The Great Gatsby: Alternate Ending
An alternate ending of The Great Gatsby that I wrote for my English class last fall. Enjoy!
The shadows crept along the Sound as a flush of glowing lights swayed back and forth in continuous ripples ebbing and flowing without any discernible direction. The sultry crystals made me daze, and for a moment, it was as if my outrageous cousin had been standing above me like a vulture swooning for its prey. She blinked and I blinked, too. As I reached toward her rosy complexion that brightened up the cove, the sand became frigid, and so did the air and the water drifting numerous feet below. It only made sense that I’m having an eccentric, unearthly dream—that or I’m dead, and a vulture really did masticate and guzzle me forth. The tides sung softly now, and her voice filled my ears. I slowly succumbed to it, the lullaby, as her soothing melody compelled my consciousness to retreat. Sluggishly, my mind swayed to a gentle dwelling hidden deep in its cave, and the seashells never felt more tender against my fingertips.
Then it blared. First it was the lyrics, then the melody, then finally the entire song. I sheepishly evacuated my tranquil abode, and the consciousness that resided within me withdrew from its resting place.
“Nick!” She called out.
Suddenly the crashing tides drowned my solemn sleep, and out there cawing at my still figure was Daisy.
“Nick,” she repeated, slowly treading her way to the coast.
“Daisy,” I stated with firm decorum. The sight of her was unruly, a trepidatory that jolted me to sweep away the few granules of sand off my trousers.
“Your hair is quite dusty, I must say, they shimmer in the moonlight far more than Pammy’s Tom Tinker."
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Rest assured, I might not even believe that it was made of the same dull wood being produced in those factories. Tom must have had it built from the most decorative artisan, and with that said, must have even imported it no matter the cost! Oh, he never spared an expense, did he?”
“Daisy, why have you come?”
She approached me with trembling eyes and spoke in a rather sour, clandestine voice, “I could ask you the same.” For a second I bluffed my shock, as I stood paralyzed by her momentary awareness of the bitter reality presented before her. “It is pretty chilly,” her voice returns to its falsified bliss, “And can you believe I forgot to bring a coat! Especially the one with little pearls embroidered along the seams. You know, I originally thought I was admired by someone I couldn’t have, and they had sent me this present, this beautiful coat, as an avowal to their never-ending affection. But it had seemed that my admirer had lived right under my nose! Tom is quite charming, is he not?”
I ignored her question.
“I’ve decided to give the old sport some company before I fly back.”
“Oh, you’re leaving so soon?”
“It turns out my reason to stay has already left.”
“Well, isn’t that nice?” She passed by me eyeing the landscape, “You can see the green light at the end of my dock… twinkling dreamily like a star, I might almost say.”
“It did bare quite fantastically as a view for Mr. Gatsby.”
For a moment, her body stopped moving and I had wondered whether Daisy had become a ghost by a snap of the universe. She hovered there, toward the edge of the daunting cliff, and when I had patted her shoulder to turn her around, she might as well had been one. Her eyes had become equivocal, two floating specs on a rose-stripped, pale face. She didn’t quite look at me, which only led me to think she was admiring my dirt-flecked shirt for the likes of forgetting what had made her vision so foggy.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
Daisy elevated her gaze so far as my chin and lingeringly brought it back down as she turned to the Sound once again. The affable breeze howled in consolation and if I hadn’t been a man of Yale, I could have sworn to believe that it whispered compliments of sorts right into her disheartened, longing ear.
I stepped towards her, picking at the stitched cloth of my deep pockets, and she took a step, too. “Daisy?” The arch of her Mary Jane’s never felt so free as it did now against the rocky brim overlooking the water.
She apocryphally murmured, “If only green were as warm of a colour as yellow.”
With a single, eloquent bounce, her deed was done. She leapt from the ledge in one swift, silent motion; so flawlessly she had become a hushed vulture satisfied with its meal. I had screamed her name as she fell, but I knew it wouldn’t have changed the outcome of what was predestined by the universe above. I felt heavy and vulnerable, as if my heart had no other way to envisage what had just happened.
The moon rose higher, casting a luminous beam onto the cadaver draped in elegant fabric, and it almost seemed unfair that she couldn’t have drowned instead of jabbed her body against a pile of rocks. Watching her bleed out was just as unsettling as it was to see the dark pigment of the water turn red, and so, still clutching my pockets, I sat down once again sprawled across the sand.
