People We Once Knew
Viewing comments for Chapter 2 "Near Death"Short Stories
10 total reviews
Comment from Ulla
Hi Estory. For some reason this was not in my messages. It's happened to me before and not only with you. You are still on my fan list so that is worrying. If it happens again I will contact Tom. This is a fantastic story and very disturbing.How well you've told it. I wished I had a six. I was riveted. Ed came across a bit creepy and when you got worried nobody would listen. They almost accused you of stalking. And then Ed's killed himself. A lonely guy with dreams nobody cared about. And a sad family story as well. This story is so very well written. Kind regards. Ulla:))
reply by the author on 28-Jan-2019
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Hi Estory. For some reason this was not in my messages. It's happened to me before and not only with you. You are still on my fan list so that is worrying. If it happens again I will contact Tom. This is a fantastic story and very disturbing.How well you've told it. I wished I had a six. I was riveted. Ed came across a bit creepy and when you got worried nobody would listen. They almost accused you of stalking. And then Ed's killed himself. A lonely guy with dreams nobody cared about. And a sad family story as well. This story is so very well written. Kind regards. Ulla:))
Comment Written 28-Jan-2019
reply by the author on 28-Jan-2019
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Thanks for the excellent review and the comments and perspective. This is a fiction story, I think I was inspired by a news story some years ago. But I'm glad it came across as riveting. I think it really is one of my better ones. Very challenging, very unsettling. A brush with death is a wake up call for the living. Sounds like you have some kind of issue in being alerted to posts. Odd. Tom will have to sort it out. estory
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But thanks for letting me know. I love you're writing and wouldn't want to lose your wonderful reviews. They mean a lot to me as you know. :))
Comment from apky
This is no doubt sad, in my opinion, but you have created a vivid assessment of the world we live in today. It reminded me of how often we hear from the news or read in the papers that someone passed away weeks or months ago and nobody noticed until the smell became unbearable for the neighbours. They notice the smell, but never noticed his absence.
An excellent social observation.
reply by the author on 28-Jan-2019
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This is no doubt sad, in my opinion, but you have created a vivid assessment of the world we live in today. It reminded me of how often we hear from the news or read in the papers that someone passed away weeks or months ago and nobody noticed until the smell became unbearable for the neighbours. They notice the smell, but never noticed his absence.
An excellent social observation.
Comment Written 27-Jan-2019
reply by the author on 28-Jan-2019
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Thanks for the excellent review and your comments and perspective. Yes, it's easy to fall through the cracks in our world today. Nobody gives people a second thought. I wrote a couple of extreme characters here deliberately, to drive home the sense of the polarity of the world; the Christian who can't seem to make a difference in the life of someone who needs help, and the self isolated loner who can't seem to connect to the world and then falls back on this terrible way to get everyone's attention and slash them at the same time. Probably one of my better ones estory
Comment from giraffmang
very well written (except for one section I've detailed at the end of the review) Dour and you hit the tone spot on.
hang out with exciting new friends that played music - when referring to people, it's best to use who/whom rather than that.
enough away to stretch my umbilical chord, - In this instance it would probably be cord rather than chord (music or wood).
it's promise of exploration, was also enticing. - its.
I saw a young man in a bat man t-shirt sitting on a couch - Batman.
"Dude," I asked him once, after dinner, in the middle of another rerun of George Lopez, "Why do keep - technically the second piece of dialogue here should start lower case as the previous dialogue, tags and sentences aren't closed off.
But if you really feel that uncomfortable, maybe I can get you a new dorm assignment. - need closing speech marks here.
I get this. It's sad but all too familiar these days. the only thing that brought me up near the end was the description of how he hung himself. The bar in the closet would have had to have been very strong and also very high for him to manage this. Too high to comfortably reach clothes from. About six or seven foot in the air at least. just the mechanics of this don't ring true.
reply by the author on 26-Jan-2019
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very well written (except for one section I've detailed at the end of the review) Dour and you hit the tone spot on.
hang out with exciting new friends that played music - when referring to people, it's best to use who/whom rather than that.
enough away to stretch my umbilical chord, - In this instance it would probably be cord rather than chord (music or wood).
it's promise of exploration, was also enticing. - its.
I saw a young man in a bat man t-shirt sitting on a couch - Batman.
"Dude," I asked him once, after dinner, in the middle of another rerun of George Lopez, "Why do keep - technically the second piece of dialogue here should start lower case as the previous dialogue, tags and sentences aren't closed off.
But if you really feel that uncomfortable, maybe I can get you a new dorm assignment. - need closing speech marks here.
I get this. It's sad but all too familiar these days. the only thing that brought me up near the end was the description of how he hung himself. The bar in the closet would have had to have been very strong and also very high for him to manage this. Too high to comfortably reach clothes from. About six or seven foot in the air at least. just the mechanics of this don't ring true.
