LYCOS | tacet anima mea - VoltageStone (2024)

Chapter Text

“Apologize.”

With every Addams is a chosen instrument for death — the honor therein.

Your dear father is straightforward and blunt, so he takes to rapiers. Uncle Fester is (or was) likewise, though rather than rhythm, his hand kept itself erratic.

Mother’s instrument blossoms in silence. There are her words, then the poison to a drink. Her victims are few, though they are, always, a pointed remark. Grandmama, she is … similar, though she falls back to scripture and incantation as well.

“I— I-I can’t—! Oh my god, I— I can’t breathe—!”

“Apologize to him.”

Pugsley has trinkets. Grenades. Rifles. Mines or the occasional tank. It doesn’t matter. If he can tinker with his instrument, that satisfies him plenty.

“He isn’t—! F-f*ck—!” (The jock wept. Naked, and bruised, with his head boiling… He truly was a disappointment.) “H-He’s not h-here—?!”

“I’ll play courier. Apologize.”

As for you, your family likens you to antique. Namely blades, though you’ve collected the most heinous array of boards and maces. Curiosity has also guided you to the complex; more than gadgetry, you are drawn to practices, and technology. Old technology. There’s artistry to them. Artistry that your family appreciates, it’s just that you do above them all.

Yet…, a contradiction.

“I can’t— I— I can’t breathe…! Pl— Ple—ase—!”

“Fine then.” (You loosened your grip. He slacked for his gulp of air. Then you stamped his head into wet tile.) “Now apologize.” (Blood erupted. It seeped far.) “To my brother. Apologize.”

Rather than antique, and complex, you favor primitive. Your very hands are your instruments.

Just as they had been beneath a fateful moon, where the life drained from his eyes. And beneath a yellow sun as well, where the world blurred, seethed Vampyric, behind cut fringe.

And so too your last hour at Lakeview High, where the locker room's shower pranced down your back, and you were struck by the sheer ease of this vengeance. All it merely took for the football team to kneel was to find them unannounced, from an empty locker, after practice.

“I’m— I’M SORRY! I’LL LEAVE HIM ALONE!”

(His head cracked ceramic by the second heel.) “Again. Apologize again.”

There was only a telephone cable in your hands.

They knew to be terrified. You had to give them that.

“I’M SORRY! HOLY f*ck, I— I’M SORRY!”

It’s a shame that stunt had ricocheted you from the police station, to home, then right to Nevermore.

“WEDNESDAY! f*ck! I’M SORRY! WE’LL LEAVE HIM ALONE!”

You wanted to see the captain’s face after the fact. You wanted to envision the colors which bloomed — beyond what Pugsley wrote you weeks into the fall semester. Because with any instrument, there is a piece. And for a sculptor to not witness her artistry…?

“She … isn’t here right now.”

It was cruel.

| i |

| (she waits for hour's end) |

There’s a wall-phone in Dr. Kinbott’s office, and attached to it is a long cable, coiled by the inch. It insults you. Mocks how you were stowed away in a matter of hours, then outright taunts the first vision you ever managed:

Your own hand, reaching for the nurse’s identical phone. And Pugsley, your dear trodden brother, was curled across one of the beds…

And throughout it all, their smiles behind the grill to their helmets. There was mud. There was rain. And paint, scuffed from turf. Pugsley bruised more color than a desert sundown could ever give.

Waking to such thing had been nightmare. Your fringe laid feral. Your eyes, widened by devotion.

Once, you enjoyed knowing the bare skill behind your artistry. An outcast, beyond what any public school could fathom. Especially those you caught within webwork.

Yet, as it turns out, you’re psychic. Being outcast, it’s ingrained — beyond what blood and moon you fathomed for your very nature. It’s unconscious, this skill of yours. There is no control, and now you’ve gone and slaved yourself. To yourself. Which is insulting, to both your hubris and digni—

She clears her throat. Eyes dart; oil sloshes. That is all. You give her nothing more.

“You have been doing well at school, still?”

These yellow walls are blaring. There is no dark corner here.

You can’t hide, Wednesday.

“Naturally.”

The clock too. You hear it tick away. It rattles down your arms. You want to scratch, until there’s raw skin, and as for the black paint on your nails, to chip away. Your jaw bites. Both urges — to scratch, and to chip away — are tantalizing. To do either would be relief. To do them here would mean conviction.

“I didn’t see Principal Weems guide you here today. Has this become habitual for you?”

A pause, because you can practically see Enid on the couch downstairs, either lit by her phone’s screen, or bothered by wandering eyes.

“Weems had a … friend take me instead.”

“A friend?”

(Cutthroat:) “That’s what I said.”

Dr. Kinbott purses a smile, and she nods cautiously. In her hands, a clipboard. That has been this semester’s change. You’re convinced it’s unique to you.

“Now is this friend a good one?”

The more you think, Enid had commented on never being inside this hellscape before. Never mind her phone, and her wandering eyes — she has, by now, found something to toy with, or to stick her nose into.

Literally, if she’s caught a scent of someone with a mind more lost than yours.

“She’s a walking collage of everything which aggravates me.”

Dr. Kinbott nods again. It’s still cautious, though warmer now.

“And knowing you, that is what you most admire about her, yes?”

There’s a snag. You catch yourself violently on it — by neck.

Because you never intended for this woman to learn about you, no. You premeditated for anything but.

(The hands on the clock have never been so slow.

(And it’s pendulum has never looked so beaten by time.)

“…y-yes.”

She waits, just for a moment. Thing’s social advice flitters somewhere; there’s pause in that too. You still don’t get it. You hate this. The walls might as well pour their pigment across you. It’d sting mildly. Not the same as red, or blue, or every color between, but it’d sting the ego, it’d flay bruised hubris…

And as for your character.

Yellow would unequivocally slough away its hide.

“Would you like to talk more about her?”

“If it means you won’t ask about me, of course.”

She waits again. For you. Not for some moment that does wonders.

“She’s a werewolf. And my roommate.”

“I see. Now that you say that, I do believe you’ve mentioned her in off-hand comments.” (Yes, you have. How utterly depraved of you.) “Is she … like a retriever, or a shepherd?”

Both and neither. Because Enid is Enid. This is a stupid question.

“She’s blonde.”

“Oh, I see.”

You highly doubt that.

Her clock scorns you. It started this foreboding the moment Dr. Kinbott welcomed you inside, chiming about an anniversary for these visits.

You had been so much stronger, far more resilient to this, back all those months ago. You made her cry, twice. Those were pleasant. Those were also last semester.

She managed to not get a lick of diagnosis off you. Not until the last couple spring months. For each one, though, you brought her down to pleasantries. Twice.

The pendulum swings. The arms barely tick. You’re halfway. You need more. Because this — you have grown exhausted of this, and of everything, for too long. Weak now, as you’ve fostered yourself to be.

It is your utter humiliation.

“She does her nails.” (So frail.) “Frequently.” (Before, Enid was just your alarming reality.) “The acrylic smells like … chalk.” (Now, you wish you protected her lasting mark from these yellow walls.)

