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Morticia was certain that the last time she’d held her daughter was the day she’d learnt to walk. At a mere eight months old, being the precocious overachiever she was, Wednesday staggered across the living room, her pudgy arms clinging to the sofa for assistance, refusing to accept any from her doting parents.
Originally, Morticia and Gomez had marveled at her, shamelessly bragging to distant family and their limited friends about their daughter’s independence.
Wednesday’s mother hadn’t anticipated just how hindering her newfound independence would turn out to be.
When she’d turned one, Wednesday was feeding herself. Any efforts made to pick her up and deposit her in her high chair would result in her sinking her minimal teeth into the perpetrator’s skin for daring to try and move her, so Gomez dutifully shortened the legs of the chair so his storm cloud could climb in all by herself.
Before she was even two, she was tucking herself in, had self-potty trained, and was speaking scarily fluent English, whenever she deemed it necessary to bother conversing with the adults who were raising her. Soon after she turned two, there was suddenly a new member of the family.
Morticia was mutually overwhelmed and enamored by Pugsley. She was sure he’d cried more in the first week home from the hospital than Wednesday had in her entire short life, but she couldn’t deny that warm feeling of importance that it provided her when she’d appear in his nursery to soothe his cries, and all Pugsley needed to calm down was his mother’s company. His mother’s love.
Pugsley wasn’t walking by one. Nor was he by two. By three, he’d finally managed to gallivant around the lounge with the confidence Wednesday had garnered before she’d even been on Earth for a whole year. In all the veins in which Wednesday excelled, her brother faltered.
The lackadaisical pace at which Pugsley reached his fundamental childhood milestones never bothered Morticia. She was more than happy to provide him with extra support. She was overjoyed to assist him with reading, his phonetic abilities, eventually his homework, and shower him with as much physical affection as he craved.
By the time her daughter was ten years old, she was practically a miniature adult. Wednesday didn’t ask for attention, she didn’t ask for help, and she didn’t ask for love.
By the time she was fifteen, she’d been expelled from her eighth school. Regardless of the fact that she was beyond positive that Nevermore would have a positive effect on her daughter’s constitution, and that even on the sporadic occasions she deigned to come down from her tower room, they seldom talked, it made Morticia’s heart ache to send Wednesday hundreds of miles away.
Hearing about everything that had happened during Wednesday’s first term at Nevermore had terrified her. But hearing Wednesday’s personal telling of the tale had been downright petrifying.
Morticia was proud, of course. Her daughter had triumphed over evil forces, solved elaborate mysteries, and, to Morticia’s boundless glee, made a friend. Wednesday hadn’t explicitly stated that she’d befriended her werewolf roommate, but the sheer number of times her name had come up in the story, and the little side tangents Wednesday would go on, specifically about something Enid said or did, was extremely telling.
Despite her genuine pride at the heroics her daughter had exhibited, and despite the careless nature in which Wednesday discussed everything she’d been through, Morticia was horrified at everything her daughter had experienced. Essentially, at her parents’ behest.
It was her idea to send her to Vermont, and she struggled not to grapple with guilt over it, even with all the repeated reassurances from Gomez.
She couldn’t have known.
She knew she couldn’t have known.
Three years ago, Pugsley and Wednesday had a disagreement about who should get the first turn with the new family guillotine. Pugsley had stripped Wednesday’s typewriter of all its keys and hidden them one by one in select locations around the mansion. Wednesday had displayed more emotion over the desecration of her typewriter than she had when she told her parents she’d been kidnapped.
Morticia hardly slept that night. When he noticed the tossing and turning in the late evening, after almost drifting off, Gomez abruptly sat up, concerned for his usually peacefully slumbering wife. Quickly pouring her fears onto her robust husband, for him to help shoulder, the matriarch was met with a wildly unexpected neutrality.
Gomez had explained that whilst everything their daughter had experienced had been horrendous, it seemed like Wednesday had also experienced some necessary character development.
Gomez had slept on the couch.
The following night, they maturely re-communed, simultaneously trying to communicate their side without argument. It had gone smoothly, right up until the point Gomez had unabashedly mentioned that it seemed like everything Wednesday had gone through had been worth it.
The couch became a permanent fixture.
Arriving at the family mansion for the Summer break, Wednesday was unexpectedly relieved to be home. With the unprecedented murder mystery she had been occupied solving in Jericho, she hadn’t had as much spare time to write her novel as she’d originally anticipated. She was glad she could have some uninterrupted peace in her tower room to buckle down and focus.
The eldest Addams progeny made haste to unpack and slip away to her room, trying to trap herself in her tower like a self-made Rapunzel. Regretfully, she’d been coerced into a family talk in the living room.
Pugsley had been nothing short of ecstatic to hear her stories. Her parents had listened attentively, keeping their opinions to themselves, which was decidedly odd. However, in her desperation to begin her month of solitude, she didn’t bother trying to deduce the why.
It did occur to her that the very night she’d filled her family in on the dubious events that had occurred at the boarding school they’d shipped her off to, her father began taking residence on the sofa. Not seeing the correlation, Wednesday didn’t dare ask why. She kept her parents’ sleeping habits far away from encroaching on her deductive radar, for her own sanity.
Eventually, she was mercifully permitted to get lost in Viper’s more favorable universe, high up in her bedroom, temporarily abandoning her own complex world.
Three days later, she’d enacted a new summer routine. It was almost identical to the previous one, in that it heavily involved avoiding her family to the maximum extent possible, but this one also involved a daily call to Enid’s property in San Francisco. At the wolf’s insistence, of course.
Hours after night had fallen, Wednesday felt her irksome human nature getting the better of her, begging for rest. Satisfied with making her corporeal form wait for another ten minutes for the purpose of maintaining her at-home schedule, she retrieved her spotless cello from its home in the far corner, electing to apply a generous amount of rosin to her bow after the unfortunate amount of time she’d been forced to neglect it.
Wednesday wasn’t obnoxiously playing her instrument in the hopes of inconveniencing her family’s night of rest. The possibility was simply an added benefit.
Ten minutes turned into fifteen. A quarter of an hour turned into half. Half an hour turned into a whole one.
It became unfortunately apparent that Wednesday hadn’t pulled any family members from their slumber, as they (well, Pugsley, at least) likely would’ve already stormed up and told her to keep it down.
Although the awareness that her music wasn’t bothering anyone was suboptimal, she was having a pleasant enough time. Strangely, with her exhaustion ever growing, she found that each time she considered dropping the bow and collapsing onto her mattress, an odd, indecipherable notion twisted up in the back of her mind like an untagleable ball of yarn urged her to reconsider.
So, eventually, only after an entirely too long session on her string instrument, she retired to her patiently waiting bed.
Sleeping in the highest point of her mansion always made her feel above her family, in more ways than one. Funnily enough, her dormitory at Nevermore was situated at one of the highest points, too. Apart from one of the towers in Caliban Hall, which bothered Wednesday more than she let on, sure it was an apt analogy for systemic sexism.
She kept her arms tightly locked over her chest as she allowed her heavy head to loll to the right, falling on her dark pillow. Sighing out of her clear nostrils, the raven read the constellations in the dewy, summer-night sky.
Sleep arrived just like Pugsley in the Addams Family Christmas katana race: Unfathomably slowly (which was nearly unheard of for her).
Being back at home had originally come as an indescribable relief. But, an equally indescribable, unnerving sensation was lazily making itself known; creeping further and further up her spine, burying itself in her mind. It sounded pleasant in theory. Perhaps, she simply needed time to adjust. Wednesday had persuaded herself that her unfounded trepidation was merely her mind and body adapting to not being surrounded by murderous chaos (or, at least less).
She would give herself time. She’d have plenty.
