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Welcome friends. Wilson, I'm so glad you're here. I'm Wil Wheaton and it's story time. This is the part of each episode's introduction where I talk about the story. You're about to hear where I write what I call the magazine heading, which will help you sort of press pause on the real world and transition with me into its story time. This part is a challenge for me. I need to summarize just enough of the plot to entice you without giving away any spoilers. I am struggling with this part more than usual today because this story, it doesn't fit neatly into any single category. It's a ghost story. It's a love story. It's a gorgeous monologue that cries out to be staged in the real life theater where the play is set. And it is such a beautiful way to wrap up our first season. There is nothing I can say about it now that will add anything to it. So I invite you to take your seat. Please silence your cell phones because the house lights have come down and it is time to begin our journey toward the end of play. All of this is true as much as anything can be true. It's the closest to autobiography as I will ever get. The ghosts are real. The rest, well, imagine you are in a theater. It's opening night of a brand new play written by me. There's about 130 seats in the place. Red cushions except for one in the far house right corner that is purple. Every audience has at least one ghost and that seat is reserved for them. Listen, I don't enjoy telling people real things about me. I tell them just enough to think that they are very special. To hear my secrets. Secret is I don't have secrets. Everyone just assumes I do. Hire a private eye and prove me wrong. Imagine you are waiting for the show to begin. There's no big red curtain that will lift up in a dramatic flourish. You can see the set already. A fully rendered fictional version of my apartment where I wrote the play you're about to see. Even the books on the shelf are real. And the notations I put in their margins. The yogurt stain on the green couch. The used bowls with dried spaghetti in the sink. The sink that actually works. You and I are both a little bit disappointed that this seems to be a realistic play. American theater is obsessed with realism. Americans love to see a fridge light up on stage when its doors open and an oven actually bake a pie. A sink that works. I've never understood it, but I'm a sellout. Imagine you are holding the show program and trying to appear very interested in the director's note. As you spot your ex enter the theater and sit two rows ahead of you. You try to focus and read the character list. But it's the kind of reading, the kind of focus that flows in and out of your brain like battery acid bursting attention fragments into every part of your body. So you are suddenly very aware and very self conscious of the little hairs on the tops of your toes or the way the skin on your arm flattens and expands while pressed against your rib cage. While trying to keep yourself so small, always small, you tuck your feet under the seat or. Sorry, I'm projecting onto you, aren't I? I always did that. You told me as much. Let's try that again. If I were you, I'd be tucking my feet under my seat and pulling my arms in so as not to take up space. Because that is who I am. That's what I do. But I wish better for you. In the program you are finally able to focus on the cast list. Hattie, played by Henny Carlo. And introducing the ghost of the movie star, Luke Ford as Lou. Let's go back. This is how it actually begins. The famous actor Luke Ford dies three days before he is set to start rehearsals for the play. You're here to see. This is how it ends. Tap, tap, tap, tappity tap. The famous Hollywood actor Luke Ford had never done a play before. In fact, he spoke very often and very clearly on his debilitating stage fright. But he had garnered a reputation. You See for extreme choices, for theatrically leaning melodrama in his acting style, for not taking things seriously. Theater is where film actors go when they want to be taken seriously. So Luke was cast in a play without having to audition. A sleepy little new play at this tiny theater in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. A little relationship drama that wouldn't demand too much of him or the audience or designers or anyone, really. It was my play. I have no interest in sleepy plays. I had originally wanted to write an impossible play, one with puppets and ghosts and big monsters that bring our deepest fears into stark reality. A cast of 20 dances, a live fucking band, or at least two of those things. But after many years of rejection, I wrote this sleepy play in a drunken and spiteful stupor over one night. I don't even remember emailing it to theaters around town. But here we are, six months later, a world premiere on the horizon, and a dead leading man. The famous actor Luke