“More than you do yours?”

You fold your hands away. Your nod is slow.

“I don’t wear acrylic.” (Why you keep doing this, you don’t know.) “Out of us, it’d make sense if she didn’t.”

“And why’s that?”

“She’s a werewolf.” (Stop it.) “Her claws are long enough.” (Quit feeding Enid to her.) “But she complained that her claws would flake the paint, and they’d clog her cuticles. So she wears acrylic even though they snap off whenever her claws extend.” (Enid is yours only. Not this woman’s.) “Which happens often.”

Dr. Kinbott hums quietly. It’s the kind that tells you she’s won again. Another point to the board you’ve kept stashed behind your eyes.

Because this therapy is a Breaking Wheel. Some days, you are left to lounge. Limbs between cogs. Only to spiral, if the session has her careful with each word. Others, she contorts you through the spokes. Limbs break. Spine, your one and only fractures. And as for your security, she leaves you to fragment.

The clock taunts. Pendulum swings. Once. Only once.

This hour wants you to break. It bids you that promise as it drawls, and sloths, across the arms and pendulum.

“That has to be quite the expense for her.”

“Not necessarily.”

Your jaw runs tense. Iron is a seething flavor as your tongue pangs, and your teeth sinch.

“Not necessarily?”

Weak. You’re losing. You’ve grown so weak…

“…I … paid for them.” (Don’t you look at her.) “It merely … costs her time. Which she uses for gossip regardless.” (The blue in her eyes —,) “And she is … particularly skilled in crafts. Her nails are clean —” (you want to gouge away her obstinacy.)

“I see.”

Her smile is a grand execution.

You have been laid to swallow dirt, nailed by your hands and feet. Helpless. You can only watch as the crooked Wheel whines towards you. It’s dressed in spires. The blood has eroded such impalements to sh*t.

“This is quite a development for you, Wednesday!” (Nailed to the moment. Watching this witch in horror.) “Do you think providing for friends in that way helps you bond with them?” (Deranged. How utterly deranged of her.)

There is no coup de grâce offered for you. Your hollow beats soundly into your palms. Your rattled joints, numb to what timbers she’s placed. Every word. Every curl of a question.

…there is no shadow. You do not have your closet to recede.

“We’re already … friends.”

“Well, yes. But, as we’ve talked about, you have to maintain and nurture your relationships. It doesn’t end once you have them.”

Starts with your legs. Breaking Wheel — ta Dame Catherine —, she’s gnawing for your anguish. And Kinbott sees your plight.

To then push. And press.

“Though, I was more asking about how this helps with your apathy.”

And break…

(You never wanted her to know of your hollow.)

“It remains unaffected.”

“I … see.” (Clipboard again. She scuffs graphite.) “Have you done any of the exercises regarding that since the last time?”

You hesitate. Then, (desperately,)

“I need my electric chair.”

“No. We’ve talked about this. You can’t self-harm your way to empathy.”

“But—”

“No.”

“I really do believe that electrotherapy would help me in this endeavor.”

Dr. Kinbott shakes her head, and across her face, she seethes something like disappointment. You don’t know why you bother. Each suggestion you give, however indulgent, is shot down every time.

“No.”

As though each suggestion is flown over hunting season.

You stare at clockface. It glares back. What … an utterly wretched hour you’ve found yourself within.

“Speaking of, you have a particular interest in that type of thing, yes?”

Slowly, cautiously, then — and only then — curiously, you eye her. A blink. You reclaim a scrap of rigid composure.

“Sentencing?”

“Artifacts of … torture, I-I mean.”

“Oh.”

You loathe this. Feeling … accepted in this damn office— A lie. She lies to you. Wants to cripple you. She keeps you in the light, far from your dark corners.

There is no haven here.

“Well, yes.”

The doctor intends to trap you now as any stray.

“Unless you meant it as a pun.”

“A pun? Of what?”

“Your writing, I suppose.”

Another blink. Then a frown.

“I don’t do puns.” (…well.) “Intentionally.”

You’ve always hated the way she hums. There’s a trail of … flower. Dressed in ripe petals, and young stem, you find it grating. This room is gowned like spring. Kinbott herself expects this exchange to suffocate you. By moss or weeds, it hardly matters.

Not as her eyes settle back onto you, several shades darker than what you quietly admire. She is a belligerent sky.

You crave blue moon ocean.

Still, Kinbott folds either hand across the clipboard. For now, the pencil is tucked away. You listen.

“Given your interest, I’d be inclined to think you’ve visited the town’s museum? There’s quite the section for artifacts like your … personal electric chair.”

Despite yourself, (you are weak,) you perk to the sound of this promise.

Jericho does have an extensive history on colonialism and pillaging. With that, the few odd trinkets to commemorate the very zealots you’ve dug up to sell off — twenty-seven femurs, forty pieces of wrist, then too many teeth to count.

(She lures you now.)

Your chin hilts. Eyes, flecked from clipboard to hands to shoulder.

“There is?”

(A nod, paired by pressed smile.) “It’s across town, by the main library.” (Moves her head to your left, gestured for, presumably, across town.) “It’s bigger than it looks.”

Now that you think of it, you have … crossed by the building. Jericho’s history has never been a value to investigate, outside of gathering the names to pilfer. Yet…, the traps… The technologies…

You eye the clock. Minutes have gone by.

And in your head, you feel the purr for knowledge. A conquest of it.

“I am intrigued.”

Your sparked fantasy is enough to ignore her smile.

“It may serve as inspiration for you? You have not talked about your writing since you came here.”

Cold.

Across your face, the room basks cold. It slogs down your neck as well. Anchors you, right to the chair. Your tongue chews like tobacco. Your throat pangs for cigar.

“I’ve taken a break.”

“How long of a break?”

Tighter. Your throat grows tighter again.

Pangs for cigar. Dries for wine.

“I’m gathering inspiration.”

“I see.”

The clock drones, and drones, and sloths before your eyes. Yellow gleams in what sunlight barrels through each window. You are waiting.

“How are things with your mother, then?”

The Wheel has found you. There was no haven. That wasn’t connection.

It was merely time spent dragging your body from ground to Wheel. She has you buckled into spokes.

“She can be quite an intimidating woman. I know it can be difficult to talk.”

This is your spun crucifixion. The Wheel is raised, and you spin faster than what the arms on that damn clock can dream. You feel your throat close. There’s a wash behind your eyes, an ocean in your ears.

There is no knowing what spills from your mouth. Your words are a pooling wound, and you are too dazed to find a suture.

“I’m frightened of her. Not intimidated.”

“Not many people would say that.”

A bladed statement that never should have been spoken so calmly. Impales you. Stings huckleberry.

“They’re lying. Unless their mothers are doormats.”

The clock wields a mallet. As it drones, and sloths, your awaited release rings dull agony. A pounding. Down your arms, down your spine, the hollow’s torment. Time is seldom on your side, though this hour has left you desolate.

There is … only huckleberry now.

