down our phone numbers at home and then exchange them at school. My mom spoke with Josh's dad, and it was decided that my mom would pick up Josh and myself from school that Friday.

We alternated this basic structure nearly every weekend. The fact that we lived so close made things much easier on. on our parents who seemed to work constantly. When my mom and I moved across the city at the end of first grade, I was sure that our friendship had seen its last day. As we drove away from the house I had lived in my whole life, I felt the sadness that I knew wasn't just about the house. I was saying goodbye to my friend, forever.

But Josh and I, to my surprise and delight, stayed close. Despite the fact that we spent the majority of our time apart and only saw one another on weekends, we remained remarkably similar as we grew. Our personalities coalesced, our senses of humors, complimented each other's, and we would often find that we had started liking new things independently. We even sounded enough alike that when I stayed with Josh, he would sometimes call my mom pretending to be me.

His success rate was impressive. My mom would sometimes joke that the only way she could tell us apart sometimes was by her hair. He had straight, dirty blonde hair like his sister, while I had curly, dark brown hair like my mother. One would think that the thing most likely to drive two young friends apart would be what's out of their control. However, I think the catalyst of our gradual disengagement was my insistence that we sneak out to my old house to look for boxes.

The next weekend, I invited Josh over to my house, in keeping with our tradition of alternating houses, but he said that he wasn't really feeling up to it. We started seeing progressively less of one another over the next year or so. It had gone from once a week to once a month to once every couple months. For my 12th birthday, my mom threw a party for me. I hadn't made that many friends since we moved, so it wasn't a surprise party since my mom had no idea who to invite.

I told the handful of kids I'd become acquainted with and called Josh to see if he wanted to come. Originally, he said that he didn't think he could make it, but the day before the party, he called me to say that he'd be there. I was really excited, because I hadn't seen him in some. several months. The party went pretty well. My biggest concern was that Josh and the other kids wouldn't get along, but they seemed to like each other well enough. Josh was surprisingly quiet. He hadn't brought me a gift and apologized for that, but I told him it wasn't a big deal.

I was just glad that he had been able to make it. I tried to start several conversations with him, but they seemed to keep reaching dead ends. I asked him what was wrong. I told him that I didn't get why things had become so awkward between us. They were never like that before. We used to hang out almost every weekend and talk on the phone every couple of days. I asked him what happened to us. He looked up from staring at his shoes and just said, you left. Just after he said that, my mom yelled in from the other room that it was time to open presents. I forced to smile and walked into the dining room as they sang happy birthday. There were a couple of wrapped boxes and a lot of cars. since most of my extended family lived out of state, but most of the gifts were silly and forgettable.

But I remember that Brian gave me a Mighty Max toy shaped like a snake that I kept for years afterwards. My mom was insistent that I opened all the cards that had been brought and thank each person who had given one, because several years before, on Christmas, I had torn through the wrapping paper and envelopes with such fervor that I had destroyed any possibility of discerning who had sent which gift or what amount of money. We separated the ones that had been sent by mail and the ones that had been brought that day so my friends wouldn't have to sit through me opening cards from people they'd never met. Most of the cards from my friends had a couple dollars in them, and the ones from my family members contained larger bills.

One envelope didn't have my name on it, but it was in the pile, so I opened it. The card had a generic floral pattern on its face and seemed to be a card that had been received by someone else who was now recycling it for my birthday because it was actually a little dingy. I actually appreciated the idea that it was a reused card since I'd always thought that cards were silly. I angled it so that the money wouldn't fall to the floor when I opened it. The only thing inside was a message that had come printed on the card.

I love you. Whoever had given me this card hadn't written anything in it, but they had circled the message in pencil a couple of times. I chuckled a little and said, gee, thanks for the awesome card, Mom. She looked at me quizzically and then turned her attention to the card. told me it wasn't from her and seemed amused as she showed my friends, looking at their faces, trying to discern who had played the joke. None of the kids stepped forward, so my mom said, don't worry, sweetheart. At least you know now that two people love you. She followed that

with an extremely prolonged and excruciating kiss on my forehead that transformed into the group's bewilderment into hysteria. They were all laughing, so it could have been any of them, but Mike seemed to be laughing the hardest. To become a bit of a bit of the worst, to become a participant rather than the subject of the gag I said to him that just because he had given me the card you shouldn't think that I'd kiss him later we all laughed and as I looked at Josh I saw that he was finally smiling well I think that gift might be the winner but you have a couple more to open my mom slid another present in front of me I was still feeling the tremors of suppressed chuckles in my

abdomen as I tore the colorful paper away when I saw the gift I had no need to suppress the laughter anymore my smile dropped as I looked at what I'd been given. It was a pair of walkie-talkies. Well, go on, show everyone! I held them up, and everyone seemed to approve, but as I drew my attention to Josh, I could see that he had turned a sickly shade of white. We locked eyes for a moment, and then he turned and walked into the kitchen.

