Re-Release: “End of Play” by Chelsea Sutton

Summary

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Podcast Summary: “Re-Release: ‘End of Play’ by Chelsea Sutton”

Podcast: It's Storytime with Wil Wheaton
Host: Wil Wheaton
Episode Date: March 25, 2026

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Overview

In this poignant season finale, Wil Wheaton reads “End of Play” by Chelsea Sutton—a haunting, genre-blurring monologue situated in the world of intimate Los Angeles theater. Blending ghost story, love story, and meta-theatrical reflection, the story meditates on art, loss, the permeability of realism, and the blurry boundaries between creator and character. Wil frames Sutton’s piece as a “gorgeous monologue…a beautiful way to wrap up our first season” [04:33]. He encourages listeners to let go of the real world and immerse themselves in the layered narrative that, while fictional in its particulars, vibrates with emotional autobiography.

The episode closes with a special treat: Wil offers a sneak-peek audiobook excerpt of Stephen King’s The Body (source for Stand By Me) newly narrated by Wil himself, marking a personal and cultural full-circle moment.

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Key Discussion Points & Narrative Insights

Wil Wheaton's Introduction & Personal Reflection (01:04–03:21)

• Announcement: Wil reveals he's narrating The Body by Stephen King as a standalone audiobook for the 40th anniversary of Stand By Me.
  • “This was this moment where I got to revisit ‘The Body’ not only as the kid who played Gordie Lachance, but as the person I am now—as the dad and the writer and the husband.” [01:35]
  • Wil expresses deep personal identification with the character Gordie, reflecting on his own childhood struggles during the Stand By Me filming.
  • Teaser: A brief audiobook excerpt plays after the main story.

Setting the Stage: “End of Play” by Chelsea Sutton (04:00–09:53)

• Wil’s Framing: He describes the story as a ghost story, a love story, and “the closest to autobiography I’ll ever get…the ghosts are real, the rest…well…” [05:19]
• Meta-Theatrical Device: Listeners are invited to imagine themselves as audience members at the opening night of a new play written by the narrator (a reflection of the author/character’s own blurred identity).
  • “Every audience has at least one ghost, and that seat is reserved for them.” [05:11]
• American Theater Satire: The narrator pokes fun at theatrical conventions, realism, and the peculiarities of LA’s theater scene.

Story Summary

I. The Ghostly Rehearsal Begins

• Inciting Incident: Famous actor Luke Ford dies days before rehearsals begin (in an absurdist accident—the marquee crushes him), leading to his literal casting as a ghost.
  • “But that is too ridiculous to put in a story…too on the nose...even though this death is particularly inconvenient for everyone involved.” [11:47]
• Production Meeting: Instead of canceling, the creative team seamlessly incorporates Luke’s ghost, discussing logistical challenges with comic matter-of-factness.
  • “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.” (Producer) [17:14]
  • “Will we be seeing the ghost? I’ll have to take some new measurements.” (Costume Designer) [17:22]
• Dissolving Boundaries: The practical business of staging welcomes the supernatural without irony, blending grief, denial, and artistic process.

II. The Playwright-Narrator’s Alienation & Envy

• Creative Ownership: The playwright resents losing control of the play to the production team and the ghost of the star, feeling alienated from their own life as it’s projected onto stage.
  • “They fuck each other a couple times and then it falls apart because they are idiots…They are not lovers.” [19:00]
  • “What I am saying is I hate that this is the play the world chooses is good enough…all it is is the very very worst parts of me.” [24:48]
• Soliloquy as Confession: The protagonist’s meta-commentary on soliloquy and interiority exposes deep self-doubt, fear of exposure, and wounds around relationships and art:
  • “Love expects some kind of that disrobing…it is so close to hating yourself.” [28:47]

III. The Ghost as Muse, Rival, and Lover

• Supernatural Communication: Rehearsals use Ouija boards, ghost boxes, and static meters to interact with the ghost-Luke, symbolizing both the persistence of the dead and the inscrutability of self.
• Jealousy & Erotic Haunting: The narrator spies Henny (actor playing their avatar) having a physical encounter with (the suggestion of) Luke’s ghost—an ambiguous, absurd, hilarious, and moving scene about intimacy and self-replacement. [27:07]
• Climax—Sensory Deprivation:
  • Rehearsal employs sensory deprivation to summon Luke more fully; the narrator finally sees him, shirtless, bearing a tattooed tree.
  • This confrontation triggers a breakdown—how it feels when your own words, performed by others, bare your soul in ways you both crave and resist:
    • “Staring into the eyes of your character, who is telling you all the ways he is broken and that you made him this way…falling in love with yourself, which is a way of falling in love that nobody talks about because it’s so close to hating yourself.” [31:45]

