please, Please, PLEASE

Another day in the life of a familiar man.

   The phone screamed on the bedside table in the blackness. Distant siren calling me back to life, just louder than my brain screaming I hate you I hate you. Weighted down with the chains of sleep, my eyes barely opened. Even then I couldn’t see and I wondered if I’d finally drunk myself blind. A stirring in the sheets beside me let me know I wasn’t alone. I slapped the table as though my arm were numb, knocking an alarm clock to the floor, overturning a glass of water. I brought the phone to my ear, cleared my throat of cigarette rust, and croaked, “God damn it, somebody better have died…”
    “Dane?” said a small voice with reverb. “Sorry to wake you up, man.”
    I groaned, one hand gripping my forehead. Someone was hammering on the inside. “Are you on coke again, or what? Know what time it is?” Beside me someone turned over to face the wall, making short, nasally sounds like hmm and ah.
    “No, Dane, just-just listen, just listen for a second, all right? I-I don’t know what to f*****g do man. I just-I’m at the end of rope and I just can’t get any slack. I‘m having real bad thoughts. I-I didn‘t know who to call.”
    So you called me, I thought. How convenient. “Where are you?”
    “I’m at my apartment, on the toilet. I got this God damn revolver in my hand and I just-I just don’t know what’s gonna happen. Amy didn‘t come home. Th- b***h. She‘s off whoring herself somewhere I just know it. I’m gonna kill her. I swear to God I’m gonna kill her. I don‘t know what to do.” Strained voice nearly cracking. Drunk and weepy, as he waited for me to speak he emitted a low whine. Close to cracking up.
    “Wipe your a*s and pull your pants up and get the hell off the shitter for one. Elvis beat you to the punch on that one. This all can wait a few minutes, right? I mean, you’re not gonna blow your brains out for some chick are you?” The person in the bed bedside me muttered something in an effort to get me to shut up. “She’s not worth it, man,” I said quietly. “She’s not. No girl’s worth your life. Why don’t you meet me at the Black Cat in twenty minutes. We’ll get coffee and talk this out, okay? You’ll be fine. Everything’ll be fine.” I said, yawned and rubbed my sore jaw. “Don’t make any rash decisions, especially not when you’ve been up all night stewing and drinking and God knows what else.” What I wanted to say, having had much experience with my friend’s suicidal dramatics, his pathetic clinginess, and his inexplicable compulsion to give his betrayers a multitude of second chances, would have been the impetus he needed to spray blood, bone, and brain matter all over a recently painted bathroom wall. But I had helped paint that bathroom wall and it looked great. Shame to ruin it. Moreover, I loved my friend even after all he’d put me through.
    I sat up, my head pounding its protest. The ceiling fan spun lazily, creaking with every revolution, the noise greatly exaggerated. The room was a furnace and the sheets were sticky with sweat and the juices of coitus. My tongue was sandpaper. I was completely naked and felt dirty all over. I put one hand on the  delicate shoulder blades and long hair of a slender female who grumbled irritably and swatted at the air like I was a noisy bat. “Time to get up,” I said. It’s not that I didn’t trust her to stay at my place unwatched, whoever she was, I just wanted to come home and fall into an empty bed and not have to smile at anybody when I woke up. She fought for a moment, trying desperately, snorting and pretend-snoring, to get me to leave her be. “Come on, get out,” I said with annoyance.
    I pulled on my jeans and a dirty t-shirt that smelled like cigarette smoke and stale beer. I stepped into my shoes and fell over against the sliding closet door which collapsed in a crash of splintered particleboard onto the hanging clothes lined up like skinny prisoners in my closet. I didn’t care to fix the mess so I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and splash water on my face. When I came back into my bedroom the girl was lunging from one side of the room to the other collecting her clothes. In the rectangular stream of light from the bathroom her pale body was caught for a moment, the v of her upper back, the delicate curves of her buttocks and the long lines of her legs which she covered with jeans tight enough to restrict circulation. She turned around and showed me her tightly lined stomach, her small perky breasts, one slightly larger than the other, which had a beige birthmark that looked like a star above the n****e.
    “Good morning, stranger,” she said, pulling her shirt on quickly to hide her breasts with n*****s hardening in the cool morning. Her messy hair was in her face and stuffed in the neck of her shirt. “Wild night, huh?” she said, fixing her hair. As though she didn’t quite remember. “I feel like I swallowed a tornado.” I wanted to say that she had, in a way. She pushed past me into the bathroom and gave me a sour apologetic look that told me stand clear of the door unless I wanted to see what she’d had for dinner the night before. I pulled the door closed. When there was an interruption in the heaving and coughing, I said, “Well, I gotta go. Lock the door behind you, okay. Nice to meet you, by the way. And I hope you feel better. I‘ll call you.” I’m a jerk, I admit. I had no plans to call the girl. Even if I wanted to call her what was her number? What was her name? She was just another girl entering and exiting through a revolving door. The toilet flushed, the faucet came on and she rinsed her mouth, gurgling and spitting again and again. I left before she came back out.
      