Waking up to a dull ache in her bones was a familiar comfort. Lying on the mattress assigned to her at Nevermore had felt like being absorbed by cotton candy, without the sticky residue that Pugsley would infamously coat his fingers with at every fair he’d ever attended.
Wednesday tried not to be, but she was spoiled. The springs in her thin mattress just prodded her spine in all the right places.
Rising like the undead, she emerged from her creaking bed-frame, shooting a half-lidded glance at the ancient mantel clock on her overused desk, mildly perturbed after learning it was already late morning.
She stiffly entered her en suite, swiftly undoing the bands in her tightly coiled braids. After brushing them out with the needlessly gaudy comb purchased for her by her mother, she stepped into her shower. Snatching the curtain shut, she attempted in vain not to be unsettled at her foiled routine.
The raven vigorously scrubbed her long locks, feeling indignation that neither parent had roused her when she never came down for breakfast. Allowing the freezing spray of water to coat her short form, she was subsequently grounded into a state of rationality, recognizing that if she had been woken up so early after sleeping so poorly, she probably would’ve had a violent reaction.
The soaking seer used caution as she cleaned the closing arrow wound on her left shoulder that she’d cleverly neglected to mention to her parents in the retelling of her sordid story. It truly was pointless, as Wednesday could predict their exact (over) reaction.
With her two pigtails pristinely re-braided and dressed for the day in a knitted monochrome sweater over a crisp, white dress shirt with a platter collar, she descended the 38 steps of her tower staircase, followed by the 20 steps of the main mansion stairwell, entering the foyer with her classically lifeless expression on.
Slinking into the pantry for something quick to satiate her energy stores, she emerged with a new destination in mind. Her stride lost its confidence as she stepped into the dining room to find it was already occupied by her mother. Aware it would seem hostile to immediately whip around and bolt out of the room, she resigned herself to her fate, lowering herself onto the closest chair, satisfied that it was, at the very least, the furthest one from the household’s matriarch.
“Good morning, Wednesday.” Morticia greeted in her ever-smooth cadence, looking up from her journal as Wednesday stared down at her small bowl of stone fruits.
“Mother.” She calmly acknowledged without any malice, gracing her with a sprinkling of eye contact, before swallowing a grape that her stomach was expressing no desire for.
“I do hope you’re not dispirited that we decided not to wake you, dear.” Morticia softly spoke, irksomely attuned to her daughter’s every whim. Her lengthy pointer finger lazily remained on the half-filled page of the open book. “Your serenade went on for an unprecedented amount of time. I thought your body might appreciate the extra rest. I hope the rest of you isn’t too affronted.”
“I assumed you didn’t hear it.” She sincerely responded, purposefully negating touching on anything specific Morticia had said. “You’ve never mentioned it before.”
“Well,” Morticia began, with a fond look on her face that forced Wednesday to return her gaze to her late breakfast. She bypassed admitting that she’d refrained from bringing up her adoration for her daughter’s musical talents in fear she’d stop hearing the product of it every night. “It’s hardly an annoyance, dear.”
She nibbled on the fruit like a rabbit, hoping her lack of response signified she was done with the unpleasant conversation. Wednesday should’ve known she could never be so lucky.
“With Pugsley’s bedroom being on the other side of the home, and your father’s notorious deep sleeping habits, I imagine I’m the only one who gets to be graced with your late-night concertos.”
“It doesn’t ruin your sleep?” Wednesday flatly hoped.
“It lulls me into it,” Morticia said, picking up her stupidly luxurious pen and returning to detailing intricate notes on her thriving plants.
“Ah, your form is perfect as ever, my little viper.” Gomez beamed after being bested by his daughter’s tipped blade, once more. “I feared that being surrounded by peers so beneath you in the art of the blade, that the lack of challenging physical stimulation might dull your effervescent skill.”
Following her sweating father’s lead, Wednesday relinquished her trusty saber, hanging it up on the porch after stepping off the grassy expanse they were battling on. It was more difficult to hail victory over her father whilst subtly favoring her right arm, but she’d adjusted seamlessly.
“There was the odd classmate that kept me engaged.” She confessed, refusing to go so far as to say a certain siren had scored points on her on several occasions. Originally, it had rattled her tremendously. Eventually, the obstinate seer came to understand the opportunity to learn and grow that the distressing act of being defeated offered her, after over a decade of being a notorious sore loser.
“We evolve most significantly through adversity. Think of Nietzsche.” He smiled with teeth as they hovered on the patio for a short moment. “I find myself growing stronger every time I’m bested by my daughter’s blade.”
“Perhaps you should try winning every once in a while, then I can experience this growth you speak so fondly of.”
He cackled heartily at his daughter’s unexpected tease, dutifully tugging the handle and holding the back door open for her.
Thanking him with a bob of her head, she passed her jubilant father, following the familiar smell to the kitchen, and observing her mother coaching her son through the art of slicing tomatoes.
“Did Wednesday destroy you?” Pugsley eagerly asked his approaching dad. Curiously, despite their new sleeping arrangement, Wednesday couldn’t detect any bad blood between her parents, as they drew together like magnets, their lips meeting for an unnecessary kiss.
“But of course,” Gomez confirmed, after reluctantly pulling away from his wife, who returned to her boy. “It was an honor.”
“Would you two set the table? It shan’t be long, now.” Morticia requested, sizzling some beef, pepper and onion together in a pan. Wednesday recognized the steps she was taking, assuming she was cooking Grandmama’s famous beef enchiladas. She wasn’t quite sure why the scent wasn’t enticing her as it usually did.
“Of course, Querida. Come along, Tormenta.”
Gomez lovingly placed the cutlery and plates around the stretched, mahogany table, assigning the more exciting job of lighting candles and selecting a record to his daughter.
Despite not having intended to spend the majority of her day with her parents, since her strict routine was already disgraced by her body’s late awakening, she had assumed the day was too far gone to be saved. Admittedly, she’d anticipated being in a far fouler mood by dinner time, but her family had been less aggravating than they typically tended to be.
Following the tray of steaming food with her eyes, Wednesday tried to force some hunger cues to rise. Regretfully, they seemed to be on strike.
Allowing her brother to serve a couple of enchiladas on her plate, clearly proud of the effort he’d put in with the chopping of vegetables, Wednesday patiently waited until he’d done the same for their parents before shoving some into her reluctant mouth.
Noticing his sister’s slow chewing on his left, Pugsley narrowed his eyes. “Do you not trust it just cause I helped make it?”
“You don’t have the guts to add any arsenic.” Not appreciating being called out, she’d gladly reverted to defensive sass.
“Mom said I did good,” Pugsley claimed, still under the inaccurate impression that his involvement in the making of the meal was impacting Wednesday’s eagerness to consume it.
“She doesn’t want to hurt your sensitive feelings.” Although it felt like trying to stuff more books into an already filled rucksack, the alternative of her family asking her probing questions about her appetite was unequivocally worse than eating the food, so she continued to suck it down.
The lingering pain in her extremities from her perfectly uncomfortable mattress was beginning to grow inconvenient, as it wasn’t particularly conducive to operating her mother’s tiny, finicky cutlery. She wondered if the fencing had exacerbated it, noticing the slight shaking of her pale hands and the uncomfortable sting in her collarbone from the jagged gash.
Joining her father at the sink to wash the dishes after dinner, she saw him downing a glass of water in her peripheral vision.
“I think your brother added too much chili.” Smiling with her eyes at her father’s weak spice tolerance, she couldn’t resist a subtle quip. “I didn’t notice.”
Gomez grinned with his entire face. “Of course not, my little viper.”
Irked with the lack of creativity oozing out of her fingertips, and gladly blaming it on the extended family time she’d been roped into that day, Wednesday finally stopped beating the dead horse, heading over to her other favorite activity, instead.