Comment Written 26-Jan-2019
reply by the author on 26-Jan-2019
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Thank you so much for the excellent review and your comments and suggestions. I'll maybe have to think about the ending. It's the only way I could think of to pull this off inside the dorm room, in a place where nobody could intervene. I've heard of people hanging themselves in apartments. Anyway, glad to hear from you. I was becoming worried you had left the site. A few of the better writers have left. We need all the good ones we can get. This one was probably one of the better ones from this series, the next story I will post is another I think is pretty good, Maze. I like to do challenging stories. Post my friend, post! I miss your posts! estory
Comment from TheStoryMan
This is a sad short story. Ed needed a friend (at least one) that he felt comfortable confiding in. Sadly, he didn't feel comfortable confiding in anyone. His roommate did try getting to know him, getting him to talk. It's difficult to know just where personal boundaries and responsibilities to others lay.
reply by the author on 25-Jan-2019
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This is a sad short story. Ed needed a friend (at least one) that he felt comfortable confiding in. Sadly, he didn't feel comfortable confiding in anyone. His roommate did try getting to know him, getting him to talk. It's difficult to know just where personal boundaries and responsibilities to others lay.
Comment Written 24-Jan-2019
reply by the author on 25-Jan-2019
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Thanks for the great review and all your comments and perspective on the story. I think you got pretty much what I wanted this story to get across. I wanted to raise questions of the individual's responsibilities to offer hope, even when the other person doesn't solicit it. Or stands in the way. That fact that Bill is a Christian I did deliberately to really drive home that point. And I ind of painted Ed as extreme as I could do dig into that question. estory
Comment from susand3022
Good Evening Estory... A very insightful piece you have written here. I, for one, pretty much grew up on the side of the kid who made the webcast, before there was such a thing as a webcast... lol but I remember that feeling. Not that my situation was the same, familywise anyway... my family was whole and nobody would have ever thought anything should have been amiss. Unfortunate to have the 'middle kid blues' accompanied by a medical condition. lol When you're old of course there's hindsight, but when you're a kid... everything's critical! Even when someone knocks on the door and you're in tears, dieing for the knock on the door, you say nothing's wrong and go away... when all you really want is for someone to come in and give you a hug and make it all okay, no matter how old you are... but who'se to know when you keep saying 'go away'? We all put ourselves in these little Catch-22's throughout our lives and are then surprised at the results. No I'm not blaming anyone by any stretch of the imagination... When my sister knocked on the door and I said nothing was wrong and told her to go away, I distinctly remember sitting on my bed, tears running down my face and a brand new bottle of meds, 300 pills, running through my fingers, thinking, "what if..." of course I never did, "what if" but just the fact that I could have scares the shit out of my older self! Just goes to show... you never can tell!
reply by the author on 25-Jan-2019
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Good Evening Estory... A very insightful piece you have written here. I, for one, pretty much grew up on the side of the kid who made the webcast, before there was such a thing as a webcast... lol but I remember that feeling. Not that my situation was the same, familywise anyway... my family was whole and nobody would have ever thought anything should have been amiss. Unfortunate to have the 'middle kid blues' accompanied by a medical condition. lol When you're old of course there's hindsight, but when you're a kid... everything's critical! Even when someone knocks on the door and you're in tears, dieing for the knock on the door, you say nothing's wrong and go away... when all you really want is for someone to come in and give you a hug and make it all okay, no matter how old you are... but who'se to know when you keep saying 'go away'? We all put ourselves in these little Catch-22's throughout our lives and are then surprised at the results. No I'm not blaming anyone by any stretch of the imagination... When my sister knocked on the door and I said nothing was wrong and told her to go away, I distinctly remember sitting on my bed, tears running down my face and a brand new bottle of meds, 300 pills, running through my fingers, thinking, "what if..." of course I never did, "what if" but just the fact that I could have scares the shit out of my older self! Just goes to show... you never can tell!
Comment Written 24-Jan-2019
reply by the author on 25-Jan-2019
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Thanks for the five star review and all the comments and perspective on the story. It always amazes me how individual stories can validate the themes in my stories. It is a small world after all. And I am glad the story raises these questions and gets people thinking about what they can do to help people, maybe even the obligation they have, especially as Christians, to at least offer that ray of hope, even if the other person seems to close the door in your face. When I come up with a story that punches you in the face, then I know I did something right. estory
Comment from Rhonda Skinner
This is a well-written story,one that is all too plausible. Noticed a couple typos ...it's (its) promise of exploration and goatie (goatee). I was very engaged in this story and hoped that Bill or someone would reach out to Ed. I'm glad this was fiction, but sad that it plays out too often for real.
reply by the author on 25-Jan-2019
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This is a well-written story,one that is all too plausible. Noticed a couple typos ...it's (its) promise of exploration and goatie (goatee). I was very engaged in this story and hoped that Bill or someone would reach out to Ed. I'm glad this was fiction, but sad that it plays out too often for real.