Ford, who had just picked up an iced coffee from Priscilla's Coffee in Burbank, was walking across the street to meet with the theater producer for a private tour of the building, if only partially so that he could scope out cubbyholes in which to hide when his stage fright became overwhelming. The real story is that as he was walking across the street, the theater's new marquee, which had been recently rebranded and redesigned, fell and crushed his body into the sidewalk, where a dark brown stain still exists in the cement where his frontal lobe was squashed through his skull. But that is too ridiculous to put in a story. The critique would be that it is too on the nose, too convenient, even though this death is particularly inconvenient for everyone involved. So, fine, I won't tell you the real story. Forget I said anything. You can choose. A, he was hit by a car. B, he had a heart attack. C, he overdosed. It doesn't really matter anyway. So Luke dies and we have a meeting. I assume we will be canceling this stupid production of this stupid play I don't remember writing. And I show up just a little bit tipsy, ready for the sad sads and the apologies and that strange relief in my belly that people won't be coming to this play and feeling like they know me, like, this is it, this is all of me. The meeting instead, goes like this. Curtain up on a rehearsal room. Wood floors with the shape and size of the stage taped out in green gaff tape. One wall covered in mirrors. A small standing piano in the far right corner, three folding tables with stacks of Scripts and pencils, bottles of water, highlighters, printed postcards for the show that have already been updated with a banner introducing the ghost of Luke Ford. We're very excited to have Luke Ford's ghost in this production. Accessibility for ghosts will be a challenge, but we are up for it, says the producer. I think this is really going to elevate the play's themes, says the director. Will we be seeing the ghost? Asks the costume designer. I'll have to take some new measurements. A cold wind suddenly blows through the room. I think for a moment that I can see something move in the corner of my eye. I have some thoughts for the bookshelves, says the scenic designer. If there is something high up that Luke can reach as a ghost but Henny can't as a live person, that could really be something. What the fuck are we talking about? I say. Will I be able to hear Luke's ghost? Says Henny. How will we communicate? You can just say Luke, not Luke's ghost, says the producer. He is still Luke. He's also here. You can speak to him, says the director. He's here? I ask Luke. I'd really love to work with you privately, says Henny. Run lines, talk about our characters. We're supposed to be lovers, so being really connected, that's important to me, you know, let's be clear, I say. They are not lovers. They each other a couple times and then it falls apart because they are idiots. They make love, says Henny. They are lovers. Lovers is an ugly word. What an awful thing to say, says Henny. She's tearing up. She's actually starting to cry. Crying on cue is listed under special skills on her resume. And normally maybe I'd admire this willingness to look like a moron. But not when she's playing me or some avatar, some sidestepped copy of a clone, some knockoff bargain price version of me, the me I wrote into the play, which apparently doesn't even matter now because the play really belongs to this team now, says the director. I encourage you to let Henny use whatever word that most connects her to her character. I scrunch in my chair and let the world spin. Luke, do you have any words for the room? Says the director. There's a stillness, then a tap, tap, tap on the table. The director nods knowingly, a little from the producer. Another tap, tap, tap, tappity tap. Henny's crying grows in intensity. What a beautiful thing, she says. I'm really looking forward to our collaboration. I want it on the record. I say that I Never really wanted Luke in this role in the first place. And the fact that we are moving forward with him as a ghost when no one can see him or hear my lines is just insane. It's nonsense. I feel like I'm screaming into the void here. Luke has a very complex approach to performance, says the director. He utilizes viewpoints, Chekovs circles of attention, biomechanics, but most importantly, there's a tapping on the table. Yes, yes, I'm getting to that, says the director. You guys are really fucking with me, I say. You don't know what he's saying. You need to settle down, says the producer. To me, you're so withholding as a person. I wish you'd find more emotional truth like with your characters. What I'm saying, says the director, is Luke uses a sense of play to really imagine himself as his characters. That's the difference. It is an expression of just being, rather than having to layer on all this extra distracting stuff on