IV. The Bleed of Life and Art

• Tragedy Echoes: Henny, desperate to ‘join’ Luke, crashes her car, becomes physically marked/bandaged, literally mirroring the ghost. [35:09]
• Culmination: The narrator follows ghostly promptings to Luke’s house and attempts “reverse invisible man” tactics—stripping naked and trying to become unseen, which finally allows the ghost to fully manifest. [39:35]
  • “It is like I am standing on a stage and being stared at 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.” [40:08]
• Performance as Requiem: Opening night—Henny (now healed) and Luke’s ghost perform, bruised, barely visible, meaning everything and nothing. The narrator wishes they’d sat with the ghosts. [42:14]
• Closing Meta-Reflection: The “ghost seat” left unfilled, the narrator aches for the connection lost, for “the thing I left out of the play, the thing I didn’t—I couldn’t have the lovers say.” [44:56]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Autobiography & Ghosts:
  • “This is the closest to autobiography as I will ever get. The ghosts are real. The rest—well…” (Wil Wheaton as narrator) [05:19]
• Satirical Wit:
  • “Americans love to see a fridge light up on stage when its doors open. An oven actually bake a pie. A sink that works. I’ve never understood it, but I’m a sellout.” [06:01]
• On Writer’s Alienation:
  • “What I am saying is I hate that this is the play the world chooses is good enough…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.” [24:48]
• On the Ghost as Artistic Rival:
  • “A sense of play, right? Whatever…” [26:54]
• Soliloquy on Love and Self:
  • “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.” [31:50]
• Final Stage Image:
  • “There is Luke as Lou, fully present, just barely transparent. You can see the bookshelves through his skin. And there’s something poetic about that.” [41:52]
• Aching for Closure:
  • “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?” [43:59]
• Final Exchange:
  • “You guys want to go see a dead body?” (From the The Body excerpt) [64:18]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Wil’s Personal Announcement on Narrating The Body – [01:04–03:21]
• Wil’s Story Introduction & Framing – [04:00–05:19]
• Meta-Theatrical Opening: ‘Ghost Seat’ – [05:11–06:13]
• Luke Ford’s Absurd Ghostly Casting – [08:46–11:53]
• Production Satire & Grief – [15:59–19:09]
• Playwright’s Soliloquy: On Losing Control, Intimacy, Grief – [22:00–28:47]
• Ghostly Rehearsals, Jealousy, Sensory Deprivation – [24:45–33:00]
• Henny’s Crash, the Bleed of Life and Art – [35:09–41:52]
• Opening Night Meta-Reflection – [41:52–46:52]
• End Credits & Chelsea Sutton’s Bio – [46:52–49:17]
• Excerpt from Wil’s Narration of Stephen King’s The Body – [49:17–64:20]

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Tone & Style

Wil Wheaton’s delivery, mirroring Sutton’s text, is honest, humorous, and laced with melancholy. The episode oscillates between dry self-deprecation, vulnerable confession, and razor-sharp observation about the intersection of life and art. The mood is meta-theatrical and haunted, yet utterly relatable and humane.

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For Listeners

• This episode is ideal for anyone who loves stories about storytelling, lost connection, the haunting of memory, and the transfer of self into art.
• Chelsea Sutton’s “End of Play” is a perfect closer for a season focused on speculative boundary-pushing fiction read aloud by someone who loves and lives for the stories he tells.
• Stay tuned after the main episode for a moving excerpt of The Body—a resonant echo of Wil’s own journey from child actor to adult storyteller.

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Explore more of Chelsea Sutton’s writing at chelseasutton.com.
If you enjoyed the show, rate, subscribe, and share. Until next time: “Take care of yourselves, and take care of each other.”

Transcript

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[Wil Wheaton]

Maybelline y', all, I have some really exciting news.