Comment Written 24-Jan-2019
reply by the author on 25-Jan-2019
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Thanks for the excellent review and all the comments and suggestions. I'm glad the story was strong enough to get a lot of people talking, in many cases, about situations they were in personally. The story is about the challenge of loving, the struggle of trying to find love in life. We either sink or swim in it. estory
Comment from Ms. Snyder
As a person who has been left behind by a person who has committed suicide, I can empathize with the moral dilemma and guilt along with the personal responsibility of where your inaction or where you are supposed to make sure someone takes note of a situation that could grow out of hand. It is hard to know when and where to act. I have always held a burden that in some ways my inaction had a cause and effect to the life that was taken. I know that as a human being it is hard not to have the empathy and also concern for one another. I now always take any threat or any inkling that I decipher as a cry for help seriously but it is only due to the wisdom of hindsight. Your story was gripping, sad and it churned my stomach as I knew there was a problem, I knew he hadn't been socialized properly - the music line was the given here. But only when you have lived as long as I have do you see the signs after having a loved one take their life. More people need to be educated about withdrawing from society and depression. This needs to be taught at a younger age. Being irrational is hard to deal with - it is, but we as a society need to be helpful and kind, and most of all a loving people to do the work that God wants us to do. Blessings & Cheers, Fonda
reply by the author on 25-Jan-2019
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As a person who has been left behind by a person who has committed suicide, I can empathize with the moral dilemma and guilt along with the personal responsibility of where your inaction or where you are supposed to make sure someone takes note of a situation that could grow out of hand. It is hard to know when and where to act. I have always held a burden that in some ways my inaction had a cause and effect to the life that was taken. I know that as a human being it is hard not to have the empathy and also concern for one another. I now always take any threat or any inkling that I decipher as a cry for help seriously but it is only due to the wisdom of hindsight. Your story was gripping, sad and it churned my stomach as I knew there was a problem, I knew he hadn't been socialized properly - the music line was the given here. But only when you have lived as long as I have do you see the signs after having a loved one take their life. More people need to be educated about withdrawing from society and depression. This needs to be taught at a younger age. Being irrational is hard to deal with - it is, but we as a society need to be helpful and kind, and most of all a loving people to do the work that God wants us to do. Blessings & Cheers, Fonda
Comment Written 24-Jan-2019
reply by the author on 25-Jan-2019
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Thanks for the excellent review and all the comments and the perspective on the story. I know I am onto something when I come up with a story that punches you in the face and makes you confront this question of responsibility, even in the face of a closed door, especially if you are a Christian. I deliberately wrote these two characters as extremes; Bill as a Christian, and Ed as completely isolated, to drive home this point. Life is full of challenges, challenges to love, and the struggle to find love in life. estory
Comment from Tootsie55
This is a great story., I have come in briefly to look it over. It needs a lot of work for breaking up into paragraphs for clarity. I promise later today (Friday in Australia) I will come back and offer the changes for you to consider. I hope this satory continues it is good reading. Just more organization needed. I promise to come back later today. Here I am back again. I have now reviewed your story. Very good story here is how I suggest setting it out with some spags pointed out. The second half is completely ok.
I went away to college because I wanted to meet new people.
Lots of people go away to college for that. I wanted to meet beautiful girls, fall in love and hang out with exciting new friends that played music and ate out together and drank beers in their dorm room while talking about all the girls and music.
I sent an application to a college upstate and when I got accepted, I was excited. The college was far enough away to stretch my umbilical chord, so to speak, and close enough that I could come home for the weekends.
It was big enough that it had a competitive football team, a nice student center with a new cafeteria, roomy dorms, [and]...either "and" or the comma not both... an art gallery and a performing arts center. It was small enough that it had ivy covered little cottages for classrooms and just outside its parameters were the mountains.
I can't help thinking now, that all these little things that influenced my decision of where to go to school led me to meet Ed, someone from somewhere else who I would never have dreamed of meeting.
I had no idea what I really wanted to study, but I was sure about the part of wanting to meet new people.
As a boy, I grew up in a family that revolved around itself in many ways; birthdays and holidays shared with cousins across town, going to school and going to church. I was baptized and confirmed and took communion in the same old church that my parents had always gone to for years and years.
It's not that I wasn't happy with that life. I loved my sister and my cousins, and I enjoyed going to church. Especially at Christmas and Easter, when that message of hope and redemption seemed to resound in the hymns and the light in the stained glass windows. I had always believed in Jesus and His story of hope for the downtrodden, His message of forgiveness and rebirth.
But as I got older, the excitement of the outside world, with its rock concerts and movies, it's promise of exploration, was also enticing. I was tired of singing the same old songs, tired of playing the same old melodies on my acoustic guitar. I had known all the girls in Sunday school for years; none of them seemed to hold out a hope for me. My cousins were planning on going away to all kinds of schools and my friends were going away for various reasons.
