r e p t i l e b o y
Because everyone should be free. Young James Wilson. 500 words.
Note: This is my first House story and, as with everything else I write, it is suitably bizarre. Be kind, I'm fragile. Any grammar and spelling errors are intentional; all plots holes are illusional.
We'll get over it
Sad, strong, safe and sober
We'll move forward
And know where we went wrong
But "you can't go home again."
Straylight Run, "Mistakes We Knew We Were Making"
When he was eight, James played with snakes. He used to pick up the rocks and poke at the little creatures beneath until they slipped away. They fascinated him, the snakes, the reptiles, the creatures. So he would keep them, take them up to his room and put them in little cages. He used to name them and make them his pets. They were the only friends an over intelligent little boy could have.
James used to hate his intelligence because none of the kids would play with him. But Mama and Papa still loved him and Grandpapa called him "Wunder Kind" and Uncle Ben would play with him and no one was cooler than Uncle Ben.
Uncle Ben would catch snakes with him, too, and they would play in the backyard and watch the snakes in their cages. Uncle Ben would tell James what kind each of them was.
So James got used to being a pariah (Brother Jacob taught him that word) and having only family and pet snakes for company. It wasn't that bad, being that way. And at least family and snakes would call you names or throw things at you because you were Jewish.
The snakes, like Uncle Ben, were cool. They would lie around in their cages all day and stare out disdainfully at everyone who went past. Except James. They crawled in his hair, and wrapped themselves around his forehead like Egyptian head-wraps. The first time James went down to dinner with Zucchini about his head, Spaghetti and Spatula gracing his arms in coils, and the white bed sheet as a toga, Mama had nearly fainted.
Which lead James to believe that she really didn't understand what it was like to be a Wunder Kind and just how lonely it can be, with only family and snakes in cages as your friends.
It was a difficult life, the one of snake-napper and Wunder Kind, and, at times, James was sure no one understood what it was like to be such a person. But then Uncle Ben would hang out with him and bring him new snakes, and Grandpapa would call him Wunder Kind and officiate at the funerals of the lost snakes.
That was probably the hardest thing James had gone through in his short life, losing Zucchini. But Grandpapa had been there and had spoke Kaddish and Uncle Ben had held James's hand while they lowered the little wooden box into the earth.
But there would be harder things in his life that would come next, after the next snake, when James grew up.
And he grew out of kidnapping the snakes, after Grandpapa told him why there was a number tattooed on his arm and what had happened to the people of their faith back in Germany in the 1940s and why no one should be locked up, after Uncle Ben got sick and went away.
James set the snakes free in his backyard.
Because everyone should be free.
Even reptiles.