Looking Down (tough criticism needed)
Tough criticism welcome
I came up with the idea for this story on the spot, and the inspiration to write it out came strongly. I think the inspiration left me after the first paragraph, but oh well lol. This was a short story that I wrote in about 4-5 hours for one of my classes, and one thing anybody should know before reading it is that it is fairly autobiographical (at least the first half). Edward's history up until highschool is my history.
If the story comes out as pretentious (or cliched) I'm sorry lol for some reason I can't seem to help it. Thats why I need some good hard criticism for my amateurish (at best) work. I need to learn how to improve.
I've got a feeling no one is going to read this but it's always worth the shot hehe.
Looking Down
Poor Edward. His heart is beginning to fail him, and his lungs aren’t doing so well either. The mud is seeping into the gashes and cuts that the gravel caused. His body is crumpled and broken, half in the ditch and half on the road, with the roof of the car crushing his legs into the asphalt. He is quite unconscious, but something is definitely stirring inside that little mind of his. There are still traces of pain and regret etched upon his face. If he had waken up again he might have been able to turn his life around, after all he had just acquired the means to do so. Sadly no one on this earth will ever know, for Edward will soon be dead.
This all wouldn’t be such an awful situation if it had been a person who had lived a successful or fulfilling life. Those terms were rather foreign when reviewing Edward’s existence. His stay had been a short one, certainly, but that’s no excuse for the pitiable life he led. That’s not to say he hadn’t done a few things right, though. His intentions throughout were mostly good, and that counts for something when the time comes. He experienced a sizeable portion of what there was to experience within his short life, though it is interesting that he left none of the sadder aspects untouched. Even though the main quality that comes to mind when examining his existence is bleak, there is something innately fascinating about his story.
Edward was born nearly twenty years ago. In fact he would have been twenty tomorrow. He would have gotten together and celebrated with his family and felt undeserving the whole while, and rightfully so. Anyways, Edward had lived what could be considered nothing other than a privileged life. His parents had divorced when he was very young (his father moved away), and so he was brought up primarily by his mother, though he would still visit his father fairly regularly. His family had never really been wanting of money, but at the same time couldn’t be described as rich either. He was always provided for, and never knew what it was like to be famished or homeless.
His family loved him deeply. He was treasured and bragged upon. At every social event he would temporarily turn into a trophy or badge of honor which his parents would display quite proudly. This behavior puzzled Edward, as he couldn’t identify the qualities that they were doting upon within his character. Even so, at home he was cared for and attended to. He was protected as well. He had to learn indirectly that his grandfather had killed his grandmother. Shot her through the head. He also had to discover on his own that his uncle had been killed. He was also shot through the head. Some children have a hard time grasping the concept of death, but Edward knew and fully understood it from a very young age. He knew that the people he had loved were gone, and that he would not see them again. Still, a child forgets things easily, and Edward was no exception, thus his losses were pushed to the back of his mind soon enough.
In the beginning he did fairly well in school. He shot through elementary school without any significant hitches, and the spotlight always shone brightly upon him. He played sports and had many friends. Then an interesting transition occurred. Somewhere between middle school and high school, old thoughts began to resurface for Edward. The difference was that now things weren’t so easy to forget, and he began to brood on the past. At this time there was a swing in his academic performance. Edward stopped doing his homework. He became less attentive in class. Overall, things just started to mean less to Edward. Concern for achievement drifted away like a light breeze.
His view turned inwards and he detached himself from school. He hadn’t lost as much interest in the other aspects of life though. He had very close and good friends, albeit few. His interest and anxiety for girls never lessened, though he rarely pursued them actively. Fun, which could easily be mistaken for happiness, was number one on Edward’s priority list. When his friends were busy with schoolwork, he would be busy entertaining himself somehow. His parents noticed the drop in his grades around this time and became especially worried about him. They asked him again and again what was wrong, but he responded with a lie every time.
During the later years of high school a common question began to arise for the students: what were you going to do with your life? Most of the kids didn’t know exactly what they wanted to do, but they knew what they liked and what field in general they were interested and proficient in. Edward found that, unlike everyone he knew, he was interested in nothing that could be translated to some type of suitable career. He wasn’t particularly good at anything either. He knew he liked movies and books and history, but knew of nothing related to those mediums which he could perform competently. The only thing that came to his mind in terms of a practice that he was talented at was photography, but he knew his family would be less then amused to find out that the child they had reared wanted to make a living by snapping pictures. Nevertheless, photography was one of the few subjects Edward garnered pleasure from in school.
