( A Teacher’s Guide to Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap and Other Plays )

They say near-death experiences bring about clarity. I've spent the past year thinking that was a bunch a hokum... I mean, I almost died by my own hand last year, and the only epiphany I had was that drowning was a really lousy way to go. Nothing about my purpose in life, nothing about what I'm meant to do or what decisions I'm supposed to make. ( Read more... )

Jamie Madrox didn't work well with silences. Once, during a round of word association with Doc Samson back in his government days, he'd generously equated the word alone with hell. Silence had played a large part in that split-second decision, reminding him too much of those interminable months he spent by himself on the family farm after his ( Read more... )

He'd been busy ( Read more... )

( Introduction to Political Science )

Chandler once said the true detective never marries. It's something I've kept in mind throughout the course of exploring this... thing with Layla, a niggling doubt at the back of my head that whispers at the most inopportune of moments. Marriage isn't in the cards for me, not by a long shot, but it is part of the natural progression. First comes ( Read more... )

Richards at his heels, Jamie shouldered open the door of the hut he shared with Layla, adjusting the strap of the worn messenger bag he'd got from the clothes box some weeks prior. It was loaded with new books to add to the increasingly crowded shelf that stood by the messy desk and the perpetually unmade bed. Someday he'd tidy the place up, but ( Read more... )

Even now, after all this time, Jamie Madrox was never one for routine. He’d managed for a while, shortly after his suicide attempt, but besides his daily standing appointment with Reid and baseball practices, he’d done away with it almost entirely, preferring instead to wait and see, playing things by ear in case something more interesting cropped ( Read more... )

I should've made this appointment the day I showed up, but the thing about being suicidal is... Well, you don't tend to make a lot of decisions that are in your best interests. Not that I needed that as an excuse to begin with -- I can count on one hand the number of good decisions I've made in my life, though I'm admittedly hard pressed to come up ( Read more... )

( This post deals with a (fictional) suicide attempt. Consider yourselves warned. )