N&M: Chapter One

This is the first chapter of Nephilims and Monsters

Chapter One

Not an Ordinary Family

 

            My life wasn’t ever normal, even before all the crazy stuff started happening. It was hard enough living in the big city of Chicago, but added the fact my whole family is full with cops. Then I’ve got a whole new mess of problems. I bet all of you are thinking that this should be a good thing. Well it is for the most part a good thing until my dad started bringing his work home with him. For one example a couple of years back, my dad busted this big time gang leader, Eddie Rodriguez. The newspapers were all over him calling him Jack “Grid Iron” Steven. I know such a stupid nickname.

            Well Eddie’s men didn’t like it and decide to threaten my dad. Fearing for our lives, Dad made us move in with grandpa’s house. He’s actually the police chief of the city which makes him my dad’s boss. Eddie was still in jail along with some of his lackeys. I don’t really know all the details. Dad liked to keep some things to himself.

            That was years ago, and now thing are back to normal. I woke up one sunny morning with the smell freshly made pancakes. I love my mom’s pancakes. I rushed downstairs to the kitchen. I found my mother, Bethany Stevens. She smiled at me as I entered the room.

            “Good morning, sweetie. How was your sleep?” she asked as she flipped a pancake over. Everyone says she was one of the most beautiful women with her pale skin model figure, curly long red hair, and light green eyes.

            I replied “I haven’t really been sleeping right.” She turned to me looking very nervous. I quickly reacted. “Don’t worry. Mom, I’m pretty sure it’s nothing.”

            My mom is always worrying about everything whether Dad is coming home from work or if I was doing well in school. However I do have a few problems in Math. I mostly do alright just to make her happy.

            The fact is this I was lying to her. I was being plagued by a dream. Just one, that seem on repeated. I kept having it every night for the past month. It always started out the same with me running through snow covered forest. The screams of people echoed through the air, I ran through them. Then a black blur ran up and knocked to the ground. I tried to get up, but something grabbed my neck. Then the blur snapped it. Not one of my most pleasure dreams.

            “Is that pancakes I smell?” a familiar voice said.

            We turned to see my father wearing a blue suit. Jack Steven walked into the kitchen. He was one of the toughest police detectives in the force. Everyone in the city either hated him, afraid of him, or a little of both. He looked tough kind of menacingly face with big pointy nose, high cheekbones and slight smile. He also had short dark brown hair and matching brown eyes. He walked past me messing up my hair before kissing my mom.

            “Yo, you guys burning the pancakes.” I said awkwardly as I rushed over. I took it off the pan and put on the plate next to it. It was almost black by the time I got there. I sighed as my parents giggled like a couple of teenagers. They have been married for past seventeen years and yet they still acted like a bunch of newlyweds.  Then again I’m not much of romantic person.

              He said “Sorry, Alan.” My dad turned to me with a wicked smile. “So you ready for your first day of school? You only have two more years until you are off to college.”

            Yeah, I am a junior at Central Masters Academy. It’s pretty much an expensive private school for kids whose parents are very rich, or they are very smart, or a combination of the two. My sister also went to the same school. Just then she walked down the stairs. My older sister Anna Walker was one those people that everyone loves to hate. She was pretty, smart, and popular. She was practically a godsend in everyone’s eyes that didn’t have a brain. I was just her boring little brother.

            “Good morning family, and how are we all doing this beautiful morning?” she asked. We all grunted none of us are morning people. She took a seat at the dining table.

             Anna looked almost exactly like our mom, from her pale skin to model figure. Expect she had our father’s brown hair and eyes. Her looks only increased her popularity giving captain position at school cheerleading team and even her class presidency. As I made more pancakes, my mother took the stack to the dining room table for the family.

            “I can’t wait to see all my friends” Anna said as Dad put some bacon on her plate. Now Anna might rule the school, but I ruled the basketball court. It was one place I actually feel at peace running around, leaping into the air, and feeling the wind brushed my skin. I don’t know, but it was like nothing else matters.

            I walked into the dining room where my family was waiting for me. I took my usual seat on the right side of the table. I immediately took some bacon and some pancakes. I began eating my lovely breakfast. Everything seemed at peace as we all started eating. However that was all about to change.

