Hey, short story? *trigger warning*

I need help, guys.  This isn’t exactly about me though. I just have this assignment, I have to write a short story.

And I just wanted your guys’ input on it.

There was a single wobbly wooden chair, a small table, and a dim lamp in the living room of young Derek Soma’s apartment. He sat on the chair every night, reflecting on the day that had just passed, smoking the last cigarette he had each day due to his a-pack-a-day smoking habit.

Derek lived in the poorest part of town called the Tenderloin. San Francisco was a big city, many said it was the perfect mix of Seattle and New York City, plus fog. Hence why they call it Fog City. But, the Tenderloin was the area where no one would be seen after dark, the part of town where the gangsters and the homeless stayed. Nobody was happy living in the Tenderloin, and this did not exclude Derek Soma.

He worked as a waiter at a small diner near the Golden Gate, but barely made enough to pay his rent. Before the day he died he couldn’t pay his electric bill, and the cops found him, three days after his suicide with his lamp switched on but the electricity had shut off the day he died. The only reason the cops had gotten there so soon was because the residents of the next apartment over complained of a terrible smell coming from Derek’s apartment.

He lived a sad life, alone. Because in the Tenderloin, no one was your friend. Some nights he would go to sleep after the end of his noon to nine shift, merely to escape the voices that creep through his ears like the fog that often shrouds the city, but they always got loudest at midnight. He had tried to mute them, but it was like they lived inside his head. Not even becoming deaf could have made them stop.

One night he sat on the wobbly wooden chair, and he felt so overwhelmed. They were screaming at him. Squeezing his eyes shut, pulling at his dirty blonde hair and digging his nails into his golden tan skin, he was shaking and breathing erratically. This continued for what seemed like an eternity until he opened his emerald green eyes and sat motionless. There was silence. But just when he thought he was finally free of the torment, he heard them whisper.

“Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it.”

He took a deep breath, and complied. It was like a light switch, his conscious thought shut off. He slowly, warily moved towards the kitchen but had to prop himself up on the blue kitchen counter. Next he opened the utensil drawer and robotically pulled out the small paring knife, sharp and silver. Staring at it, not thinking, just doing.

The cuts he made were to the bone. The blood rolled down in beads and streams, and dripped onto the dirty and cracked linoleum.

He knew this was the end, and he didn’t know if he was happy to die but the voices were hushed and he knew they wouldn’t come back. So he made his way back to the wobbly chair, pulled out his final cigarette, lit it, and let the sweet and savory smoke swirl through his dying lungs one last time.