Short Stories

Invincible.

i wrote this for my fiction writing class just a few days ago. this was supposed to be a basic character sketch, not really a short story(:

Walter Haleston

Walter slipped the finished papers into the folder neatly, placing it in a tidy pile in the corner of his spotless desk. Nodding appreciatively at his completed workload, he suddenly plucked the stack off of his desk and threw it on the ground, smiling contently as the sheets swirled in the air before settling across the carpeted floor. He snatched all of the papers off the ground carelessly, stuffing them back into the folder haphazardly, happy with the result of “accidentally dropping” the files that he was assigned. And was due 3 days ago.

Sighing wearily, he counted down the number of weeks before he would be done interning as an associate at his parents’ law firm, silently asking himself why he had been cursed to have such a successful family. His parents were founders of the most successful law firm in New York, his mom’s sister and brother-in-law were respected politicians, and even his dad’s brother was a lucrative doctor in Maryland. Each of his cousins knew immediately that they would follow in their parents’ footsteps no matter what and make them proud, as if they desired nothing but their parents’ acceptance. And of course, even his little 12-year-old sister knew that she was born to be a lawyer, that it was in her blood.

“Walter, I need to speak to you,” his boss’s stiff voice echoed through the intercom, and he sighed again but brightened when he realized that perhaps his boss had finally remembered that Walter had failed to hand in his cases when they were due. Swiftly wiping the pleased smile off of his face, he set off for his boss’s office with his messy case file in tow. Taking a breath, he gently tapped the door that read Junior Partner. With a muted ‘come in,’ Walter shuffled into a neat, organized space, his eyes downcast and jaw clenched in anticipation.

“I’m sorry I didn’t hand my cases in–” he started to say but was cut off.

“Walter,” she said, confused at what he had started to say but waved it off before continuing with her original thought. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you, but you nor I had the time with all of those cases we had.”

His boss, a small blonde lady, chuckled heartily, and Walter flinched at the sound, already knowing this wasn’t the usual check-up about how he was enjoying his time at the firm. A fear and excitement swamped him suddenly, and he stood there frozen, wondering if he was to be released early or was being promoted. At last, the reason for his presence in the office was revealed, and Walter had never felt the blood drain from his face as fast as it did then.

“Walter, your parents have called to check in on you. They’re offering you position at the firm. Congratulations!”

Shock. Disbelief. Then anger. Frustration. More disbelief. Walter’s mind went into overdrive– How did this happen? He had failed everything flawlessly. Flawlessly. Handed work in late, arrived late, slacked off during meetings. He even completed each of his cases with several carefully executed mistakes! Before this moment, Walter couldn’t have been happier that his internship was nearly over. From the moment he set foot in the building every morning at 9:18 am sharp, he was desperately waiting for the next moment he could escape the prison cell he had been working at for the last year.

But with this curveball, the show wasn’t over, and the curtains weren’t ready to close. Walter wasn’t finished with this career. He cursed himself for not having seen this coming, for misjudging his parent’s interest in him. Walter’s plan all along was to finish the internship quickly, quietly and uneventfully. No outstanding cases, no extraordinary solutions, no ingenious plans. Being an ordinary failure was what he had been aiming for since day one– though he was far from it– and he had been so close, so close, to executing a flawless plan. Why hadn’t he realized his parents would track him down and train him to be perfect?

The perfect son who followed in his parents’ footsteps. The perfect lawyer who could close a case faster than you could sit down. The perfect man that outshone every other person in all of New York. Perhaps it was because he overestimated his parents’ love for him, hoping that they would love him no matter what choices he made in life. Of course, that’s what they always told him, but behind every “I love you, son. We’re so proud of you,” there was always that underlying threat of “But if you don’t become a lawyer and upstage your cousins, we’ll disown you.” That’s all he was to them– something they could brag about to their relatives, the classic, “mine is better than yours.”

“You know,” he thought to himself, “With a 3.98 GPA, you really can be stupid.”

Wordlessly, Walter just walked out of his boss’s office, muttering something about a headache when she sputtered in the middle of her congratulatory speech and asked where he was going. Truthfully, he had no idea where he was headed– it was too early to head home since his train came at 7:30, and it was barely past 5. Even if he did have a destination in mind, his feet wouldn’t respond to his sluggish brain, acting on autopilot.

Shuffling out onto the street, his mind a mess of “what-if’s,” he let his feet take control and giving his mind a rest for once. Walter greatly restrained from smacking himself in the head every few seconds for being so naive– anger, frustration and miserability swirling around inside of him. He couldn’t grasp how unfair his life was: he had been an excellent student at Harvard. Why? Because his parents wanted him to go there. He hadn’t wanted to go to law school after college, but he did. Why? To appease his parents. He had done everything they had ever asked, but why did they just keep on asking, and asking, and asking?

As each foot came to meet the cold pavement, Walter wondered if this would be the last thing his parents ever expected of him. Everything happened in sets of three, right? Would becoming a lawyer be the final thing they ever asked of him? Or would they keep on asking and turning him into some kind of monster without a will, a desire, and–

Walter was on the verge of tears, ready to explode from all of his repressed regrets of not standing up to his parents before Harvard, not being the perfect son, and most of all, regrets of not wanting to be a lawyer. But suddenly, when he thought he couldn’t contain it any longer, he realized his feet had stopped moving. Apparently, his feet had reached their destination and weren’t moving until they entered the building they had stopped in front of. Walter immediately recognized where he was as he saw the faded posters in the window, even the chipped azure paint on the door.

He rushed towards the shop, and as he stepped through the creaky doorway, he shed all of his stress, pain, fatigue, all of it just fading away into an insignificance. Surrounded by DSLR’s, various lenses, books, old Polaroids and film canisters, it was here in that photography shop that he felt as though nothing could harm him, not even the end of the world, a meteor, or even his parents. It was here that he could finally conquer any adversity life threw at him.

It was here that Walter was invincible.