untitled thingy I wrote :D

[Ethan]

ok...I've been really depressed the past few days (since friday to be exact...) and I wrote this, and it made me feel better...its really short, but yeah...comment please




"My name is John, and I am about to die."

His tears blur his vision, making it difficult for him to see his own words, as his wrist scribbles quickly. He needs not to worry for much longer, his pain will fade, but his words must not. He knows now what he needs; the cold steel presses against his temple, his finger playing cautiously at the trigger.

"My life has not been an easy one, and I know I am taking the coward's way out. But the pain is too much, I cannot bear it any longer."

He wants to end it now, to be rid of this world, and it's evils, but he cannot, not yet. Between sobs and fits he writes, relishing in the fact that his pain will soon end. His suffering must not be in vain, so he carries on.

"For too long have I suffered, and I have lost too much. My entire life has never had meaning, but, in my last words, my death will."

Why had it come to this? He wonders to himself. Why had he not been meant for something greater? Why had his dreams been nothing more than that of pipes? He had been a good man, and he knew it. Never missing church, never wanting more than he needed, and never thinking a dark thought...until recently...he had been a decent human being. But, no matter what he had not done, the facts still remained.

"I pose a question: is the pain we shield, and the roads we choose not to take, worth being alone in the end? Why must we live for the future, and make the present miserable? It is a never ending cycle, and a vicious one at that."

His wife had left him for his brother, he had lost his job due to mechanization, and he was being evicted from his apartment in 24 hours time. The man chuckles at the last thought, as it won't matter where he will rest his head, not after tonight.

"Follow your heart, take the risk you know you shouldn't, it may all be worth it in the long run."

The gun is his friend, and the bullet is his release from this world. From a world that no longer wants him, he will depart. To where, he does not know. The man dreams, and hopes, that God will still want him, that, somehow, this is what was planned for him, that this is how it must end.

"And, no matter what you do, remember these words. If you say you do not want to leap off of the cliff because you are afraid of the impact, then you will never experience the rush of the fall."

His hand comes to a stop once he approaches the end of his message. All that is left is to sign his name. He writes, “love,” then stops, rubbing it out with the pink, soft end of of his pencil, he substitutes it with,

"Forever damned,
John."

And with that, he releases himself from this world, and his pain stops.

[Taurus Tash]

Whoa...that was intense! The words that John said all came from his heart...I could tell. He must've gone through a lot to make him want to do something like that...

Anyways, it was a great piece! Especially the ending sentence to seal the mood!

[Chris]

The following review is based upon the facts and assumptions that (a) this story is about a man who writes a farewell letter before releasing himself from his miserable life, (b) this story is meant to entertain through drama and poignancy, and (c) this story's intended audience is your fellow guildians.

I feel that I too often stumble upon by young writers here who, in my opinion, do not possess the emotional understanding, the empathy or the subtlety to write stories about serious issues without making them overdramatic, and I'm afraid that Ethan's bland, too-short story about a man who finds himself so downtrodden by life that death seems to be his only escape from his psychological pangs seems to fall into just such a category.

In a nutshell, the story is about John, who has lost his job, his wife and his home. Wretched and forlorn, he tearfully writes a letter to no one in the hopes that his somewhat garbled, melodramatic message of living for today will perhaps help someone in need, and then brings his long time suffering to an end with a bullet to his head.

The story definitely has appeal. After all, Ethan's audience are, like himselves, teenagers, most of whom are going through or have just gone through that angst-ridden, moody phase where it feels like the world is crushing you, the innocent one, with its burdersome weight and its crooked, flawed ways, and your primary thought seems to be, "I should just kill myself; that would show them all." We, the narcissists that we young minds are, will totally relate and even revel in the poisonous, familiar feeling that we bear the injustices of the world alone, and that we could change people, and by proxy the world (or at least the world we know), by sticking it to them with the suicide letter, the end-all of parting shots. Or at least it sure is relatable to me.

But as relatable as that is, the author doesn't succeed in giving us a real reason to care for John. John is basically Ethan's suicide lettter: an instrument to pluck at your heartstrings obviously and unapologetically, to rub misery in your face, as shown from the very opening line: "My name is John, and I am about to die." Ethan glamorizes John's suicide by making it into a sacrifice, using his last words as some sort of recipe to self-betterment, but the glamour doesn't hide the fact that we aren't shown the real reasons why John feels that suicide is his only salvation. I say real reasons because we are told that he's lost a lot, but its done so ... hastily, as if its unimportant why he's suffering, when in fact it is very critical to developing John into a real character and not what is most likely a written manifestation of the author's feelings. Sure, John lost his job, his wife, his home, but what is about losing these things is so horrible to him that death is a better alternative to living without them? Sure, John is tired of the evils of the world, and his dreams aren't realized, but how are we supposed to relate to thes vague notions of evils and unfulfilled dreams unless we know just what they were and how they affected John personally? Without more insight into who John is as a person, he isn't anything more than a name, some guy who killed himself for some reason or other, and as a reader, I see no reason to care.

Overall, I'd have to say while it was a good idea, the story's melodramatic, psychologically-underdeveloped execution left me unsatisfied.