Shadowed Dreams
Author: Amata le Fay
Title: Shadowed Dreams
Story: Danse Macabre - RP
Flavors: Fig 5 (the river styx)
Toppings/Extras: Whipped Cream (Spencer is 12)
Word Count: 606
Rating: PG13 (language; trigger warning: parental deaths, drugs, suicide)
Notes: He tells himself that sleep is for the weak. Only his subconscious knows that he's also avoiding nightmares. // I think this can stand by itself. This was originally longer but I cut the second half because it just didn't fit with the tone of the piece.
4:07 a.m. Half-scribbled equations ripped out of notebooks wallpaper the room, edges peeling off ever so slightly as they're nudged by the draft from the open window. Spencer has not slept in 24 hours. It's starting to trip up his brain, but he's so close to finishing the program that all the exhaustion will be worth it in just a few more lines of code.
He tells himself that sleep is for the weak. Only his subconscious knows that he's also avoiding nightmares-if you could even call them nightmares. So little of it was from his imagination, and so much from his life.
“Mom! Mom, look at me!” He grabs her shoulders and turns her to face him.
“Ethan.” Her eyes are dull, as if she's in a trance, too far into her own memories. “Ethan, come back. You have to come back.”
“It's Spencer! Your goddamn son!” His fist slams down against the table. His mother refuses to meet his eyes. She is silent for a moment. Then she rises, slowly, and heads toward the door.
No. Mustn't sleep. Work to do.
He mutters jargon under his breath to fill up the silence echoing through the empty house. His creation is just the right mix of technology, reality-hacking, and spiritualism to make the technobabble sound like complete nonsense. He's given up talking to his teachers or friends about it. They've told him it was irrational to believe in ghosts. They don't understand.
He needs to believe in ghosts. Whether it's rational or not is irrelevant.
He runs and throws himself in front of her, screaming. “He's dead! Dad's dead and he's not coming back!”
She strokes his cheek absently. Her mind is elsewhere. “Don't worry, Spencer. Your dad's coming back. We'll be together-”
“The only way we'll be together is if we die like him! Face it! He's gone!” He closes his eyes to stop the tears that threaten to spill onto his cheek.
No more of that. No more.
When Spencer next speaks, it's in a half-sob. “He's not coming back. That doesn't give you an excuse to abandon me. So get your shit together, because I will not say another word to you until you do.”
The look on her face is as if she's been struck. “Spencer... I'm trying.”
The eleven-year-old hardens up his heart. “Try harder,” he snarls, and then he leaves her alone with the silence.
He throws himself into the work as the clock on his desk switches to 4:08. He types in the final lines, waits for them to process, and then clicks run.
All the lights in the house flicker off. The computer, plugged into the same sockets, stays on.
Spencer runs out of the room, heading straight to what used to be his mom's bedroom. His vision wobbles and he almost falls, but within the minute he's standing in front of the window where his mother overdosed in order to join his father at last.
Standing there is a shimmering white glow in the shape of a woman. Spencer! she calls, not expecting him to hear.
“Mom?” Is this a dream is this a dream oh dear God let this not be a dream.
I'm here, Spencer. The figure glides toward him. Ethan, he found us.
He turns around. Standing in the doorway is another figure, a man. Spencer. My boy. My brilliant, brilliant boy, says his father as he steps forward. I'm so proud of you.
“Dad?”
You were wrong. His mother's ghost is smiling. He doesn't know how he knows, but she is smiling. Dying isn't the only way for us to be together.