Saving Saint Mom

By Mr. Finch Mellor

Will's been chosen to save humanity. He’s an average young man with the slight exception, he’s learning differenced. He's in his final moments of high school, he was born three years earlier on the same day as his brother and while visiting home for the Christmas holidays in 2011 he’s told devastating news by his Mom. Saving Saint Mom is the truly amazing highlight reel of memories from the cool and quirky mind of a dyslexic high school senior out to change life.

During a perfect early summer afternoon in late May, Will sets out for a leisurely jog hours before his highly anticipated graduation dinner. As he runs through the sleepy suburban streets of a small town, he remembers in vivid detail the hundred and forty-three days leading up to this day, the day of his jog. Will meets his brothers in the park in dramatic fashion. He jumps and hangs from a tree branch like a chimpanzee, mostly because of his excitement to see his brothers again, but also because of the adrenalin he felt after being on a quest to rid his mother’s bones of cancer. And, while he was dying to tell them, he has plans to announce his life changing news sometime during his grad dinner later that night.

Will’s highlight reel of memories reveals the series of the triumphant and sometimes tragic events that lead to him understanding he must become super human, and fast. The last Original Soul on earth needs to be saved, and Will is our last best chance to save her. And Will’s last best chance is Mr. Finch Mellor, Will’s English teacher, who delivers this incredible news to him. Mr. Mellor rediscovers a childhood secret after reading an open and honest journal entry for his senior level English class written by Will. An embarrassing event in the dormitory hallway and an impromptu trip to a small village in Ireland, Finch Mellor had returned to the boarding school to guide a quest to purge cancer from the bones of the last Original Soul on earth, Will’s dying MOM. Having chatted about their plan to save the world over a biscotti and an Espresso in the school’s library late one evening Mellor’s chosen warrior in the story becomes none other than the main character, Will himself.

Sketchy three o’clock in the morning meetings in the parking lot of the local convenience store and secret four hour drives all help make sense of the time Will spent hanging out in the lobby area of the 6th floor cancer ward at the Buffalo hospital. Mrs. Mellor's amazing understanding of the human mind and her experimental techniques help strengthen Will’s mind power and she’s able to help Will create a tangible connection between his soul’s power and his mother’s disease. Samurai wisdom, cancer victims, surgeons, and slam poets all give Will, the bullied and labeled young man, the courage to prove he’s super human. Sorry, did I just say super human? I meant to say SUPER DUPER HUMAN.

The power of words and conviction brings Will to do things he never thought possible. He overcame the demands of a ridiculous ultra-conservative school headmaster HRJr. and he found love and true beauty in a wonderful girl named Xania. From the stage at a packed Café in the heart of downtown Toronto, into a stinky hockey bag while sneaking back across the US border, Will stopped at nothing to take his mother’s pain and make it his. Unfortunately, he never gets the chance to tell her, or anyone else his amazing tale like he’d planned during his graduation dinner, because he exits our world in dramatic fashion later that afternoon. He'd ’prepared themselves’ as best he could, and they won the war - kind of.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mr. Finch Mellor
• Release date: May 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781775021209

Mr. Finch Mellor

Hi! I’m Will and I’m a learning differenced young man out to save the world. I’m on a quest to prove I’m super human. Sorry, did I say super human? I meant to say SUPER DUPER HUMAN. This is my amazing story about lifetime struggles with language, and how I use the power of words to save the world, I hope. It’s a raw insight into the world of a dyslexic young man and his struggle to change life. I overheard the one and only Mr. Mellor say once that it’s a humorously broken tale of triumph over tragedy, or something like that. Speaking of Mr. Mellor, he’s an awesome guy and he's kind of the author of our story, Saving Saint Mom. What you need to know though, is that he wrote this story totally with my help. I'd really like to be able to explain to you how we did this, but I can't, so you're just going to have to trust that I did, and that it worked amazingly! Well, you'll soon see for yourself if you read our story. So...oh ya, Mr. Mellor, well his first name is Finch, he’s a Bluenose do-good vigilante and a kick ass Adult Education teacher in Halifax, Nova Scotia. That's in Canada. Among the many things he loves, he especially loves good music, strong conviction, his beautiful wife, his incredible son and their very cool dog, Cash. From what he's told me, Mr. Mellor's played varsity football, he's drummed in a punk band, he was an altar boy in high school, he's taught class in a jail and he passed his Driver's test in one try. Well whoopedy doo! No seriously, he's a super nice guy. I'd love it if you checked out our story. Mr. Mellor's also written a couple of other really cool stories. One's called, Life's Little Melodies and it's about an incredible man that I knew, too. His name's Mr. Peter Weisenburger. Actually, Mr. Weisenburger's in our story, chapter 17, I think? I'll have to check. The other story he wrote is, My First Twenty-Five Years. A crazy good story about the first twenty five years of a World War Two soldier's life. They're both totally amazing, and I didn't even help him write either of them. Talk soon, Will Aargh