The boy had another problem. See, even though he was good at nothing of recognizable value, Edward was a perfectionist. He didn’t do much, but what he did, he did painstakingly. This seemingly desirable quality would torment him throughout his life. Edward was always coming up with ideas, and always congratulating himself for a job well done. “An idea only a genius could come up with”, he would say reassuringly to himself. But all those thoughts and ideas were just intangible notions with no concrete backing. Edward never really thought he would be able to make his ideas come to an agreeable fruition. Anything less then perfect would have been unacceptable, and he had no confidence in his capabilities to create what he envisioned. Thus, Edward very rarely made anything.
College came about sort of suddenly for Edward. He had not thought about where he wanted to attend for he hadn’t even figured out what he could do proficiently. He failed to apply to any respectable school because he didn’t feel like spending the three or four hours that would have been needed for the essay that was required for the applications. He was not unable to make a decision though. Instead of trying to discover what he wanted to do, he decided he had to make a choice between going to school near his mother or near his father. They lived far apart so the decision wasn’t an easy one.
Edward’s decision meant more then just being close to one parent or the other. On his mother’s side he had a sister and a brother, six years old and one year old, respectively. On his father’s side he had his great grandmother, grandmother, and grandfather; all of whom were not in the best of health. He had to choose between his impressionable, innocent siblings and his wise, endearing, and terminally defined grandparents; he had to choose either life or the grim reminder of mortality. Both parties were of vital importance to Edward, but in the end he reasoned he should spend what time he could with his older relatives before they succumbed to the will of nature. After all, he could return later to his brother and sister, who would have all but grown up without him… him being of no more importance to them then a distant cousin. This predicted conclusion pained Edward, but he determined it would be a necessary sacrifice.
And so Edward moved. The change in environment wasn’t much of a problem for him; he enjoyed a sense of adventure. Soon though, the by-products of his decision began to make them selves apparent. Edward believed that he didn’t truly fit in with the crowd in this new community, and was at a loss to find any new close friends. In this way the last complete stage of his life had begun, the era of loneliness. Up until this point, Edward had been fortunate enough to never have felt lonely for any noteworthy amount of time. He was still not completely alone, for his elder family still doted upon him while he spent what time he could with them, but when considering his own age group he was in fact very solitary.
Meanwhile Edward attended school, managing to keep his old irresponsible methods intact. Tasks were rarely completed and he spent most of his free time alone in his apartment. Edward realized that his complete lack of responsibility wouldn’t make it far into any professional field, and began wondering why he was even in school in the first place. He was living off his parent’s combined money, and an unbearable guilt began to course through him. Why had he feigned some sense of potential? He was a good-for-nothing. A leech. This area of contemplation led to questions regarding the merit of effort itself. If he had actually tried, Edward reasoned, and somehow turned himself into a productive member of society, what would come of it? He could see no other outcome then maybe marriage and a few children who would just have to endure the same pointless being.
Edward meditated on these thoughts further, and concluded a few things. Firstly, Edward could not convince himself that his own species’ sole purpose was to multiply. He conceded that life is merely a test. Edward was never truly religious, even though he pretended to be in order to please his grandmother, and was too rational and faithless to believe in a book that contained so many foul contradictions. But there was something behind religion which appeared to Edward to be undeniably true. The idea that there is some overseer, some god-figure, is what appealed greatly to Edward. Also the suggestion that should a person pass the test of life gracefully, that person would be dealt a fate different then that of a person who had lived unjustly (or else what would be the point of a righteous way of life?).
These constructed beliefs served their purpose, and Edward slipped into a state of comfortably numb existence. He reasoned that he simply needed to do nothing wrong, which ultimately meant doing nothing at all. From day to day, every twenty four hour shift was like the one before it; the lines blurred and differentiating became impossible. The slow ticking of the hour hand had made itself blatantly apparent. The only aspect of his character which remained alive (and kept him disappearing altogether) was an inflated sense of self-interest. His eyes became reminiscent of dark holes in the sky; his voice had turned hollow and meek, and his body had sunken into a state of regression from lack of activity. Thankfully this phase of Edwards life didn’t last terribly long, for an event occurred which tossed him back into the land of the living.
One of the photographs that Edward had taken a few years back had resurfaced. It was a picture of a desolate parking garage at night, nevertheless littered with traces of inhabitance. An empty bag of potato chips, a smudge of ketchup, and a tie that had been forgotten were some of the objects that occupied the floor. Edward saw something of himself in that scene, and without much further thought he snapped the picture. What he didn’t realize is that he had set the lighting, depth of field, and contrast of the photo perfectly. His former photography teacher was rummaging through old portfolios, looking for examples for class, when she happened upon Edward’s forgotten negatives. She developed the shot and was astounded; the picture portrayed a profound array of feelings, and so she decided to submit it to her colleagues for professional review. The responses were encouraging, but the persisting comment was that it was perhaps a fluke. The teacher decided to contact Edward anyways, and urged him to at least attempt to take another picture of the same quality.