top of the trueness of the characters. I stopped taking him seriously the moment he said viewpoints, but the rest of the room is nodding. Maybe you could learn a lot from Luke, says the costume designer, who giggles as if someone just tickled her. This is such, I say, but not loud enough for anyone to hear. At least no one that is still alive. I feel something cold brush the back of my neck and my whole body shivers. If this were a play, if you were watching this rather than reading or listening or whatever, I would turn to you, step into a spotlight, and the rest of the room would dim behind me as I speak to you. Because this would be a soliloquy, the only way for interiority in a character in a play. Though really, my interiority is pretty fucked up right now, let me tell you. Me. And so I do tell you. I don't really remember writing this play, but I know where it came from. The lovers in the play, they were not lovers. They were more than that. I think so. At least not husband or wife and boyfriend or girlfriend. It's just so juvenile. Partners sounds like a law firm. Anyway, they existed together and then they didn't. And it was largely my fault, me being one half of the lovers. Remember, this is all true and not true. And this is a secret. I tell everyone that exposure freaks me the fuck out. Love expects some kind of that disrobing. It is sometimes the same thing, or one begets the other. I never use the word beget. Let me just say that right now, it's a symptom of this Fucking style of direct address where I want my language to level up. Ah, fuck this soliloquy. What I am saying is I hate that this is the play the world chooses is good enough. Is the one that says something about who I am when all it is is the very, very worst parts of me. How I fall in love with the characters in my plays more than anyone outside of them. And how much I really, really liked the feeling of Luke's cold, dead fingers on my neck. Because really, he isn't there, but also there. And how satisfying to be touched by something you can't even see. At least not yet. And then there's a shift as the lights come back up on the room and the director announces, we're going to get started. Now, since Luke's presence seems particularly strong, and since this ghost stuff is new territory, well, we better just see how far we can get, shouldn't we? Montages don't really exist in theater, or when they do, they are especially stupid. But luckily this isn't a play. So I can just tell you that over the next several rehearsals, we use a series of communication tools to rehearse with Luke. A Ouija board where Luke can spell out his lines. A ghost box that picks up his voice in varying degrees on radio frequencies. A static meter that screams in a high pitched series of beeps every time Luke manipulates the air around it. I do rewrites. I try to cut back on Luke's lines, give them to Henny. Henny and Luke often disappear to the main stage to run lines. I stumble on them once because the director had asked me to bring my new pages to them. And when I stumble into the wings, I see Henny and Luke. Or Henny, let's just say I see Henny. And I get a feeling that Luke is there too, in a compromising position. Henny lying on her back, chin up to the stage, lights overhead, eyes closed, a breeze of some kind rustling her hair. And there I can just make out the outline of a hand. Definitely, I'd assume, Luke's hand gliding over her body, a button or two on her shirt or pants or whatever, popping open in a cartoonish way, as all sex is ridiculous, no matter how you swing it. And she's moaning all happily and it's just. It's just such an actor thing to do, right? I don't interrupt them because I'm not heartless, just cold. I'm. I'm just the tiniest bit chilly as a person. So I tell the director I couldn't find Them a sense of play. Right? Whatever. On the seventh day of rehearsal, we use sensory deprivation to commune with Luke for the breakup scene in the play. This will help Luke figure out how to appear to us physically, says the director. Blindfolds, headphones, these real plush chairs that make us feel like we're floating. We stare into the black void for quite a while. I assume someone is trying to speak to him to encourage him to show up, to not have stage fright. Here. This is a safe space and all that shit. He's gradual about it, but eventually I see him out of focus at first, but even then I can tell he is shirtless. I can see the tattoo of a giant tree on his back. Bare branches reaching up and around his collarbone, poking at the invisible line between chest and neck, curling down like the tree is cradling his ribcage. Imagine being a ghost and you can manifest as literally anything. And you show up as yourself without a shirt. Luke is looking at me right in my eyes, which in normal times wouldn't even rattle me. I make it a habit if I run into celebrities around town to. To lock their gaze and stare