As I watched him dial a number on the corded phone attached to the wall, my mom whispered in my ear that she knew Josh and I didn't talk as much since one of the walkie-talkies had broken, so she thought I'd like it. I was filled with an intense appreciation for my mom's thoughtfulness, but this feeling was easily overpowered by the emotions resurrected by the returning memories I tried so hard to bury. When everyone was eating cake, I asked Josh who he'd called. He told me he wasn't feeling well, so he called his dad to come get him. I understood that he wanted to leave, but I told him that I wished we could hang out more.

I extended one of the walkie-talkies to him, but he put his hand up in refusal. Dejected, I said, well, thanks for coming, I guess. I hope I'll see you before my next birthday. I'm sorry. I'll try to call back more often. I really will, he said. The conversation stagnated as we waited by my door for his dad. I looked at his face.

Josh seemed genuinely remorseful that he hadn't made more of an effort. His mood seemed suddenly bolstered by an idea that had struck him. He told me that he knew what he'd get me for my birthday. It would take a while, but he thought that I would really like it. I told him it wasn't a big deal, but he insisted. He seemed in better spirits and apologized for being such a drag at my party. He said that he was tired, that he hadn't been sleeping well. I asked him why that was as he opened the door in response to his dad's honking in the driveway.

He turned back toward me and waved goodbye as he answered to my question. I think I've been sleepwalking. That was the last time I saw my friend, and a couple of months later, he was gone. Over the past several weeks, the relationship between my mother and I has grown increasingly strained due to my attempts to learn the details of my childhood. It's often the case that one cannot know the breaking point of a thing until that thing fractures, and after that last conversation with my mother, I imagine that we will spend the rest of our lives attempting to repair what had taken a lifetime to build. She had put so much energy into keeping me safe, both physically and psychologically, but I think that the walls meant to insulate me from harm were also protecting her emotional. stability.

As the truth came pouring out the last time we spoke, I could hear a trembling in her voice that I think was a reverberation of the collapse of her world. I don't imagine my mother and I will talk very much anymore. While there are still some things I don't understand, I think I know enough. After Josh disappeared, his parents had done all that they could to find him. From the very first day, the police had suggested they contact all of Josh's friends' parents to see if he was with them. They did this, of course, but no one had seen him or had any idea where he might be.

Police had been unable to turn over any new information about Josh's whereabouts. Despite the fact that they had received several anonymous phone calls from a woman urging them to compare this case with the stalking case that had been opened about six years before. If Josh's mother's grip on the world loosened when her son vanished, it broke when Veronica died. She had seen many people die at the hospital, but there is no amount of desensitization that that can fortify a person against the death of her own child. She would visit Veronica twice a day since she was recuperating at a different hospital,

once before her shift, and once afterward. On the day Veronica died, her mother was late leaving work, and by the time she arrived at her daughter's hospital, Veronica had already passed. This was too much for her, and over the next couple of weeks, she became increasingly more unstable. She would often wander outside, yelling for both Josh and Veronica to come. come home, and there were several times her husband found her wandering around my old neighborhood in the middle of the night, half-clothed, and frantically searching for her son and daughter.

Due to his wife's mental deterioration, Josh's dad could no longer travel for work and began taking construction jobs that were less well-paying, so he could be closer to home. When they began expanding my old neighborhood more, about three months after Veronica died, Josh's dad applied for every position and was hired. He was qualified to lead the build sites, but he took a job as a laborer, helping to build frames and clean up the sites on whatever else was needed. He even took odd jobs that would occasionally come up, mowing lawns, repairing fences, anything to keep from traveling.

They began clearing the woods in the area next to the tributary to transform the land into inhabitable property. Josh's dad was tasked with the responsibility of leveling the recently deforested lot, and job guaranteed him at least several weeks of work. On the third day, he arrived at a spot that he could not level. Each time he'd drive over it, it would remain lower than all the surrounding land. Frustrated, he got off the machine to survey the area. He was tempted to simply pack more dirt into the depression, but he knew that it would only

be an aesthetic and temporary solution. He'd worked construction for years and knew that root systems from large trees had been recently cut down would often decompose leaving weakness in the soil that would manifest his weakness in the foundations above. He weighed his options and elected to dig a little with a shovel in case the problem was shallow enough to fix without needing a machine that would have to be brought over from another site. And as my mother described where this was, I knew I had been at that spot before the soil