So at the end of the summer of my eighteenth year, I packed up my little pinto with suitcases and boxes, my guitar case and my notebooks, my camera and my cassettes, and said goodbye to my parents and sister on the front porch of our house. My mother cried, and I promised I would call every week. My father shook my hand and wished me luck. My sister said she would keep me informed of all the goings on of our cousins and friends. She would even play me chess by letter.
On the one hand I was trembling with the excitement of heading off into something new, but with one foot firmly standing still on that porch, knowing there were people who loved me waiting for me when I got back. I could always go back to that old church next summer.
When I arrived at the dorm, and got my room assignment, the lady gave me the key and told me I had a roommate. The dorm was on the second floor so I had to carry all my things up there and it took a couple of trips. I fumbled with the keys, I remember, at the door; half tired of all that carrying the past up there, and half wondering what I would find on the other side.
When I opened the door, I saw a young man in a bat man t-shirt sitting on a couch in front of a video camera in the living room. The camera was hooked up to a computer on a desk in the corner. He was obviously doing some kind of video feed, in the middle of saying something to some kind of audience out there on Youtube or Facebook, and he stopped abruptly when I came in, as though he were doing something exclusive. He looked at me as if I had just walked in on a movie set in Hollywood. He turned off the camera.
"Hi," I said, putting down my suitcase and my guitar case. "I'm Bill. I guess you're my roommate. They said I had a roommate."
I couldn't help thinking how much he looked like an average kid who wanted to be a movie star. He had a fashionable hair cut. He was wearing designer jeans. He had a little goatie like you see on those movie directors sometimes. He didn't say anything right away. He just looked at me, and I got the feeling that he felt I was crowding his space. He got up, and turned off the computer. Then, he sat down on the couch again, crossed his legs like a movie director, and said: "Do me a favor. Knock before you come in."
"Knock?" I said.
"Yea. I was in the middle of this webcast. I do this webcast."
"No kidding?" I said. "Well, that's cool, I guess." I asked him what his name was, and he said his name was Ed. And that was how I met Ed.
Ed was from Pittsburgh. That's about all he ever told me of his background. He never mentioned his family, his friends, or a girlfriend. He watched a lot of TV. He had a TV in the living room, a small TV that he kept on the windowsill in the kitchen, and another one next to his bed. We got into an argument about it one night because I couldn't go to sleep while he watched and watched into the morning hours. In the end, I moved my bed into the living room.
He told me he couldn't sleep without it.
Mostly he watched family sitcoms, like Roseanne, Family Ties, Reba, or The Dick Van Dyke show or Father Knows Best. In the morning he watched I Love Lucy reruns. In the afternoon, he watched soap operas. At first I didn't think too much of it, and then I noticed that he was watching reruns of the reruns. The same things, over and over.
"Dude," I asked him once, after dinner, in the middle of another rerun of George Lopez, "Why do (you) keep watching the same things over and over? Don't you ever get tired of it?"
He didn't say anything right away. Then he said something like, "It's like watching home movies," or something.
It was funny sometimes, I got that. But the guy really didn't do much else, other than shoot this webcast. I had to leave the room when he did that. For some reason, he couldn't do it while I was there, and I got tired of arguing with him. So I made a habit of going down to the library and then getting something to eat in the cafeteria.
It was down there that I met Christine. She was a literature major from Vermont, into poetry and music, and we hit it off right away. I got to bringing down my guitar and we'd go outside and I'd play her something romantic, and she'd sit on a bench and laugh. She was also close to her family, and called her mom every night. She went to church and we started going to this little Lutheran chapel in the town. We'd listen to the gospel and the sermon, bask in the light of the stained glass windows, and sing all the old hymns we knew together. For some reason, I never thought of asking Ed to come with us. I don't know why. I guess because he seemed so creepy.
One night while we were in the cafeteria, I saw Ed sitting at a table in a corner of the room, by himself. He must have been done eating, but he just sat there, with his hands folded, looking around at the other students eating their dinners and the girls and guys fooling around together at their tables. I was sure he had seen us. I thought of going over there with Christine, and introducing her, and then, I thought better of it. I don't know why.
Once I asked him if he liked music. He said he didn't know. Can you imagine someone telling you that they didn't know if they liked music? He watched me once playing my guitar, like one of the judges on American Idol.
"So that's how you're going to become famous?" he asked me.
"Well," I said, "I don't really play guitar because I plan on becoming famous doing it. I just like music."
"It's easier to get famous playing music," he said, matter of fact like. "Lots of people get famous that way."
I shook my head. "Ed, is that why you're on the web, so that you can get famous?"
He shrugged.
"So how many people actually follow your show?" I asked him.
"I have to study," he said, and got up and went into the bedroom.