Slightly disturbed by the fact that her mother had confessed to enjoying listening to her play while she lay in bed, Wednesday picked up her bow, nonetheless. She played for her own merit, not anybody else’s, so she was mildly irritated as she flicked through her selections and felt an unwelcome pressure to pick something her mother would approve of.
Wednesday was even more annoyed to have to turn the pages with her own hand, since Thing was away with Fester, likely getting up to unspeakable mischief that Wednesday was slightly envious of.
Plus, with Lurch on his well-earned summer break (mostly consisting of him frolicking around the garden and groaning to himself or blasting opera in his quarters), the house was unusually quiet.
Settling for some classic Pablo Casals after getting herself overly worked up, Wednesday let loose, forcing all thoughts of her mother out of her brain.
In quite the opposite manner of the previous night, Wednesday dropped the bow after less than half an hour of tickling the strings, deeply tired in a way that she was ashamed of, and couldn’t fathom the reason for, after her rather lackluster day.
She entered her bathroom to brush her teeth, which had been relatively unused that day, given her unfounded lack of hunger. Lost in thought, she morosely considered that the human body she was unwittingly born into was weak and constantly malfunctioned. Although angered at this newest malfeasance, there was nothing she could do but succumb to it, crashing into her bed in a dark lump.
Wednesday relished the dramatic clanging sound her slight form made as she connected with the virtually concrete mattress.
Her satisfaction was short-lived, as it fizzled back into that maddening sense of unease she’d inexplicably experienced the night before. The presumptuous seer hadn’t expected it to linger, and it was making her typically seamless transition into unconsciousness inordinately challenging, once again.
Unable to understand why her body was insistent on defying her in multiple factions, Wednesday tossed and turned and huffed and puffed, but found that to be rather unhelpful, too (even at diminishing her rage).
A lazy glance at her clock, with the summer moonlight illuminating her desk, told her it was already well past the witching hour. Feeling disobeyed by the useless meat sack she was trapped inside, and vastly uncomfortable with the lack of control, since she was supposed to be its operator, Wednesday bitterly tore off her thin duvet.
The cello wasn’t piquing her interest, and she didn’t want to type out any more uninspired drivel through her writer’s block, so she merely stood, rarely uncertain.
Finally, electing to clomp down the two staircases into the desolate kitchen, Wednesday boiled herself some tea that she wasn’t overly interested in drinking, primarily for the purpose of having a task to complete, with the vain hope it would snap her out of the strange stupor she’d found herself in.
She contorted her cheeks as she felt a peculiar burn in her throat, as the hot beverage trickled down it. Wondering what blend her mother purchased, Wednesday inspected the packaging, turning it every which way.
“It’s an herbal blend. It was gifted to me by a friend.” Noticing the shameful coil of her insides in reaction to the vague surprise at the matriarchal interruption, Wednesday wondered how it was possible for somebody to descend a 20-step staircase with such feather-light feet. Morticia closed the gap with them, continuing to speak in her soft, singular cadence.
“If the reason you’re sipping tea at 4 AM is that you’re having trouble sleeping, this might not be the blend for you.” She said it like it was free, optional advice, but physically took the mug from her daughter’s hands, which Wednesday thought was rather audacious.
Wordlessly observing her mother press the back of her fingers against the kettle to check it was still hot, she kept up her silence, as it seemed like the simplest route to take. “When you were little,” Morticia began, pouring the incorrect tea down the drain, then refilling the mug with boiling water. Wednesday rolled her eyes behind her mother’s back, positive she didn’t want to hear this story.
“I used to find you all around the home, late at night.” Morticia poured in some dark powder, mixing it with a long spoon. “After using some deductive skills of my own, I began to notice a consistency to your restless nights.” She handed her daughter the steaming mug. Wednesday wrapped her digits around the smooth handle, careful not to touch her mother’s manicured fingers with her own.
“They would always follow an episode of vengeance.” Morticia calmly explained. “Fifth grade: When you set Mr. Higgins’ desk on fire for his unfair treatment of your brother. Tenth grade: Piranha’s in the pool, for the very same unjust act.” She remembered with a fond, reminiscent shine in her dark eyes. Wednesday listened intently, curious if her mother was going to be woefully off base, or not.
“I wasn’t so naive as to think this was your guilty conscience. These were all acts of retribution. But your father once explained to me a common phenomenon, about soldiers who come home from war, and find the simplicity and triviality of everyday life challenging to readjust to, after experiencing the adrenaline of battle.” Morticia met her stagnant girl’s inquisitive eyes. “Did you fight any battles yesterday, Wednesday?”
Thinly amused that her mother was genuinely asking her if she’d committed any grievous acts of vandalism or maimed anybody yesterday, then considerably less tickled when she considered how trivial her past acts of destruction paled in comparison to the raw, high-stakes battle she’d partaken in at Nevermore, she blinked, feeling her scarred stomach twisting in a nauseating realization, and her healing shoulder gash start to tingle. She didn’t fight any juvenile battles similar to the ones she’d willingly enjoyed in her youth the previous day, but, no less than a week ago, she had fought a real one, which, in retrospect, seemed to barge its way into her mind far too often for it to really be considered normal.
A mere “No, mother.” was the best Wednesday could conjure, after stewing in the sheer silence for another telling amount of time.
Ignoring her mother’s annoyingly disbelieving hum, Wednesday directed a question at her in a feeble attempt at changing the subject, hoping her egocentric tendencies would take over. “Why are you awake?”
“I heard somebody coming down the stairs,” Morticia explained, pointedly, but without any real parental dissatisfaction.
Recalling her mother’s comments about listening in on her cello solos, Wednesday felt a keen disgruntlement joining her vast unsettlement. “You seem to hear everything.”
“I’ve lived in this beautiful house for an awfully long time. I’ve become very attuned to her, even in sleep. What’s keeping you up?” She slyly slotted in, not swaying from her maternal focus.
“Perhaps it’s the same reason.” Wednesday brushed her off, woodenly passing by her mother to escape to her tower, since she was sure her resolve was quickly slipping through her grip.
“This home was perfectly peaceful before you unsettled her with your turbulent energy, darling.” Wednesday slowed in her tracks, squeezing her mug tightly in her grip, seething at her mother’s irritating personification. “I hope that you know you’re always welcome to talk to me about whatever’s unsettling you.”
Feeling doubly unnerved at being seen through like a freshly cleaned window, Wednesday stiffly ascended the robust staircase without a word, not bothering to restrain her distressed facial expression from any imaginary watchers, for once.
As the morning sun finally deigned to show its face, shining through the thin trees of the surrounding forest, Wednesday’s compromised being finally sank into a fitful slumber.
Lucid dreaming was a phenomenon that Wednesday began experiencing on rare occasions in early childhood. Her favorite unconscious endeavor was a pleasant dream which included her pinning Pugsley to the ground with a sword to his throat, while their parents were trapped in the hallway, helplessly listening and banging on the door.
Upon waking up and realizing she actually did have Pugsley underneath her, and her trusty sleep-dagger clasped in her right hand, she wasn’t so amused when her tired father burst in to save his son’s life. That incident triggered their parents to move Pugsley to the furthest room from the tower, since Wednesday refused to vacate it.
When her seer abilities showed up, it became more and more common for her to be able to enter and control her dreams and nightmares. But, as her psychic prowess developed, the control part became tremendously challenging. Often, her dreams felt like visions. Curious if she was part Dreamer (like Xavier), her detailed research unfortunately told her this was but a common experience for darker seers, and was urged to be careful not to confuse dreams with visions, as it was a sure road to madness.