them down until they stop smiling, until they scurry away. I once made Ashton Kutcher tear up a bit near the bathrooms at Patty's Diner. Listen, Luke is probably not looking at me because he's looking at everyone. That's the trick of theater. Imagine you're on stage and the lights are in your face. You can't see shit, but you have to pretend like you're looking straight into the eyes of the audience. Have to pretend that you love them, that you're speaking straight to them and them only. That's how love works, isn't it? You just never know if the audience is watching until it's too late. I didn't want Luke in this play, but he's reciting my lines to me. And I'm starting to feel uncomfortable. Not uncomfortable, Misty. I start to cry. All right. No one else knows this because of the sensory deprivation. I'm not Henny. This isn't my style. I'm not sure if Luke knows, and if this were a play, I might step into the spotlight. I'm already in a dark void, so not much needs to change, really. Me. And I look at you, and maybe you think I'm looking, like, right at you, and maybe you think I'm a little bit in love with you, but I'm not. I don't know what that even means. But when Luke is looking directly at me, speaking my words, being all broken in his way, in his character's way. Not his way. I don't care about his way. I never wanted him in this play and the first place. But staring into the eyes of your character, who is telling you all the ways he is broken and that you made him this way because maybe you're broken in that way too. And maybe you wrote him broken because there's no other way for this kind of seeing, for this way of falling in love with yourself, which is a way of falling in love that nobody talks about because it is so close to hating yourself. And hating yourself takes a so much more. What is it? Space. And then there has to be a silence here as you stare. And then another. I need a silence. Stop looking at me. The day after the sensory deprivation session, Kenny gets in her car and speeds around Malibu Canyon Road trying to fly off the side of the mountain. She only manages to lose control enough to run into the walls of the tunnel and block up the whole road for a good four hours while crews clean up the mess. I wanted to become a ghost too, henny says later at rehearsal, her head and right arm bandaged to be closer to Luke, to match him in his process. It's a few days before opening night. Hell week, that's what we call it. 12 hour plus days for tech and running the show. I'm back at my apartment, exhausted. The show is not good. I know this. Everyone knows this. My apartment looks the same as it did when I wrote the play. It looks just like the set. I feel as if I have never left the theater, the books, the yogurt stain, the bowls of dried spaghetti in the sink. This is a moment set up for self reflection, something, something autobiography, something, something. No imagination, but fuck that. So I get in the car and drive in a direction. It's maybe 20 minutes into the drive when I feel the cold ghost fingers on the back of my neck. I can feel Luke's cold ghost breath on my cheek, the cold fucking ghost heart that is just my heart too. Luke's hands are on mine and he steers me to his house in the Hollywood Hills, more modest than I'd imagined, old Victorian, like you might see in any haunted house in any movie. He points me to where he'd hidden a key for himself for the particularly drunken nights where he was dumped off, pockets as empty as his head, which had happened more than he cared to admit. A key tucked inside a hole in the tree in his yard, a tree with sprawling bare branches that lean over me as if to smell my Breath for alcohol, maybe, or something else. Something else rotting deeper down, wherever the roots of a person are. Listen, I knew all this. He was telling me all this. Somehow it's embarrassing. He was saying, come upstairs. I don't turn on any lights. I walk carefully, hand on the banister, a thin layer of dust puffing up into the air in front of me. And I think. Think I almost see him, the dust clinging to an outline of him. I know the play isn't good, he is saying. It's my fault. I'm not a theater actor and I'm a ghost. No, it's my fault, I say. I left stuff out. I just don't know what. I get to his bedroom. It's sad. The bedroom of a dead person. Even a dead person I never really liked. I woke up here one night, he's saying, and there was this guy standing at the foot of my bed, naked, eating a fudge sickle. I don't like to talk about it. Then why are you? I say. Because I can't seem to manifest myself, he is saying. And I think it has to do with that. Like I think he thought he was invisible. And I think I have to do the same, but like in reverse. I don't know why I do this, because I don't do stuff like this. But I take off all my clothes and I stand at the edge of the bed and I stare at the empty spot where he should be. And