Stutter || Larry Stylinson

Chapter Seven

It was honestly hilarious to Louis that hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia was the fear of long words, and that hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is the longest word he has ever seen. Although, it might've been funnier given the fact that he has been in his room for two hours doing absolutely nothing. School was called off for some kind of reason (might have been snow, might have been ice, might have been just too cold, who knows) and the whole downstairs was being remodeled for the day. So Louis couldn't even go downstairs to eat something, he could only stay in his room until eight, when the workers had estimated they would be finished with their jobs.

Honestly, though, who the hell came up with these phobias? Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, the fear of long words. Ithyphallophobia, fear of seeing, thinking about or having an erect penis. Samhainophobia, the fear of Halloween. Or, God forbid, Alektorophobia, the fear of chickens. Louis was getting tired of phobias, and decided he had a phobia of phobias. Phobophobia. Nice.

Louis picked at his clothing, trying to decide what to do in the limited amount of space of his bedroom. He could go onto his laptop and play some sort of game, but he was tired of first-person shooter games, and games about wizards or whatever the hell they are. Muppets, probably.

As Louis is having a random daydream about muppets casting spells on other muppets, he hears something coming from the attic. The people working on the downstairs aren't supposed to come upstairs, his sisters are terrified of the attic, and his parents don't ever go up there. So, for about three seconds (minutes) Louis freaks out, and then he mans up and goes over to where the ladder falls down from the ceiling. He pulls it down, letting out a little cough when a pile of dust floats down with it. After he is done with his coughing fit, Louis ascends the ladder, gasping lightly when he almost falls three times.

When he pulls himself up to the attic, Louis is not surprised when he sees that there is dust, dirt and a mouse in front of him. With the flick of his hand, the mouse scurries away, and Louis pulls himself up the rest of the way into the attic. He lands in some dust, but he brushes it away, coughing all over again.

In the corner of his eyes, he can see something sparkling in the limited amount of light there is up there. Louis walks over to a box, and inside there is a photo album with gold trimming on the cover. He yanks it out and blows the dust off, opening it up to see inside. He's instantly greeted with the smiling faces of him, his mum, his dad, and Lottie when she was just one years old. She has only a little bit of teeth, and her smile is wet, but she's still the cutest baby Louis has ever seen. He flips the page and smiles softly when he sees an almost two year old Lottie leaning over the crib of Felicite's, gazing down and smiling. Louis remembers their cribs being placed right next to each other because they couldn't go to sleep at night unless they could see each other. They still share a bedroom, and sometimes Louis will peek in, catching them in the same bed, cuddling up next to each other. They were closer than the twins, who were practically attached at the hip. Louis went on, smiling wider when he sees the picture of him at his twelfth birthday party, Lottie and Fizzy are both around him, smiling widely at the camera with holes in their smiles where teeth used to be. Louis remembers every detail of that birthday party. When he turns a couple of more pages, he sees him at thirteen years old, smiling down at the two bundles of joy nestled in his arms. He was so tiny back then, still was, that the twins took up his whole entire lap, even though they were premature and were tiny themselves.

When he flips the next page, though, he's met with the smiling face of someone he doesn't even know. He's a younger boy, his blond hair straight and long against his cheeks, which are dimpled from the wide, holey grin he's wearing. He has light blue eyes and chubby cheeks. He turns the next page, and he sees the boy again, only this time, it's a picture of the two, pressed cheek-to-cheek. In this picture, Louis doesn't look any older than nine, but he could be younger. The boy looks even younger than him, and it almost disturbs Louis how he doesn't remember a thing. He could remember things like what cake he had for his twelfth birthday, but couldn't tell anyone a single thing about the other ones he has had. He could name every detail of the outfit he wore on his first date with Hannah, a girl he used to go to school with. And he could say the alphabet in Spanish and German, which he learned both in kindergarten. But anything other than that, and he doesn't have a clue, even if the question was 'what did you have for breakfast yesterday'.