edge·lord ˈej-ˌlȯrd. plural edgelords. slang. : someone who makes wildly dark and exaggerated statements (as on an internet forum) with the intent of shocking others.
CW: suicide, mental health issues, abuse, murder and violence.
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Her - age 17.She doesn't care.
She really doesn't.
Not about them, or their opinions.
They act like they disbelieve this of course, and that doesn't shock her. Why would they ever believe their opinion isn't important enough to matter to her?
When she tells them she doesn't care what they think of her, or herlifestyle choices she's met with verbal abuse.
That's their God given right they believe.
At home - courtesy of both controlling parents - sometimes her father's fists if that takes the older man's fancy, or the mother's slaps.
"We brought you into this world, we can take you out of it!"At school.
From idiots in her class who think high school is gonna matter in the grand scheme of life.
Kids who don't realize it's only important to people like her mom, who peaked at the age of sixteen and eyes up the pool lifeguard in a way that only an unsatisfied wife would. Or like her dad, living for the moment the way too young for them cashier at the market smiles at him- she's just doing her job - and fantasizing that maybe this girl is actually waiting for him to go buy ingredients for meatloaf.
The future is now her teachers keep telling them.
They're exactly one year away from graduating high school. They'll be adults soon. Don't they know they're supposed to have everything figured out by that age?
It's only the rest of their lives, after all.
No pressure.
As a kid whenever anybody asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up, she only ever had one answer.
"I wanna fly."
The adults ether indulged or laughed, depending on the setting.
Bur all she ever dreamed of was being able to fly far,far away from the suburban existence that somehow always felt like a trap.
The adults would never admit it, but they envy her youth.
The honesty she speaks, often brutal in its nature.
Her freedom from the shackles of life in suburbia that bind them to the lives they built out of fear, desire for security or just the simple notion that this would be enough, when in actuality it hasn't been enough for a very long time.
The kids her own age feel a similar way.
Why isn't she worried about the future?
Why does she think she's so special?
The thing is, she doesn't.
The reason she doesn't worry or care about the future?
Because she knows she doesn't have one.
Or rather, she's seen the kind of future available to her, decided she doesn't want it and that none is preferable.
There's no money for college and her grades were never good enough for scholarships. The middle child sandwiched between the golden sister and the baby brother.
A fill in. A ghost. An unfinished page in her parents' perfect life story.
Destined to become a footnote in her own.
Her - age 27.She cares even
less these days which sometimes makes her laugh.
A mirthless one that never reaches that genuine pitch. It's hollow to her own ears. An echo in an empty house. A dog barking in the distance.
A decade is a long time to wear down an already fatigued mind and heart.
The Mustang slices through the desert like a blade in the dark and behind its wheel, she thinks back over everything that led her to this point.
She'd always heard your life flashes before your eyes before dying.
One last trip down memory lane can't hurt.
She thinks of her parents always nagging her for not having any clear goals, for not being more like her siblings, for never caring enough.
Her high school years being the utter inverse of the best days of her life, as she was always informed they would be.
Every dead-end job and relationship she's had.
Some highlights reel.
She sighs, exhaling into the breeze that surrounds her and fans her blonde hair out around her like a halo.
Up ahead the road stretches out before her, seemingly into oblivion, kissing the sky at the edge of the horizon where heat waves bounce.
She swerves when the oncoming car does the same, the other a reluctant player in the game of chicken she initiated.
The other driver loses control and their car flips over, rolling once, then twice before it lands on its roof at the side of the highway.
She laughs, blue eyes meeting her own gaze in the rearview mirror, watching that other car erupt into flames behind her.
In the distance there's the all too familiar wail of sirens that have been tailing her on and off over the past three days.
This seems like as good a time as any to put an end to all this.
She's getting tired now.
In truth, she's been tired for a long time.
The kind of tired that runs bone deep and settles behind your ribcage as a dull ache.
Turning the car around, she accelerates, drives towards the cop cars.
One final game of chicken.
In that final five minutes that encapsulate the end of her short life though, a funny thing happens.
It happens so swiftly that she doesn't even have time to think, just feel.
Truly feel.
It's only when she realizes that this time she is going to die, that she notices how blue the sky is, how the flowering cacti at the side of the road are in bloom, adding color to a sun bleached landscape.
She feels the wind in her hair as her vehicle hits the squad car in a head on collision.
It caresses her skin as he sails through the air, for a brief moment suspended in time, weightless.
"I'm flying," she thinks before her body hits the tarmac.
And she smiles.
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fiction. After going back and forth on a different idea for this prompt, I chose in the end, to write asubversion of the edgelord, because I'm contrary like that. Rather that this being someone who is being edgy for shock tactics, I wanted it to be someone who is in pain, but no one really cares to see that, because they're too concerned about themselves, and then wind up shocked when the extreme happens.
Inspired in part by growing up in an extremely small and repressed place, some angsty feelings I experienced as a teenager, and a beautiful conversation I had with
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inkstainedfingertips about one of both our favorite movies, American Beauty. (Thank you for inspiring me <3)
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