Book preview

Saving Saint Mom

By Finch Mellor

Copyright 2015 Finch Mellor

Smashwords Edition

Thank you for downloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this story, please return to the Smashwords library or favourite other ebook distributer and submit a review and discover other works by this author. Thank you for your time and support.

Chapter One – SKABOOSKA

It happened in a blink, seriously. I swear to God! And it came from out of nowhere. I mean, I guess it always happens to us that way. I just couldn’t believe it happened to me right now, just like that. During the open side of my blink I wondered to myself if I was running a four-minute mile, thought about the nagging cramp in my side and about how quickly I could shower and get ready for my awesome graduation dinner in a few hours. And of course, as usual, in the back of my mind my deepest thoughts were always about preparing ourselves. And then I blinked my eyes closed, and the next thing I knew I was on some gently spiraling free fall away from myself, but into pretty much everything else all at once. It’s hard for me to explain, but I’ll try. Suddenly, I felt like I was on a rocket that fired me straight up into the endless blue sky, except I wasn’t, I was here, but somewhere else completely new and different and totally freakin’ amazing. That’s all pretty weird, I know.

So, let’s back it up before all this freefalling and rocketing started happening. I was in the middle of my afternoon jog on the coolest day of my life. It was Friday, May 20th the hundred and fortieth day of the year in 2011. A beautifully sunny day with an expected daytime high of eighty-two degrees, and I felt like a total boss! The Citizen Bank’s digital sign confirmed it was 1:43pm and exactly 82°. The daytime high hit and everything felt perfect. I had my dope looking high school squash team warm up shirt on, my last name in bold white letters on my back. Oh, and the captain’s ‘C’ embroidered on my left shoulder. Just sayin ‘cause I’m really proud about that.

As I ran along the street I thought about random things that made me happy, like the awesome squash match I’d played on the amazing glass court at Yale University earlier in the year. So, smiling big and wide like some cracked out clown I jogged happily out onto the Main Street and across the ankle twisting cobblestoned intersection towards the old-fashioned movie theatre, and everything seemed great, except for the fact that it became way too crowded for me really, really quickly. I don’t know how I didn’t notice the crowd, but it soon got really annoying having to step on and off of the curb. After almost getting clotheslined by a couple of lovers holding hands, and being knocked off stride by a wickedly loud Harley that revved insanely loudly outside of the chicken wing bar, I desperately looked to avoid all of this chaos. The street was filled with parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, boyfriends, girlfriends, soon-to-be high school grads, first year college dropouts and bandana’d bikers with their significant others. There were bff’s kissing cheeks, dogs leashed to bike racks, people stuck to park benches in the shade and tremendously poorly parked cars everywhere. I mean two boutique olive oil stores in one town with line-ups to get inside of both? Really? It was a total shit show. This town was filled to capacity for the weekend. No more joiners please!

I slipped away from the Main Street chaos by jogging through a narrow piss smelling alleyway that had shards of colourful broken glass strewn everywhere. Now that I was behind the drive thru area of the Burger King parking lot I hopped a small guardrail and made my way through an old cemetery that smelled like a funky mixture of Tim Horton’s donuts, McDonald’s fries and garbage dumpster. Yum! I tried to preoccupy my sense of smell by counting the number of times I blinked per minute, but I soon realized that I wasn’t blinking normally because I waited to count my blinks. I can be such a dumbass sometimes! It would be way easier if I stopped outside of the town’s outdoor ice rink, stretched my legs and used my phone to find out how many times the average person blinks per minute. Turns out we blink fifteen to twenty times per minute, so by that calculation we’re now about a thousand blinks before we free-fall and rocket away again. I continued my laidback jog down this quiet leafy tree lined back street and through this little toy-maker’s town in Western New York. Seriously, Fisher-Price has a huge toy factory here. It’s childishly epic!

