The grey haired man stood, staring out the 12th story window, blinds opened to flood the room with the evening light. Massive panes of glass, across the room, made believe they were invincible, guardians against the city lights. The setting sun turned shadows from the buildings into darkened claws that would no doubt consume people, cars and streetlights, feeding them to a black monster past the horizon. The desk behind him, normally so tidy, the product of obsessive dusting, polishing, arranging, now so lonely, covered in crumpled papers stained by coffee rings and an untouched nametag. Jeremiah Kingston. He hadn’t slept in the last three days, showed in his in his bloodshot eyes and worn face. Dark stubble on his chin had begun to thicken. Three weeks- three weeks of writing and signing and calling and heaven knows everything he’d worked on. And it ended in nothing. The deal had been broken by the associate company. There had been full out war between corporations, with Jeremiah at the front lines. He told the directors that he had the upper hand, that he had an unbreakable case. But with such surety in his company comes the risk. If someone is that certain, stakes inevitably go upwards in the hectic, business defined world of Wall Street. And someone like him- at the height of his game, at the peak of his potential- he wasn’t allowed to fail. He knew there would be consequences worse than death in this gambit. The city outside was hushed, and the earth began to slowly recede from him. Up here, in the darkened New York skyline, he was alone, a failure society had thrown in the windy cloudless summits. A knock on the door behind him. A pause. The man didn’t turn to look and see who entered without invitation. It didn’t matter. The sound of a paper sliding onto his desk, then the click and knock of the door closing once more. The man had one more thought. He wondered how simple it would be to break the window’s reinforced glass.
Written at Writer's at Harriman
Ahem. Well.
ReplyDeleteThat's dark.
BUT! Very good. I liked the part about the windows pretending. VERY good descriptions.
You described him as grey-haired, yet he's in the peak of his potential? Oh, I guess some men grey prematurely. But then his beard is dark? I guess that's possible, too, only it conflicted in my mind's eye.
Ooh! I read it again and saw a LOT of good, tie-over words. Like saying the deal was "broken," he had an "unbreakable case," consequences "Worse than death," the society had "thrown" him,
And then the thoughts of suicide, like breaking the window and throwing himself down 12 stories.
OH! And The window is like symbolism for himself, when you describe it as pretending to be invincible, like the man who thought his case was unbreakable, but, like the window, he can't stop his own decline, just like the window can't possibly stop the light from coming in.
Also, all the Break-related words show him as a broken man.
And all the descriptions in the beginning really set the mood perfectly in showing the man's despair.
I LIKE it.
To be fair, I did get a lot of editing help from a really good poet, but thank you. I figured you're at the peak of your buisness potential in your fourties and fifties anyways, and it was that poet's idea to make his beard dark. And.. does it feel like WE'RE THE ONLY TWO ON THIS BLOG AT ALL??
ReplyDeleteI have another peice I wrote, about a piano that I think is much better than this, but.. I downloaded the wrong file... and lost my printed copies... hopefully, a friend I gave one of those copies to can send me it. Otherwise I'm a little bit doomed.
Hey, I couldn't get on the blog 'cause I was on vacation. Anyway, about the piece...it's pretty good. I like the deep emotion you've pushed into its depths, the visualization, the topic. It needs some line-editing though to make the sentences flow more smoothly. There are some excess words which need to be cast into the depths of the deepest, darkest ocean too...but other than that, a wonderful piece worth reading. And more than one time.
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