Project 3
As Jade turns over under the comforters she subconsciously reaches for her buzzing cell phone on the nightstand. The screen lights up the pitch black room as it scans her face and reads her fingerprint to unlock and she silences her alarm. As she walks over to her closet the cold cement floors harshly send shivers up her spine. The black screen on the bare walls scans her face and fingerprint as the closest door clicks open and Jade walks into her dimly lit monochrome wardrobe. While Jade is getting ready she turns on the television and hears the commotion of an ongoing recent murder investigation in her city. “Last night government official Jason Gideon was gruesomely murdered in his home as FBI are still investigating the crime scene we advise all-” Although this is startling for her to find out about her town she dismisses it and swiftly turns the television off and calmly makes her way into her garage as the impression of her thumb unlocks her sleek car. Everyone in Jade’s office is already speculating about the recent news around the water cooler by that afternoon and Jade can’t help but overhear the loud whispers and when she glances up from her desk finds all her coworkers watching something outside of the window that seems to shock all of them. Before she can question it she sees agents swarming out of the elevator door in the hallway like bees in a beehive. She rushes to her other coworkers as they all start questioning what is happening and then Jade’s heart drops as she hears the deep, booming voice state her name. Her face is stripped of color and she feels as though her heart is going to explode as the sound of her heartbeat is pulsing through her ears. “Jade Perry, you are under arrest for the murder of Jason Gideon” the agent barks at her. Jade tries to deny these accusations but cannot seem to find her voice through the shock as she feels tight grips on her wrists and the sound of her Miranda rights being read slowly fade as she tries to understand what is happening. The next thing she knew she was in the back of the agent’s car and could see all of her coworkers pressed against the window and shaking their heads in disbelief. The flash of cameras and yelling hit her like a bolt of lightning as she is brought out of the car and pushes through the crowds of microphones attached to the hands of every news station she’s ever heard of and even ones she has not. While Jade waits in the ominous silence of the room the agents brought her in, the cold metal table she is now handcuffed to doesn’t amount to the eyes she can feel on the other side of the dark glass. When a man in a suit who she assumes is also an FBI agent storms in and slams a file full of papers on the table making her jump, she stares at the sticker on it with her name in big, bold letters until her vision becomes blurry and it comes to her attention that she has been crying. “I didn’t do anything I promise I don’t know what is going on please-” she begins to beg at the intolerant agent. “It’s no use we know it was you who murdered Jason Gideon but what we want to know is why you did it”. His voice seems to take the volume of both of theirs and she can only seem to make whimpering noises and repeated whispers of her innocence. “You are charged with first degree murder pleading innocent is not an option” he states. Those words haunt her and as he describes the details of the vicious killing all she hears is “you are charged with first degree murder” ringing in her ears. She barely notices her dried tears and puffy eyes while she blindly stares at the impenetrable walls of her new home. Although her expression is blank her mind is screaming with thoughts of how she got here and after being interrogated all night she seems to not be able to tell herself if she is truly innocent at all. While Jade rots away in her isolated cell, miles away the footsteps and voices quiet down in a hidden building as just about every person with power running from a-list celebrities to government officials sits at a long rectangular table. “Great work”, the hidden figure bellows, “but our efforts are not completely finished as you all know”. The group nods almost in unison as they sit back in their seats. “We need to thoroughly mark Jade Perry off the list of viable identifications and next time”, the voice pauses and this time the tone is more serious, “be more careful the next time one of you decides to kill your subordinates for a higher position, placing Jade’s fingerprints and putting her face on the killer caught by street cameras are not a short notice task that I wish to fulfill again”. The people disperse and Jade Perry is marked off a list that seems to go on forever. While some work on cross searching for Jade’s name throughout documents on the table some go into a highly secured room and when the door opens there seems to be tables of screens for miles each with a name assigned to them. They walk over to the table labeled Jade Perry and click it on while the giant screen filled with pictures of Jade’s face and different angles of her fingerprint zoom across and then disappear when the button labeled “used” is pressed. They all leave and go their separate ways never to speak of this night again and none even think of Jade, spiraling into a craze for the rest of her life in prison.
Reflective component:
My project demonstrates how I applied my understanding of a variety of skills discussed throughout the course by using metaphors, imagery, point of view, character, and voice throughout my short fiction story. The point of view is third person omniscient and metaphors and image were used to describe the character’s feelings and set the mood of the story. Some struggles I faced while trying to create my own composition that doesn’t depend directly on an original source is that I was challenged with how to start the story and how much detail to include or not because it is a “short story” after all. I overcame this challenge by planning it out like a movie in my heads since I imagined the idea as an episode of Black Mirror (a tv show with episodes that are based around modern society with regard to the unanticipated consequences of new technologies). I have learned that a range of tools for creative writing can be used and totally change how a story comes across. For example, if my short story was written from the first point of view it would not make any sense because the ending would not be revealed.