The highlights from high school played in my mind like they were a movie. I remembered the good times and the not-so-good times and I especially remembered my times with Mr. & Mrs. Mellor, but most importantly I remembered to continue to prepare myself. I remembered all of the important things that ever happened to me over the last few months, and in such vividness. The coincidences that brought everyone together, and every minute of every long hour that went into all of this preparation. And then I stopped remembering and I worried that we’d accomplished absolutely nothing. And that was definitely a possibility. I mean who’d really know if we’d won the war or not?

I took a break from jogging for a moment stood there and I thought about my current situation and about the super awesome dinner coming up later in the evening. The most important dinner of my life ever! My entire family would be sat around the large table at the restaurant enjoying their food and drink, joking around and celebrating my graduation from high school with me. And then they’d all wear the same shocked look when we told them what we’d been up to for the past hundred and forty or so days.

Okay! No more second-guessing. Come on! Start jogging again, dammit! Everything’s going as planned. Purge that shit out. Feed it to the rats! Ekah Catvarah Tryah are the words I said to myself to help refocus my thoughts. Saying these simple words helped me find my confidence to continue to ‘prepare ourselves’ for what was to come. With that cracked out clown-like smile back on my face I jogged to the park to meet my brothers. I felt like I was on top of the world. The park was at the very other end of town from where I currently was, but it really didn’t matter to me. I obviously had stuff on my mind, I needed the exercise and I had an amazing movie of high school memories to get back to watching.

Looking forward to seeing my brothers again made me smile. We hadn’t seen each other for like ever so it was going to be so cool being back together with them. I jogged a few blocks out-of-my-way and down a backstreet I’d hardly ever been on before. The street felt lonely to me even though it had huge manicured bushes, gardens and big green trees in the front yards of expensive detached houses. It turns out that this was the same lonely backstreet that the most forgotten about former US President’s childhood house is on. The house looked like a fancy meth lab if you ask me. The windows were boarded up and it had graffiti on its sidewalls. It seriously looked like a meth lab hidden in the middle of this little rich town. No one ever noticed it as a cookhouse because it’s the former President’s childhood home. Totally Breaking Bad styles, right?

Anyways, it took me a few extra minutes to get to the park to meet my brothers, but I figured it was worth it. A lil’ extra fresh air, some firsthand US history and some peace n’ quiet never hurt no one, right? When I came around the last bend I passed by the Italian pizza place and I could see the park. Both of my brothers were there waiting for me. They were messing around and pushing each other back and forth as usual. Outside the ice cream shop I decided to stop and watch them for a bit. It was like I was observing gorillas in the zoo or something, seriously. Interesting little fact, the ice cream shop is actually an old yellow train caboose. Ca-boose. That’s such a strange sounding word. Say it ten times fast. Sounds like I’m speaking Russian and ordering something called, ‘Skabooska’ over and over again. The longer I say it the angrier I sound. Anyways, I waited beside the ice cream shop caboose and watched them, my brothers that is, for a few minutes. They seemed overly energized to me. What were they up to? I hadn’t seen them both together since Christmas, so it could have just been their excitement to see me? Ya, right! They were totally up to something. We might be apart for the entire school year, but I never forget how dangerous they can be when they’ve got time to plan something. Especially when I’m their target.

How did they think they were going to get me today?

I knew what I had to do! It was the only thing I could do. I couldn’t care what they had planned for me. I needed to take them by surprise and bring my own attack. Catch them off guard and throw off whatever they had planned. I figured they’d expect to see me come through the park’s main entrance. Neither of them would bother to look for me over here. Perfect. I had to wait for my chance. My ultra athletic swimmer at college older brother hung one armed from a tree branch with his shirt off. He was looking down trying to convince my younger Dr. Who loving slightly bigger boned second chair bass in our hometown orchestra brother to hang from the branch, too. Patrick finally and very begrudgingly helped Daniel drag an old rundown burgundy picnic table beneath the branch that Daniel hung from a few minutes earlier. Their plan was clear to me. They planned to use the table to jump off of and grab a hold of the branch. My guess was to guerilla attack me from above somehow? My older brother clearly didn’t need the picnic table’s assistance, but my younger brother probably needed something a little bit more than what the picnic table offered him.