Although she’d originally scoffed off the warning, a few hellish, disorienting dreams served as a real wake-up call, and she could quite easily cipher how somebody might fall victim to the profoundly believable night terrors she’d suffered through. It went without saying that Wednesday enjoyed torture, but she’d learnt she liked to have her wits about her when she was experiencing it. Those dreams were a convoluted cesspool of derealization and misinformation that she wouldn’t even wish on Pugsley.
Drifting off to sleep around five in the morning, Wednesday should’ve anticipated she would be dragged back into the hazy pit.
After emerging from sheer darkness, the first sense that returned to Wednesday was auditory. She heard the undeniable crackling of flames. The first coherent thought that bubbled into her fuzzy mind was that she must be in Principal Weems’ office, as it was the location she most associated with fire. But hearing the roaring burn swimming all around her relieved her of that notion. This was no fireplace.
Next, she recovered her sense of smell. The expected stench of smoke and death clogged her nostrils, and she slowly felt raw heat traveling across her body, which was something of a relief, as she had previously felt formless. Tasting the acrid tinge in the sharp, sweltering air, Wednesday opened her sticky eyes to a most unexpected sight.
“I will send you back to hell.”
Wednesday felt like she had whiplash, hearing his putrid, gurgling words again. It felt like it had been years since she’d killed him, and also like she’d never left that moment. Crackstone smirked down at her, readjusting his grip on the magical staff, the relentless flames illuminating his stately, apparitional figure.
Flicking her gaze down to her own hands, Wednesday saw and finally felt the sword both she and her mother had used when they’d been forced to take their first life. Assuming she was going to be made to relive it, Wednesday brandished her weapon, irrationally prepared to do so without all the mistakes she’d made last time, even though she knew none of what she could hear, smell, feel, or see was presently happening.
Perhaps, if she could slay Crackstone again, and do it right, instead of being shot with a redirected arrow, coming seconds away from being suffocated, leading to her needing to be miraculously saved by Bianca by some unlikely force of deus ex machina, and only succeeding in her mission by lacerating both palms whilst using a jagged piece of a broken sword (at least her hands healed quicker than her shoulder), she’d stop being haunted by this needlessly unshakeable event.
Gritting her teeth, she rushed at him. On that fateful night, the anger from all of Crackstone’s heinous past acts fueled Wednesday’s rage. Tonight, she wasn’t just fighting for all the wrongful, discriminatory deaths committed by his large, bloody hands, but for herself.
She felt confident, already landing a deep slice on the side of his torso, splitting open his filthy rags, beginning to lose herself to the raw dream, forgetting that that was all it was, amidst all the chaos. Wednesday grunted as she dodged a firm swing of his wooden staff, knowing exactly where her target was. It was considerably easier to hold a sword without unbridled agony coursing through her shoulder.
Unfortunately, all it took was one arrogant move, and she’d felt the powerful, invisible force of the pilgrim’s staff as he’d shoved it in her direction, forcing her to the floor. Desperately trying to take in some air, Wednesday’s chocolate orbs darted around the ravaged quad, scanning for Bianca, even though she hadn’t planned on becoming a damsel in distress, again.
The burning expanse of the quad remained empty, save for the pilgrim and the student.
Wednesday gasped, her lungs impossibly constricted, refusing to look up at the chortling, reanimated monster towering over her, as he sucked the life out of her with his cheating, magic wand.
“Burn in the eternal fires of hell.”
“Wednesday.”
“Where you belong.”
“Wednesday, wake up, now.”
Feeling all of her senses ebbing away again, she assumed Crackstone had accomplished his mission. Slowly becoming aware of unidentifiable hands gripping her upper arms, Wednesday fought like a rabid animal as she attempted to tear away from the perceived threat.
Trying to summon her senses as she fought against the limbs pinning down her own, she felt a hard surface beneath her back that was too firm to even be her mattress. As her cochleas resurrected themselves, she was startled to hear her own panicked grunts and whines.
“Calm yourself, Wednesday. It’s alright.” A nervous, saccharine voice drowned out her desperate, unbecoming mewls of distress. “It’s alright.”
Grunting in disorientation, struggling to focus on anything other than her blind panic and her racing heartbeat, Wednesday saw her mother’s face slowly swimming into her field of view.
“Why am I on the floor?” Was genuinely all she could ask.
Morticia released a frightened huff of amusement. “I haven’t any idea.”
Flitting her eyes around the as-yet-unidentified room to try and place herself, it seemed that although she’d migrated off of her bed in her sleep, she hadn’t absconded from her bedroom.
Perhaps even more so than the troubling night terror that she’d witnessed, it became obvious to Morticia that her still panting daughter was feeling out of sorts when she didn’t indignantly yank herself away from the cautious hand she’d slid beneath her dampening bangs. The heat the matriarch felt on her palm confirmed the suspicion that her daughter’s uncharacteristically flushed cheeks had stirred up in her gut.
“You’re burning up, sweetheart.”
“Oh.” Wednesday sincerely croaked out, actually feeling marginally relieved, as she hoped with a pathetic desperation that her high temperature was the sole catalyst for all the odd sensations fluttering through her unsettled spirit.
“Come, darling.” Morticia elegantly rose to her feet. “We need to return you to your bed.”
Joining her mother on her own two feet with a noticeably lesser amount of grace, Wednesday checked the time at her desk, her glassy eyes sizzling as the raw sunlight mercilessly lasered them through the poorly placed window.
“It’s eleven.” She succinctly stated, by way of expressing that she wasn’t keen on this plan.
“Yes.” Morticia calmly agreed, regarding her daughter’s faraway look with a heavy, silent concern. “And it was nearly five AM when I found you lurking in the kitchen.” She countered by way of arguing that she was sure her eldest hadn’t yet had enough rest.
Admittedly, Wednesday’s rock-hard mattress was screaming her name, but the idea of retiring to her bed purely by someone else’s volition (especially her mother’s) wasn’t settling right with her spirit.
“Come.” Her mother insisted, beating her to the bed, which, upon further inspection, appeared messy and twisted, as if she’d been thrashing in her sleep. Dazedly observing her mother smoothing her dark, crinkled sheets and lifting her duvet so her daughter could crawl inside, Wednesday reluctantly obliged, her ego already bruised beyond reparation.
She was unsuccessfully trying to blame the surreal sensation of hovering over her own body on having just emerged from one of her disorienting dreams of enhanced, unconscious awareness. She felt more real in her dream than she felt upon coming out of it.
Waiting for the adamantly lingering sensation to fade appeared to be an exercise in futility.
She watched her mother holding back all kinds of maternal instincts, encouraging her to securely tuck her ailing daughter in.
“I’m going to fetch you some tea that should help lower your body temperature,” Morticia announced, after scouring through her mind for the correct course of action to take, having not tended to a sick Wednesday for many moons. “The blend you drank last night seemed to successfully put you to sleep, even if it wasn’t sound.”
Reverberating from that perceived dig, the raven watched her mother fly away. The few minutes of solitude she experienced weren’t as peaceful as she typically found them to be. There were too many doubts and queries twisting around her mind like a slither of snakes.
Was her fever solely to blame for the wariness she’d been feeling ever since returning home? Or maybe her ailment cropped up because of her newfound nervousness. Perhaps her body was rejecting her feelings. Whatever the reason, her body needed to snap out of it, because if her mother took it upon herself to dote on her all day, she’d have to fling herself out of her bedroom window and aim for Pugsley for cushioning.
Wednesday idly rubbed her clavicle, feeling the crease of the bandage through her thin nightshirt. Morticia abruptly emerged from the open doorway. She felt envious of her mother’s lack of footfalls. Her element of surprise wasn’t anything to sneeze at, but it had nothing on her mother’s.
“Here.” She drifted over to her bedside and set down the ceramic mug.