And with it, a cold, sterile aftertaste.

“How would you describe your relationship with your mother? Complicated? Is there resentment there, Wednesday? Or is it just simple misunderstanding?”

Always the pointed questions about Mother.

Your head spins to Wheel’s rhythm. An urge — to gag, to choke — ravages you. Cold dyes you blanching unease. Sterile drowns you a light head. You want to drift, far from this yellow.

Ma lune océanique…

You shake your head. Against the Wheel, perhaps, or to stave off this bombardment.

Lancez … un radeau pour moi.

Nothing… You fear it has done absolutely nothing.

“You’ve always been cagey when talking about her. Just let it all out. This is a safe space.”

Tongue-tied now. Despite being central to the room, you feel yourself press into a corner. Your mouth goes dry. Your hands itch for telephone wire. Bloodlust seeps. You are yearning to stain these damn walls.

The air…, it grows claustrophobic.

“She named me…”

“And your mother chose quite a unique name, don’t you think?”

The ground is beneath you no more. The room is tilting.

Your grey world…

“It’s a weekday. So no.”

“For a person, I mean.”

It. Bleeds. Yellow.

“…mierda.”

Obscenities seldom cross your mouth, slice your tongue. You find your lexicon enough to harbor your resentments. However, there is no tripping such words should they choose to fall. They feed you a rare taste of something. A lit match, laid straight on your sliced tongue.

You watch Kinbott, however. Blue chimes confused.

She didn’t catch your slip.

“She’s French.”

“I see.” (Clipboard again. Your ears strain to hear notation.) “With your mother, did she use to tell you stories? Your writing seems to take a lot from French folklore.”

The clock tips into another, mere minute. The telephone wire hangs fantasy.

“I don’t find this therapeutic.”

“Sometimes, retracing steps in your childhood is good in understanding your relationship with your parents presently.” (A pause. Searching you.) “Are there any that come to mind?”

You nod slowly. Turn yourself away from the cable.

“Which was her favorite?”

Yellow warps. You smell fireplace, see her wine.

“‘Le ruban du cou.’”

Her cheeks are rosy. And her face— Your mother ages slowly. Yet…, memory serves to you a faceyouthful.Years behind where you sit now.

The realization that you had not watched your mother mature beside fireplace strikes you numb. She was still just as young by the time you had left her embrace.

“It’s a family story on her side.”

“And…, what is it about?”

However…, you hear it. Her viola.

Mother had found ways to bleed her stories to you. Through manor floors, the windows, your bedroom door. A room so, so empty now. Barren by what was brought to Nevermore.

“A man married a prostitute.” (Elle s'appelait Morta.) “She wore a ribbon around her neck.” (Le ruban était noir.) “He always wanted it off, just to see. She told him no, and that he’d regret it.” (Mother te l'a dit avec un souffle poétique.) “The man took it off while she slept. Her head followed suit.” (Son souffle était sombre.) “The ribbon had been the only thing which kept her together after a guillotine.”

“I… I see.” (You hid poetic breath from her.) “And what did you take from this story?” (Saved Mother from this woman.)

You grate your jaw. Oil, ignited, snaps to her.

“Ask a woman if she wants to take off her ribbon. And don’t question it if she says no.”

Dr. Kinbott spurns you with another smile.

One more of those, and you’ll tear out the telephone in its entirety.

“That is a good lesson.”

“It’s the only lesson.”

There. That quirk in her brow, and the slight of her eyes. You’ve managed to belt her. Frailly so, it’s far from what you’ve done before.

But you take this meager point. It's a crude tally on the scoreboard.

“You said she’s French. Does she know the language?”

You nod.

“Do you?”

Slower now. The clock chips away your sanity.

“I prefer Spanish.” (You bite tongue. Worm your breath.) “Glides better.”

“And your … father is Spanish?”

“Latino. And Italian.”

“I see.”

The hour, your execution, drains to quiet. Seconds pass, or minutes, you can’t tell. There is no knowing. Your body aches. Gravity throbs. You keep your stare away from her.

Because, should you give her anything more, she will torch this Wheel, and have you burn for it. So you wind. Until the moment she speaks, and the hour crashes upon you once again, you wind, and you wind, and you wind again. You will run. You are good at running. You are agile. She would never be able to catch you.

“Well, that will be all the time, then.”

You wrench upright. There is no moment to spare. You—

Time?

“Before you leave, there is something I have to tell you.” (Tethered. Bolted to the damn floor.) “These appointments will have to be postponed until after I come back. A few weeks, give or take.”

What… What is this? This— There’s a … fiddle in your chest. J-Joy?!Has finally found you?!

So be it. For your sanity — lack of, or otherwise —, you plead the former. Give. Give more to those few weeks.

“For what?”

“A funeral, actually.”

How morbidly fitting for you.

“Crashing or a beloved person of yours?”

There’s a light smile across her lips. Dr. Kinbott scrawls across her page, and it sounds familiar. Sounds like,

Inappropriate comment.

Still, she answers you calmly. A simple, quiet,

“Colleague, delt with by a terrible stroke.” (A final dash, then her eyes meet you.) “But, I’ve been asked to cover some of her responsibilities for the time being.”

A blink. A nod.

“Okay.”

You leave. The steps through the room are heavy, before they trail down the stairs in near-sprint. You’re too drained to care whether or not she hears it, nor if she makes note.

Because you are free. Truly. For more time than you could fathom.

Downstairs, you find Enid sputtering panic, in the corner, as she stuffs a few plastic leaves into a vase. Slashed leaves, as you come to observe. The odd floorboard creaks despite you (and to spite you), which has her erupt every false nail from her extended claws, and her eyes to bug right for you.

“Um. Howdy. Can— C-Can we go now…?! I may have given her plant a buzzcut.”

| ii |

| (she falls in stride) |

She half-skips beside you.

How she does it with any sense of grace and rhythm is something for a forensic pathologist to conclude. (She is an organ donor, according to license.)

Once upon a time, it was grating. Wherever Enid gets her energy from, you vowed to tame it via Judas Cradle, then have said pathologist give their conclusion.

In present day, the vow has faded, for you’ve … come to embrace it. Whole-fully. There really wasn’t a moment when it happened, just one that struck you as serrated epiphany. A moment of literal embrace, on some unremarkable day, where you didn’t bat an eye.

Perhaps that is your exercise in empathy, and Enid managed to goad you into it long before Kinbott suggested her ploy.

Whilst the two of you, a pair, linger at the town’s central crosswalk, you eye Enid as she inspects the loss done to her hands. The acrylic remains are stowed in her pocket — aside for one, which you keep and intend to stash … somewhere. Most likely in your closet, or beneath your bed.

You can’t tell what is different in the way she knots her brows together. You can’t tell if there’s even a difference at all. Maybe, it’s that she’s blossomed again, more than what she did over the summer. Not that you can discern such a thing. Flowers only bloom, grass only grows, when you’ve left their side.

(And Enid has grown herself an orchard. Gone is the retriever puppy. A wolf, of some sort, falls to your stride now.)