For the very first time, Stephen King's novella the Body from his book Different Seasons, which was the inspiration for the movie Stand By Me, will be released as a standalone digital audiobook narrated by me. And I'm just thrilled for, like all the longtime Stephen King fans and people

who grew up with Stand By Me,

to experience Gordie Lachance's story as told

by the person who's probably after Stephen

King most closely identified with Gordie Lachance in popular culture. As many of you know, it is the 40th anniversary of Stand By Me, and for the last couple of years I have been reaching out to Simon and Schuster trying to get permission to narrate the body specifically for the 40th anniversary. I felt like this moment was rare and special and only going to happen once. This was this moment where I got to revisit the body not only as the kid who played Gordie Lachance, but as the person I am now as the dad and the writer and the husband. And I thought this is a rare opportunity to close a circle. I see so much of myself in Gordie Lachance, and I know that I'm good in the movie because I am Gordie Lachance. I was navigating a difficult childhood when we filmed Stand By Me, and I can just see so much of the sad little boy I was who was really suffering and struggling, then desperately trying to make connections with his friends. That connection to that character has always stayed with me. At the end of this episode, Simon and Schuster have given me a clip

from the book that you can listen

to, and I'm so excited for you to hear it. So at the end of the credits, please stay tuned and you'll be able

to hear a little excerpt from the Body, Narrated by Me, written by Stephen

King, available now wherever you get your

audiobooks, including Audible, Apple Books, Libro FM and more.

I hope you'll check it out.

I know that you're going to love it.

Thanks for listening.

Welcome friends. 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 Threat 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. 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 ribcage. 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. 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.

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[Wil Wheaton]

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 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 her 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 fuck 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, tapity 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 line 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, Chekhovs, 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 bullshit, 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 is 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 the 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 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 quick, 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 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 in 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.

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[Wil Wheaton]

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, kenny 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, 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. I 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 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 Lou, 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 stage. On stage they have no meaning anymore. More 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 a dream as I realize lies. 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, Lou, 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. Listen. Tap tap tap tappity 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 Mooncalves, Strange Stories, among others. She holds an MFA from UC Riverside and can be found in at Chelsea Sutton.com. It's Storytime 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 Gabrielle Decur. 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 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.

We had a tree house in a big elm which overhung a vacant lot in Castle Rock. There's a moving company on that lot today and the elm is gone Progress it was a sort of social club, although it had no name. There were five, maybe six steady guys and some other wet ends who just hung around. We'd let them come up when there was a card game and we needed some fresh blood. The game was usually blackjack and we played for pennies, nickel limit, but you got double money on blackjack and five card under. Triple money on six card under. Although Teddy was the only guy crazy enough to go for that. The sides of the treehouse were planks scavenged from the shit pile behind Mackie Lumber and Building Supply on Carbine Road. They were splintery and full of knotholes we plugged with either toilet paper or paper towels. The roof was a corrugated tin sheet we hawked from the dump, looking over our shoulders all the time we were hustling it out of there because the dump custodian's dog was supposed to be a real kid eating monster. We found a screen door out there on the same day. It was fly proof but really rusty. I mean that rust was extreme. No matter what time of day you looked out that screen door, it looked like sunset. Besides playing cards, the club was a good place to go and smoke cigarettes and look at girly books. There were half a dozen battered tin ashtrays that said Camels on the bottom. A lot of centerfolds tacked to the splintery walls. 20 or 30 dog eared packs of bike cards. Teddy got them from his uncle who ran the Castle Rock stationery shop. When Teddy Zonk asked him one day what kind of cards we played, Teddy said we had cribbage tournaments. Teddy Zunk thought that was just fine. A set of plastic poker chips and a pile of ancient Master Detective murder magazines to leaf through if there was nothing else shaking. We also built a 12 inch by 10 inch secret compartment under the floor to hide most of this stuff in on the rare occasions when some kid's father decided it was time to do the we're really good Pals routine. When it rained, being in the club was like being inside a Jamaican steel drum. But that summer there had been no rain. It had been the driest and hottest since 1907, or so the newspaper said, and on that Friday preceding the Labor Day weekend and the start of another school year, even the goldenrod in the fields and the ditches beside the back

roads looked parched and poorly.

Nobody's garden had done doodly squat that year, and the big displays of canning stuff in the Castle Rock red and

white were still there, gathering dust.

