Airborne

Chapter 1 - Family Troubles

"Shut up, you little turd!" Jack shouted at his younger brother, Aiden as he slouched at his desk, trying to get his homework done before the "big trip".

"I just want to know what you're working on." Aiden moaned in response.

Jack rolled his light blue eyes. "It's a history essay, now please. Go. Away." He hissed through his clenched teeth. Aiden finally gave into his brother's "dicator-like" attitude and sulked away from his brother's room.

Jack was an IB student, he and Aiden were part of the MUN club in their school and were going to a conference in Bangkok tomorrow morning, yet he had a history essay to finish writing by the time he got back from the trip. During the last trip, Jack tried to put off an essay until after the trip the night before he returned to school; it did not go well. Thus, this time Jack was determined to finish all his work before tomorrow morning, and his parasite of a brother was not helping.

Jack was 16 years old, while his brother Aiden was 12. They both looked exactly the same, except Aiden was only up to Jack's shoulder height-wise. They both had dirty blonde hair that was short, but still covered their foreheads. They had round faces that ended with pointed chins, with small noses, wide bright blue eyes, and thin lips to pair with their large mouths. They both had thin bodies that weren't in good shape, but they weren't in terrible shape either.

Jack's bedroom door creaked open again and Aiden poked his head through.

"What?" Jack groaned.

"M-mom just wanted to let you know dinner is on the table." Aiden whimpered.

"Fine, I'll be there in a few minutes." Jack responded with a sigh.

"I-it's gonna get cold-" Aiden warned Jack before being interrupted.

"Oh my god, I know!" Jack shouted at his brother.

"I just want to finish this paragraph." He added before motioning his brother out by flicking his hand. Aiden left the room again and Jack pushed his blonde hair out of his eyes before resuming typing his essay.

After what seemed like an hour, Jack finished writing the paragraph and he lumbered downstairs where his family was still eating dinner. It was meatloaf, again.

"Hurry, your dinner's getting cold." His mother said blankly as Jack sat down. He said nothing to respond and began eating his food. The entire family ate dinner quietly, a miserable atmosphere falling upon the dinner table. All colour seemed to drain from the dining room as the family continued to eat.

As soon as Aiden had finished everything on his plate, he finally broke silence. "I-I'll go pack my bag." He said quietly before bolting upstairs to his room. Jack's parent's finally spoke up as well.

 "You should go pack your bags too sweetie." Jack's mom advised him.

"I can't, I have work to do." Jack responded dully as he swallowed a slice of meatloaf.

"But you've been working all afternoon, take a break." His dad advised. "Look at those bags under your eyes son. You have to take a break with your work." Jack hated to say it, but his dad was right, there were purple bags under his eyes, the symptom of spending multiple nights up until one or two in the morning, mainly spent doing work.

"But then I'll fall behind." Jack whined as he rubbed his eyes. His parent's were right, he was exhausted from the constant work load, but he was deathly afraid of him falling behind if he took time off.

Just then, Aiden came back downstairs, holding Jack's Macbook charger.

"Jack? Do you want me to back your chargers? I have extra space." Aiden asked his brother.

"Sure, fine.. Whatever." Jack said as he rolled his eyes again. Aiden then ran back upstairs.

"Jack!" His mother snapped.

"That is not how you treat your brother!" She said sternly to him.

"But he won't leave me alone!" Jack responded angrily. 

"Even when I ask him to leave, he just clings onto me like a fungus!"

"It's because he loves you!" His mom replied. 

"He wants your attention, just be kind for once and he'll leave you alone."

"Uugh, fine." Jack groaned as he rolled his eyes, he just wanted his mom to be quiet.

"I just want you two to have a good relationship with one another." Jack's dad said with a soft face.

"Y'know, one day we won't be here to help you two. Then you two will have to work together." He said to Jack as he stood up. Jack pushed his hair out of his face, he had heard his dad say that a thousand times by now, he had probably memorised it word for word by now.

"I'll just go pack my bags." Jack said as he went upstairs quickly, before his parents could say anymore.

Jack walked past Aiden's room and heard him inside playing video games. Jack secretly envied his brother for all the free time he had. He never showed it, always claimed he hated video games to hide it.

Jack then walked into his room, to his unfinished history essay and unpacked bags. His clarinet that he dreamed of playing professionally was in the corner of his room, one could almost see the cobwebs gathering on the instrument case. His bed was unmade and the curtains were closed as usual. His parent's referred to his bedroom as the "cave" or "dank hole" as it hadn't been cleaned in months. School books, used notebooks, dirty clothes and school uniforms laid scattered on the floor in a crumbled mess.

Jack made a half-hearted attempt to back his bags, he wanted to do it as fast as possible so he could get back to writing his history essay. He threw in 3 pairs of suits for him to wear during the conference. Next, his speech for the conference. He rummaged around his pigsty of a room before finding it underneath the mountain of History notes he had on his desk.

His speech, his jumble of words he wrote at 2 A.M. while high on redbull was supposed to talk about France's perspective on viral outbreaks, but he was sure nobody at that conference would make heads or tails of it, and at this point he really didn't care anymore. He was only doing this MUN thing for CAS hours, he didn't actually give a monkey's left nut about any of this MUN stuff.

He tossed the script into his bag and then a couple of extra things he needed, such a toothbrush and toothpaste, soaps and extra school notes so he could study while in the hotel or something.

Just then, his phone buzzed a rare occurrence in his dead and decaying social life. It was what he would a friend, David, a student also going on the MUN trip tomorrow. He was messaging him on Facebook.

"Yo dude, check out this video. Crazy shiet boi" The message read, followed by a youtube video.

Jack opened up the video, which seemed to be a home video of three people running through a rice field. He was pretty sure they were shouting in Indonesian. He could hear screams and shouts in the background, they didn't sound fake, in fact, they seemed so real, a shiver went down Jack's back when he noticed a fourth figure tackle one of the indonesian farmers while emitting a bone-curling howl from his gaping bloodied mouth. The video then cuts off as the farmer rushed to his friend's aid.

The video was getting millions of views by the minute, Jack kept refreshing the video and with each refresh, the video had ten to fifty thousand more views. Jack, still in doubt of this video's legitness, scrolled through the comments to see the rest of the world's opinions. The comments either joked about the video or claimed it was false, saying it was scientifically impossible for the deceased to return to life. Jack laid down on his bed to text David back, telling him what an idiot he was for actually believing that "pile of filth and lies" of a video.

However, before he could press "send" a week of one - two hours of sleep a day finally caught up to Jack as his eyes rolled back and he completely passed out.

__________

And so begins my first story, the rough draft at least.

please write your criticism, I want to become a better writer boiz and grillz