Talk:Penpal/@comment-25107879-20140626121554/@comment-25145203-20140706104516

It's late, and this story chills me deeply, but I'll do my best. I'll do it in chronological order using all the facts that we know and it may or may not sound mechanical in my attempt to not be disturbed in recapping it.

Balloons.

The Narrator sends his balloon into the sky so a member of the community can find it and send a letter back to him. However, (and this was one of my first thoughts as I'm sure they don't do it now) the school provided his name and the information to find him. The person who found his balloon "fell in love" with him, as many mentally ill psychopaths do. And so the pictures start. By the hundreds, they are sent to him, a tolken of sick love, that he is being watched. FOR STAMPS. The dollar came back to him. The letter with the last Polaroid had no postage. They were hand delivered. The man was there.

Footsteps

At this point, the man (I will refer to him as such from now on) has made his home underneath the Narrator's house, in the crawlspace. The man knows that neither the Narrator nor his mother come down beneath the house and so he makes his home there, living off of cans of cat food. The sounds that the Narrator hears at night are that of the man creeping into his house, continuing to watch him. But watching isn't enough at some point and he carries him deep into the woods where he has made his "altar" to him with the pool floaty. The place that will continue to be the fulcrum of events to come.

I'm sorry, I don't know if what I've said has helped so far but I can't take this feeling in my spine anymore. Perhaps another time.