This is the first time I've ever published my writing to anyone and I'm extremely hesitant to do so. I'm not a confident person when it comes to the things I write. I'll be honest with you, I absolutely suck with punctuation so just ignore it if this looks hideous.
This particular conversation comes out of a story I've been working on for several years. I got this idea after I finished playing Red Dead Redemption and I was intrigued by Jack's character. The story I am writing is not a RDR fanfic so it doesn't belong here. I thought I should take a break from my original story and maybe write fanfic? Maybe writing something else for a short period of time could help me out idk. I'm just not sure what I'd write if I did begin to publish stuff here.
I would also like to note that for some reason there were a lot of unnecessary codes between the paragraphs, so if you see something crazy that does not belong in a sentence just ignore it. I tried to delete all the random letters but there's no telling how many I missed.
I wrote this in the point of view of the character I'm using in the story I've been working on. I'm not sure what's going on here because I just found this on a random document on a flash drive. I tried to edit this but because it was written so long ago I was unsure of what to do, I don't remember writing this. Take this however you want, but please understand that this is taking a lot of effort to share this. Don't be afraid to leave a review, good or bad. I know you don't exactly understand what's going on but here it is...
Jack stares at me with a desperate look in his eyes, as if to silently ask for help. He sighs, leans back, and digs in his pocket for a cigarette. He stops when he finds nothing. He pulls at the grass instead, tossing the torn blades in a pile by his boot.
"Why do you smoke?" The question escaped my mouth before I could even think about it. I cringe and my cheeks burn and I hoped he didn't think I was overstepping my boundaries by asking him. I want to apologize, but I'm too embarrassed to speak now.
He's silent for a moment, and he stops picking at the grass. The question causes him to think harder than before, but he simply shrugs it off once he finds his answer. "I don't know. I was bored and wanted something to do."
Silence screams between us. I turn my head at the sound of a voice but ignore it. I wonder if he feels as awkward as I do. By looking at him I couldn't tell, the expression on his face was blank. I wondered what had beat him hard enough to drain all the emotions out of him.
It's Jack who speaks next. His tone is dull, his body becomes heavy, and his eyes harden. It was like this was the first time he'd spoken about himself to anyone. I sit back and listen, trying not to make him feel uncomfortable or embarrassed.
"I started smoking when I was sixteen," he whispers at first and then laughs. He pulls at the grass for a moment. "I started to drink when I was seventeen. I stopped caring about everything and was just desperate for something to hold me over till the next day."
Jack takes a deep, heavy breath and scratches the side of his head. He glances at me and makes eye contact for a moment, but decides it's too difficult and looks away. "I just completely lost it by then, and I figured no one else really cared about me, so what was the point? You know? What was the point in living at all?"
As he went on, I began to realize how much we had in common. Of course, Jack's story was far different from mine, but the more he spoke the more I begged to know. He was struggling to speak. It seems to hurt him to go on but for some damn reason he keeps telling me everything.
"I found a weird bottle of medicine in the boss's office one evening so I swallowed it all. It only caused me to throw up more than I should, and I didn't eat for two days after that because I couldn't hold anything down. And then I decided not to eat at all, and I did until I just couldn't stand it any longer." He laughs at himself a moment, almost in shock that he had actually done any of this.
He finally looks at me and holds his gaze, his eyes hurting but also amused. "I just felt like I didn't deserve a damn thing in the world. It all turned into crossing the street without looking because maybe I'll get hit, or trying to think of a way to break a bone and make it look like an accident. I threw myself off a horse one time, but I ended up catching myself on accident. I got a few bruises from that. I walked down the road at night, in the place where most people get robbed and killed, and didn't nothing happen." His voice has begun to crack and he takes a deep breath. It's hard for me to tell if his eyes were watery, but I thought they were.
He becomes uncomfortably silent and I'm not sure if I should speak up or not. He looks away, the only sounds come from the crickets and the birds.
"It's just so different now. Sometimes I find myself wanting to go back to it, wanting to just find a way to quit everything. But there's some stupid and ridiculous thought that maybe things will get better... that maybe I can get my life back on track, you know?" He stops after that, stares straight ahead, and then scoffs. He shakes his head, his cheeks turning red. "It's stupid I shouldn't have told you that."