I asked him once what kinds of things he talked about on his webcast, but he wouldn't tell me. I thought of going online and watching it once, but I never did. Maybe I was afraid of what I would see. I don't know. After all, I lived with the guy.
I never knew what kind of classes he was supposed to be taking either. Sometimes he went out, and he would stay out for a while. It seemed like he was going to class. But I never saw him doing any homework. Once one of his teachers called, and asked me if I knew why Ed hadn't been to his class for the last three weeks.
"Is he sick or something?" the guy asked me.
"No," I answered.
"Tell him that I called, will you?" the guy said, "Tell him I want to talk to him."
So when Ed came back, I told him.
He just shrugged.
I followed him once, after that. I was getting curious about what he was really doing. He ate his Wheaties, in his Superman t-shirt, put on his jacket, grabbed his knapsack, and opened the door and went out like anybody would do on their way to a morning class. I grabbed my jacket and slipped out after him. He had taken the stairs down to the first floor, and when I got down there, I could see him walking across the parking lot towards the campus. But instead of continuing on the path out to one of the colleges, he got into his car, a little grey Honda. So I cut over to my car, got in, and kept following him, out of the parking lot, and onto the main road that led into town.
He drove through the town, to the shopping mall, and pulled into the parking garage. I followed him all the way to the top floor, and watched him park up there in one of the corners. He got out of the car with the knapsack. He set it carefully on the ground. He opened it up and took out his video camera and tripod. He set up the camera on the edge of the parking garage, overlooking the entrance to the mall. Then he started filming the shoppers as they walked into the mall.
I was getting worried about Ed. There were times I felt sorry for him, and times I was scared of him. I didn't know what to do. So I went to talk to one of the guidance counselors at the college.
"So what seems to be the problem with your roommate?" she asked me, picking up her cup of coffee.
"He's strange," I told her. "He does weird things. He watches TV all the time."
"Has he threatened you?" she asked me, putting down her cup of coffee. "Has he damaged any of your things?"
"No," I said, carefully. "He hasn't threatened me. But one of his professors called once, and asked why he hasn't been going to class."
"That sounds like an issue between him and his professor. It doesn't really involve you."
"You mean I should mind my own business?"
"If it doesn't concern you."
"I followed him once, to see what he's doing. He went to the mall. He just stood there, filming people going into the mall from the parking garage."
The counselor shook her head. "That kind of behavior can be described as stalking. Maybe there was an explanation for his actions. Maybe he is working on a class project. Maybe he needs to just get off campus for a while. I don't think you should feel the need to follow him around and see what he is up to. People need their space, sometimes."
"I don't know. He once told me he didn't know if he liked music."
The counselor shrugged. "Maybe he just doesn't like music."
I looked out of the window. It was a grey, cloudy day, I remember. "I guess you're right," I said.
The counselor smiled and picked up her cup of coffee again. "I'm sure there is some innocent explanation to all this. Don't start jumping to conclusions. But if you really feel that uncomfortable, maybe I can get you a new dorm assignment.
I stood up. "I'll think about it," I told her.
I left the counselor's office and started back for the dorm room. It was getting windy, and cold. The brown leaves of last summer were rattling as they blew along the sidewalks, and people hurried passed me bundled in their coats, heads down, silent.
As I got nearer to the dorm, I noticed a crowd of kids and security guards standing around the front door. Some of the girls were crying, and people were calling their parents on their cell phones. There were police cars in the parking lot, with their lights popping on and off. I asked one of the guys what was going on.
"Some kid hanged himself in a closet in his dorm, while he was doing this webcast," the guy told me.
"That's my roommate!" I shouted.
One of the security guards approached me and told me I had better go up and talk to the police. Everyone was looking at me as I went through the door; the girls crying, the guys staring, whispering. The security guard told the police I was Ed's roommate, and they took me up to the room. The detectives and the officers were all crowded around the computer, watching this horrible image of Ed, swinging from a rope in the dorm closet. They had already taken down his body, but they were watching it over and over.
"You were the roommate?" they asked me. I told them I was.
"Did you know anything about this webcast he was doing?" they asked me.
Then they showed me the video, the last video Ed had made. He started by sitting in the chair, the way I had seen him the first day I met him. He talked about how he had always wanted to be somebody. How he had wanted to be famous. An actor, a movie director. He had started this webcast, but hardly anyone watched it. He felt nobody was noticing him. His father had left. His mother was dating someone and hardly talked to him. He had no friends. He wanted everyone to know what they had done to him. This was how he could tell the world how he felt, and get famous doing it.
Then, he got up from the chair and opened the closet door. There was a rope hanging from the bar where we hung our clothes, tied into a noose, with a chair under it. He climbed onto the chair, put the noose around his neck, and said: "Goodbye, everybody,". Then he kicked the chair out from underneath him. I looked away.
"What did you know about him?" the detective asked me.