            “So are you excited about today, Alan?” Dad asked me. Before he put some pancake in his mouth.

            I lied, “Yeah, I can’t wait to see all my new classmates.” I didn’t know if Dad bought it, but I definitely knew that Mom didn’t. She looked at me with those green eyes and I looked away.  I wasn’t going to go tell the truth. I’m pretty sure Dad didn’t want to hear the truth.

            The truth is I really didn’t want to go to school and it’s not the reason you expect. I actually enjoy my classes, but it’s the people I don’t like. I just can’t understand some of things people do. Why do people smile in your face, but talk behind your behind? I spend most of days avoiding gossip and people who start them. Unfortunately, that is ninety percent of people at school so yeah, it can get kind of lonely. I quickly finished off my breakfast and started heading to the living room to get my things.

            “Alan, wait your sister going to drive you to school.” Mom said. Anna let out a huge grunt that I could hear from the dining room.

            I insisted, “I can walk to school, Mom.” As if I wanted to be in the same space with Anna. There was a short moment of silence. I knew that I wasn’t going to get my way. I sighed showing a sign of defeat. “Fine, I will ride with the screaming harpie.”

            “Dad!” My sister screamed from the dining room. That just proved my point. Anna always ran to Dad which she didn’t get what she wanted from Mom. It was a constant thing between them.  Dad would always agree with Anna until Mom gave him one of her look. It was a look she gave us when she didn’t like what we were doing.  Then Dad would cave in and change his mind agreeing with Mom. This happened many times.

            Dad said “You two need to learn how to get along. Don’t forget it grandfather’s birthday so dinner at his house right after school. Don’t be late or I’ll ground you both until you’re thirty-three.” I didn’t know why I was going to be punished. It was not like I could drive around and could get grandpa’s house.

            “Fine, we will be there.” Anna said sounding very confident. Then she joined me in the living room as I was throwing on my jacket. “Didn’t Mom tell you to get rid of that dirty old jean jacket?”

            I screamed, “No, mom was the one who gave me the jacket.  I will never throw this away.” I picked up my book bag while Anna was getting her things together. I waited for her to finish before we said our good bye to parents. Then Anna grabbed her car keys on the way out. We walked out into the driveway where her car was at.

            For Anna’s seventeenth birthday, Dad got her a shiny red convertible. She absolutely adored this car.  However in order to keep this car, she had to do three things;  must keep her grades up, keep a part time job, and drive me to school and home every day.  She wasn’t so happy about the last thing. Now every time we arrive at the parking lot, everyone looked at us. I hated it, but Anna loved the attention. That’s exactly what the car was; a big attention magnet was with wheels. When we arrived at parking lot, like everyday Anna’s little group of popular people walked up to us.

            “Hello, Anna” They said in unison.  All the pretty girls from the cheerleading team were gathering around us. Then they looked at me. “Hello Alan.”

            I grinned slightly “Good morning everyone.” Anna and I got out of the car. I walked away from the chattering group and headed up to the school courtyard.  It was small grassy area leading up to the huge building that was the school. Central Masters Academy kind of reminded me of a temple with white pillars and red brick walls. One thing I loved about this school is that there are no uniforms. Unlike many private schools, Central allowed students to wear normal comfortable clothes.

            Then I heard a loud noise and quickly turned around. I watched Anna rush toward a guy. I quickly recognized the boy as Dylan Rider. If Anna is the queen of Central then Dylan would be its king. He was a tall guy with arms like a gorilla. His hair was blonde kind of spiky under his tanned skin. His eyes were blue. I know all this because Anna won’t stop talking about him. Even more when they started dating, I should really talk to her about her choice in men. She jumped on top of him while the people around him laughed.

            Then something bad happened; I saw a boy walking through the crowd. He bumped into Dylan. Oh crap, Dylan was famous for his short temper, although he never used it on Anna. He knew Dad and I would kick his a*s if he ever touched Anna the wrong way. This boy wasn’t going to be so lucky. He was officially Dylan’s new victim.