No one had anything to put up that summer except maybe dandelion wine. Teddy and Chris and I were up in the club on that Friday morning, glooming to each other about school being so near and playing cards and swapping the same old traveling salesman jokes and Frenchman jokes. How do you know when a Frenchman's been in your backyard? Well, your garbage cans are empty and your dog is pregnant. Teddy would try to look offended, but he was the first one to bring in a joke as soon as he heard it, only switching Frenchman to Pollock. The elm gave good shade, but we already had our shirts off so we wouldn't sweat them up too bad. We were playing three Penny scat, the dullest card game ever invented, but it was too hot to think about anything more complicated. We'd had a pretty fair scratch ball team until the middle of August, and then a lot of kids just drifted away. Too hot. I was down to my ride and building spades. I'd started with 13, gotten an 8 to make 21, and nothing had happened since then. Chris knocked. I took my last straw and got nothing helpful. 29, Chris said, laying down diamonds. 22, Teddy said, looking disgusted. Piss up a rope, I said and tossed my cards onto the table. Face down.

Gordy's out. Old Gordy just bit the bag and stepped out the door.

Teddy bugled and then gave out with his patented Teddy Duchamp laugh

like a

rusty nail being slowly hauled out of a rotten board.

Well, he was weird. We all knew it.

He was close to being 13 like the rest of us, but the thick glasses and the hearing aid he wore sometimes made him look like an old man. Kids were always trying to catch smokes off him on the street, but the bugle in his shirt was just his hearing aid battery. In spite of the glasses and the flesh colored button always screwed into his ear, Teddy couldn't see very well and often misunderstood the things people said to him. In baseball you had to have him play the fences. Way beyond Chris in left Field and Billy Greer in right. He just hoped no one would hit one that far because Teddy would go grimly after it. See it or not. Every now and then he got bonked a good one, and once he went out cold when he ran full tilt boogie into the fence by the treehouse. He lay there on his back with his eyes showing whites for almost five minutes and I got scared. Then he woke up and walked around with a bloody nose and a huge purple lump rising on his forehead, trying to claim that the ball was foul. His eyesight was just naturally bad, but there was nothing natural about what had happened to his ears back in those days when it was cool to get your hair cut so that your ears stuck out like a couple of jug handles.

Teddy had Castle Rock's first beetle haircut

four years before anyone in America had

ever heard of the Beatles.

He kept his ears covered because they looked like two lumps of warm wax. One day when he was eight, Teddy's father got pissed at him for breaking a plate. His mother was working at the shoe factory in South Paris when it happened, and by the time she found out about it, it was all over. Teddy's dad took Teddy over to the big wood stove at the back of the kitchen and shoved the side of Teddy's head down against one of the cast iron burner plates. He held it down there for about 10 seconds. Then he yanked Teddy up by the

hair of the head and did the other side.

Then he called the Central Maine General Emergency Unit and told him to come get his boy. Then he hung up the phone, went into the closet, got his.410, and sat down to watch the daytime stories on TV with the shotgun laid across his knees. When Mrs. Burrows from next door came over to ask if Teddy was all right, she'd heard the screaming. Teddy's dad pointed the shotgun at her. Mrs. Burroughs went out of the Duchamp house at roughly the speed of light, locked herself into her own house, and called the police. When the ambulance came, Mr. Duchamp let the orderlies in and then went out on the back porch to stand guard while they wheeled Teddy to the old portholed Buick ambulance on a stretcher. Teddy's dad explained to the orderlies that while the fucking brass hat said the area was clear, there were still Kraut snipers everywhere. One of the orderlies asked Teddy's dad if he thought he could hold on. Teddy's dad smiled tightly and told the orderly he'd hold until hell was a Frigidaire dealership. If that's what it took. The orderly saluted and Teddy's dad snapped it right back at him. A few minutes after the ambulance left, the state police arrived and relieved Norman Duchamp of duty. He'd been doing odd things like shooting cats and lighting fires in mailboxes for over a year, and after the atrocity he had visited upon his son, they had a quick hearing and sent him to Togus, which is a VA hospital. Togus is where you have to go if you're a Section 8. Teddy's dad had stormed the beach in Normandy, and that's just the way Teddy always put it. Teddy was proud of his old man

in spite of what his old man

had done to him, and Teddy went with his mom to visit him every week. He was the dumbest guy we hung around with, I guess, and he was crazy. He'd take the craziest chances you can

imagine and get away with them.

His big thing was what he called truck dodging. He'd run out in front of them on 196 and sometimes they'd miss him by bare inches. God knew how many heart attacks he'd caused and he'd be laughing while the wind blast from the passing truck rippled his clothes. It scared us because his vision was so lousy. Coke bottle glasses or not, it seemed like only a matter of time before

he misjudged one of those trucks and

you had to be careful. What you dared him because Teddy would do anything on a dare.

