Britain's Storage Room Cleaning - APH Fanfic

The Cleaning

     As the hinges moved they sounded a meticulous screech making my teeth shiver. Teacup still in hand, I stepped in noiselessly and closed the door behind me. It was pitch black but I habitually reached and grasped a chain hanging from the ceiling and gave it a tug, which set a short row of dusty ceiling bulbs springing to life one after another before me. Yellow glowed over the windowless attic with low ceilings coming to a peak in the center. This open room was miniscule under the impression of tightly packed rows of boxes, tubs, and bookcases. Every possible inch of the room had been filled and orderly sectioned. Can you tell I come here often?  

     I set my tea down on a stack of books that reached up to my waist, eyes searching for something not already ruthlessly organized. Even rolls of spare wallpaper, rusty bars of fencing, and other cumbersome items have been carefully propped against the water-stained drywall. I began strolling through the rows, much like a buyer browses the aisles of a supermarket. As I passed each wicker basket full of mesh and every brass candlestick topping a particular heap, already the images started blooming in my mind's eye. Faces of ragdolls in dishcloth dresses unburied my toy-making in an ancient rural London. Brass tubas having lost all burnish from years of neglect evoked visions of my earliest empire. I have mounted and proficiently filled hat racks and hangers on the low rafters. It's strange, the stories of use that latch onto even the smallest items. I could have spent the day dawdling on this first shelf.

     On a hook above my head I spotted my faded red coat with gold beading and frills at the cuffs; still tied around the collar was a dingy liquor-stained cravat. These both hung underneath a wide-brimmed captain's hat with two bravura feathers stuffed under its belt. I took it and blew a puff of dust from the craggy leather, soft to the touch from weather-wear and long-gone days of pirating.

     "Ah," I sighed and fondly hung it up again, "The days when a man could be free at sea... How I envy you today, Former Me."

     At my feet were two old weapons. One of them, my rapier still glistening in the dim light. The other, a lad's handmade wooden pirate's dagger. I gave it a swing or two and found it much lighter than I remembered. This was where the new wind in my sails took me. When he was just a boy, America would run me down, flailing this thing at me. He always had to play the hero, and I'd always be the thieving pirate. He'd save the imaginary damsel in distress, and I'd gladly act out every possible demise a bloke could suffer. With this toy I'd be sent sprinting out of the house and all around the yard until I'd snatch up a stick to return his favor. There in the New World (back when it was a new world,) we'd have a go, battling to see whose fits of laughter would cripple him first. 

      Up and down the rows of half-opened boxes I continued.  Atop a small dresser against the back wall, I found something of trivial interest. It was a small assortment of hardbacks placed between two Gaelic figures standing in as bookends. These were the fairy-tales and textbooks I used to read to America as a child. The first textbook on display was a mathematics learner, pages stiff and brittle from being passed down my bloodline for centuries. In a particularly lazy mood, America could whine and wail about the lessons as fiercely as polar equals on a magnet reject each other. He was an exceedingly intelligent child when he wanted to be; but, blimey, did his mind wander! Then again, pulling out the fairy tale collective beside the learner, I recalled that I was mostly to blame for his attention deficit. In this big storybook I fed his wild imagination until it was spoiled rotten.

     The two books in my hands were mere relics from the past, but holding them helped me contemplate. First of all, I was intent upon bringing him up proper and intellectual like all the rest. In the other hand, there was more than mere affluent potential in the boy. In this hand holding the fantasies, there thrived a totally different outlook on the affiliation. I had a brother. Of course, if it hadn't of been for the prospective wealth he'd bring, there never would have been any other relationship; but that was besides the matter. Here I was now, remembering the days we would sit in the fields together conjuring the most ridiculous inventions. I must have been immersed in the idea of having a little brother who not only appreciated my castles in the sky, but even built his own after me. Either way, those were undoubtedly the times I felt less alone than ever.