Talk:Penpal/@comment-24269673-20131209040638/@comment-24288095-20131213144407

Just thought I'd help out and let you clarify a few things about the story, as I feel you missed some things. Before I begin with your numbered points though, I feel I should point out that the birthday card the narrator received that said, "I love you." wasn't from Josh; it was from the man that had been stalking the boys.

2- The man was laying on top of Josh in a coffin and they found ether in there. The ether will knock you out, and as he was laying on Josh, there would have been plenty of room for them both in the coffin, seeing as how it was 7 ft long by 4 ft wide. So it's perfectly reasonable that both Josh and the man could fit inside the coffin. Also, the man had paid Josh's dad to bury them, so it's not like the man buried himself and Josh, he just knocked Josh out with ether and got in the coffin with him. I agree Josh's dad should probably have noticed such a large coffin though while filling up the hole, but he's been through some shit, so maybe he was just preoccupied with his thoughts.

3- According to the story, Josh went missing when he was 12 but was in captivity of the man for 3 years, as Josh had been missing for 3 years, and didn't have Josh's dad fill the hole until after Veronica had died. The story said Josh was wearing clothes that were too small for him, so one can infer that he must've been wearing the same clothes he was wearing when he was first kidnapped. No plot hole here, everything lines up perfectly. Veronica was killed before Josh was buried.

5- Boxes wasn't abandoned. He heard the cats' death meows as the man had turned on the dropped walkie-talkie while he killed Boxes. So what he had heard were the last meows Boxes will make. This can be inferred from the corpses of dead animals found under the house where the man had made home.

7- One can assume the reason he called the main character's mom and not the police is because Josh's dad wasn't sure how he wanted the body found, he wasn't sure what to do. If he called the police, Josh's mom would definitely have found out Josh was dead, and as the dad said, he didn't think she'd be able to take finding her son dead as well as her daughter. Also, there was a picture of the narrator found with the bodies, so he called the narrators' mom to show her the picture.

8- The story was told from the present day age of the narrator, so he was rehashing the story of when he was a kid. As such, he may have worded things differently as he is much older now and understands English and sentence structure better. Any time I tell a story about my childhood, I don't talk like a kid, I talk how I do now and just state the jist of the conversations that were had. I don't remember how bad my grammar was when I was in kindergarten so why would I tell a story and use bad grammar for the way I spoke back then? Also, when I was around 5, I used to build forts and vehicles out of stuff I found lying around my grandmas' shed, so them building a raft isn't so far-fetched.

Just thought I'd help you out as I feel you may have cheated yourself out of enjoying this story more as you didn't fully understand what was going on or may have missed a few things here and there.