"Nothing," I said.
reply by the author on 25-Jan-2019
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This is a great story., I have come in briefly to look it over. It needs a lot of work for breaking up into paragraphs for clarity. I promise later today (Friday in Australia) I will come back and offer the changes for you to consider. I hope this satory continues it is good reading. Just more organization needed. I promise to come back later today. Here I am back again. I have now reviewed your story. Very good story here is how I suggest setting it out with some spags pointed out. The second half is completely ok.
I went away to college because I wanted to meet new people.
Lots of people go away to college for that. I wanted to meet beautiful girls, fall in love and hang out with exciting new friends that played music and ate out together and drank beers in their dorm room while talking about all the girls and music.
I sent an application to a college upstate and when I got accepted, I was excited. The college was far enough away to stretch my umbilical chord, so to speak, and close enough that I could come home for the weekends.
It was big enough that it had a competitive football team, a nice student center with a new cafeteria, roomy dorms, [and]...either "and" or the comma not both... an art gallery and a performing arts center. It was small enough that it had ivy covered little cottages for classrooms and just outside its parameters were the mountains.
I can't help thinking now, that all these little things that influenced my decision of where to go to school led me to meet Ed, someone from somewhere else who I would never have dreamed of meeting.
I had no idea what I really wanted to study, but I was sure about the part of wanting to meet new people.
As a boy, I grew up in a family that revolved around itself in many ways; birthdays and holidays shared with cousins across town, going to school and going to church. I was baptized and confirmed and took communion in the same old church that my parents had always gone to for years and years.
It's not that I wasn't happy with that life. I loved my sister and my cousins, and I enjoyed going to church. Especially at Christmas and Easter, when that message of hope and redemption seemed to resound in the hymns and the light in the stained glass windows. I had always believed in Jesus and His story of hope for the downtrodden, His message of forgiveness and rebirth.
But as I got older, the excitement of the outside world, with its rock concerts and movies, it's promise of exploration, was also enticing. I was tired of singing the same old songs, tired of playing the same old melodies on my acoustic guitar. I had known all the girls in Sunday school for years; none of them seemed to hold out a hope for me. My cousins were planning on going away to all kinds of schools and my friends were going away for various reasons.
So at the end of the summer of my eighteenth year, I packed up my little pinto with suitcases and boxes, my guitar case and my notebooks, my camera and my cassettes, and said goodbye to my parents and sister on the front porch of our house. My mother cried, and I promised I would call every week. My father shook my hand and wished me luck. My sister said she would keep me informed of all the goings on of our cousins and friends. She would even play me chess by letter.
On the one hand I was trembling with the excitement of heading off into something new, but with one foot firmly standing still on that porch, knowing there were people who loved me waiting for me when I got back. I could always go back to that old church next summer.
When I arrived at the dorm, and got my room assignment, the lady gave me the key and told me I had a roommate. The dorm was on the second floor so I had to carry all my things up there and it took a couple of trips. I fumbled with the keys, I remember, at the door; half tired of all that carrying the past up there, and half wondering what I would find on the other side.
When I opened the door, I saw a young man in a bat man t-shirt sitting on a couch in front of a video camera in the living room. The camera was hooked up to a computer on a desk in the corner. He was obviously doing some kind of video feed, in the middle of saying something to some kind of audience out there on Youtube or Facebook, and he stopped abruptly when I came in, as though he were doing something exclusive. He looked at me as if I had just walked in on a movie set in Hollywood. He turned off the camera.
"Hi," I said, putting down my suitcase and my guitar case. "I'm Bill. I guess you're my roommate. They said I had a roommate."
I couldn't help thinking how much he looked like an average kid who wanted to be a movie star. He had a fashionable hair cut. He was wearing designer jeans. He had a little goatie like you see on those movie directors sometimes. He didn't say anything right away. He just looked at me, and I got the feeling that he felt I was crowding his space. He got up, and turned off the computer. Then, he sat down on the couch again, crossed his legs like a movie director, and said: "Do me a favor. Knock before you come in."
"Knock?" I said.
"Yea. I was in the middle of this webcast. I do this webcast."
"No kidding?" I said. "Well, that's cool, I guess." I asked him what his name was, and he said his name was Ed. And that was how I met Ed.
Ed was from Pittsburgh. That's about all he ever told me of his background. He never mentioned his family, his friends, or a girlfriend. He watched a lot of TV. He had a TV in the living room, a small TV that he kept on the windowsill in the kitchen, and another one next to his bed. We got into an argument about it one night because I couldn't go to sleep while he watched and watched into the morning hours. In the end, I moved my bed into the living room.
He told me he couldn't sleep without it.
Mostly he watched family sitcoms, like Roseanne, Family Ties, Reba, or The Dick Van Dyke show or Father Knows Best. In the morning he watched I Love Lucy reruns. In the afternoon, he watched soap operas. At first I didn't think too much of it, and then I noticed that he was watching reruns of the reruns. The same things, over and over.