An engine to an old motor pops, and Enid — without looking — begins to walk.

“I half-expected I would have to try and play Where’s Wednesday?”

“You would’ve if the session was a minute longer.”

Her eyes swim as ocean when they find you. Smile a tad coy, drowned by humor, Enid notes,

“Would’ve been fun if you did. You’d be a bitchin’ stripper going down that pole again.”

The comment jars a near-smile from you. You feel a cavern crack, anyway.

“I don’t bitch.”

“Well—”

“I. Don’t.”

As you cross into the Weathervane’s corner, you hear a throb down metal. In the distance, and it's muddled by the market's usual, drowsy errands. A light pole’s heartbeat, just a few paces shy from you and Enid.

You ignore it, in favor for what dose of relieve Enid grants you. She always does, after Kinbott.

(Oil traces her. You seal the way light paints her to memory.)

The Weathervane grants you similar, the moment you stride through its doors. You don’t grace the shop as often as you had before. However, finding the hung canoes across the ceiling, then the waft of coffee grounds, it brings the very calm you sought in months past. You prefer Enid. But this would do, should she venture into another store.

“No, seriously! Someone’s been swiping my supplies from the studio!”

You tail Enid as she strolls down the booths, where Ajax rests into his palm, and Xavier — to the other side — is stuck in the throes of animation. Ajax glances over, perks to the sight of Enid, before he shrugs.

“Who’s going in there? You put in a padlock, dude.”

“I—”

Enid rounds the table. Sits beside him.

You, begrudgingly, take the spot by Xavier.

“What are you talking about…?”

“Xavier still thinks someone’s stealing from him.”

“Because they are! And I swear dude, I think there’s someone there half the time now.”

Ajax nudges over a crime for a drink: a last nail to a diabetic’s coffin; Enid’s, specifically, though removed of chocolate. She near-purrs at it, before an off-handed,

“To do what? Watch you paint the same thing over and over?”

Xavier blinks. Your peripheral catches his head crick, and his eyes shrew.

“How do you—?”

“Bianca, but it isn’t like that’s not just a you thing to do.”

His arm stretches across the booth. The seat is a false reflection of Ajax and Enid, what with Xavier’s caution, and the boiled glare you pierce into him.

He retracts until your silence shunts him to the corner.

“Sorry…”

Neither of the couple audibly acknowledge Xavier’s latest attempt. Ajax finds the street quite the spectacle through the window. Enid traces her claws down her drink’s label. You watch as the froth bleeds through the paper, before it’s drawn to her mouth.

Her eyes sear gold.

“What if it’s someone from a party?” (Ajax, then, offers,) “The last one got kind of close to your studio.”

“I don’t know.” (Hands tangled together. Far from you.) “It’s just irritating. I spent so long on that thing, and I’m not just going to let some stoners torch it.”

Your attention begins to glaze across the tables.

At the counter, the barista is busied with the many contraptions. The line is impatient. You hear several of their feet drill against the wood tiles. Then, a scattering who wait for their overly complicated orders. Compensations, ultimately, for another menial day done, and for the great pleasure to be found in a pretentious drink.

So you’ve heard.

“Oh yeah. How’d Saturday’s party go anyway?”

“Hm—? Oh. There was so much weed. It would’ve made your heat worse, I think. But it was chill.”

The amount of shots and pumps uttered in the time you’ve sat here is enough to crave a bullet.

“Until they got too close to my shed…”

“Yeah, that.”

“Build a fence, Xavier.”

The retort had flown without your mind’s regard. Your glare warns for him to keep his distance, and to relinquish what part of the booth he’d reclaimed within the past minute.

He doesn’t. Instead, he plays into contemplation, where he considers your input.

“Actually, I might.”

There’s the urge to clarify how tall the fence should be. It is, however, quickly dismantled. You don’t have the care to gather the bite. In the distance, across the road, you hear a clock chime, and its pendulum swing. Knowing how you’ve yet to escape the mere sight of her door is enough for your hollow to squirm.

…that is precisely why you’ve neglected the Weathervane isn’t it?

Once you realized how these wide windows gleam towards the townhouses across the square, there was no true solace to be found here. The yellow would follow you, just as it has now. There’s enough sun out today to have you beg your shadows. The grey clouds are a gift. You hope for rain, and you long for the haze thereafter.

“Did you drink all that already…?”

“Thirsty.”

A haze of dew, perhaps, where the world clings onto the cold. Soon, that cold will turn vindictive. It will become a biting white, and the worst of nights will come once the rest of the animals burrow away. If you go deep enough into woodland, you’ll escape the blaring lights, drown away the carols.

Or, you could find a few trees to ignite. Blaming a faulty outlet or a broken few wires have always done you wonders.

Christmas robed in fire is the only dance of yellow you enjoy. It is a sight to relish.

“Well, you got some—”

“I got it. It’s fine, Ajax.”

“A-Alright…”

There is mistletoe as well. How a parasite ever managed to charm puritans to the point of worship is well beyond you and your family, though it is something to behold. The plant has charmed you as well. Its toxins are second-rate, though you’ve managed a few poisonings.

Convincing fellow children to reach for the berries was easy enough. Discovering how to induce vomiting from burning the plant was an invigorating discovery.

…now to kiss beneath one. It’s a waste of thought, and the same kind of nonsensical devotions your parents play into. (Rigorously.) However, if one were to … apply the red of mistletoe, it wouldn’t be enough to have Enid vomit, would it? Or would she simply keel over, and you’d be left to resuscitate?

There’s a drift down your leg. Then a nudge.

Your stare flecks, and the world returns like fevered dream. The shop is blurred, and every patron sloths. The exchanges smudge together to the ear — the one just beside above all. Because there is only ocean, brewed over her hands, clasped together.

There is … a tang laid between.

Her rut.

And it stirs intrigue. This has been a game between you. A silent one where her eyes, rather than gold, favor a dark submergence. The tang is of berry. You realize that she hasn’t worn this perfume often, but you smell it now, as though she’s spiked coffee aroma. Neither of you break from trance. Spellbound, so you toe a line against her shoe. She nips back. Your mouth grows parched, and you wonder the taste of mistletoe, and if it would satiate better in shadows or cloaked in a fire’s bask.

Toeing again. She nudges—

“Should we head back then?”

“Yeah, I’m game.”

At once, her jolt lands a kick square on your ankle. You bite back the lurch in your throat.

“Still got that level to do?”

“Oh! Yeah, I—” (Ajax pauses, then swerves for Enid.) “Um, are we gonna, you know, u-um handle your he—”

“It’s fine. Already took care of it. And Thing wants his nails cleaned up.”

Avoidant, though it’s an admission you can verify. Today had been an early morning shower before you stirred awake.

Ajax doesn’t miss a beat. He nods to Xavier.

“Cool. Yeah, we can do that.”

You, with Enid, are the first to abandon the booth. Xavier follows. Ajax fumbles for his wallet once he does the same, then prods the leftover few dishes towards the front of the table. You stroll to the door a step ahead. The town square has never been as inviting to you as it does now. You’re eager to clamber back to the dorm, and to meddle typewriter keys through a few essays.