    There were three pale girls dressed in different shades of black sitting in the booth at the window which looks out at the moonlit lake where I usually sit when I come to the Black Cat in the early morning hours. The girls looked like they were drinking decaf and all three were stirring spoons and silently turned to look at me and then muttered amongst themselves as I passed by into an adjoining room. I sat at a round table and looked around. A guy facing the wall was reading a newspaper and clouds of smoke rose around him. A man in a top hat was typing on a laptop and he looked up at me, smirked, then started typed faster than before. A girl with a cell phone pressed against her ear saw me eye her and she stared at me as though I’d caught her doing something forbidden in the café and she jumped up and walked briskly to the door, turning back to look once and then out the door. What were all these people doing awake at this time of the morning?  What was I doing awake?
    “Hey, man,” a voice said, bringing me out of a daze. Luke stood with his hands on the back of a chair facing my table. “Sorry to get you up out of bed and everything.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
    “I been here about ten minutes. In the bathroom. My stomach’s killing me.”
    I grumbled something that meant I was sorry to hear of his digestive troubles and motioned for him to sit down. “Let’s get some coffee before I pass out. Oh, did I introduce you to my invisible friend Cleo?” I pointed to the other empty chair. He laughed uncomfortably, probably wondering if it was he who couldn’t see Cleo or if she really existed at all.
     With the palms of my hands I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. When I removed my hands a waiter was standing by the table with the blank expression of someone who works in a morgue or a late night café. Luke was puffing on a cigarette like a man with an aversion to oxygen. The waiter took our orders without acknowledgment or reply to our question of his well-being and then he excused himself. As he returned with two steaming mugs on a tray Luke was lighting a second cigarette with the stub of his first. I thanked the waiter who smiled somewhat like a fish and nodded and slipped away.
    “When’s the last time you got some sleep?” I guessed from the dark circles beneath Luke’s eyes, his pallor and his trembling hands, that he’d gone at least two nights without rest. The coffee burnt his tongue and lips and he spilled some on his white shirt and finally he set down the mug and pushed it away. Had my question rattled him? I watched as he dabbed with a napkin at the brown stain on his shirt, imagining the drugs he must have taken and the thoughts he must have entertained in the past few hours. Every few weeks, if what he’d once told me was true, he suffered a bout of insomnia. He was prescribed plenty of drugs to help him sleep but he was also a hopeless addict who ate drugs much like an unwatched child eats candy, ravenously and without thought to the consequences, so all his prescriptions only exacerbated the problems they were supposed to remedy.
    He appeared not to have heard me and began coughing. “That guy on the laptop’s writing something. You see him?” he pointed. “I think he’s recording our conversation. Yeah, he just looked over and then started typing again.” He made to stand up. He had the feverish look in his eye of someone guilty of a horrible crime.
    “You gotta lay off the drugs. Do you remember why we’re here? Remember calling me about twenty minutes ago?” I said.
    His eyes glazed as he looked inside himself. “Yeah,” he said and sat down again.  “Yeah, I do. It’s not the drugs, all right, it’s not.” Shakily he lit another cigarette. “She didn’t come home tonight.”
    “Jesus Christ, Luke. Is this really about Annie?”
    “Amy, her name’s Amy.”
    “Annie, Amy, all the same. How long you known this girl?” I’d never met her. I don’t think anybody had met her. For all I knew she was a figment of his imagination. He’d imagined girlfriends in the past so it wasn’t so unlikely that he’d do it again.
    “Two months. Two months of heaven.”
    “Two months. Eight weeks. Sixty days. That’s not that long in the grand scheme. Maybe she wants some space. I mean, sixty days after she meets you in some crowded bar she’s moving in with you. That’s a little fast. You barely even know each other. It’s a big change.”
    “Yeah, but we know each other. We’re in love. She loves me. She really does. Where could she be? She didn’t call or nothing. It’s just not like her.” He was starting to get worked up.
    I looked at him and saw a needy man who could never be satisfied with life because he was a great disappointment to himself and thought he’d never done anything right. He thought he deserved all the pain in the world. So every chance he got he’d set himself up for a double dose of pain, disappointment, and sadness. He’d fall in love with a person and transform himself into someone he thought he needed to be to ensure that his love interest loved him back. He could never be himself and as a consequence no one else could ever love him completely.