"Dude," I asked him once, after dinner, in the middle of another rerun of George Lopez, "Why do (you) keep watching the same things over and over? Don't you ever get tired of it?"
He didn't say anything right away. Then he said something like, "It's like watching home movies," or something.
It was funny sometimes, I got that. But the guy really didn't do much else, other than shoot this webcast. I had to leave the room when he did that. For some reason, he couldn't do it while I was there, and I got tired of arguing with him. So I made a habit of going down to the library and then getting something to eat in the cafeteria.
It was down there that I met Christine. She was a literature major from Vermont, into poetry and music, and we hit it off right away. I got to bringing down my guitar and we'd go outside and I'd play her something romantic, and she'd sit on a bench and laugh. She was also close to her family, and called her mom every night. She went to church and we started going to this little Lutheran chapel in the town. We'd listen to the gospel and the sermon, bask in the light of the stained glass windows, and sing all the old hymns we knew together. For some reason, I never thought of asking Ed to come with us. I don't know why. I guess because he seemed so creepy.
One night while we were in the cafeteria, I saw Ed sitting at a table in a corner of the room, by himself. He must have been done eating, but he just sat there, with his hands folded, looking around at the other students eating their dinners and the girls and guys fooling around together at their tables. I was sure he had seen us. I thought of going over there with Christine, and introducing her, and then, I thought better of it. I don't know why.
Once I asked him if he liked music. He said he didn't know. Can you imagine someone telling you that they didn't know if they liked music? He watched me once playing my guitar, like one of the judges on American Idol.
"So that's how you're going to become famous?" he asked me.
"Well," I said, "I don't really play guitar because I plan on becoming famous doing it. I just like music."
"It's easier to get famous playing music," he said, matter of fact like. "Lots of people get famous that way."
I shook my head. "Ed, is that why you're on the web, so that you can get famous?"
He shrugged.
"So how many people actually follow your show?" I asked him.
"I have to study," he said, and got up and went into the bedroom.
I asked him once what kinds of things he talked about on his webcast, but he wouldn't tell me. I thought of going online and watching it once, but I never did. Maybe I was afraid of what I would see. I don't know. After all, I lived with the guy.
I never knew what kind of classes he was supposed to be taking either. Sometimes he went out, and he would stay out for a while. It seemed like he was going to class. But I never saw him doing any homework. Once one of his teachers called, and asked me if I knew why Ed hadn't been to his class for the last three weeks.
"Is he sick or something?" the guy asked me.
"No," I answered.
"Tell him that I called, will you?" the guy said, "Tell him I want to talk to him."
So when Ed came back, I told him.
He just shrugged.
I followed him once, after that. I was getting curious about what he was really doing. He ate his Wheaties, in his Superman t-shirt, put on his jacket, grabbed his knapsack, and opened the door and went out like anybody would do on their way to a morning class. I grabbed my jacket and slipped out after him. He had taken the stairs down to the first floor, and when I got down there, I could see him walking across the parking lot towards the campus. But instead of continuing on the path out to one of the colleges, he got into his car, a little grey Honda. So I cut over to my car, got in, and kept following him, out of the parking lot, and onto the main road that led into town.
He drove through the town, to the shopping mall, and pulled into the parking garage. I followed him all the way to the top floor, and watched him park up there in one of the corners. He got out of the car with the knapsack. He set it carefully on the ground. He opened it up and took out his video camera and tripod. He set up the camera on the edge of the parking garage, overlooking the entrance to the mall. Then he started filming the shoppers as they walked into the mall.
I was getting worried about Ed. There were times I felt sorry for him, and times I was scared of him. I didn't know what to do. So I went to talk to one of the guidance counselors at the college.
"So what seems to be the problem with your roommate?" she asked me, picking up her cup of coffee.
"He's strange," I told her. "He does weird things. He watches TV all the time."
"Has he threatened you?" she asked me, putting down her cup of coffee. "Has he damaged any of your things?"
"No," I said, carefully. "He hasn't threatened me. But one of his professors called once, and asked why he hasn't been going to class."
"That sounds like an issue between him and his professor. It doesn't really involve you."
"You mean I should mind my own business?"
"If it doesn't concern you."
"I followed him once, to see what he's doing. He went to the mall. He just stood there, filming people going into the mall from the parking garage."
The counselor shook her head. "That kind of behavior can be described as stalking. Maybe there was an explanation for his actions. Maybe he is working on a class project. Maybe he needs to just get off campus for a while. I don't think you should feel the need to follow him around and see what he is up to. People need their space, sometimes."
"I don't know. He once told me he didn't know if he liked music."
The counselor shrugged. "Maybe he just doesn't like music."
I looked out of the window. It was a grey, cloudy day, I remember. "I guess you're right," I said.
The counselor smiled and picked up her cup of coffee again. "I'm sure there is some innocent explanation to all this. Don't start jumping to conclusions. But if you really feel that uncomfortable, maybe I can get you a new dorm assignment.
