Chapter 2: The Ongoing Struggles Of Teenage Angst

The Spare Bedroom, Blakesley Residence, 1214 Winchester Dr, Camden, Maine....(1990)

 Eyes of the deepest obsidian opened in the semi-bright bedroom that had been where a 16-year-old lad turned in almost every night ever since he'd been born. The familiar blaring of his bedside alarm clock had not been as welcome this time as it had been any other morning it had roused him from his rather pleasant slumber. The long pale and rather thin lad had been quite average at least by anyone's standards and not nearly as noticeable as many of his schoolmates aside from his lanky limbs and wild raven-colored locks that hung about his shoulders. He often let it fall around his cheeks when given to embarrassment to hide his shame which always prompted his mother to slick it back to see his face.

Of all the people he had known, only she had been pleased by the sight of his acne-riddled pale face. The tiny pinkish-red blotches that appeared on his cheeks and chin had not done him any favors as far as self-esteem had been concerned. At the moment, the lad had been more inclined to hide back beneath the crisp white sheets that lined his bed and pretend his awakening had never occurred given what he had to look forward to in terms of his day.

High school had not been as interesting nor as fond a place to be as it had been in the movies he'd passed on watching that littered his television in the hopes of catching the eye of the youthful demographic. He rolled his eyes and sneered at the over-the-top character portrayals and wondered if he or anyone from his age group should take offense to the tasteless visuals presented before him, but he often found that many of the characters did echo the personalities of fellow students what had gone out of their collective ways to make his life miserable.

Finally getting the willpower to urge himself out of bed, mostly due to the overwhelming need to answer the call of nature, he heard a brief knock on his bedroom door signaling that his mother had taken notice of his lack of enthusiasm and had come to drag him out of bed.

"You'd better be decent," she called from behind the door. "I have no qualms about barging in given that I'm the one that changed your nappies."

The young man sighed not understanding why she insisted on calling diapers, "nappies" given that she had been well aware of what Americans called them and long removed from her time growing up in England.

"Mom, I'm up already," he said in annoyance. "I just need to take a leak."

His words did little to deter his mother as she came barging into the bedroom, with a rather flimsy long white cigarette pressed between her lips and an inquisitive expression filed across her face. She wore her usual cotton dress and unruly brown hair in numerous pink rollers as she stepped with fuzzy pink slippers on her feet into the room carrying an empty laundry basket.

"Mom!" he exclaimed in further annoyance.

"Don't you "Mum" me....off to the shower with you...you smell like you've been living in a closed-in gym for three months." she urged moving about the room to collect his discarded dirty clothes and shoving them into the basket.

Rolling his eyes, the rather lank young man hurried off toward the bathroom more interested in relieving his aching bladder than bickering with his mother over her lack of boundaries in terms of her invading his bedroom on a whim.

He often wondered what she did when she couldn't outright harass him on a daily basis and how she filled her empty mornings and afternoons when he'd been at school and she'd been done with work. They had been well off financially, or at the very least content given his late father's savings and insurance, but she saw her way to working long hours as a waitress at a diner more often than not on occasion.

Mrs. Blakesley, as she preferred to be called when entertaining her long-time friends or acquaintances, was more interested in ships and weather than she ever had been in a man's affections that had not been her long-deceased husband. When she'd had her fill of the sailors and captains from her past, she would focus all of her attention on both her young sons. 

Some days were good days for her as she set about playing the role of mother and homemaker to the ghostly memory of a man forgotten by time and some days, were bad days where she'd still be mourning the loss of her husband despite the passing of time since the tragedy occurred and did nothing, but wallow in the pitfalls of her own misery via drink and sad song.

This day, she seemed in good spirits, and as per the norm, she set about getting the house in order.

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The Bathroom, Blakesley Residence, 1214 Winchester Dr. Camden, Maine....(1990)

Sethivas "Seth" Rutherford Blakesley stood gawking at his reflection in the nearby bathroom mirror as he attempted to see past the numerous rows of horrid pimples and reddish marks along his naturally pale face. His unkempt raven hair draped at his shoulders and had fallen into view of his eyes blocking them from the unflattering image that looked out before him. A rise of stubble in the form of facial hair had been evident with a five-o'clock shadow and his rather crooked, but pearly white teeth had been visible briefly as he attempted to make himself more appealing.

His smile, which he likened to being something seen on a homicidal maniac had prompted him to end the farce that had been his interest in his own appearance. Past experience had given him the memory of his mother going on and on about how handsome his father had been despite them never having any photographs of the man anywhere in the house.

His mother often remarked about the resemblance and tousled his lengthy raven locks saying that they had been also attributed to him via his late father. Growing up in a single-parent household, Seth knew very little about his deceased father aside from the fact that he was a sailor and loved the water and that he'd lost his life during a daring rescue of his crew mates which left all but him alive following an accidental fire.

The rather curious lad often asked those around him questions about the man he never met and what he had been like before his untimely demise, but it never seemed to be enough to sate his curiosity.

While other children could recount many tales about their fathers, Seth had been regulated to what he had been told from the memories of those that had known the man in the past, most had not been willing to be so forthcoming with their experiences and his mother only referenced him in passing whenever he did something that reminded her of him.

From what he could gather, his father had been a good man and a heroic one given the nature of his death and he was quite sorry he'd never get the chance to know him.

The beating on the bathroom door signaled that his mother had finished collecting his dirty clothes and expected him to get into the shower.

"Hurry up! before you're late!" she urged knowing all too well that her son had been pressed for time to make it to school with a bit of a walk ahead of him.

Seth sighed and pulled back the shower curtain discarding his t-shirt and boxer shorts as he adjusted the water that came rushing at him full force. It was just another day in the Blakesley household and another typical morning in the young man's otherwise uneventful life.