    “You’re worrying over nothing, Luke. You can’t worry over questions you don’t have the answers to. You just got to ask her. Tell her how this had made you feel. I’m sure she’ll turn up and say she was watching Sleepless in Seattle with a big bowl of popcorn on a girlfriend‘s couch or something?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said as though I’d tried to tell him the Earth was flat.
    “What do you mean? It’s a good movie. Okay, it’s not that good of a movie. But who doesn’t love popcorn? I know I do.”
    “No, man, she’s out with somebody. I know it. She’s leaving me. She probably went out and got drunk at Le Belmont or somewhere and decided to screw me over, that’s what. I can feel it. She was all pissed off and she kept saying she should’ve never moved in with me and that I had ruined everything. She said I was abusing her with my bullshit. What the f**k, man. I tried, you know, I really tried to be okay.”
    “What’d you do to her? Did you bite her n****e off or something?” I said, wondering why he’d mentioned Le Belmont of all places.
    “Nothing. Nothing,” he said as though I needed to be convinced. “I tried to act normal, just normal. I mean, I’m having a rough time right now. I’m just trying to keep it together. She said I was emotionally abusing her. Mindfucking her, I think she said.”
    “You haven’t even introduced her to your friends. You know that? She probably feels like you’re keeping her locked up like an animal. Like you’re ashamed of her. Girls are like cats, they don’t like being on a leash or kept in a cage. They need to be able to roam, to explore the forest and the dark alleys, to lie around unobserved for a while so they can lick their own butts. They want to feel they’re master of their worlds and then they’ll come home to you and your loving embrace and your magic can opener. They need their freedom. They don’t want to be  cooped up inside all the time kept away from other people like lepers. Beautiful women need to be stared at, ogled, envied, coveted. But most of all they need to decide to come home on their own.” I said all this as though I was some love guru who’d had successful relationships with women which was far from the truth. But I do love to pretend.
    His head hung down over his coffee cup, dark greasy hair masking his expression. “What am I supposed to do? It‘s that time of the month.” He always said this without humor and what he meant was his manic self was turning into his depressed self. Dr. Jekyll turning into Mr. Hide-from-the-monster-named-Luke. He went into a whole story of his current depression and the circumstances surrounding it, repeating many things I’d heard before about him being worthless and on the verge of insanity. He apologized to me for being so unstable, thanked me for being there for him tonight and forever in the past, wondered aloud finally what in hell he was doing with a gun at his apartment anyway and finally decided it was time he changed his life for good, a decision and a  promise he’d made countless times before. Listening to him was like listening to a broken record. His new girlfriend apparently was seeing this scary side of him for the first time. His manic self, who seemed at least a little normal, the lovable, outgoing, impulsive dreamer who believed he could do anything and had an endless reserve of energy was transforming into a hideous, self-loathing creature who ridiculed the manic self’s ambition and believed the world was a dark and frightening place.
    Luke was a troubled man, heavily medicated with prescription drugs which he never took as prescribed and with self-prescribed drugs like alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine which he never took in moderation. He’d complained that the medicine wasn’t working without ever giving it a chance to work. Like a man in love with his shadow, he could not just accept his darker side, learn to live with it, and get on with life but had to dance with it, had to curse its distracting presence and lament its sudden disappearance when he felt better. His shadow was an easy scapegoat and its lingering presence and his readiness to blame all of his problems on it made relationships with him nearly impossible to maintain. I often wanted to strangle him to death. I couldn’t blame anyone for running as far away from his as possible. Even though I knew him, his suicidal tendencies and his unrealistic dreams, he often terrified me.
    Because of my intimate knowledge with his struggles, I couldn’t cut him off. He was like a man standing next to a dark, bottomless abyss who cannot stop himself from peering down and who cannot convince himself to walk away. Some day he would jump in or fall in but as long as I was there talking to him, reasoning with him, reminding him of what he will lose, I believed I could delay his fate. So I came to his aid when he needed me, listened when he talked, and tried to help him sort out his messes or at least sweep them neatly under a rug.
    We’d finished our coffee by now. His cigarette pack lay empty on the table. He’d need to replenish his nicotine supply in a few minutes so I knew our meeting was close to an end.  The café was suspiciously empty now and I felt like we no longer belonged there. “Just go home, Luke. I’m sure she’s there waiting for you in bed, waiting to rock your world. She’s probably worried to death about where you are, thinking you’re out running around on her.”
