Ok, here we are, your next chapter all ready for your viewing pleasure. My apologies for not updating over the weekend, but I was far far away from a computer in Nottingham. I did write just before I went though and the result is the chapter below. Update on character names-following the advice of bellamegs and TrudiRose, Gaston will now be known as Tristan. He doesn't appear in this chapter though, a fact I'm sure he'd be upset about! As for Beasty Boy, your suggestions are all good. Personally, I'm leaning towards Sebastian, mainly cos it's a nice name, but am worried you'll all wonder what a singing crab is doing in this story!
Disclaimer- Disney am I not. Oh, and I'm not Tim Burton either, although I wish I was.
Morris lit the fireplace he had built himself a few years previously and smiled as the warmth started to fill his soul. Rubbing his hands together, he sighed contently. Bella, whose head was hidden from sight in a large cupboard, finally found what she was looking for and held it aloft in triumph.
"Told you I'd find it!"
Morris slowly rose from his position in front of the fire and looked at the thing Bella held in her hand. It was a well-loved copy of Edward Scissorhands.
Morris and Bella often spent their Friday evenings like this-he would prepare the popcorn, while she chose their entertainment. Morris looked across at his only child, who was now eagerly reading the back of the video case, and couldn't help chuckling softly to himself. He had often lovingly scolded her for 'wasting her Friday nights with her old man', but had long learned to keep his thoughts on the matter to himself, rather than see her eyes flash and her nose wrinkle in disgust when he suggested other ways she could spend her time.
"Father, you are the only person in this town I would happily spend more than five minutes with."
A loud 'ping' interrupted his thoughts, and he carefully made his way to the kitchen to retrieve the popcorn.
Bella looked up from pretending to be absorbed in the words on the video case, and studied her father closely as he shuffled through the doorway. She couldn't help worrying about him. Part of her anxieties she dismissed as a daughter's natural concern for her widower father. Her mother had passed away when she was seven and, ever since then, Bella felt the need to take care of her father despite his insistence that she was fussing over nothing. However, Bella had also recently observed her father taking longer than usual to do simple things, such as preparing meals or getting dressed. His absent-mindedness was also starting to affect their lives on a daily basis. Bella wanted to blame all the time he spent on his inventions. After all, spending hours in their dark and cramped basement must be not good for anybody's health. However, just seeing her father's lit-up and slightly sweating face after a productive inventing session often reassured her that it was worthwhile.
"BLAST!" Her father's agitated voice came through the open doorway.
"What's wrong?" asked Bella, already halfway across the room. As she moved closer to the doorway, she became aware of her father frantically opening and closing drawer after drawer while the popcorn continued to languish in the microwave.
"What have you lost?" she asked, raising her right eyebrow as she often did when she was confused.
"My wallet….I'm sure I……" The rest of Morris' sentence was lost to the sound of him rummaging through the contents of one of the drawers.
Bella sighed to herself. Morris was always misplacing things and then suddenly missing them. She knew that he would now not calm down until he had found his wallet.
"When did you have it last?" she said, as she started looking among the piles of letters and leaflets on the worktop directly in front of her.
Morris closed the drawer and bowed his head. Bella could almost hear the sounds of cogs and wheels grinding together as he searched the recesses of his brain for the approrpaite memory. He saw himself leaving the house earlier that day and walking towards the post office to send off his latest patent application. He remembered cheerily wishing the clerk 'Good Day!' as he entered the building and then…….Ah, that was it! He had em,ptied his coat pockets to find the envelope and in doing so, had placed his wallet on a nearby shelf, intending to pick it up again once he had posted the letter. He must have walked out of the shop without it in his hurry to get home to Bella and the popcorn.
The clock on the kitchen wall started to chime bringing Morris back to the present with a jolt. It was a quarter to eight. He had fifteen minutes to get to the shop before it closed.
Bella watched as her father grabbed his coat and scarf from the peg by the back door and satretd muttering to himself about shops and time. Concern pushed itself to the front of her mind as she realised his intentions.
"Father….." she started but was cut off.
"Now don't you start, young ladfy! I'm sure I can walk to the shop and back without causing any trouble."
"But……" she protested. "It's dark and you'll catch your death of cold." She didn't even knoe why she was bothering to open her mouth-he'd go anyway-but it did make her feel a bit better thinking she'd at least tried to stop him.
The flames in the fireplace flickered as Morris opened the door, and Bella felt the cold air shoot down her spine. She shivered.
"Father….."
Morris paused for the briefest of moments. "why don't you get the popcorn and put the video on? I'll be back before you know it.
Bella sighed and shrugged her shoulders in resignation. Wearily, she walked to the microwave and opened the door.
"That's my girl!" Morris proclaimed cheerfully. "I'll be back soon. Make sure you save me some of that popcorn."
And with that he was gone.
Bella picked up the now lukewarm bowl of popcorn and sat in her favourite chair by the fire. The gentle heat of the flames played upon her face and, setting down the popcorn on the table next to her, she closed her eyes, imagining she was lying in a meadow in the height of summer. Her vivid imagination allowed the smell of freshly-cooked popcorn to be replaced by the invisible sweet smell of daisies and buttercups, and her ears heard the very faint tinkle of an ice-cream van somewhere in the distance….
………………………………………………………………………………
Morris hummed to himself, his fingers firmly clutching his newly-found wallet. He had gotten to the shop with a few minutes to spare and the clerk had laughed softly as she handed him back his peace of mind.
A lone street-lamp illuminated the old man as he crossed the street by the pub. The light picked out his thinning hair and caused slight shadows to form under his eyes. The tune that Morris was humming was one from a happy summer spent with Bella and her mother several years before. They had had a picnic on the grass in a meadow and had heard an ice-cream van across the field playing Greensleeves. It was this tune that filled his head with sound and caused his eyes to slightly mist over. Happy times……..
Engrossed in his memories, Morris failed to notice the crack in the pavement, and so it made him stumble and the wallet fall from his hand. Tutting to himself about road maintenance, Morris stopped and slowly bent down to pick up the wallet. Confusion lined his brow as his hand fell not on the soft leather of his wallet, but on the hard leather of a shoe covering it.
………………………………………………………………………………
Merely two hundred metres away, Bella slept in the armchair, oblivious to the fact that Morris was about to start in motion a chain of events that would change their lives forever.
Yay, I hear you shout, It's a chapter that's more than a page long. I was actually going to write more but thought I'd end on a nice little cliffhanger instead. Mwa ha ha ha ha! What's going to happen to Morris? Who does the shoe belong to? Why are they eating popcorn when nachos are so much better? Tune in soon for the next captivating instalment of 'The Beautiful and The Beastly.'
Before I go, a few words of happiness to my reviewers…….
TrudiRose-I'm glad you liked the first glimpse of the Beast. I'm hoping to make him more of a psychologically convincing character. We'll be entering his head again soon I'm sure.
Bellamegs-Thank yoooo! –dances around the compute happily-. Personally, I was pretty pleased about that chapter so I'm glad people are likeing it. Am liking the names you suggested, apart from Gaylord………..
Rosakara- I'm glad you liked it. Hopefully this chapter will please you too.
Hana-Thanks for sticking with it. I'll do my best to continue to draw you in.
And finally, seeing as I made chocolate pie this weekend, you all get a slice.
