Jeremy Picols: Chapter 1

If I must write a description on a young man named Jeremy Picols who just happens to get himself into an utter mess with everyone and everything he associates with, then I'll decide not to conform to the rest of society and furthermore will not tell you a

 

              1

Gusts of wind leaped around within his throat. The wind was filling his lungs- tears stained his sallow cheeks as he slowly closed his eyes.

He was flying, he realized.

He screamed, his eyes fluttering open as his arms flung around wildly, desperate.

 

“H-Hello?” He stifled a yawn, guessing it was one of his parents, or both of the monsters.

“You’ve just won a free trip to Australia, please claim the trip now!” Jeremy, smiling, pushed the END button and carefully placed the phone back in its holder. Then he let out a holler, his clenched fists punching the air fiercely in front of him; he was wishing he could somehow beat the stuffing out of the person whose voice was shrouded with that damn sanguinity. It was just too bright for the morning.

The phone rang again, and he scarcely had the chance to voice out a curse before he was interrupted.

“Jem. We need to talk,” A remarkably familiar voice demanded on the other line.

“Veronica?” This didn’t make sense. He had left Vertigo Veronica on the uppermost floor of the Eiffel tower in way back when as a small joke. He thought she’d find it funny, really!  Except she hadn’t exactly spoken to him since. Voluntarily, at least. They had worked together in the newspaper; that was before he got fired.

“No, it’s Mimi.” He almost groaned. Mimi had an even more gruesome story than Veronica’s. On some nights he had an occasional drink or two; it turns out he never could hold his liquor well. He spouted one too many female names when he was incidentally being nursed back to health in the mornings by Mimi. Which also caused him to receive a broken nose once, he remembered- but this time it was a doctor nursing him back to health. One of the reasons he tended to avoid drinking these days.

Oh God, he thought, back to the reality of the situation. Anyone but that! She continued in a relatively controlled tone, “I was wondering… Where’s your article, Jem?” Her voice was coated with honey.

Jeremy’s blood turned cold. Mimi never knew that he had worked for a newspaper. But she was somehow able to shove the fact that he had been let go into his face. She correctly took his silence as his own faulty confusion because she said impatiently, “Veronica contacted me- she was worried about you, Jem. So I suppose she felt I had a right to be worried too; us girls stick together, you know,” Her voice droned on and on in that breathy, wound up voice.

How could she live with herself? She probably put earplugs in immediately before she so much as breathed a word, he concluded after contemplating her unfortunate situation.

Author's Note

Please ignore grammar, unless you feel really really strongly about it, then I can make no objections! And I feel that the type of critique I need here is if this is an interesting start for a story. That's been my main problem for the past xy years I've been alive, so tell me if the start doesn't pull you in at all or if there's something that can be changed to make it more interesting...or if it's absolute crap that's impossible to change or edit to the extent that it'll be suitable for the start of a story. Oi vey. Alright, just give me your most harmful critique on whatever you want to critique (preferably not on grammar though. But I stay loyal to my previous words), lay it on this puppy!