“What’s in it?” She stiffly inquired, eyeing it with suspicion for no real reason.
Morticia gently hummed. “Ginger, lemon, honey, chamomile... You should avoid dabbling in any of your Uncle’s special ingredients until your immune system is one hundred percent, again.”
It was an irrelevant recommendation. Even arsenic wouldn’t lift her spirits. “Perhaps.” She flatly agreed, regardless, for the sake of saving face.
“I imagine you crave solitude and rest.” Morticia assumed, retrieving the empty mug she’d previously given her daughter, early this morning. “I will return at lunchtime. You can either come down and join us, or I can bring something up for you.”
“Goodbye, mother.” Wednesday stagnantly bade her farewell, not wanting her mother’s company, nor wishing to be stuck with her own. Once the door clicked shut, she deftly grabbed the cup handle, hoping the chamomile would sedate her and effectively silence her thoughts.
“Our little Rain Cloud, under the weather,” Gomez remarked, taking a break from buttoning his silk pajama shirt to rub his mustache in a pondering manner. “It’s been a long time.”
“It certainly has,” Morticia murmured in agreement, smoothing out her dark, velvet sleeves.
“Tish.” He forlornly uttered, taking her slender hands into his darker ones.
Her eyes sparkled with levity, already sensing where her guilty husband was going to take this. “I’ve already forgiven you, Gomez.“
“I know. Your capacity for forgiveness is almost as breathtaking as your capacity for withstanding pain.” He passionately claimed. “But I feel I must elaborate on the true intentions of my dastardly words. It all came out wrong. I lack your elegance; I thank the stars that our children inherited it.”
Instinctively skeptical after the week they’d spent in a rare state of hostility they’d skillfully hidden from their offspring, Morticia overcame her doubts, electing to trust her husband. “The stage is yours, Mon Cher.” She allowed, willing to hear him out, leading him to the edge of their bed and perching by his side, sliding his final button through its destined hole.
“I didn’t mean to imply that her growth had been worth her suffering.”
“That’s not what you implied, Gomez.” She disagreed with a warning tone. “That’s what you said.”
“As much as it physically pains my chest to disagree with you, Cara Mia.” He softly and earnestly began his explanation. “I believe what I said was that what had happened to her had been worth it. For a regular person, such an event would undoubtedly be traumatic and cause great suffering. But Wednesday is not a regular person. She’s extraordinary.”
“Of course she is.”
“Murder and mayhem and mystery,” He decidedly shook his head. “When has that ever fazed our girl? It’s only entranced her.”
Morticia’s face softened, suddenly understanding her husband’s stance, and almost feeling sorry for him, and how misinformed he was.
“Gomez.” She stroked his stubbly cheek with her juxtaposing smooth hand. “There is such a difference between having an interest, or even appreciation for the morbid pockets of the world, versus actually experiencing such a thing, in the way Wednesday did that night.”
His dark eyes scanned her face, wordlessly requesting elaboration.
“I’m not saying she’s overstating her love of the macabre. I’m not even saying she necessarily is grappling with any kind of turmoil over her experience.” Morticia evenly explained, sliding her hand back into his waiting one. “But, whether it’s a reanimated pilgrim born hundreds of years ago or a human being you’re forced to execute, taking a life can change you. I know this better than most. We do.”
Gomez exhaled shakily, dragging his eyes up to his wife’s gaze. “Wednesday, extraordinary or not, isn’t immune to that. She’s sick, Gomez.” She pointedly reminded. “When was the last time she was sick?”
“You think it’s connected?” He asked, his posture straightening. “Her body deteriorating in unison with her mind?”
She slowly shrugged, pouting her plum lips in undecidedness. “Seems an awfully strange coincidence.” She landed on. “She didn’t seem to be any better this evening, even with all the tea and potions. We may have to resort to normie pharmaceuticals tomorrow.”
Gomez theatrically shivered, slapping a hand over his heart. “A fate worse than death. I struggle to see her being receptive.”
“As do I.” She easily concurred. “Hopefully she’s in an uncombative mood.”
“Our Wednesday?” Gomez smiled, big and proud. “Impossible.”
In an effort to thwart her mother’s unbecoming plan (to drug her firstborn and contribute to the scourge of Normie Big Pharma) that she’d subtly mentioned upon slapping an unwanted hand on her rosy cheek early that morning and finding herself unsatisfied with the temperature of it, Wednesday was seated, her spine ramrod straight, in the living room.
Hoping to convey a sense of normalcy and wellness by returning to her routine and finally emerging from her ravaged bed, the raven perched on one of the armchairs, so none of her fellow household members would take it upon themselves to sit next to her.
“Mom says you’re sick.”
Wednesday slowly dragged her dark orbs up from her novel, allowing them to land on her brother’s soft, expectant face.
“Pugsley, if you go through life blindly believing everything your family tells you, your future is guaranteed to be as bleak and disappointing as I’ve always assumed it would be.” Whatever remote possibility there was of her brother being insulted by her early afternoon tirade was foiled by her undeniably exhausted face. Her visible sleepiness, combined with her typical ghostly pallor, made her look like a caricature of somebody afflicted with the common cold.
He fixed her with a disbelieving, tickled expression that made Wednesday wish she’d finished the job during her violent lucid dream a decade prior. “Should’ve eaten more dirt when you were little. My immune system’s made of steel.”
“I’ve consumed enough cyanide in my lifetime to wipe out a village.” She said, refusing to be irked by his provoking blathering, returning her bleary eyes to the worn pages of the withering book. “Our immune systems aren’t comparable.”
“Then how come you’re sick, and I’m not?” He teasingly dropped his metaphorical mic, sauntering over to the other side of the room to retrieve a book for himself.
“Because the universe pities you enough, already.”
“So, you do admit it?” He nonchalantly called back, achieving the fabled last word, and dropping his sister even deeper into her dank well of a mood.
Ten minutes had passed, and Wednesday had forgotten that she wasn’t alone. It wasn’t a rarity for her to lose herself to the literary universes her sharp eyes absorbed and processed. However, on that seasonably warm summer afternoon, wearing a heinous amount of layers that her misinformed hypothalamus demanded of her, Wednesday could hardly take in any of the simple print.
It was her raucous thoughts that stole her precious attention. The keen sensation of existing in a space but feeling like she wasn’t really there returned to her in full force. Every minute, she’d hear the crisp turn of a page from her left, but aside from that, she only heard her faint breathing and the occasional creaking of the behemoth of a home that her mother’s auditory senses were so attuned to.
Wednesday thought of the recent past. The Happy Ending that the Jericho Daily Press had alluded to. The Heroic Underdog Student that they’d slapped on the title page. The first adjective, no doubt used by some glorified, hick journalist, had been the finest cause of Wednesday’s frustration. She wasn’t the inspirational antihero they were trying to make her out to be for the sake of a pleasant story. She wasn’t a hero, period, and the story wasn’t a pleasant one, especially The Ending.
During her childhood, she’d dreamt up and consciously imagined many violent battles.
Her, alone, against evil.
Wednesday always foresaw that vanquishing a foe would make her feel powerful. At the end of every novel, when Viper inevitably triumphed over her enemies, she’d feel the same way.
Perhaps the reason her writer’s block was so prevalent was that she’d been so detrimentally incorrect about everything she thought she knew about the world and who she was that she couldn’t trust what she wrote to be true anymore.
Staring vacantly at the pages before her, Wednesday wondered if reading was the only literary venture she’d be capable of, from now on.
The seer forced herself to read a passage from the book she’d selected after being told something by her mother, originally stated by her father, two nights ago, about war.
I breathe deeply and say over to myself:—'You are at home. You are at home.' But a sense of strangeness will not leave me... I am not myself there. There is a distance, a veil between us.