            Everyone moved around them, forming a circle. They all knew what was going to happen. I couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying, but Dylan was practically yelling at the guy. The only thing that bugged me was the look in his eyes. He remained calm the whole time as he watched Dylan became a completely a*s. Most people would yell back at him or at least say that they were sorry. Dylan was the biggest bully in the school.

            The boy tried to away. I guessed he was trying to avoid a fight, but Dylan’s boys got in front of him, blocking him. As much I hated getting involved, I knew I had to stop this. Dylan and his boys are a part of my basketball team which meant this my problem. I ran down the stairs and through the center of the crowd.  I was moving a lot faster than I expected. It only took me seconds to get through the circle. I saw Dylan moving toward the new guy with his hand in form of a fist.

            “Dylan, why don’t you leave the new guy alone?” I said stopping in between both guys. That probably wasn’t the best place to be.

            He said “Move, Alan this is none of your business.” He tried to push me away, but I was going to budge.

            “What you and the team do is my business. Your actions not only reflect poorly on yourself, but on this team and school.” I said proudly then I turned to Anna and boys. “Get him out of here.”

            Dylan didn’t move as if he was calculating what would happened if he hit me. He started moving toward the new guy. Once again I blocked his way standing in front of him. I was going to let him get the team in trouble.

            “Humph. Should you all be heading to class?” A deep voice echoed through the crowd. Everyone turned their heads to see Mr. Banner, the science teacher. He is one of my favorite teachers next to my first grade teacher Mrs. Franklins who made cupcakes for the class every Friday. When everyone saw his bushy beard face, they all scattered leaving all different directions.  Only the new kid and I were left alone with Mr. Banner, who looked at us with his calculating brown eyes. It was very creepy and I got the feeling the new gut felt the same. Then we heard the first period bell rang.

            He said “Well, lads get to class. I have a feeling you two will learn quite a lot.” Then he moved out of our way and we both began walking past him. “Boys, do me a favor and stay out of trouble for now on.”

            We both said “Yes, sir.” We kept moving to the school. The courtyard was quickly being drain of students as they entered their classroom. We walked thru the hallway in completely silence.

            The new kid was tall just like me, but a little wimpy looking. He has short black military style haircut. He had brown eyes behind his geeky glasses that matched his brown skin. Even though he looked like a simple nerd. He was able to stand up to Dylan who was practically a mountain compare to both of us.

            “Hey, sorry about Dylan, he’s probably on steroids. My name is Alan.” I struck my hand out ready to shake his. Yet he just stared at it as if I was setting him up or something.

            He leered at me. “Listen kid, I don’t want any problem from you or your friends. So do me a favor and stay out of my way.”

            Then he started moving ahead of me before he turned the corner. All I could think about how much of jerk this guy yet if he wanted to be left alone then. I would leave him alone. Somehow I had a feeling this guy was more dangerous than Dylan and whole team put together. 

Author's Note

Please don't ignore any problem I want to know so I can fix them. Thanks

Reviews

[TOF_Matt]

As I said in the prologue, you have much to be proud of in your work. You clearly have a deep, well-thought out mythology as the backbone of your story. I would guess that you are a young writer, or possibly one for whom English is not a first language (possibly both). My advice to you, as it is to many, is to read more and not just stuff on this site, but professionally written novels, short stories, and scripts. You have some foundational issues that you can surely fix with some work.

One of the reasons I guess you are a young writer is that you have a very passive voice, which is common amongst young writers. Passive voice includes anything of the "to be" variation, such as "I was..." or "it was..." or "they were...." Sometimes this kind of structure is unavoidable, but if you use it too much then the tone of your writing will start to drone and become boring. For example: "The new kid was tall just like me, but a little wimpy looking. He had short black military style haircut. He had brown eyes behind his geeky glasses that matched his brown skin. Even though he looked like a simple nerd. He was able to stand up to Dylan who was practically a mountain compare to both of us." Read that out loud and you'll start to see how it drones. Every sentence is "he was this. he was that. he had this. he had that."