    He paused long enough, I imagined, to repeat my last words in his head. “You think? Should I call the apartment just to see? I mean, why wouldn’t she call and tell me?”
     “No sense in worrying over questions you can’t answer. Remember that. All questions will reveal their answers in time. And all you can do is hope you’re ready for the answer by then, no matter if it’s good or bad.”
    “You’re probably right. Damn, I don’t know how to thank you for meeting me. I was really in a bad way. Let me pay for the coffee,” he said and starting digging in his pocket. I knew better than he that he didn’t have money to waste and I also knew it was important to him to offer to pay even though he secretly hoped I would decline the offer.
    “Don’t be ridiculous, man. You get the next one,” I said and we got up from the table. He shook my hand and we parted ways. I watched him walk out and then I went to the front of the café and paid the bill. I had to get that gun away from him as soon as I could, I decided.
    In the morning, Luke called. I was dead asleep and was annoyed that anyone would call at the ungodly hour of ten in the morning. He sounded like he’d drunk ten cups of coffee. His manic self. I told him to slow down because I was just coming back to life.
    “I just wanted to thank you again, Dane, because, seriously, I was in a bad state last night and was acting stupid and was freaking out about nothing really because as it turns out Amy was just over at a friend’s house and she was just having some alone time and getting things straight in her head and all and I told her everything about myself, you know, about my illness and my meds and everything and she’s fine with it. She’s fine with it, Dane, I mean she understands and everything. She says that she wants to help me. She says her mom was real mentally ill, too, so she understands. Isn‘t that great?” He was a totally different person from the night before.
    “That’s great, man. I’m happy for-”
    “Yeah,” he cut me off. “And it’s really all because of you and I can’t thank you enough, I really can’t. I want to take you out for dinner tonight anywhere you want to go and then you can meet Amy and we can all talk and have a few drinks. She does need to meet my friends and all, especially you. I told her I wanted her to meet you and told her how many times you’d pretty much saved my life and all and she says I’m lucky to have somebody like you and she really wants to meet you. What do you think?”
    “Honestly, the gears in my brain are turning slowly today but that sounds like a good idea. Why don’t you pick a place and give me a call back a little later. I’m working at the restaurant until five so whenever after that will be fine.”
    “Awesome. Great. I’ll call you after five then.”
    “Sounds good. I’ll see you tonight.”
    “All right. It’ll be great and we’ll--” he was saying…
    I hung up and passed out.
    Luke picked a trendy Japanese restaurant with the best sushi in town according to his sources, which were newspapers or overheard statements on the radio, television, or street conversation. I met him there at eight o’clock. He was wearing a blue blazer, white turtleneck and blue corduroy pants. He looked good. He was alone at the table when I arrived.
    “Glad you could make it,” he said, shaking my hand over the table. He waved to someone and when I looked in that direction I saw a waitress heading our way. I ordered a Japanese beer and watched the young Asian waitress strut away.
    “There you are, baby. I thought you’d gotten lost,” I heard Luke say. I was still watching the waitress. “Amy, this is Dane, the friend I was telling you about. My pro bono therapist.”
    I turned back to join the table thinking about what I’d say when the waitress returned. My eyes met Luke’s girlfriend’s waist, saw the golden belt buckle which connected a white blouse with her chocolate skirt. This all happened in a moment. My gaze drifted up to her face, along the way catching glimpses of her thin pale arms, her outstretched hand with a glimmering golden ring on one finger,  the v-neck of her shirt which bared her cleavage, and the edge of a birthmark above her left breast. My skin went pale and my blood went cold and I swallowed but couldn’t clear my throat of an obstruction to my airway which materialized simultaneously with the chill that ran down my back, the arch of my eyebrows, and the widening of my eyes, all brought on by the sudden realization of who Amy was and where I’d seen her before. As I took her hand and expressed how nice it was to finally meet her I felt the tightness of her grasp, saw the intent look in her eye and heard the word please echoing in my mind louder and louder and louder and louder.
    “So we finally meet,” she said. “Luke always says he’s so lucky to have a friend like you. Is there something going on between you two that I should know about?”
    Luke laughed at his girlfriend’s joke. “No, no, he’s not quite my type,” he said. When Amy and I joined in with his laughter, I noticed that the frowning patrons of the restaurant were turning to see our table of inconsiderate monkeys.