She slammed down the cover so suddenly that she saw her focused sibling jolt in her peripheral vision. Haunted by a vividly uncomfortable sense of resonance, Wednesday, for the first time in her life, returned an unfinished book to its slot on the family bookshelf, dizzyingly relieved that her brother was pathologically unobservant.
Pugsley yawned obnoxiously loudly. “Are you going just cause I came in?”
“Yes.” She lied, more concerned with fleeing the location of her newest bout of awareness than conjuring a scathing remark to mentally assault her brother with.
Wednesday stared into her own eyes for so long that it no longer felt like she was looking at herself. She tepidly analyzed her appearance. She hadn’t ever thought much of it before. It was merely the skin puppet she piloted to execute her will. Outwardly, she didn’t appear any different. But as she gazed into herself in the ornate bathroom mirror, she didn’t recognize anything she saw.
She descended the 58 steps of the two staircases and crossed the foyer to enter the dining room, donning an impassive look that didn’t match her overactive mind or swirling gut. Noticing his daughter’s arrival, Gomez didn’t dare state the obvious: That she was more than welcome to eat dinner resting in her bedroom, and probably should. Wednesday was transparently committed to her performance, even if everybody could see straight through it. Nobody was brave enough to bring it up.
Gomez triumphantly clasped his son’s shoulder, loudly proud of his contributions to the cooking process, once again.
“It’s fun. Mom did most of it.” He bashfully shrugged, helping his pleased mother arrange the dishes on the satin tablecloth.
“And so humble, too.” Gomez clapped his back, fondly shaking his head, and meeting his wife’s gaze. “We’ve raised a proud and dignified young man, Tish.”
The needless, overt display of familial affection was increasing the nausea that Wednesday had felt slowly slithering up her esophagus throughout the afternoon.
And dignified felt like a stretch.
“We certainly have.” She smoothly agreed, pinching her blushing son’s cheeks as he served her a large piece of saucy chicken.
“Okay, okay, I get it.” He mumbled, earning his parents’ light laughter. Watching a piece of meat doused in an unidentifiable red substance thud down onto her plate, Wednesday unintentionally let a rare blink rehydrate her eyeballs.
Hearing the men’s boisterous laughter and chatter, Wednesday gratefully assumed that her moment of weakness went unnoticed, not aware of the matriarch’s relaxed, yet piercing glance.
She felt that familiar sense of unsettlement permeating through her entire being before she could even place what had caused it.
The sauce, which was too thick, drab, and smelled entirely too pleasant to even be comparable to blood, was still evidently enough to breach Wednesday’s weakening mind and seize control. Thinking of the diluted stream of scarlet that had swirled down the shower drain that ghastly night, of her and Enid’s blood mingling together as they came together in an embrace, of the very real wound on her clavicle that still intermittently dotted her bandage with maroon, Wednesday absently stuffed some meat down her throat to spitefully prove to some invisible, internal force that she wasn’t falling for this trick.
The act of defiance against her treacherous spirit primarily just made her feel sick. She would’ve preferred to blame her nausea on Pugsley’s growing culinary skills, but regretfully, they had nothing to do with it.
She tuned out the blurry, surrounding conversation, focusing on maintaining her facial composure and keeping her stomach fluid and bile where it belonged.
Although she was aware that any attempts made to mimic her regular, unbothered self would be for naught if she wasn’t going to verbally participate in the family dinner, Wednesday simply didn’t have it in her. Despite the unforgiving ache of each muscle and the unnatural heat coursing through her bloodstream and branding her cheeks with its flush, she felt grateful for her illness and how it disguised her real tribulation.
Miraculously getting through the entire meal without throwing up or faltering in her stoicism, Wednesday helped transport the dishes to the kitchen with her father, desperately clinging to her rapidly dissipating composure.
“You know, us being proud of your brother does not diminish our everlasting pride in you.” Her father spontaneously assured her, seemingly out of nowhere, after accepting her offering of the sponge she had finished using.
She furrowed her brow, effectively snapped out of her quiet state of anguish and pulled into one of puzzlement. Quickly understanding that he’d likely misinterpreted the uncharacteristic, sheer silence, Wednesday schooled her expression and responded appropriately. “Pugsley requires constant attention and positive reinforcement like a newly house-trained puppy.”
He hummed in consideration, scrubbing that dastardly red sauce off a plate. “Is your illness perhaps rendering you silent?” Gomez cautiously guessed, struggling to pretend like his little girl wasn’t standing before him with red cheeks and paper-white skin.
“Only on the outside.” She allowed him to believe. Wednesday wasn’t comfortable with her father thinking she was being taken down by an infinitesimal bacterium, but the alternative, of him knowing that the truth was she was being destroyed by her own mind, was even more unpalatable than the meal she’d just begrudgingly consumed.
“Of course.” He somberly accepted, watching his daughter make her exit, his bright personality dimmed by her vacant demeanor.
His liveliness returned quicker than the speed of sound, as he observed his daughter’s febrile head snap backwards when her dainty fingers wrapped around the door handle. Gomez’s lightning-fast reflexes were the only thing that saved Wednesday from a concussion. Carefully suspending her flaccid form mid-air, he adjusted his grip of his unconscious daughter, carrying her to the living room with a shout of his wife’s name.
“Morticia.” The use of her first name captured her attention, which was previously being happily given to her son, as they flipped through the well-loved cookbook, lightheartedly arguing about what meal they’d fix together tomorrow.
Pugsley rushed to follow his mother out of the dining room and into the living room, confounded to find his dad laying his sister down on the polyester couch like she was made out of porcelain.
“What did she touch?” Morticia mournfully asked, traversing the room and landing by her ill teenager’s form, placing a cushion under her twitching head.
“Just the door handle.” Pugsley watched his parents towering over his jerking sibling and felt a keen wave of distress at the unfamiliar scene.
“What’s wrong with her?” He timidly inquired, the pubescent edge to his deepening voice dissipating in the face of the unbridled concern he felt for his big sister. “That doesn’t look like a vision.”
“Not a regular one, perhaps. She’s very fevered.” The dove needlessly rearranged her daughter’s bangs that were barely askew, merely so she could feel like she was helping in some way. “Gomez, run to the pharmacy, will you? We can’t put it off any longer, even if it makes her unhappy.”
“If Wednesday wasn’t unhappy, I’d be even more concerned than I already am.” He said by way of goodbye, sparing his daughter one last painful glance before kissing his wife’s cheek, patting his son’s shoulder, then leaving to acquire some medication.
“Is she okay?” Pugsley meekly asked, unsure where to place himself or what to do with his hands.
“She’ll be fine, darling.” His mom empathetically promised, her dark, smooth hair sliding down her back as she turned to face him. “She’s just unwell. It won’t last. Why don’t you go back to the cookbook and find something for us? I trust your judgement.”
“Yeah.” He melancholically accepted, old enough to understand that she was just trying to get him away from the haunting image of his convulsing sister, but happy to oblige, nonetheless, as he was sure he’d have nightmares about it.
“Oh, Wednesday,” Morticia murmured, perching herself on the arm of the sofa. Her black heart was heavy as she helplessly watched her daughter writhe. Occasionally, her breath would pick up, and she’d mumble and stir like she was going to come back to her, before she settled once again, returning to whatever horrors she was being forced to see.
When she finally woke, it was sharp and sudden.
“Wednesday.” Morticia softly spoke, a distinct sheen of sadness glazing her vigilant eyes. Wednesday only grunted, her eyeballs darting around, unseeingly, reminding Morticia of the nightmare she’d witnessed her daughter in the throes of when she’d first discovered she was sick. “You’re home, now. It’s alright, now.”
“Mother.” She absently named in a mumble, her prosody scrambled, and her gaze amiss. “I have to go.”