was broken and before it had been filled in. I felt a tightening in my chest. He dug a small hole about three feet down until the shovel collide was. with something hard. He smashed his shovel against it repeatedly in an attempt to gauge the thickness of the root and the density of the network when suddenly his shovel plunged through the resistance. Confused, he dug the hole wider. After about a half hour of excavating, he found himself standing in a brown blanket-covered box, about seven feet long and four feet wide. Our minds work to avoid dissonance. We hold a belief strongly enough, our minds will

forcefully reject conflicting evidence so that we can maintain the integrity of our understanding of the world. Up until the very next moment, despite what all sense would have indicated, despite the fact that some small but suffocated part of him understood what was supporting his weight, this man believed he knew his son was still alive. My mom received a call at 6 p.m. She knew who it was, but she couldn't understand what he was saying, but what she did comprehend made her leave immediately. down here, now, son, please God. When she arrived, she found Josh's dad sitting perfectly still with his back to the hole. He was holding the shovel so tightly it seemed that it might snap,

and he was staring straight ahead with eyes that looked as lifeless as a shark's. He wouldn't respond to any of her words and only reacted when she tried to gently take the shovel from him. He dragged his eyes slowly to hers and just said, I don't understand. He repeated this as if he had forgotten all other words, and my mother could hear him still muttering it as she walked past him to look into the hole. She told me she wished she had gouged her eyes out before she faced downward into that crater, and I told her that I knew what she was about to say and that she need not continue.

I looked at her face, and it was expressing a look of such intense despair that it caused my stomach to turn. I realized that she had known of this for almost ten. years and was hoping that she'd never have to tell me. As a result, she never came up with the proper arrangement of words to describe what she saw. And as I sit here, I met with the same difficulty of articulation. Josh was dead. His face was sunken in and contorted in such a way that it was as if the misery and hopelessness of all the world had been transferred to it. The assaulting smell of decay rose from the crypt, and my mother had to cover her nose and mouth to keep from vomiting. His skin was cracked, almost crocodilian, and a stream of blood that had followed these lines had dried on his face after pooling and staining the wood around his head.

His eyes lay half-lidded, facing straight up. She said by the look of him, he had not been long dead, and thus time had not brought the mercy of degradation to erase the pain and terror that was now etched into his face. She says it was as if he had fixed his gaze right on her, his open mouth offering an all-too-late, plea for help. The rest of his body, however, wasn't visible. Someone else was covering it. He was large and lay face down on top of Josh, and as my mother's mind stretched itself to take in what her eyes were attempting to tell her, she became aware of the significance of the way in which he laid. He was holding Josh. Their legs lay frozen by death, but entangled like vines in some lush tropical forest.

One arm rested under Josh's neck, only to wrap around his body so that they might lay closer still. As the sun passed through the trees, its light became reflected by something pinned to Josh's shirt. My mother stooped to one knee and raised the collar of her shirt over her nose so that she might block out the smell. When she saw what had caught the sun, her legs abandoned her, and she nearly fell into the tomb. It was a picture.

It was a picture of me as a child. She staggered backwards, gasping and trembling, and collided with Josh's father, who still sat facing away from the hole. She understood why he had called her, but she could not bring herself to tell him what she had kept from everyone for all these years. Josh's family never knew about the night I had woken up in the woods. She knew now that she should have told them. But to tell them now would help nothing. As she sat there resting her back against Josh's dad, he spoke. I can't tell my wife.

I can't tell her that our little boy... His speech staggered and fits as he pressed his wet face into his dirt-caped hands. She couldn't bear it. After a moment, he stood up, still shuddering, and lumbered toward the grave. With a final sob, he stepped down into the coffin. Josh's dad was a big man, but not as big as the man in the box. He grabbed the back of the man's collar and pulled hard. It was as if he intended to throw the man out of the grave in a singular motion, but the collar

ripped and the body fell back down on top of his son. You motherfucker! He grabbed the man by the shoulders and heaved him back until he was off of Josh and sat awkwardly, but upright against the wall of the grave. He looked at the man and staggered back a step. Oh, God. Oh, God, no. No, no, no, please God, please God, no.

In a struggling but powerful movement, he lifted and pushed the corpse completely out of the ground, and they both heard the sounds of glass rolling against wood. It was a bottle. He handed it to my mother. It was ether. Oh, Josh, he sobbed. My boy, my baby boy, why is there so much blood? What did he do to you?

As my mother looked at the man, who now lay facing upwards, she realized she was facing the person who had haunted our lives for over a decade. She had imagined him so many times, always evil and always terrifying. And the cries of Josh's father seemed to confirm her worst fears. But as she stared at his face, she thought that this didn't look like who she imagined. This was just a man. As she looked at his frozen expression, it actually looked serene. The corners of his lips were turned up only slightly.