“sh*t! The pumpkin bread!”

Not one pace from the door, and Ajax is whirling his way back down the booths. Xavier hesitates before he bounds after him with a hissed few words. All of which leaves Enid to roll her eyes, though there’s a genuine smile graced as Ajax scrambles at the foot of the shop’s counter. Her hand closes around the doorhandle.

“Leave it to Ajax to forget why he got coffee in the first place…”

The moment you stride from the Weathervane’s maw, and hear Enid nudge around the cyan doors, the light pole again. It pangs down the sidewalk. Steel, you think. Steel and—

“You think Thing would want raisin for his nails again?”

“Try mulberry. The imp has been pouting into your magazines.”

Your eyes meet. She drifts away from the incoming patrons.

“Vogue or Global Icon?”

You purse your lips dismissively. It’s difficult to tell the difference, only that there’s a stack of them routinely on her vacant chair — set aside for said gossip manuals, then jackets —, and that stack is the star of one segment in her blog. Parsings, if memory serves you right.

Given her smile, you figure the difference is minor to Enid as well. With how much she and Thing reads of them, they might as well be a wash of the same by now.

(Steel and cast iron.)

It pangs. For your attention, down the sidewalk. There is a leisure urgency. Your strides slow, and you find it, and the boy it’s attached to:

A bat, held by one of Jericho’s delinquents. Burly. Swine-like in the face, but his eyes speak of vermin. His specific record has nothing on yours. All of it is petty, and each line is a different crusade against Nevermore.

But, while his record says one thing, his presence claims another. He should have graduated by now. He may have, or he may have not. If he didn’t, it’s a strange hour for a Jericho student to loiter. If he did…

Why would anyone sane stay here? Jericho still wears its capotains and tricorns, and its excuse for therapy has left you rattled not an hour later.

Asinine. It is utterly—

“Oh, wait! Nevermore’s on the…”

Enid reaches for a lukewarm tradition of Jericho’s: an old-fashion newspaper, handed out by the associated street boxes. There’s a claim that it secures the town’s charm.

They may be right, if charm is synonymous to repulsion.

Once she glances, steals you away, the moot point is waved. Enid explains, without need to,

“For my blog.”

“…Parsings?”

“Skimmings. It’s Skimmings.”

Memory has not served you right.

It only provided a better answer.

“Ah.”

…it is asinine.

Your eyes draw down the street again. The moment you find the bat, the air thinks itself as ice against your skin. Your hollow jolts.

Because you know this bat. The dents down its shaft. The frayed handle.

You treat yours better, but vision has grown itself disgustingly fond of this one.

“Day…?”

You nudge into her. This brush of contact — a graze of the body, not shoe; even with Enid —, it has your skin scorned by cloth’s itch. Her hand graces yours. Skin on skin. Feels better. Less damning when your body winds to run. You suppress the winding to a walk.

“Just get to the bus stop.”

The moment you step onto road pavement, the bat takes cease. Enid follows you, loyally as always, and once she does the same, you know the petty delinquent to move.

In towns like Jericho, there is a sense of community. That you can acknowledge. These roads were built over dirt and gravel. The town was once a wooden village.

However, in towns like these, where you are an outsider — an outcast —, this rural mark tolls in broad daylight.

Enid changes her pace. There is no bounce. Not as she matches your stroll, nor once her hand finds your arm. Roaming down the next path doesn’t quell like it should. You are, still, in the heart of Jericho. Enid may be at your side, matched to your stroll, but you are dancing down webwork not your own, and you have felt a danger rattle down the strings.

The hook around your elbow is your lifeline.

How she knows to cloak this unease so casually is for a digger to exhume.

With the alley you pass, there comes a sharp whistle. It reeks of dog.

“Damn, girl… Y’keep getting better every time you come to town.”

Your twist is violent. Hers is vehement.

What steps into the light is another one. A delinquent who should have graduated, though this one is built entirely like vermin. Your eyes dart, and you find a third leaned against the next light pole. The most unassuming of the three, if you discount the fellow insomnia in his stare.

“Yeah… That’s it.” (Vermin again. Reeks of pungence.) “You’d be real tight, huh? I can’t imagine it’d be loose—”

“What kind of—?! Would you f*ck off?!”

Enid’s snarl does its part to startle him. He frowns, slinks both pale eyes across her, and snaps,

“You could do better keeping your face right.”

“Don’t think I won’t fix yours.”

She is taloned to a point you’ve yet to witness on her. Her claws grow dark. As for her hands, the bone almost chars into her skin. This is the most animal you’ve seen from Enid. Or, it’s the most rut you’ve known to notice.

You hear the scuff to bootheels. The bat which follows plods in kind.

“Oh, just because he wouldn’t choose you doesn’t mean you gotta be like that. He just likes girls who haven’t been used by half that school of yours.”

“Says wh—?!”

(You step between.) “Talk to her like that again, and I will teach you how to skin someone with that bat of yours.” (His glare doesn’t do well to match your own.) “Starting with that mouth.”

The words leave you, and the following lurch across your body is a lurid one. (It has you sick.) You keep your glare sharp, and oil bathed in fire. Neither move, nor the one trained to your peripheral. (An inclination.) However, you watch something deep vesseled in their eyes. (There is a nauseating inclination that your visions…) The world is moving. This sidewalk sways to the bound of your unease. (They will not find this bat anymore.) Enid stands beside you. (Because your hand will.) She is your anchorage, your security. (You will claim this bat’s frayed handle.) You dread any moments where you find them without her.

His jaw cricks. His eyes, darting between the two of you. A retort brews. It climbs, and climbs, before—

Autumn spice.

It’s the blur past your head, and the singe to your nose. The blur smacks him square in the face, before it flops to the ground rather dumbly. For this brief tick in time, there is a shared moment of sheer bafflement. You and Enid stare. They stare.

Once you realize that the spice is pumpkin specifically is when you hear him, several shops away:

“Get away from them!”

Ajax storms across, and you catch the last of Xavier’s blank face before it’s swapped for a matching ire.

The delinquent is still entirely dazed.

“Was that … pumpkin bread?”

To that, Ajax snatches the bread and bag from the ground by a gruff hand.

“Yes. Now get away.”

He, with Xavier, stands between you and the zealots. Toe-to-toe, and neither side budges. Xavier nods. His voice is flat:

“For what? If you’re going to start talking, talk to us.”

The second — the vermin — shrugs into the other and scoffs.

“Look, if a whor* walks out of her school like an incubator, pops her little freak out and then lets her strut around here, I’m going to wonder how much that’s passed down. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

There is a spit of irony in what rises from you. After all, your therapy is in part because of her, and you fail to understand the meaning behind your mother and father’s boundless displays.

However, therapy or not, to imply your mother a whor* warrants a death sentence.