An example of how you could fix this (and I stress this is just an example I came up with in about 10 seconds). "The new kid might've been as tall as me, but he was scrawny as a stick, even despite his military-esque crew-cut. It certainly didn't help that he hid his big brown eyes behind a huge pair of geeky glasses. Still, I had to give him credit for standing up to Dylan who was practically a mountain compared to either of us." Try reading that out loud and notice that the differing sentence structures liven up the scene, rather than making it sound like a bunch of bullet points. Try re-reading your entire book and seeing how many of these "droning passive" sections you can liven up this way.

In terms of your perspective, remember that when you use a first-person-perspective (that is, your narrator is the main character and uses the pronoun "I" do describe his actions), you're dealing with a "biased" narrator. That is, the narration should naturally follow your main character's thought process, and only know what your main character knows at the time. For example, you say early on "I found my mother, Bethany Stevens." But this isn't really a natural way for a first-person narrator to think. When you wake up in the morning and go downstairs to have breakfast, do you often think of your mother's full name? I would bet no. Trying to work in the mother's name this way (and later the dad's) feels forced and unnatural, and again starts to change the tone into a very "matter of fact" droning pattern. Instead, I would suggest you try introducing their names a different way. Have the mother and father engage in a conversation where they call each other "Beth" and "Jack." That is far more believable.

Also, be mindful of how you structure your sentences. When you use a phrase like "a familiar voice said," you're generally trying to create some suspense. You're indicating it's someone familiar, but that the main character is not quite sure. In this morning breakfast scene that you use it, there is neither suspense nor purpose. Would the main character really only identify his father's voice as "familiar," or would he know instantly that it's his father? My bet is on the latter. Always keep in mind what you're trying to accomplish with the way you present your material.

Be careful of something I call "empty description." In reality, this is just another form of passive voice. For example, you say "I began eating my lovely breakfast." What is a lovely breakfast exactly? Lovely is one of those empty words that really has no weight. Try something like "I breathed in the aroma of my freshly cooked breakfast and began wolfing down the sweets and savories together." The aroma adds a smell texture to the scene, wolfing captures the main character's enthusiasm, and sweets/savories cover taste. Remember that as the writer, you're the eyes and ears for the reader. When describing a scene, ask yourself, how can I appeal to the five senses? You want to make the reader live in the scene.

The last thing I'll mention is try not to bring up details just for the sake of having them there. For example, you talk at the beginning of how the family had to relocate to the grandparents house due to being targeted by a gang leader, but that now everything is back to normal. This kind of makes the relocation a moot point, unless they are still living at the grandparents' house (if they are, I don't feel that's clear). Remember that readers get bored easily so you only want to tell them what's important. The more words they have to read before reaching the "meat" of your work, the more likely they are to give up and put the material down. Make every sentence count for something.

In summary, you have great ideas but a very raw form. Luckily, form is always something you can work on through revisions, but you must be critical of your own work in revisions. Always ask yourself what you're trying to accomplish in a given chapter / section / paragraph / sentence. In writing, even the smallest piece of your work is important.

[Shep]

Just then is a bad thing to use to introduce someone walking in. Very good story. Can't wait to read more latter today. Please go back and clean it up like you did with the first page. See latter my friend.

[melissa]

I also enjoyed this book very much I can't wait to see what happends next so far I love the book

[Francesca]

It's an interesting plot, and you describe the characters and their quirks well. I laughed when he called his sister a screaming harpie, and the description of the new guy was good. Just watch the grammar and spelling, and watch parts where you don't have the voice of a narrator. For example in this sentence, "Unfortunately, that is ninety percent of people at school so yeah, it can get kind of lonely." Where you said "so yeah", that's how people talk to their friends, and it doesn't add to anything in the story. You should cut it out, and there's a few other sentences with words like that.
Good job on this! :)

[Thomas Fitzgerald]

The classic battle of good versus evil in the more bourgeois sense of the wording, well done

[Alicka]

Wow I enjoy this Chapter very much. I like how you mention the history cops in his family it gives you the information that the family fights against evil. Describing his sister Anna was awesome, then the mention of "Fine, I will ride with the screaming harpie.” tells the reader how his sister react to her brother. Alan's dream was placed well in the story, I can't wait for the next chapter.