please please please please please please please review! I just want to know if I'm anygood or not. reviewers will be treasured; constructive criticism shall be venerated! Flames will be put in a fire-proof box and stored under the bed with all my old drawings that I just can't bear to throw away!
(Disclaimer. Disclaimed. But ask if you want to use any of my oc's please)
It had been fifteen long years since Gregor had left the Underworld for the last time. He had missed it bitterly at first, undergoing random bouts of depression and anger. He had even run away once. But he was over it. Some things still lingered with him; he hadn't dated any girl since Luxa, for example, but he had healed.
He had needed to heal, not just for his own sake. His family had needed fed, after all, and while his father had recovered enough to teach, he was never again as healthy as before the 'accident', as Gregor's mother referred to it. He had not been able to secure a high-paying job. Gregor's mother had found work at a grocer's. She made enough to pay the rent and electric bill, but no more. So at the age of fifteen, Gregor had gotten his first steady job. He had worked at Dunkin' Donuts for two years, until his grandmother died whereupon he'd been fired for some rather stupid mistakes he'd made while distracted, then as an assistant at Barnes and Noble for a further two.
Somehow, they'd made it. Now mother was manager of the grocery store and making enough to pay the expenses of the whole family, as long as they did nothing too extravagant. Lizzy was going to an expensive college in Connecticut on a full scholarship. She would be graduating in two months, to take a previously arranged post in some bank. Margaret, or 'Boots' as she had been formerly called, was doing very well in school. She was failing math of course, her talents had never lain in that direction, but she was hardly failing history, and who could fail science with their father as a personal tutor? Her literature and foreign language grades, on the other hand, were completely off the charts. She was only thirteen, and already she spoke seven languages fluently. The school had had to get special tutorial programs to to teach her online. Her teachers were astounded, particularly since she was currently failing her English class spectacularly. (She claimed it was boring.)
Gregor himself had become a police officer. There hadn't been many other options, what with his fairly terrible grades and lack of good people skills. The academy hadn't asked a lot of questions about his scars either, so theyd been a decent match. His instructors had commended his grasp of hand to hand combat. Lizzie had laughed when she heard that.
He worked in the North Brooklyn Borough, dealing mostly with homicides and shoot ups. His mother worried, of course, but she had decided about four years previously to allow Gregor to do what he wanted without too much fussing. Still, as she told him, "worrying's my job." And she came to check on him about once a week. Gregor appreciated it. It was nice to know she loved him, even if she was a bit of a mother hen. Besides, he was probably a major cause of her white hairs and he owed her some for that.
He liked being a cop. Not dealing with the homicides and shootings and thefts of course, but the camaraderie, the satisfaction of a job well done, and the somewhat idealistic belief that he was, in his own way, making the world a better place than it had been yesterday were good feelings, ones he wished to experience more of. He wanted to be a good cop, for he remembered how the police had acted when they'd been investigating his father's disappearance. He didn't want anyone else to have to go through that.
One day, he knew, he might do what his mother was always pushing him to do, get a wife, settle down, raise a family. It sounded rather nice. But something always stopped him. Instead, he donated as much money as he could spare to charities. Remembering his own upbringing, he helped families in the poorer neighborhoods as much as he could, usually only amounting to some donated groceries and helping out at the local food pantry, but sometimes larger things. Watching children while their parents were called away on emergencies. Finding missing children. Once, he had pulled a drowning boy out of a pool.
He had no plans for the future. He would not have been unhappy to die like that, with family and friends who cared for him. He had seen may worse ways to die, after all.