Gordy's out,

screw, I said and picked up a Master Detective to read while they played it out. I turned to he stomped the pretty coed to death in a stalled elevator and got right into it. Teddy picked up his cards, gave them one brief look, and said, I knock

you four eyed pile of shit.

Chris cried. The pile of shit has a thousand eyes, Teddy said gravely, and both Chris and I cracked up. Teddy stared at us with a slight frown as if wondering what had gotten us laughing. That was another thing about the cat. He was always coming out with weird stuff like the pile of shit has a thousand eyes, and you could never be sure if he meant it to

be funny or if it just happened that way.

He'd look at the people who were laughing with that slight frown on his face as if to say, oh Lord, what is it this time? Teddy had a natural 30, Jack, Queen and King of clubs. Chris had only 16 and went down to his ride. Teddy was shuffling the cards in his clumsy way and I was just getting to the gushy part of the murder story where this deranged sailor from New Orleans was doing the Bristol stomp all over this college girl from Bryn Mawr because he couldn't stand being in closed in places when we heard someone coming fast up the ladder nailed to the side of the elm. A fist rapped on the underside of the trapdoor. Who goes? Chris. Yelled Vern. He sounded excited and out of breath. I went to the trapdoor and pulled the bolt. The trapdoor banged up and Vern Tessio, one of the other regulars, pulled himself into the clubhouse. He was sweating buckets and his hair, which he usually kept combed in a perfect imitation of his rock and roll idol Bobby Rydell, was plastered to his bullet head in chunks and strings. Wow, man, he panted. Wait till you hear this.

Hear what?

I asked. Let me get my breath. I ran all the way from my house.

I ran all the way home.

Teddy wavered in a dream. Dreadful little Anthony Falsetto.

Just say I'm sorry.

Fuck your hand, man, vern said. Drop dead in the shed, Fred, teddy returned smartly.

You ran all the way from your place?

Chris asked unbelievingly. Man, you're crazy. Vern's house was two miles down Grand Street.

It must be 90 out there.

This is worth it, vern said. Holy Jesum, you won't believe this. Sincerely. He slapped his sweaty forehead to show us how sincere he was. Okay.

What?

Chris asked. Can you guys camp out tonight? Vern was looking at us earnestly, excitedly. His eyes looked like raisins pushed into dark circles of sweat. I mean, if you tell your folks we're going to tent out in my backfield. Yeah, I guess so, chris said, picking up his new hand and looking at it. But my dad's on a mean streak drinking, you know. You got to, man, vern said sincerely. You won't believe this, can you, Gordy? Probably. I was able to do most stuff like that. In fact, I'd been like the Invisible Boy that whole summer. In April, my older brother Dennis had been killed in a Jeep accident. That was at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he was in Basic. He and another guy were on their way to the PX and an army truck hit them broadside. Dennis was killed instantly and his passenger had been in a coma ever since. Dennis would have been 22 later that week. I had already picked out a birthday card for him at Dolly's over in Castle Green. I cried when I heard and I cried more at the funeral, and I couldn't believe that Dennis was gone, that anyone that used to knuckle my head or scare me with a rubber spider

until I cried or give me a

kiss when I fell down and scraped both knees bloody and whisper in my ear, now stop crying you baby.

That a person who had touched me could be dead. It hurt me and it scared me that he could be dead.

But it seemed to have taken all the heart out of my parents. For me, Dennis was hardly more than an acquaintance. He was 10 years older than me, if you can dig it, and he had his own friends and classmates. We ate at the same table for a lot of years, and sometimes he was my friend and sometimes my tormentor, but mostly he was, you know, just a guy. When he died, he'd been gone for a year. Except for a couple of furloughs, we didn't even look alike. It took me a long time after that summer to realize that most of the tears I cried were for my mom and dad. Fat lot of good it did them or me.

So what are you pissing and moaning about, Verno?

Teddy asked. I knocked, Chris said, what? Teddy screamed, immediately forgetting all about Vern.

You friggin liar.

You ain't got no pat hand. I didn't deal you no pat hand.

Chris smirked.

Make your draw, shitheap. Teddy reached for the top card on the pile of bikes. Chris reached for the Winstons on the ledge behind him. I bent over to pick up my Detective magazine. Verntesio said, you guys want to go see a dead body?

Everybody stopped.

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[Wil Wheaton]

How quick?

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