Short Story Reflection

The Fall

It was a chilly winter evening on January 2. The year was 1947, and tonight was a turning point in the life of the Don. He was driving down a dimly lit Washington street. In the passenger seat was his longtime friend and political ally, who he had known since his high school days. They had just gone out for a drink at a local bar, as they often did on nights before Congressional assemblies, and the senator had indulged a bit too much. “You‘re drunk,” the Don had said, “go home, get some rest.” Though the intoxicated senator thought that he was the mobster’s most trusted ally, he was blissfully unaware that he had become a liability, just as he was blissfully unaware of the pill that had been slipped into his drink. He was talking now, his words growing more slurred, but the Don paid him to no mind. The car pulled up to the apartment complex; the mobster guided his friend to the elevator and took him up to his penthouse. As his friend’s steps grew more staggered, the Don grew more focused, thinking only about the moments ahead.

He opened the door, motioned his friend inside, offered him another drink. “I’m not feelin’ so good,” the senator mumbled. “Some fresh air will clear your head,” said the Don, as he opened the door to the balcony. His friend continued to speak as he stumbled through the door; the Don didn’t hear him. They both stood at the edge of the railing, looking out over the city. The Don felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing but the dark road below, the soft glow of the streetlights shining back up at him through the blackness. His heart pounded in his chest; his face remained passive. A small shove was all it took. He watched as his former friend flipped over the edge of the railing.

The senator’s life was the first that the Don had ever personally ended. Sure, he’d been behind the deaths of several individuals, but he had never actually done the deed himself. It was no different than he’d imagined. He remained by the balcony, for a no more than a moment, lost in thought. He remembered times gone by, before he had become involved in the ‘family business.’ If somebody had told him then about what he would become… if only someone had warned him. No, he said to himself, no remorse. No looking back. Only forward. The Don took a step back, turned, and left the balcony. He made it to the door before he heard the dull thud of the senator striking the concrete fifteen stories below. 

Before this assignment, I had never really written an entirely fictional story, and that is something that I’d like to be decent at doing in the future. It actually occurred to me to write about corrupt individuals while I was watching House of Cards, and the story was originally going to be about a corrupt politician who pushed his colleague off of a roof. However, the next night I started rewatching The Godfather, and I realized midway through the film that a story about a mobster would make for a better plot. My first draft (when the story was still about a politician) was actually pretty close to the final product in terms of length of the story. However, my peer reviewer pointed out to me that I had hardly developed the main character at all in terms of backstory or after the actual crime had been committed. Honestly, the short stories that we read prior to this assignment didn’t really help me out that much when I was writing, except for “The Lottery.” This was because I liked the cliffhanger ending, which I was originally going to use for my story. However, in order to develop the character, I chose to tell the entire story of the Don’s first kill, rather than leave it at the final moments before the deed was done.