Author's Note

Please share your thoughts. I've reworked the story a bit but still don't know if it's finished. Your advice is appreciated.

Reviews

[Indigoshadows]

NOTE: This review is for the sole purpose of uplifting and bettering your writing. Any criticisms or suggestions are only given with the best intentions. If you'd like to discuss this review, feel free to message me anytime.
ADMIRATIONS:
1. I love your unique and very descriptive style. I really liked how you described the senses-- how things felt and sounded, etc. One of my favorites was: " cleared my throat of cigarette rust, "
2. Not only did you portray the bipolar behavior well, but you also portrayed their friendship well. I have a sister who suffers from this problem. She never takes her meds, she sounds like a broken record, and it's like I'm stuck being her friend/sister because of her problems. I can really relate to Dane on that point, although, not all bipolar people are super manic and super depressive. There are different types that are a mixture.
3. The dialogue was thought out well and each character has their own unique voice.
CRITIICISMS/SUGGESTIONS/QUESTIONS:
1. Perhaps, I'm just ignorant of this but what does 'monna mean in "I 'monna kill her. I swear to God I 'monna kill her." ? I know slang might put gonna' there, but I just have no clue. I was a little thrown off by it, but perhaps, it's b/c we are from different places.
2. I pretty much saw the end of this from the beginning. As soon as you had Luke say "She's off whoring herself somewhere.." I knew. She muttered something when she heard her name, and the whole scene where Dane didn't see her face as she got ready was too obvious. The key to a story like this, is that you need to make your clues more subtle. There's other ways it could be done. Maybe she's not even in the room when he wakes up, maybe she leaves something behind or he lays in bed and vaguely remembers some things. Also, maybe you should take out Luke's accusation of "whoring herself" from the beginning completely-- save it for the conversation in the cafe maybe. When you put the two so closely together-- "whoring herself" and his faceless bed companion, it is too apparent, and you want your readers to be surprised.
3. The ending was also just a little to obvious (maybe because of the beginning), he's turned away, Luke says, "this is the friend I was telling you about." The reader just knows who it is. Maybe Amy could be sitting there already, he doesn't recognize her, but she seems so familiar, until he figures it out and the tension is just unbearable. Or if you want to keep this scene, maybe have Amy say, "Hey there, stranger." And it can echo into that louder and louder thing you have going.
4. In the beginning, you had that wonderful cigarette rust image happening, but then again towards the end you put "Honestly, the gears in my brain are a little rusted today but that sounds like a good idea...." I just kind of would like a different word in it's place to keep out any repitition, unless you want that.
OVERALL:
Good read, Great imagery, descriptions, dialogue... Everything is superb with the exception of the plot and how you present your clues that hint at the ending. Take out those obvious clues, put in a little more suspense and surprise and voila! it will be the picture of perfection.

[Celtic Cat]

Well....I certainly feel ripped off as this page is currently blank!! Nice picture, though. ; )

[Annebelle Ashire]

oh my god.
*laughs*
that was intense and then right there at the end when I thought it was going to keep up the atmosphere,
I get humor! - that was an amazing write - I'd love to read the entire story, it sounds like something
I could dig my nose into for a while.

Thank you so much for inviting me to read this!