I try to believe I am invisible. And it is like I am standing on a stage and being stared at by. By an audience. I can't see through all the stage lights. And then the lights start to dim and the audience becomes clear and I'm more naked than I've ever been. And he is there. A full ghost manifestation, the transparent sketch of what was Luke Ford. But he looks like Lou, the character in my play. In our play. Is it working? He says. I nod and I lay down on top of the comforter and I fight the urge to cover myself up. I'm going to stop there, you pervert. Imagine you are in a theater. It's opening night of a brand new play written by me. You are still trying to pretend that you didn't see your ex sitting two rows ahead of you. The lights go down and the play begins. You hold your breath and so do I, but I do because I don't know if he can do it again. Luke Ford has stage fright, and this one performance might be all he's got before he disappears to return to his natural state of translucence of evaporation of the traceless. It takes a terrible amount of energy to resist it. But there is Henny as Hattie, her bandages mostly off, a few bruises hiding beneath layers of makeup. And there is Luke as Louis, fully present, just barely transparent. You can see the bookshelves through his skin, and there's something poetic about that. There's a meaning there that wasn't intentional. You certainly hadn't anticipated any kind of meaning. Sorry, I'm projecting again. I hadn't anticipated anything. I enjoy the show because I know that this might be his last performance and I want to remember it. I glance up to the house right corner of the theater where that purple chair is, the one reserved for general admission ghosts, and I wish I'd sat there holding the hand of whatever ghost managed to show up on time, because what is time to dead things anyway? People and creatures and lovers, even if you want to use that word. And the lights start to go down on the stage and just focus on me and that empty chair, me as I stand up, ready to say something to someone, to everyone, to you. The thing I had left out of the play, the thing I didn't, I couldn't have the lovers say, ugh, I really hate that word because it's doomed. Lovers are star crossed, are found out, are dead by the end of the story. The thing I couldn't have them say on stage would have made you laugh. The things people say in person, curled together on a yogurt stained couch, have been overused on. On stage, on stage, they have no meaning anymore. And I'm not good enough to know how to rewrite your words and make them better, to have you say things like how you holding up a transition of sorts, a melting away of. Of a dream as I realize I'm standing in the middle of the lobby at intermission, right in the center, like I'm about to make an announcement. But no one is looking at me. Only you. I'd seen you looking at the program earlier, before the show, focusing so hard to not look at me. But you came here, didn't you, Lou? Surviving, I say. Just barely. I ask you what you think of the show. You say, well, Hattie, I never expected you to write realism. Sorry to disappoint you, Louis, I say. I think I feel cold fingers gentle on the back of my neck, the way Luke had held them there that night, swirling along my skin in circles. The way you used to. Hattie, you say. I hope you don't mind, I say. I almost forgot that I know the ending, you say. Lou. I say. I hear rapping on the wall near us and I turn to look but it's just some guy waiting in line to pee, leaning on the wall, impatient fingers counting out the seconds toward relief. Leave, listen. Tap tap tap tapity tap. We hope you enjoyed End of Play By Chelsea Sutton Chelsea Sutton is an LA based writer and director. She's a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, a Humanitas Play LA Award winner, an Emmy nominated co writer of the Interactive Film event. Welcome to the Blumhouse Live and a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in Apex Magazine, Bourbon Pen, Friction, Speculative City Craft, Literary, Flash Fiction Online, the dread machine, and Mooncalve's Strange Stories, among others. She holds an MFA from UC Riverside and can be found at chelseysutton.com It's Story Time with Wil Wheaton was produced in 2025 by Traveler Enterprises Incorporated, who holds the copyright. Our producer is Harris Lane. Our story producer and director is is Gabrielle Dacure. Our content editors are Lynn and Michael Thomas. Our podcast is edited, mixed and mastered by Alex Barton of Phase Shift av. Special thanks to Wes Stevens, Christopher Black and Marina Piper. Recorded at Skyboat Media. Thanks a lot for listening. As I said at the top of the podcast, I'm so happy that you are are here. If you've enjoyed the show, please like subscribe, rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you next time. Until then, take care of yourselves and take care of each other.