Anyways when Daniel finally let go of the branch I sprinted in from behind. I flicked the back of Dan’s ear and knocked Patrick’s hat off his head with simultaneous flicks and slaps to the back of their big stupid heads. They had no idea what had hit them. I jumped up without using the picnic table’s assistance and grabbed the tree branch like I was a friggin’ chimpanzee. I swung back and forth one handed, I beat my chest and yelled like WWE champ John Cena. I held myself up for as long as I could, looked down at them and said, Wassssup suckers? After I dropped to the ground I swung my upper body towards them like an ape, pointed in their direction and growled, Now get me a Whopper!

Boom! What an entrance! They seriously just looked at me, shrugged their shoulders at each other and rolled their eyes. Whhhaaaatever! Don’t be hatin’ yo! I know you were both all like whaaaat???

So, like I said before it’d been a long time since the three Raynard brothers were together in the same place at the same time. It was probably the first time our entire family was together in like, three years. Don’t get me wrong, the Raynard’s are a totally tight unit. Best news of all was that every single one of us was going to be here, in Western New York together for the entire weekend celebrating my high school graduation. My Dad had made dinner plans with Mr. & Mrs. Mellor at some totally hoppin’ restaurant in town. It was going to be EPIC! The Mellor’s are super cool people and my family’s super cool people. So one incredibly super cool dinner on it’s way. I was super excited if you can’t tell. My high school graduation dinner celebration! Damn. A lot of people said to me, and to my parents that I’d never get my diploma. Shrimp cocktail to start. Maybe two? A huge steak with mashed potatoes and a beer. Maybe two? I hoped. Another reason I was so stoked for dinner was because Mr. & Mrs. Mellor and I planned our grand unveiling. A detailed explanation of everything we’d worked so hard together on over the past hundred and forty or so days. We were going to tell everyone at the table about our amazing secret about the double lives we’d been living for the past few months. Reservations were made for 6:00pm. My roommate Hank and his Mom were going to be there, too. The restaurant and bar would be packed with so much talent! Oh, come on 6:00pm! And did I mention I was set to graduate from high school in less than, like, twenty-four hours? I did. Okay sorry. THANK FREAKIN’ GOD FOR THAT!

As I stood in the park with my brothers that afternoon I felt so freakin’ happy. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this good? I didn’t just feel good and happy, I felt strong, free, matured, and virile. Nice word right? Virile. I know! I stood under that tree branch while younger brother Patrick sat at the picnic table and texted away on his new iPhone. Where had Dan gone? I wondered. The truth was that I didn’t wonder too long because my movie of memories started playing in my mind again, so I stood perfectly still and let the gentle summer breeze brush against my face.

The long velvet ribbon of high school memories was temporarily interrupted by memories and thoughts of my family. Wow! I felt completely and totally at peace. I felt so...reassured. Ya, that’s the word, reassured. Big deep fulfilling breaths of air filled my lungs. I was young, tanned, and in shape, well kind of, and I smelled good for someone who’d just been jogging for an hour or so. The images in my head were so crystal clear and so vivid that they seemed to provoke and heighten every sense inside of me. Everything felt so real to me at that moment. Everything in my mind I mean. Like I could reach out and touch my memories. Imaginary Shakespearean actors acted scenes from my life. O’Williamo, O’Williamo. We know what we are, but know not what we may be. Hardy har har har har. Or however Shakespearean actors speak? I stood beside Patrick and smiled as I thought about my private actors and about how not too long ago I’d passed my driver’s examination and lost my virginity on the same day. And I got laid first too! What’s up with that? I’m such a baller! I was captain of my school’s squash team and probably one of the most unconventional left-handed nationally ranked junior players in the US at the age of sixteen. That is unless you’ve seen my buddy Walker on the court. Right Walk? In my senior year I broke the top one hundred junior players in the country a few times, and I finished ranked one hundred and forty third. I’ve had braces. I’ve played baseball, and I swam for a bit, but I ended up becoming a pretty good tennis player as an early teen so, I kind of ran with that sport for as long as I could. I’d always wanted to be a cool swimmer dude like my older brother, so I’d always do the same warm up exercises swimmers did for whichever sport I was doing. I’d do that stretch swimmers