~*AC*~

[bluessadmood]

another great writing ,you describe beautifully ,a relation between two friends ,one is so stable in full control of his life ,though a little messy ,and ready to stand up to his friend ,a friend who is manic depressive ,and you draw that trait in those miserable people beautifully,there is so much psychoanalysis here,i liked the loyality between the two friends ,so rare now,its the way he gives therapy ,by almost fooling him into certain ways so it seems happened many times ,otherwise the poor friend will take his life no doubt,and the way you describe women like cats who need a space ,or they will suffocate ,and to show themselves and feel free ,never be bound by chains ,this is so mature description of a woman ,i liked every word in it ,this is truly a masterpiece,written by a master,thank you ,i enjoyed it a lot,moayad

[Raef C. Boylan]

I saw it coming at "wondering why he'd mentioned Le Belmont of all places."
Seems that other reviewers spotted it in different places, or not at all, so I just thought I'd share mine, in case there was a particular place you wanted suspicion to start.
Did you change him mentioning Amie's name on the phone - near the beginning, when the girl in bed mutters something [mentioned in Indigo's review]? I think that would have actually been cool; subtle, not obvious, and then when people go back to read it for a second time, the clues are consistent and it has that 'ohhh yeah' factor. The Le Belmont clue could possibly do with some refining, unless that's where you want people's brains to start ticking, because there was no explanation for why Le Belmont bothered him so my thinking went into overdrive and I figured it out.
Having said that, I think the whole point of the twist in stories like this is that you want it to captivate people, for them to carry on reading to either a) see if their guess is right or b) find out what happened - so it's good to hint at the twist once or twice, as you've done here.

Overall, a really great story. Our narrator isn't a particularly nice guy, yet we empathise with him, which in my opinion is very skilful writing. He's brutal enough to kick someone out of bed, so it seems like he would be brutal enought to ignore his suicidal friend, yet he doesn't - which gets us wondering about whether there's more to this friendship than currently meets the eye, e.g. they've known each other since babies or something, or Dane owes Luke bigtime or...yeah. It works fine left unsaid, it merely serves to add further intrigue to these people.

Great dialogue too. I think someone else already said that, but you really effectively matched the characters to their verbalisation.

Thanks for sharing this.

"I looked at him and saw a needy man who could never be satisfied with life because he was a great disappoint to himself" [just checking: should "disappoint" be disappointment?]

[Rachael]

I really enjoyed this, it is very descriptive and has a strong narrative voice throughout.
Great twist at the end, I for one did not see it coming until the last moment, but i think Indigo is right: having Amy say "hello stranger" would be the perfect ending to this piece. As it is, the ending is a little sudden, it just seems to stop.

The only other glitch for me is the two paragraphs from "Luke was a troubled man, heavily medicated with prescription drugs which he never took as prescribed and with self-prescribed drugs like alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine which he never took in moderation" to "So I came to his aid when he needed me, listened when he talked, and tried to help him sort out his messes or at least sweep them neatly under a rug." It's just that all the information in these paragraphs is already given to the reader elsewhere, and it slowed the story down a bit for me... it's more tellling than showing, but you've already shown all this stuff (does that make sense?)

I loved the way you compared women to cats. that bit was so hilarious, and so right that it made me smile. I also loved the image of the three girls in the cafe, all the detail is so rich that the piece pops and left a huge imprint on my mind. The dialogue is also really well done, Dane's narration and his actual speech match up really well and Luke has a voice that matches his bipolar nature really well, from the depressive cafe luke to the bubbly luke on the phone the next day.
great story...love it :)

[Lucinda Bogart]

This is a great story.....lots of little realistic detail and a great sad and sorry gut-wrenching twist at the end. I'm going to add notes and come back to the review.....

The only thing I would do different in the way of structure is to inform the reader why the guy feels such a need to help his friend, cause this guy is willing do deal with a lot of inconvenience to be there for his friend. I find that people who are that way are compelled to be that way by something.....guilt, fear, something usually drives them....a more clues about this would add some interest. Or maybe they are already there and I just missed them. : )

[Kitty]

ohhhh! this was good! Reeeal good! I normally only read poetry in here, because I am always reading a book, and want to get back to it.. but this got me from the beginning of the story.

You are talented, and if you had a book out I would so buy it and devour it. I couldn't read fast enough to get to the end of the story, at first I thought the guy was going to kill himself, and his friend was going to try to save him.. but I was NOT expecting the end..

VERY VERY well done No one...

Write on,
Melba C.

[Treasaigh (The Solitar..]

That was amazing, with a jaw dropping twist at the end=) Your concept overall was excellent,I was left wanting more. You craft words together so well, such eloquence!

[Damon Ross Cottrell]

Excellent desciptions. You gave a wonderful portryal of a manic depressive and someone who's friends with him. Good twist at the end although I saw it coming.