Your blade’s handle is warm against fingertip. You intend to stay the night in Jericho, behind bars. Yet you aren’t given that courtesy. A murmur drawls from behind the pair; it stirs annoyance:

“Then why do some apples grow from citrus?”

Tyler Galpin.

Forgettable all around. He lives in the town’s shadow, and behind the sheriff’s cold shoulder. Charismatic enough to, remarkably, hand over coffee to some of the women here without getting his hand bitten off; meek to the degree their husbands don’t find it in them to bark. Knows to restrain conversation with you. Remembers your brewed order, enough for you to acknowledge him. Neglects to keep himself away.

What you will give this hindrance of a man is that he knows his words, uses them well, and doesn’t have Thorpe’s exact desperation.

His dark eyes sift between the pair as he prods through their shoulders. Tyler, rather than meek, wears a face of revulsion. It’s cold on him. Unfeeling.

Your glare does little to stray. You watch for a moment of agency, because Jericho is trepid about its outcasts, abrasive to the sound of Addams, and Tyler mutely prides himself as its face. The humble and meek, on any other day, with just enough backbone to guide the rest of the town’s boyish zealots.

…he lurks where his gang runs.

They had to have graduated by now. Where you question the rest of their mental capacities, you know Tyler would not let his grades fall. They really should have left.

“Knock it off. Quit being slimy. Both of you.” (Dark eyes narrow. Lips shrew.) “How many times do I have to tell you? We’re adults now. We don’t do that, and I’m not about to let my dad slap your names onto a registry.”

The third one. Tyler clips him by his narrowed eyes.

“Didn’t do sh*t… That’s all them.”

“…right.” (Turns to you. Gleams a wide, causal smile.) “Y’all getting coffee?”

None of you four answer. Your faces are hardened. You keep the tension strained — guarded, if anything.

Ajax co*cks a brow, hilts his chin.

“Didn’t you get fired?”

“Me? No.” (He shakes his head. Answers, almost earnestly,) “I quit. The coffee’s terrible, or has it gotten better since? The barista looks like she does good work.”

He again waits for answer. There is none. Not from Enid, nor Ajax, nor Xavier. Certainly not you.

Tyler takes it in stride.

“No? Yes? Alright.”

“Just get out of here.”

“Out of … my own town?” (For the moment, Tyler looks far more reptilian than any gorgon.) “I was born here, you know. You outcasts aren’t going to herd me around.”

Behind his eyes, you watch Ajax stumble over. He works his jaw, irons it shut, before he dismisses Tyler entirely.

“Okay. Then get out of our way. We were leaving.”

“But I was looking forward to talking with one of you…”

Those dark eyes of his, you decide, are beyond vermin. It isn’t the same as what herds around Tyler. The rest of them, they’re pests. Hardly anything to bother with, much less keep an eye on.

Jackal. His eyes are jackal.

“I have a new club. We meet every now and again. Invitation only.”

Your rejection is immediate.

“I—”

“She’s not taking the offer. Now beat it.”

However, it isn't as swift as Xavier’s bombardment. He’s stepped forward, arms crossed, as he stares Tyler down. Between them, there’s a hardened standoff. You come to realize that Tyler was bored before this. Now, he surveys Xavier. Flicks across his body, then between grey eyes. There’s a flare of something. You don’t care to regard it.

“Wednesday probably doesn’t need her own knight in shining armor.” (Tyler glances. He notices her.) “The other one doesn’t look like it either. You could strangle a car, couldn’t you?”

You hear Enid’s held breath. It is, however, eclipsed by laughter. Whatever grin Tyler managed to fix on has promptly fallen, and he glares over his shoulder.

“I wasn’t joking. Do any of you honestly not know a werewolf when you see one…?”

A grumble, from the most vermin of the three:

“…more like crazy bi—”

“Milton.”

He’s snapped to silence, without question.

Ajax shifts, and once Tyler watches him past Xavier, he fumbles out,

“Okay, true. Out of everyone here, she’s the one who could beat us. But it … doesn’t take a knight or a werewolf to deal with a few irritating flies.”

There is one mark of surprise, and it’s a brow raised. Tyler searches Ajax. You wonder how much of this is to humor the awkward retort, or to skewer him by stare alone. Ajax, to his credit, keeps his lips tight. He doesn’t budge, nor does he allow the pubescent insult to buckle his dug stance.

His eyes layer down at Tyler. As the lines of his face harden, and strength broods across, you’re challenged to the thought that this is no act. This isn’t a character to play. No bravado for impression’s sake.

Tyler may read the same. He humors:

“Flies? I thought I would’ve been better than that.”

(Xavier now, white armor gleaming:) “Okay. Enough. You’re a rat. Now beat it.”

Said rat darts his jackal eyes. Xavier stands his ground, same as Ajax. The glower from Tyler speaks of a longer history.

“She’s not yours.”

“You’re the one who seems fascinated by Wednesday being someone’s.”

Ironic, Xavier.

“The same way you dumped the one girl for her?” (There’s a smug grin. It isn’t Xavier’s.) “Yeah, don’t act like your school’s dirty laundry isn’t aired out here.”

“Whatever. None of your business. Wednesday isn’t yours.”

As much as you are … disturbingly flattered by Xavier standing your ground, and that it does the work to worm underneath Tyler’s skin, you’re through with this exchange. Whatever pissing match this has turned into, you don’t intend for it to last.

“Wednesday has the mouth to speak for herself.”

Both Xavier and Ajax twist around. There’s startlement painted across the former. As for Ajax, you uncover what it is about this sudden daring of the gorgon's: it’s panic. He has manner. He knows to keep his girlfriend — and by extension you — out of trouble.

You decide to shrug away Xavier’s chivalry, and ease Ajax’s whirling attempts to guard.

Three steps. You stand toe-to-toe with Tyler now.

Jackal does not land on you. It teems beyond, despite the unbothered face he has plastered.

“Now, when I said Wednesday wasn’t theirs, that does include you.”

You turn. You should have known.

Enid.

She does not snap, nor bludgeon herself between you and him. Instead, she stands as a mute threat. Her eyes bleed gold — there is no oceanwater. Ten claws, drawn to a length you’ve yet to have witnessed on her. The face she wears, however, is what draws your intrigue. Her soft nose is the only remnant of her disposition. Rather than vibrant, or jovial, Enid stirs in violent smog.

You wonder if she will pry herself away from one shoulder, to another.

“Enid…”

Her eyes flick. They brand you to sunlight. There’s a moment. She’s unsure.

You wait, and you press for her, silently. Enid barely nods. She leaves Ajax for you.

As your second half skulks to your side, you find Tyler strained. His jaw is locked tight. He didn’t expect you to have someone, or anyone, in mind. You watch him, before a quiet, low,

“He wasn’t wrong. I’m not interested.”

There is nothing to gleam from his eyes.

Tyler merely stares, then shrugs. It’s far too languid for comfort.

“Our numbers are growing though. But…, yeah, I figured this invitation wouldn’t pan out.”

He takes his leave. The rest follow, without word. As they do, the cars pass as though the day is like any other — unremarkable —, and Ajax breaks away with Xavier to follow. They don’t trail far.