Alarmed at her daughter’s unexpected ascension from the sofa, she hovered her hands near her swaying form as a precaution. “Where, Wednesday?”
Blinking up at her mother, Wednesday, now being forced to endure a moment of consideration, became aware that her body felt truly awful. At least when she was stabbed, the agony was fixed to a specific location. The general suffering she was currently experiencing wasn’t even limited to her physical form; it was radiating through her entire spirit.
“I have to go.” She repeated, unable to translate her raving thoughts into concise speech, despite knowing it probably wasn’t helping her seem very sane.
“What did you see, Wednesday?” Morticia asked her manic daughter instead, more than a little concerned about her ceaseless trembling.
“Crackstone.” She answered after a strangely long lull, her heart racing after the coming atrocities she’d witnessed.
“Wednesday, you banished him.” Morticia tenderly reminded, trying to get through to her. “He’s not here, and he never will be again. We know this to be true.”
“I saw him.” She passionately insisted, the determined, disoriented glint in her eyes deeply troubling her mother.
“Visions are unreliable on a normal day, darling. And today, you have a very high fever. You can’t trust what you’ve seen.”
Instinctively recoiling at her mother’s denial, Wednesday’s hardened features unwittingly softened as she rationally decided to consider the words being patronizingly uttered at her like she was an unstable person brandishing a butter knife. For the first time in her life, she was really hoping her mother was right.
“Sit back down.” Morticia calmly commanded her child, leading by example.
Obeying her mother’s orders always left a sour taste in her mouth, but her decaying, treasonous body wasn’t giving her much of a choice.
“How long has it been?” Wednesday croakily inquired after a moment of discontented silence, finally noticing the absence of her father.
“You were gone for about ten minutes,” Morticia told her unreadable daughter. “He should be back soon.”
“From where?” She tiredly asked, already bitter as she pre-anticipated the answer.
“You’re not getting any better, dear. We’re out of options.”
Feeling a profound sense of emptiness and resigned to her pharmaceutical fate, Wednesday rose from the couch, preferring the idea of waiting by her lonesome and stewing in her feverish self-pity. She decided to announce her destination, lest she wanted her mother to believe she was headed off to change the outcome of a false vision. “I’m going to my tower.”
Morticia gulped down her instinct to plead for her daughter to stay, knowing it would be ultimately fruitless. She watched her leave, more concerned with the unusual state of her typically unflappable mind than her ailing body.
Gomez arrived back at the mansion with his stubby arms full of white boxes and translucent bottles full of pills he couldn’t identify.
“You know, she doesn’t have the plague this time, right?” Pugsley retrieved one of the loose boxes off the floor after it slipped out of his bustling father’s grip.
“You can never be too careful, Mijo. Has your sister revived, yet?” He checked, wrestling off his shoe with his other foot.
“Yeah. She went back to her room.” The electric boy unhappily confirmed, carrying some of his father’s load for him, and earning his passionate thanks and distracted kiss on the cheek. “Where are we taking this?”
“To the kitchen.” He deftly bobbed his head in its direction. “So your mother can decipher the appropriate course of treatment.”
The trio of family members spent a quarter of an hour reading tiny labels and consulting their crisp, unused medical handbook. Managing to reach a vague consensus, Morticia ascended the staircase with a bottle of ibuprofen, headed to the waspish patient’s bedside.
A somber smile befell her plump lips as she entered to find her daughter unconscious, but much less fitfully so than she had been a half hour ago. Slinking over to the head of the bed, Morticia ran a testing finger along her child’s cheekbone. If Wednesday were feeling herself, she would’ve immediately burst out of sleep to recoil away from her mother’s touch. Sometimes, even sensing Morticia’s eyes scanning over her resting form was enough to pull her out of her stifling dreams.
Whenever Wednesday experienced illness as a child, Morticia found that she slept much more deeply, presenting her with a rare opportunity to simply see her daughter completely scowl-less, or run a tender hand along her heated face.
Every time her eldest came down with something, Morticia, despite herself and despite her morals, couldn’t restrain that wicked little notion that sneaked into the back of her mind like an unwanted guest.
That she dared to feel any inkling of joy over her child being ill disgusted her. She detested that veiled part of herself, but she pitied her, too.
“Wednesday.”
Her burning cheeks nuzzled against the pillow as she slowly roused, her mask of stoicism returning the second she locked eyes with her mother.
“Are you here to betray your alchemical culture?” The words she spoke arguably sounded like something that would come out of her mutinous daughter’s mouth, but her voice sounded gravelly and weak, like it hadn’t been used in a decade.
“I’m only here to lower my daughter’s body temperature; I’m not overly concerned with how it happens. So long as it does.” She evenly explained her intentions; her tone sounded even more elegant than usual in comparison to Wednesday’s harsh one.
Although she was naturally opposed to obeying the wishes of authority, Wednesday couldn’t deny her prominent desire to reduce the dull agony swirling around all her throbbing muscles. Plus, the scarlet color painted on her cheeks was unbecoming of an Addams, especially the second palest of the bunch.
Wednesday held back a groan as she sat up with her arms folded across her chest, refusing to use them as leverage to help her weak body rise, even if it made her unrelentingly nauseous to only use her core.
“Here. Take them with water,” Morticia advised, preempting that her daughter would dry swallow them just to prove that she could. She placed two white cylinders into her palm, then retrieved a glass from her neat bedside table. “Your throat sounds very raw.”
Rolling her eyes internally, Wednesday impassively indulged in the western medicine, showing no physical reaction as the pills dragged along the sensitive walls of her pharynx.
“You should go back to sleep.” Hearing Morticia’s recommendation, Wednesday reflected that upon entering her room, her intentions hadn’t been to sleep at all, only to rest. The idea of reentering the land beyond her consciousness and potentially dreaming of her haunting vision was not a tenable option, but her mother didn’t need to know that.
Nodding her agreement, Wednesday settled back into her scorching bed, staring up at her hovering mother, who bid her a dramatically sorrowful goodbye (at least in her opinion). Ten minutes later, she fell into another unintended sleep.
Lying awake on that unseasonably chilly July night, Gomez’s guttural snoring was the only white noise Morticia was granted. Feeling for her snoozing husband, she rubbed up and down his arm. He only snored when he was anxious.
When she and Gomez had decided to take Wednesday to boarding school, Morticia had been forced to get used to sleeping without listening to the harmonic notes created by her daughter’s flexible bow sweeping across the crisp strings of her cello. And she did, eventually. But tonight, knowing the reason for its absence, Morticia couldn’t soothe herself into a state of slumber.
Considering heading downstairs to scavenge some alcohol to do the job for her, Morticia shifted, glancing forwards at the patterned wall, as she heard a distinctive creaking, signifying somebody else was already headed to the ground floor. Inhaling in anticipation, the matriarch elegantly swung her legs over the side of the four-poster bed, wondering what her sick daughter was doing up and about after midnight.
Tiredly trotting to the landing, Morticia caught a glimpse of black clothing tearing off to the kitchen as she peered down the staircase. Entering the kitchen, she wasn’t entirely sure what she was going to walk in on, but in retrospect, she definitely wasn’t expecting to see her sleepwalking daughter brandishing a kitchen knife.
“Wednesday.” She cautiously uttered, in an effort to garner her attention, rounding the center island and standing before her teenager. Morticia was aware of Wednesday’s lucid dreams, even though she only knew of them because it was an almost guaranteed side effect of being a seer, and she often experienced them herself, rather than Wednesday actually deigning to open up to her. But she had never seen her (or anybody) sleepwalking. However, based on her swaying form and half-lidded eyes, it was pretty undeniable.
She didn’t show any reaction to her name being softly called.