I stood up. "I'll think about it," I told her.
I left the counselor's office and started back for the dorm room. It was getting windy, and cold. The brown leaves of last summer were rattling as they blew along the sidewalks, and people hurried passed me bundled in their coats, heads down, silent.
As I got nearer to the dorm, I noticed a crowd of kids and security guards standing around the front door. Some of the girls were crying, and people were calling their parents on their cell phones. There were police cars in the parking lot, with their lights popping on and off. I asked one of the guys what was going on.
"Some kid hanged himself in a closet in his dorm, while he was doing this webcast," the guy told me.
"That's my roommate!" I shouted.
One of the security guards approached me and told me I had better go up and talk to the police. Everyone was looking at me as I went through the door; the girls crying, the guys staring, whispering. The security guard told the police I was Ed's roommate, and they took me up to the room. The detectives and the officers were all crowded around the computer, watching this horrible image of Ed, swinging from a rope in the dorm closet. They had already taken down his body, but they were watching it over and over.
"You were the roommate?" they asked me. I told them I was.
"Did you know anything about this webcast he was doing?" they asked me.
Then they showed me the video, the last video Ed had made. He started by sitting in the chair, the way I had seen him the first day I met him. He talked about how he had always wanted to be somebody. How he had wanted to be famous. An actor, a movie director. He had started this webcast, but hardly anyone watched it. He felt nobody was noticing him. His father had left. His mother was dating someone and hardly talked to him. He had no friends. He wanted everyone to know what they had done to him. This was how he could tell the world how he felt, and get famous doing it.
Then, he got up from the chair and opened the closet door. There was a rope hanging from the bar where we hung our clothes, tied into a noose, with a chair under it. He climbed onto the chair, put the noose around his neck, and said: "Goodbye, everybody,". Then he kicked the chair out from underneath him. I looked away.
"What did you know about him?" the detective asked me.
"Nothing," I said.
Comment Written 24-Jan-2019
reply by the author on 25-Jan-2019
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Thanks for the excellent review and the comments and suggestions. I think part of the problem is the editor on the site that doesn't let you properly delineate paragraphs, and offset them. I tried to do it, maybe it didn't come through that way. But I am glad you liked the story and found it so gripping. This one is setting off some strong reactions, very personal reactions, and when I get that as a response, it means the story is good. So I am happy. estory
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Yeah well I am glad I got to meet you on this time around.I should tell you this is my wife's account I am operating for various reasons. I am Geoff my account is sankey if interested in checking my stuff out. My name is Geoff in Australia I gather you are either Catholic or Episcopalean or something or Lutheran even. I hope this story continu7es. I don't mind poems but I love reading stories.
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You're right; Lutheran. I will be posting poetry and short stories alternating for a bit. I like to do both. The next short story in this series will be Maze, probably one of my better ones. estory
Comment from Sugarray77
This is a very well-written story about a very hard hitting subject. As your story clearly points out, it is hard to pin down the signs of someone being suicidal. Also, with all of the antisocial behavior that Ed portrayed, it was hard to befriend him. This is a write about a social issue, but I saw not suggestions on how we, as society, can accurately address this issue or accept blame.
Melissa
reply by the author on 25-Jan-2019
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This is a very well-written story about a very hard hitting subject. As your story clearly points out, it is hard to pin down the signs of someone being suicidal. Also, with all of the antisocial behavior that Ed portrayed, it was hard to befriend him. This is a write about a social issue, but I saw not suggestions on how we, as society, can accurately address this issue or accept blame.
Melissa
Comment Written 24-Jan-2019
reply by the author on 25-Jan-2019
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Thanks for the excellent review and the comments and suggestions. I don't know if I have the answers, or can cast blame. Is there anyone to blame? The point I was trying to make, is that especially as Christians, we have an obligation maybe to at least offer a ray of hope in the mercy and grace of Christ, even when the other person is almost closing the door. That's why I cast the two characters in such extremes, Bill as a Christian with knowledge of the gospels, and Ed as a complete introvert. Life is hard sometimes. Life is a challenge to offer love, to find love, and a struggle to attain the love Jesus talked about. estory
Comment from patcelaw
Your story pretty much expounds the truth of this scripture I received today. We do have a responsibility to others, The verse...
Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.
Galatians 6:1
reply by the author on 25-Jan-2019
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Your story pretty much expounds the truth of this scripture I received today. We do have a responsibility to others, The verse...
Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.
Galatians 6:1
Comment Written 24-Jan-2019
reply by the author on 25-Jan-2019
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Thanks for the excellent review and all your comments about the story. I am glad that it got people thinking, sometimes in very personal terms, about personal experiences. I am glad the story resonated so strongly for you. Challenging people to take hard looks at themselves, at situations, at relationships is what the story is all about. estory