Edward was driving when he received the call, and a spark of excitement ignited in him. This sudden intrusion disturbed the crystalline stasis that was Edward’s day-to-day routine, like sun-rays marching over a frost covered dawn. The idea that he had left an impression, that life might have something lasting in store for him, thrilled Edward. It energized him. He was so shocked from this unexpected occurrence that he wanted to begin his search for the next picture immediately. Later that night, while Edward was at home debating the subject of his project, it began to rain. While gazing outside at the hostile weather, he realized that what he wanted to convey was currently the seminal aspect of his life: loneliness. The idea suddenly appeared vividly in his mind, and he knew he could take the picture that night.
Excited, he set off driving downtown with a fresh roll in his camera, which was lying on the passenger’s seat. He drove around, keeping his eyes open, waiting for the image to manifest itself before him. Several hours later, the rain was still falling and he had found nothing. Nothing was clicking for him. He decided to head back for the night, and began driving back to his apartment. The rekindled hope began to wane a little inside Edward, but he reassured himself that it would take time to find the right circumstance he wanted to capture. Still, a dismal tenor filled the car.
Then he saw it. There it was, in front of him. Unquestionable and perfect, Edward felt such a strong connection with what he saw that it was if he were looking at his own reflection. Directly ahead there was a woman sitting on a curb, looking odd with high heels and a rain coat. She was huddled, arms embracing her knees, under a streetlight. The light intertwined with the rain as it poured down upon her. She was alone, cold, and wet; yet she was illuminated. Edward stopped and got out of his car some distance away, found the right position, and calibrated the camera precisely. Then he took the shot, and a deep sense of relief flooded him; there was no need for another take. He knew it was going to be perfect.
He jumped back in his car, ecstatic, when he realized how depraved it would have been to simply leave the subject of his photo behind. He pulled up to the woman slowly and opened the door. Hesitantly, she got in; she felt confident after noticing his feeble and kind appearance. He asked where she lived and started driving her home. They talked some, and he found out that she had been waiting for a ride that had never come, and that she couldn’t take the bus or a taxi because she lived too far away. She had made the trip into the city after not having worked in years, and she was finally forced into finding a job because of her dwindling economic situation. She spent all day walking through downtown trying to get a job when she was just about ready to give up. Before she did, though, she walked into a bank and managed to grab the manager’s attention. She struck him as honest enough and fairly intelligent, and thus offered to set her up for an entry level secretary position. Edward listened and wasn’t disheartened by the news that he was in for a trip, for he was still encouraged by the photo and the fact that he had found someone to talk to.
After a few moments of silence the woman noticed something on the floor board in front of her when her heel knocked against it. She leaned over and picked up the camera. Edward was nervous that she might correctly infer that he had taken some pictures of her while she was unaware, which would naturally be considered rather inauspicious. He looked over at her, and saw that she was just studying and fiddling with the camera. But then he realized that one of her fingers was floating above the button which would open the roll compartment and thus ruin the negatives. Startled, he reached over too suddenly to grab the camera and the woman mistook it for some type of advance and defended herself. Edward lost control of the car during the skirmish and the vehicle went sideways on the wet road and began to flip.
Edward, who wasn’t wearing his seat belt, was flung out of the driver’s side window and flew several dozen feet in front of the still rolling car. His last conscious testimony was in his distress for the woman, who he hoped was still strapped into the safer confines of the car. He hit the ground hard and the asphalt and side-road gravel showed him no mercy. He skidded to a halt, half in and half out of a muddy ditch. The vehicle came to a full stop soon afterwards, turned upside down with the roof resting squarely on top of Edward’s lower legs. The woman inside the car was already dead, her head having suffered severe trauma. Lying undamaged in front of the car, strangely enough, was the camera that Edward had just taken the perfect picture with.
And here I am now, sent here to retrieve him. Poor Edward, he was so close. His story lays tangled behind him, but I still can read it perfectly. Edward and his life were full of sadness, self-importance, and self-pity, but there was an austere hope and optimism at the end. Without hesitation, time goes on, and in a short time Edward’s family will wake up to prepare for a celebration that will never occur. Perhaps he will still find happiness, especially once he learns that the camera housing that special image was left un-ruined. The picture capturing the woman’s solitary beauty and Edward’s prodigal vision lies intact on the cold, slick earth. His last breath lingers visibly for a moment, and then is gone.