“Darling.” Morticia creeped closer to her absent daughter, keeping a safe distance in case she lashed out. The repeated attempts at earning her attention were unsuccessful.
“I have to go,” She announced, her neck struggling to hold up her head, as if she were a newborn again. Of course, after only two months of life, that was a weakness that Wednesday had eradicated.
The older psychic wasn’t sure her kin was actually speaking to her; she certainly wasn’t looking at her.
“Where are you going, Wednesday?” She tried to find out, pushing all of her minimal composure into her tone in the hopes that her daughter would trust it.
“To kill him.” It was spoken in such a relaxed tone that it almost sounded flippant.
“Who?” Morticia could hardly spit out. At the risk of being a poor mother, she actually hoped Wednesday’s subconscious intentions were to butcher her brother, because if she said the name Morticia had an inkling she was moments away from uttering, she was certain it would mean this situation was exactly what she’d feared it was from the beginning.
“Crackstone.”
She regarded her sweltering daughter, teetering from left to right on the linoleum floor like there was an earthquake rippling through the New Jersey dirt, the pale moonlight highlighting the left side of her face, the right side black like the dark side of the moon. The knife shone too, appearing extra threatening, almost like there should be a glimmer on the tip like in a cartoon, exaggerating the sharpness and danger of it.
Morticia no longer harbored any shameful feelings of gratefulness for her daughter’s state of vulnerability that allowed her to be affectionate to her when she was extra unaware; she simply wanted her to feel better.
“Wednesday, you’re asleep.” She whispered, trying to siphon back the tears that were blurring her surroundings; they could be saved for later. “I’m going to take the knife, now.”
Gently but deftly restraining her wrist immediately triggered a violent but flustered response. Morticia focused on her important priority of disarming her daughter, resolutely sliding the weapon out of her grip in spite of the pummeling her midriff was enduring from Wednesday’s free fist. She tossed it onto the countertop and slid it out of reach from Wednesday’s short, grabby limbs, kneeling down to give the girl her full attention.
“Wednesday, you’re safe. You’re home. Wake up and return to me.” She tried to drag her out of her daze, which was likely brought on by her determined fever; it didn’t feel any cooler to Morticia as she held her daughter’s vigorously squirming hands.
The raven’s distress was palpable, but Morticia tried her best not to absorb any of it, speaking in soft coos to her almost hyperventilating child until she slowly began to come around, looking tangibly, unnaturally sad as more awareness seeped into her febrile mind.
“That’s it. You’re just here with me,” Morticia encouraged, as the vacant glaze over her daughter’s eyes finally faded away, suddenly replaced with something objectively worse. The second she noticed the tears brimming at the bottom of Wednesday’s strained eyes for the first time in ten years, Morticia’s automatically followed suit. “Nobody else.”
Reaching a hand up to swipe away the escaped droplet streaming down her daughter’s cheek made Wednesday recoil on instinct, as her eyeballs darted around unsurely, confused and detrimentally embarrassed by what they’d produced.
“There’s nobody here, Wednesday.” Morticia poignantly reminded, staring earnestly up at her child through her equally wet eyelids, knelt on the floor in the desolate kitchen, her heavy heart feeling much the same. Returning her hand to the soft, warm face that she had seldom got to touch for the last fifteen years and six months, Morticia soothed her daughter as she lightly flinched again. “It’s only you and me.”
Wednesday kept her pitiful gaze downcast as she felt her tears dried by her mother’s hand, which was still scarily familiar despite the lack of physical connection she’d had with it over the years. Rather than pulling it away after completing her task, another one was added, her dual thumbs stroking back and forth along her daughter’s cheekbones.
“Wednesday.”
She winced at her mother’s tone, the profound velvet softness of it stabbing her like a kitchen knife wielded by an unconscious user. A fresh wave of tears fell into her mother’s waiting hands.
“I don’t want this to be happening.” Morticia wasn’t sure if the sudden, concise confession from her daughter’s wobbling lips was specific to the crying or the entire unfolding situation, but she felt her abused heart crack like a frozen lake that had been stomped on, spreading like a spiderweb until the whole thing caved in, and she felt a cumbersome, undeniable urge.
Even with the raging fever, Wednesday’s face felt cold when her mother’s hands relented. Immediately and pathetically frightened that it meant she was about to initiate a talk that she wasn’t prepared for, Wednesday felt initially and inexplicably relieved when she saw her mother’s arms, outstretched and offering.
Blinking up at her face to read what it was displaying, Wednesday saw only love and sincerity, and had to look away again.
Conceding, ready to admit defeat and let herself be enveloped for the sake of putting off a conversation and having an excuse not to look her in the eye, Wednesday robotically stepped into her mother’s space.
Appalled at herself, Wednesday’s overactive mind repeated internal mantras and tirades of self-pity and disgust until the singular second she felt the arms wrap around her shaking back.
Unlike the rare touch or stroke of her face that she’d occasionally allow just to keep her parents’ sanity levels from descending too low, Wednesday was completely certain that she and her mother hadn’t embraced since her infantile amnesia wore off.
So she was dumbfounded at the surreal nostalgia she felt rippling through her every cell and neural tissue.
Her mother’s unspeakably safe grip felt like Déjà Vu.
Like she’d been held in it just a minute ago.
After ten seconds, she couldn’t remember what it felt like to not to experience it. To be tightly held and surrounded by somebody who could never feel anything less than adoration for her.
After another ten, following the distinct sensation of her mother shuffling to separate from her, Wednesday felt herself latching onto her with a desperation so intense that she heard a sound emerge from her throat that she didn’t intend, suddenly petrified that she was going to remember what it felt like not to be held anymore, and not remotely ready for it.
Morticia, although deeply distressed by her daughter’s pain and so shocked by her physical plead for contact that her lips parted, didn’t need any convincing, and resolutely readjusted her grip, closing any minimal distance that was between them and sliding her arm up Wednesday’s back, cradling the back of her head between her two braids, holding her in a hug that only fell short to two other embraces she’d had in her lifetime; the days both her children were born.
“I’m going to help you, Wednesday,” She whispered in assurance, her daughter’s face nestled into her shoulder, faintly dampening the slinky material with her salty tears. “As much as you’ll let me.”
She craned her neck around, placing her chin onto the top of her daughter’s hair, relishing in this moment that she knew might never happen again, and if it took something else tragic happening to Wednesday to cause a repeat, she didn’t want it to. “I promise.”
They remained intertwined for an amount of time Morticia truly couldn’t measure, and didn’t honestly care to. At some point, Gomez quietly entered the room through the archway, pulling his wife out of her comfortable, timeless bubble.
It had been years since he hadn’t slept as soundly as a baby all the way through the night. Morticia wondered if it was his paternal intuition that woke him.
She saw his expression twist into confusion and a solemn concern she didn’t often see paint her husband’s face. She shifted imperceptibly, raising her pointer finger to her lips, before returning her hand to Wednesday’s shoulder, which had stilled considerably. She wondered if she was perhaps asleep, but didn’t feel any real desire to find out and break their silence and peace.
Gomez watched in awe before gesturing to himself and pointing back the way he came, not wanting to risk ending Morticia’s moment prematurely, knowing what a rare occurrence this was, like getting struck by lightning or sighting a chupacabra.
She stuck up a thumb, not wanting to nod and jostle her girl. Gomez eventually obliged, after hovering for just one more moment to soak in the unforgettable scene.
The loving mother melted back into her troubled daughter.
Wednesday was sick, and she was coming to terms with the fact that she was traumatized.
Morticia was terrified for her daughter, and terrified that she wouldn’t know how to help her, or that she wouldn’t be given permission to.
But, in that moment, Wednesday was securely tucked into her mother’s arms, just like the day she was born. For just a few minutes, they both let that be enough.