Talk:Penpal/@comment-37260276-20181021172817

A few things really stood out to me after reading. 1- As a previous comment has already mentioned, the Stalker kills both himself and Josh in the same place he had left the Author ten years prior. Either a) he couldn’t bring himself to kill the boy he had an obsession with just yet or b) he intended to kill the author but he wouldn’t get full satisfaction from just killing him. B is the more likely scenario in my opinion.

2- At the party, Josh states that he thinks he’s been sleepwalking. This means that the Stalker did exactly the same thing with Josh as he did with the Author- moving him small distances in his sleep then one night, deciding to take him into the woods.

3-Near the end of the story, Josh’s father repeatedly mutters that his hair had been dyed, a detail so minuscule compared to everything else that was happening that most people forgot about it. Josh’s Hair was dirty blond, the Author’s dark brown. Josh’s Hair was dyed dark brown. The Stalker was desperately trying to make it seem like it had been the Author that was dead in place of Josh, perhaps to convince himself or perhaps to get inside the Author’s head, in a kind of “This is what I wanted to do to you” manner.

Another detail in this particular section that I just couldn’t leave out was that Josh was dressed oddly, the clothes much too small. Now, remember the part in Boxes when Josh was talking about how the Author’s clothes were still hanging up in the closet over the walkie-talkie when the Author put them in boxes. Does it make sense now? Josh was wearing the clothes the Author had left behind, and the Stalker had hung them back up all that time ago to prepare them for what would happen in the future.

4- Another idea that I read about, the “either 15 or 16” on the stick figure drawing. As the same commenter from before explains, the 15/16 was the age that the Stalker and the Author would be ‘united’ or to put it more simply, when the grand finale would take place- the death of the Stalker and the ‘Author’, Josh made to look like the Author.

Now something caught my eye at the end that no comment I had read mentioned. The drawing found in the Stalker’s pocket after death. Another picture of the man and the young boy, this time with the Author’s initials next to the boy. This is to signify the end of his scheme, the Stalker had won.

5- In the last part to this story, the Author states ‘The 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.’ From what I can gather from this single quote alone, the Stalker had done this before. Probably many,many times although his obsession with the Author was far stronger than all the other cases. However, the quote didn’t go into any more detail and it wasn’t mentioned again (as far as I know) so I can’t explore this idea further.

These were all the things that made my skin crawl, although I intentionally left out the more obvious points such as “The man’s a pedophile. He was in love with the Author.”, “The Stalker killed people the Author was close to.” and “This all would’ve been avoided if the school didn’t decide to do such an obviously stupid project.” Yes, I completely agree with all those statements and it was a really, really stupid move on the school’s behalf, however I felt like I had to bring up points most people left out.

Please correct me if I’m wrong on any of them, or if you have your own theories it’d be really cool to hear ‘em.