~ part 1: fireflies and good intentions ~
Spencer Ried. T. 1,353.
Written for lady of scarlet and based off one of her stories.
"i. Our little garden of life, such a charming, fairy-like spot."
Little Spencer Reid is a delicate and tender six years of age when Diana declares, on a sudden fickle whim, that nature is a valuable treasure meant to be cherished by all men and creatures alike. He dismisses this statement, assuming with adult-like reasoning that this is one of her so-called inspirations; a foolishly naive idea that she will dismiss later as nonsense. After all, he reminds himself, no matter how many places he has marvelled at within the pages of books, he has never once stepped an inch outside of the confines of Las Vegas. Nor has he ever planned on it. (Of course, I've been to such places as Italy, Prague and France. I've seen the English valleys and seen the hot sun on the Nile...all within the pages of my books, he thinks.)
The next morning the sun is nothing more than a faint reddish glow which spreads across the lawn, causing the droplets of dew to twinkle like fallen stars upon the grass, when his mother wakes him up to go camping-their truck packed and ready to roll. The young boy dons his bright blue jacket and outdoor runners, slipping his fingers into the holes of his winter gloves and placing his annoying glasses upon his nose with a sense of uncertainty.
He is yanked unceremoniously into the offending vehicle without any thought given to his emotions, and as their old Ford pulls out of the driveway, Diana speaks of towering evergreens and such beautiful birds that even the angels weep when they see them. Spencer does not pay attention to her this once, for he cannot hear her singsong voice amid the roar of the worn-out engine and the pounding of his heart.
The tattered old house which he has grown so accustomed to—with its peeling paint, cracked cement walls and faulty doors which creak and moan whenever you disturb them—disappears behind him, turning into many long and winding roads which even he (Spencer Reid, boy genius) cannot conceive of remembering. The twist and turns they take along the thousands of pathways become lost in the abyss of nothingness containing the things which he has actually forgotten and no longer recalls. (There are a great few things here in the nothingness, Spencer knows, a great few things which he has forced himself to erase from his spotless mind. Things such as his Father shooting himself in the foot with a nail-gun when Spencer was no more than three and his Father crying over it. Not, of course, that Spencer remembers this.)
ii." Blossom the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels"
Spencer honestly tries to enjoy this adventure of hers. He abandons his pessimistic attitude in anxious eagerness, hoping above anything that at least she will be happy, telling himself that it does not matter that she has dragged him away from the presence of his peers but also from the comforting bliss of his books. (His precious, lonely books, collecting dust on his red-brown mahogany shelf back home.)
Diana does not take notice of her son's gloomy expression and takes his forced smiles for genuine excitement as she coats him down in bug spray which is meant to keep the blood hungry parasites (mosquitoes) at bay. In the end it is merely pointless, however, as the spray leaves a sticky film over his skin which only makes him itch horribly and the gooey marshmallows which he eats like a barbarian off of unsanitary sticks only attract the bugs all the more.
She teaches him about the constellations and he decides, with a passionate awe in his heart, that the only thing good about the countryside is the vast open skies which are populated with beautiful stars. He has never really seen them before, only the burning luminescence of flashing neon sins and slander, and he watches them with reverence. He wishes he could pluck them down with his chubby hands ("The stars pluck from their orbs too, And crowd them in my budget; And whether I'm a roaring boy, Let all the nation judge it.") and place them within a glass jar so that he will not have to sleep within the breathing darkness which seeps from the sky and flows into his fearful heart.
"Tell me again about Canis Major, Mother, please," he requests when the air gets too chilly and the sky too dark for him to endure the darkness. He misses the perpetual, iridescent glow of Vegas suddenly and berates himself for not thinking of grabbing his flashlight.
"Canis Major and its neighbouring constellation, Canis Minor, the Little Dog, appear in a number of myths. One legend has the two dogs sitting patiently under a table at which the Twins are dinning. The faint stars that can be seen scattered in the sky between Canis Minor and Gemini are the crumbs the Twins have been feeding to the animals."
Her voice, smooth and loving, lowered to an aching whisper full of professionalism and wonderful joy. He strained his tiny ears to hear her above the whistling wind of the nighttime and let his genius mind fall into her enchanting story, her power of speech transporting him into a vivid scene where he could literally feel the thick fur of Sirius caressing his fingertips.
The world felt so small and safe to Spencer in that instant, a compacted space full of never-ending knowledge and affection; so full of untapped potential.
iii. "Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed"
"Too many words, too many words, too many words..." Diana mumbles under her breath as she paces along the red-wood floor boards, which remind Spencer so much of his book shelf that he yearns for printed pages in agony. She goes around the room so fast that he naively thinks she will make deep creases in the floor as she chants the disturbing phrase like an amazing prayer.
Too many words, he muses.
He doesn't recognize it as a quote, nor does he understand what she means by this. He listens intently, waiting for a clue as to what she wants, but he cannot make sense of her incoherent ramblings and merely settles for watching her footsteps and waiting for her to trip over her own feet. She never does.
Instead she flutters determinedly like some exotic butterfly through the cabin, gathering the few books she brought to read to him within her paper-thin arms and discarding them, rather neatly, onto the floor.
Spencer watches in fascination from a rickety wooden chair in the kitchen as she arranges and re-arranges them, curiously wondering what she was searching so desperately for. It seemed an eternity to him before Diana was finally and at long last satisfied by her baffling work. Eagerly awaiting an explanation, his young face registered acute horror as she flipped to page 367 and began tearing out the paper.
It was then that he realized the fate of her mid-nineteenth century poetry.
Diana ripped and tore the pages of her books with her fingertips, the shredded remains of her lost companions falling around her as her son recoiled at their deaths. The ground to Spencer's eyes seemed to be littered with the blood of innocents, a painful testimony to his mother's growing insanity which he would not accept. Could not accept.
He made no move to stop her horrendous massacre, however; if she wished the pages to be removed from her novels, they would certainly be removed. The books were, of course, replaceable. (For the most part, anyway. That last one was a classic.)
When at last he thought he could take no more of the sound of paper being ripped and the sight of words on the pages being lost before his very eyes, he retrieved a box of cheerio's from the cupboard and ate them dry on the front porch.
Everything would be okay when she was finished, he told himself. Perhaps the pages would make good kindling for their (disgusting)marshmallows which she liked so much.
First draft: 01-30-09
Revisions: 1-5-10 & 9-23-12