Just like that, you are free to pass with little incidence. You are still deep in Jericho’s webbed net, but you were never tangled. Not today.

As they stroll, then cross the street for the Weathervane, you watch the gold in her eyes worm. There’s a disconcerted line down her nose, and a furrow to her brows. Enid stands without an inkling of vibrancy.

“Enid?”

She doesn’t startle, exactly, though with her focus nabbed comes a jolt. Enid still follows them by stare alone.

“I don’t like the scent I just got off of Tyler.”

At once, she pulls away, looks to you, and the sun in her eyes settles for ocean.

“Like, it’s the same, but … I don’t know. He—”

“What was that all about…?! My god!”

Ajax, with Xavier a few lingering strides behind. Where one barrels around his girlfriend, eyes branded by panic, the other keeps his eyes trained, and his guard steady.

As much as you wish to clonk Ajax on the head, wring Xavier’s neck, you are — legitimately — thankful. They are equally as much outcast as you are. This town will toll for them as they do you. Yet, you are aware that it’s one thing to know how to trip a man’s weight onto his knees. It’s entirely another to tie his mouth shut, and keep his pants buckled tight.

Without drawing blood.

The reality is that by the end, it’d be to only dance into their hands where the conviction held against you would be to sit nice in your cell, mind your pretty head. Exhausting, because jailtime is palatable, yet wholly brimmed by nuisances.

And to even dare admit that is to your own chagrin. You’ve already worn your parents down throughout the years, and though you shall do it again…

You’ve grown tired already. Kinbott, and the psychiatric hospital on her speed-dial, it’s enough to dissuade you.

(You’ll continue to meander, won’t you…? And pretend that authorship is your future.)

So, to have a gorgon, and then … an artist.

It is a relieving thing.

(Everyone knows that isn’t true, Wednesday…

(You’ll return to your habits soon enough.)

The rash kiss Ajax shares with Enid isn’t appreciated, though you leave it be. You don’t let yourself flare over the matter, especially once Ajax stares at you, humble in the face. As though he anticipates the moment you snap at him for taking the hour into his own hands.

With the slab of pumpkin bread he nearly forgot about, at that.

…admittedly, killing him is a touch dramatic. Even for you, by chance.

You nod, and you watch the tension pool from his shoulders.

Xavier steps beside.

“What a creep…”

Ajax shrugs, and he breaks from Enid.

“Come on. We’ll just go.”

As you and Enid follow, and the pair in lead murmur their own, you ruminate in the lost moment before. Her nature has lost its edge by now. She looks as rattled as you should feel — to the bone. You leave the edge of town. A car passes. It’s the same old motor.

“What scent was it, Enid…?”

She doesn’t answer immediately. Ocean graces you, then her brows furrow again. Enid searches her nose.

By the shiver down her spine, you suspect it doesn’t take effort. Whatever it was she caught, this is something to keep to memory.

“The same — like the woods here, but…

“He smells like the woods withering away. It’s really cold.”

| iii |

| (she ruminates in scent) |

The first time had been after hours of desertion, where rut drove Enid back to Ajax, and the school semester to fume its intentions. (Your intentions, if anything.)

Thing had been dead asleep. There was no consoling your cold sweat, nor what breath rattled from yourself.

E-Enid…?!

You took to her laundry. Stolen the first of many, and with a frayed mind, you shed your mattress of its sheets, seized your favorite blade, and carved a lesion. The blouse was inhaled. Enid and her body, knotted to cloth. You burrowed it — burrowed her — into lesion.

(The mattress bled cotton from its gash. The springs caught your nails. Frantic.)

It hadn’t been … the most lucid hour, admittedly.

(The moment was frantic.)

The time was in desperation’s name. You were scavenging for her, and found the best you could manage before plunging back to nightmare within an unmade bed. Her scent mulled as you stirred awake, hours thereafter. It struck you like liquor-poison. Your hands burned. Beaded lines, drawn across your skin.

Fixing your sheets was the cure to hangover back then.

The answer had been to haphazardly climb the academy tower a mere week ago.

…you fret over what, exactly, would appease this now.

It’s the same torn collar in your hands. You smell her, and it’s stitched to what your palm has left behind. You’ve had it strangled for too long. There’s too much of you. Not enough of her. The room is quiet. You think of your bed, where the rest of this was stashed. You’re staring into the punctuations across the page, all the while. At your desk. A hand draws to the typewriter keys; they feel cold again. The essay is of blank thought. Your mind, however, toils for words.

Her scent lulls you. Her scent craves you. Butchers him. Tacks to you.

Ripe, but it’s fading. Her perfume has gone. Salt and musk remain. Then— Then decay. Sweet, sweet decay. Bitter down your tongue, honey to rot’s eye — this is liquor. The keys are drawling. You…?

You feel … the moon, and it pants down your back. Each step of yours, they're uneven. You move for balance — knock into wood stability. With Enid, her scent and musk, there’s another. Horseradish. Caked in iron. It’s close to rot’s honey. There is no lulling, only…

Only heartbeat.

And black.

Enid…? Mon loup…?

The air is biting. Your breath is fogging. Both chime frostbite’s glee as snow chars to your flesh, because though you run colder, you do, still, take the image of a corpse not done yet. You wish to reap. Your bloomed lust marks reverence.

Where … have you gone? Where have you gone, mon loup?

Warmth finds your lips. It savors like the color dead. Velvet — a dark, tasteful shade on you.

You want better on your tongue. You reap for blood and flesh.

Not quite this…

The hour twangs, and your eyes snap to the wall you stand near. Several strides from your desk, to be precise. The chair is knocked over. Your blazer lays weakly beneath its back. By a numb hand, you guide the chair to its legs, then cloak it again. As you do, a crawling trepidation — this … realization — finds you. Then sinks you. Deep in where you stand.

A fog begins to clear. Heavy, and one that sought your mind without abandon. Stole it so. Leaves you now, to disorientation and its belligerent mercy.

(Your desk, that blazer, are the twanged hour's only anchorage.)

The essay fed into the typewriter snags you. Has your intrigue twist to deadbolt.

by 1789, where woL

FsBAn .?

Your throat.

It has run dry, for your typewriter hemorrhages ink, oozes down paper. You had lost your tact. The ink blots now, then chokes on the marks it barely stuttered. It is still broken— Your typewriter is still broken.

Despite what you’ve done to salvage its working order.

“Day…?”

Agitation bests you. From over your shoulder, you eye her. Enid stands gingerly at the end of your bed. She grasps the footrail, white-knuckled, with Thing at her heel. He crawls. Lamplight sheens across his mulberry paint, aside for the last nail, where it bears a clear brushstroke.

The torn collar is stuffed into your pocket — dismally so.

“It’s nothing.”

“You—”

Enid stares at you, as though you said something wrong, and you’re none the wiser. Her eyes garner a sheen of their own.

“…you were knocking on the wall.”

Sounds hoarse. At the verge of rupture.

