We are the ghouls of London // PHAN

•CHAPTER SEVEN•

Phil entered him and his dads home after school with a sigh of relief. Don't get him wrong, he loved seeing his friends... but coming home was just, he thought, a lot better.

The atmosphere was warming as Phil walked through the house to the biscuit barrel. He opened the lid, looked in and then groaned in disappointment.

His dad had eaten all the double chocolate-chipped-cookies he had brought from Sainsbury's and had been saving for a time like this.

Phil sighed before walking into the living room again, heading towards the stairs. Before he could even get there though, he looked over to the mirror which was above the fireplace, and saw his hair had become a mess in the reflection that stared back at him from the terrible wind outside.

Sighing, he went over to the mirror and sorted out his hair using his fingertips to flatten it down and put his fringe in place. He noticed in the corner of his eye a photo. He smiled to himself.

"You would do the same if it was the other way around, mom," Phil spoke aloud.

Phil's mom was 30 when she died, making Phil 4 at the time. He remembered everything that happened like it happened yesterday, not 11 years, 5 months and 4 days ago.

His mom had had breast cancer. He couldn't remember how she found out she had it, though he did know it was too late for any proper surgery, or how she came to beginning the chemotherapy. He did, however, remember seeing her loose her hair in chunks after periods of time, and how she would use any money his dad brought home to invest on getting wigs to cover what she called her 'shaming appearance'.

This was why his dad got such a high earning job. Not only did he actually enjoy it, it supplied Phil's enough money to help his mom out.

Phil wouldn't call his mom's appearance 'shaming' however.He'd say even though it was a scary concept to think about, his mom loosing hair all of a sudden, he knew she was always the same person inside, the same caring mom who made him laugh with her funny impressions and different voices for story time characters and tickling him till he squealed so much he wet himself.

That only happened once.

But then he remembered the impressions stopped all of a sudden. Phil hardly saw his mom, she stayed in her room all day, away from civilisation. Phil swore he could hear her crying, but every time he went to go into the room to comfort her, tell her she will be ok... his dad would stop him, pick him up and say in a calming voice "mommy needs rest... leave her be for a while, ok?".

At the time, Phil hated his dad for doing this to him. He wanted to desperately see his mother. If she could make Phil laugh when he cried because people made fun of him at school, then surely Phil could do the same to cheer his mom up.

But now time had progressed on, Phil now knew why his farther kept him away. It was so Phil wouldn't become scared all of a sudden. His mom, according to his dad, was slowly becoming more depressed over the fact that she had a illness that was slowly killing her. She was having frequent anxiety and panic attacks which shook her up and made her scared of anything outside her bedroom walls. She was becoming weaker, her speech was starting to slur and she often felt nauseous which lead to her throwing her guts up at a minimum of twice a day.

She was unhappy, dying, and his dad didn't want Phil to see this. Protect him.

Well, that was until one night.

The fact Phil wasn't aloud into the room to visit his mom just made him more and more curious about it. After all, he was a four year old boy who had been told 'no' when he asked to see his mom.