Phineaus Fletcher part 2

He sucked the last bit of pleasure from the cigarette and stubbed it out in the over spilling ashtray kept hidden under the edge of the bed. He held the smoke in his lungs, as if it were medicine, some magic potion rich in vitality. When it got too much he turned around and exhaled out of the gap between the window pane and ledge above the low headboard. He swept his greasy mop of hair back again and grimaced at the grey morning outside before he swiftly muffled the draft. It was going to be a miserable day, but at least he’d be inside for most of it. He’d only have to dash from the house to the garage and then on to the pub later.

            Phineaus glanced at the clock. It was 7.05, and a modern-day miracle Janet Fletcher hadn’t pounded on his door yet. He swivelled to his left and gingerly placed his feet on the naked floorboards. Wincing at the cold, he slunk over to the wardrobe and scrambled around to find his cleanest overalls, not that any of them were particularly clean, but he felt like making an effort on his birthday. His normal garb was a far cry from the elegant attire and winklepickers of the metropolitan mods but then he’d never really gone in for fashion much, especially when it involved genital-crushingly tight trews. He preferred instead the practical garments of his trade and sturdy, no-nonsense boots. It may have stunted his progress with some of the more snobbish city girls, but it earned him a little respect from working men and in the long-run he supposed that counted for more. People saw he meant business and he got more work, and therefore more money to put towards cigarettes and pints. His priorities were definitely right in that regard.

            He stumbled towards his door and shuffled down the narrow staircase in his stocking-ed feet. He could no longer hear the scrape of the brush across linoleum but his mother was definitely still in the kitchen. Her raspy, laboured breathing was a dead giveaway. He shut his eyes for a moment. He knew what was coming. Twenty one years old and his mother still baked him birthday cakes; Twenty one years old and he was still living with his mother. That was probably the real reason why Susan from the Rose and Crown wouldn’t ever give him the time of day, but what could he do? Janet Fletcher was not a wealthy woman and she relied on Phineaus for everything. Truth be told, she’d never gotten over the loss of his father and had flinched anytime a man dared approach her. In her early forties, she was still thin as a rail and pale as a ghost, but nervous with it. She was an almost infallible authority for her son, but there was a frailty to her that meant Phineaus felt like her protector rather than the one needing protection.

            He took a breath, opening his eyes and the kitchen door at the same time, ready with his expression of surprise and gratitude. He wore the same one every year when his mother produced a monstrosity of cake and frosting that she’d slaved over the night before. Secretly, Janet Fletcher knew she was a terrible cook, but she still searched for the smile that showed her son was thankful.

Into the unknown - Phinaeus Fletcher part 1

So, I'm considering writing a short story in serial form. I've started it, and I'll post it below. Any trolls who want to let me know if I should bother continuing, please do. Any trolls who think they want to steal my scribblings, please don't. No, seriously, don't.

Have you ever considered the possibility of living forever? Not like in films, but actually the day-to-day experience of living forever. It isn’t as glamorous as it’s made out to be, not some great prize, the way mythology paints it.

Phineaus Fletcher was born in wartime Britain, son of an absentee soldier-father who died before he even knew he was one. Doodlebugs were screaming their way across the nightime sky of London as Janet Fletcher screamed her way to becoming a mother in a cramped and busy shelter with very little privacy. A few kind-hearted women cooed at the little lad, but mostly people sniffed in disapproval and annoyance at the spectacle of an unmarried mother. No one knew then, not even Janet Fletcher herself, that the boy would rise far beyond his less than humble origins.

When immortality is imagined by those who do not possess it, a few choice clichés spring to the fore. However there is no fountain of youth, Phinaeus Fletcher was never the victim of vampiric goings on, nor was he, as we have established, the love-child of philandering deities. He was not magical, mystical, alien or a superhero. Until the day he turned twenty one, for all intents and purposes, Phinaeus was a normal human being.

           

Phinaeus woke to the sound of his mother cleaning the kitchen floor, just as he did every morning without fail. She was a wonderful woman his mother. She was warm and loving, proud and generous. She had many saintly qualities but like any other woman, she also had her quirks. Every morning at 6.45 precisely, Phinaeus would be woken by his mother scrubbing away at the linoleum; the incessant squeaking and scratching of the brush was loud enough to wake the dead. You’d think, though, that she could leave it be for one day. At least that is was Phinaeus had hoped when he’d clambered into his narrow cot bed the previous night.

As he blinked the sleep from his eyes, he contemplated what it meant to be 21. He felt no different in himself. His 21yr old eyes functioned exactly the same, saw the world exactly the same as had his 20yr old eyes yesterday. No one body part felt older, wiser or more able to garner the attention of the new barmaid in the Rose and Crown.  He scraped the greasy mop of dark brown hair back from his forehead and twisted more comfortably in the crumpled bedsheets. Before long his mother would be stomping up the stairs of their cramped little terraced house demanding that he quit being a lazy lummox and shift himself, but he lingered in the stolen moment of solitude.

What would his father have said to him if he were around? This was the day you were supposed to become a man after all. What would he make of him? Phinaeus sat up and caught sight of himself in the tacky perspex mirror on the back of the door. Not for the first time he wondered how much he looked like him. Casting his mind back to the one time he’d found that tattered photograph his mother had hidden away, he tried to imagine some semblance between the image and his reflection. The jaw line wasn’t square enough and the hair was thick and dark like his mother’s, but the eyes, they could be similar. And the nose was exactly the same; it was long and straight with slightly flared nostrils and a smattering of freckles, just enough to be noticed if you looked very closely.

But what about the other things, aside from appearance? Did he laugh like him? Did he smile like him? Did he daydream like him? He swept his hair behind his ears and reached for the cigarettes on the bedside table. With any luck he’d be able to sneak one before this moment of peace was disrupted.

Newly started

Here goes folks, my second attempt at producing a blog! For all those not genned up on their looney tunes history, 'Hold the Lion, Please' was the name of a 1941 Merrie Melodies cartoon, the tenth to feature Bugs Bunny. It was one of my favourites growing up and one of the few blog titles I could think of that didn't make me cringe. I've started this as a means to produce some kind of creative work, whether it be my own fiction writing (heaven forbid it actually see the light of internet) or reviews/criticisms/witicisms connected with tv, art, cinema, literature and anything else I can get my hands on. So fingers, toes and other appendages crossed that I can actually drive myself to do this!