AN: Nellie's Back! This isn't in ANY of my fandoms, but as I am in a play production as Rhoda, and we had a free-write in English, I couldn't resist! A one-shot, more of a character study, of Christine and Rhoda. There MAY be some confusion if you know nothing of 'The Bad Seed' in which case I urge you to find the novel or play at your library or if you're desperate, the movie version. Although in musicals/plays, it contains some elments of the novel for those who have read it. PLEASE: R&R and enjoy
Disclaimer: I do not own the Bad Seed. It belongs to the author of the nover, William March, and the plawright who adapted it, Maxwell anderson. I'm only an actor-writer exercising my imagination.
MOTHER and CHILD
a story of 'The Bad Seed'
The town-home was claustrophobic, crushing the child in her over-sized, over-stuffed armchair. Even more strangles was the mother's breathing: impatient and shallow. The binge jar was empty—it was too hot, too sticky and constrained to go to the park—there was nothing. Christine's mind was exhausted from creating movement and indulgences for them: the never-ending bus ride, a double feature, ice-cream, the toy store, the library and museums and it was meaningless. Her daughter was still that strange spawn: her mind still craved things, actual things that it hadn't even seen yet; her cold grotto of a heart did not grow outside the borders of her own wants and needs. The only comfort the mother drew was that her child was helplessly incapable of being otherwise.
"Are we going anywhere today, mother?"
The mother shook her head no.
There was a silence. After a time Rhoda pressed further, "Will you tell me a story?"
Although she smiled, the mother was slightly agitated, she could feel, even taste her heart quivering and breaking between the need to escape her daughter and the greater need to love and be loved by her. "Well, what about the one I told you on the bus? Should I start with the part where the train disappeared or the part where..."
"—How about a new one? Will you make a new story with me, Mommy?" The shallow, empty holes of the child's eyes looked up in earnest. The world was numb around her but she know if she smiled bright enough and curtsied well enough it could be fooled. Her mother was the world.
AN: If you liked what you read I MAY be pursuaded to add on to it, maybe get into the story they make up, or create other one-shots with Christine and Rhoda...maybe even Monica Breedlove.