She saw that he was smiling. Not the expected smile of a maniac from a film or horror story. Not the smile of a demon or the smile of a fiend. This was the smile of contentment or satisfaction. It was a smile of bliss. It was a smile of love. As she looked down from his face, she saw a tremendous wound on his neck from where the skin had been ripped out.

She was at first relieved when she realized that the blood had not been jogged. Perhaps he had suffered less, but this comfort was short-lived as she realized just how wrong she was. She brought a hand up to her mouth and whispered, almost as if she was afraid to remind the world what had happened. They were alive. Josh must have bitten the man's neck in an attempt to get free, and although the man had died, Josh couldn't move him. I began crying when I thought of how long he might have laid there. She looked through the man's pockets for some kind of identification. but she only found a piece of paper.

On it was a drawing of a man, holding hands with a small boy, and next to the boy were initials. My initials. I'd like to think that she was remembering that part of the story incorrectly, but I'll never know for sure. As Josh's father carried his son out of the grave, my mom slid the piece of paper into her pocket. He kept muttering that his son's hair had been dyed.

She saw that it had. It was now dark brown. and she noticed that he was dressed oddly. His clothes were all far too small. After Josh's dad delicately laid his boy on the soft dirt, he began gently pressing his hands against his son's pants to feel his pockets. He heard a crinkle. Carefully, he retrieved a folded piece of paper from Josh's pocket.

He looked at it, but was vexed. Absently, he handed it to my mother, but she didn't recognize it either. I asked her what it was. She told me it was a map, and I felt my heart shatter. He was finishing the map. That must have been his idea for my birthday present. I found myself strangely hoping that he hadn't been taken while expanding it,

as if that would somehow matter now. She heard Josh's father grunt and looked to see him pushing the man's body back into the ground. As he walked back toward the machine that had found the spot for him, he put his hand on a canister of gasoline and paused with a car. his back toward my mother. You should go. I'm so sorry. It's not your fault.

I did this. You can't think like that. There was nothing. He interjected flatly, almost with no emotion at all. About a month ago, a guy approached me as I was cleaning up the site on the new development, a block over.

He asked me if I wanted to make some extra money. And because my wife's not working now, I accepted. He told me that some kids had dug up a bunch of holes on his property, and he offered me $100 to fill them in. He said that he wanted to take some pictures for the insurance company first, but if I came back after 5 p.m. the next day, that would be fine. I thought this guy was a sucker, since I knew clearing that lot was coming up, so someone would have to do it anyway. But I needed the money, so I agreed. I didn't think he even had $100, but he put the bill in my hand, and I did the job the next day. I've been so exhausted that I didn't even think about it after it was done.

I didn't think about it until today when I pulled that same guy off my son. He pointed at the grave, and his emotions started to push through as he broke into a sob. He paid me a hundred bucks so that I would bury him with my boy. It was as if saying it allowed forced him to accept what had happened, and he collapsed onto the ground in tears. My mother could think of nothing to say and stood there in silence for what felt like a lifetime. She finally asked what he would do about Josh.

His final resting place won't be here with this monster. As she looked back when she reached her car, she could see black smoke billowing and diffusing against the amber sky, and she hoped against all hope that Josh's parents would be okay. I left my mom's house. without saying much else. I told her that I loved her and that I would talk to her soon,

but I don't know what soon means for us. I got into my car and left. I understood now why the events of my childhood had stopped years ago, and as an adult, I saw the connections that were lost on a child who tends to see the world in snapshots rather than a sequence.

I thought about Josh. I loved him then, and I love him even still. I miss him more now that I know I'll never see him again and I find myself wishing that I had hugged him the last time I saw him I thought about Josh's parents how much they had lost and how quickly that loss had come they don't know about my connection to any of this

but I can never look at them the way I did could never look them in the eyes now I thought about Veronica I had only really come to know her later in my life but for those brief few weeks I think I'd really loved her I thought about my mother. She had tried so hard to protect me and was stronger than I would ever be. I tried not to think about the man and what he had done with Josh for more than two years.

Mostly, I just thought about Josh. Sometimes I wish that he never sat across from me that day in kindergarten, that I'd never known what it was like to have a real friend. Sometimes I like to dream that he's in a better place. But that's only a dream. and I know that. The world is a cruel place made crueler still by man. There would be no justice for my friend, no final confrontation, no vengeance. They have been over almost a decade, for everyone, but me now. I miss you, Josh. I'm sorry you chose me, but I'll always cherish my

memories of you. We were explorers. We were adventurers. We were adventurers. We've were friends. This concludes the Pen Pal series. All the stories for Pen Pal were written and introduced by Dathan Auerbach. Narration by Sammy Raynor. The role of Veronica was performed by Wendy Stoliarov. The series was produced for the No Sleep podcast by David Cummings.