(Your fault.)

“Like, repeatedly.”

A frown pulls. You are, unabashedly, dumbstruck. Yet, you do feel the lasting graze of wood across each knuckle. There’s no mark. Just the mere, dull pang down your hand.

“What?”

Thing patters down bedside, before he leans, then throbs a few knocks against your desk, then the wall for good measure.

Thump-thump… Thump-thump…

She nods, with her face still pulled by her concern. For you. Because of you.

“Yeah, like that.”

It rings verbatim beneath your skin. You feel it in your hands, this daunting melody. Deep in hollow, blood thrashes. Seeks your head. Wants to drown your very mind.

Thump-thump…

There’s clockface. Then, a lasting pendulum.

Time…

Moving to a whim not your own, though you are sorely losing your foothold.

Thump-thump… Thump—

“What was it about?”

You’re … running out of it. It takes after sloth now. For how long, however…?

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t—!”

Horseradish does not leave you. It stains your tongue — can’t swallow it down. The iron is strong, however.

The heartbeat. There is one. Reminds you of her. It pangs again. Violently.

Thump-thump…

Your eyes discover Enid terse. Her jaw has gone unyielding. Arms crossed. She is as livid as she could be. Despite the moment, where you’ve done nothing, and both she and Thing abandoned their arts and crafts for… What, exactly?

A slight lapse which you can’t even piece together?

“Don’t bullsh*t me.” (Her eyes are biting.) “I know when you have a vision.” (Ocean-blue seeps wreckage.)

“And I’m telling you, I don’t know, Enid.” (You refuse to falter.) “This one was quiet.”

There’s no telling what blood — whose blood — pounds behind your ears, and where vision’s heart lies.

Thump-thump… Thump-thump…

Just that both seize to her words.

“To me.” (Loathe these moments —) “Now quit looking so disturbed. It doesn’t suit you —” (where Enid discovers fragility.)

You turn away, and as you do, you ignore how she seeks you. Her eyes follow. You know Enid to lean.

There is the urge to bite, singing across your lips. Just to keep her away, for now, because fragility does not belong on you. Fragility is for—

Warmth trails down your hand. You move to catch, then to behold the streak across your palm, stained into your sleeve, your collar, tie.

Velvet. It is all velvet. There was only velvet.

You glance over. Gleam from her tired eyes how none the wiser you just were.

Thump-thump…

Enid croaks vowel. A cleared throat, before she murmurs,

“There’s something wrong.”

“Dry air.”

You draw farther from her. Soothe your hand.

“You don’t need to look so scared either.”

“I can’t help it?!” (Snapping. Enid strikes you.) “I can’t help what I feel for you when—”

She holds her tongue.

Thing scuttles between you both. He waves for attention, then toys with the draped corner of your bedsheet. Your stare keeps itself pinned. You don’t need to know her growing exasperation. You hear it anyway, through choked silence. Feel it blister against your skin.

Thump-thump… Thump-thump… Thump-thump…

Hollow thrashes more.

You didn’t—

Why does she do this…?! You did nothing wrong. (Still your fault.) She knows that. Enid knows that vision means lapse. And to be struck by one, within your shared, quiet haven, is blessing.

“You can’t expect me to feel nothing from watching you do this sh*t with your eyes rolled back, and blood spouting from your nose!”

“I never asked you to—”

“No one in the history of ever has asked to feel these things, Wednesday! It just f*cking happens.” (Rarely. And when it does, it is excruciating.) “So yeah, I’m scared because you just—” (How she can’t find her own hollow to avoid such ruin is beyond you.) “You scare me. That’s all.”

…that is the condition between you, isn’t it? Enid dwells where you cannot fathom. She does not understand you. You as a pair, there is no stability. Only capsize.

You piece together as any cold case. You just are. There is no reasoning behind how you are, you just are. She the hardened alibi. You the time of day.

Thump—

Enid tries, however. She reaches for you.

“Can I at least help—?”

You lurch.

The room is rigid. You dare not look at her. From peripheral, you gather plenty of what you’ve just done. Enid retracts, and as the moment still pangs down your throat, she submerges. Back to her side. You hear blankets. Her lamp drowns in shadows, now bleached by a mere screen.

It’s only then do you cast your eyes. Her phone is what’s ignited. The laptop sits closed, on her desk. Beside it, the shambled remains of her and Thing’s routine.

He worms by your chair’s leg as the blanket twists around her body. Tucks her away. From you.

Tonight will be another lonesome. Until morning, where it all shall be swept, and the pair of you will carry on.

Your jaw sinches tight. You watch an urge amble down his stitching.

“Don’t lecture.”

The strain to your voice haunts. You stalk to the door.

He taps for your attention. It’s granted, wearily.

[That was not just vision.] (Thing soothes his fingertips together.) [You do worry her.]

You glance at her. She is sunken to her side, far, far from you. He tugs at your pantleg. Your eyes path.

[You are dissociating.]

“This was one time.”

[Or is it the first for another year?] (Strain breaks to croak.) [Wednesday, if this is happening again, you need to be careful—]

The door whines to you. The hallway light fleeces across the wood. You turn away, murmur to him,

“I told you not to lecture.”

Roaming down for the communal bathroom ignites consternation. The lights shine brighter than necessary. Your steps resound for your balance. Far too loudly. Far, far too lodged in your ears. And your uniform… You slack the collar. Wear the tie’s knot down.

It isn’t enough.

Your stability has always been a bleeding wound after Kinbott. You should have anticipated this, especially after losing to her the way you just did — too many to a single meager tally.

There is no one in the stalls, by the sinks. You swipe the switch for the lights. The bathroom ducks for shadows, and you stalk through this bask of comfort. (There is no yellow to unearth you now.) You stand before one of the sinks — fourth down — and quietly twist the faucet.

Runs cold.

Across your hands, against your face, the water is spread as a frigid balm. You remain for a mere moment, with the faucet draining, and your hands clasped, before you guide your eyes to your reflection.

You never do discover precisely what you expect. The vague idea you have for yourself, of yourself, is … just that.

Because your face.

It feels like masquerade.It is your mask.

Where you know oil, you find dark peat. Your hair is, still, raven, though what fringe veils you is tussled to vision’s whim. There’s insomniac. It paints you paler than the recent summer months. Leaves behind these flecks, almost, akin to what dirt you’ve claimed from graves robbed. The grey around your eyes burns charcoal. There are straight edges — down your jaw, namely. Your lips are… Your lips are molded by scowl. Bleaker than you thought. Less than shadow, more like burnt leather, smeared of velvet.

This is your transcription to remember.

This mask will slip away from you, again, and again. Until you find a mirror — staple it back.

And by the blunt edge to each of your nails, the straight across your teeth, everything about your face clings for recollection. Until the inescapable — slippage, as it were —, where it will blur. You’ll recede for grey, and you’ll submerge in shadows. Your complexion will remain like the skin down your hands. Oil will come to mind, however, and the rest will be bleak concepts, and they will rot with age.

Assuming that you have long enough to witness any kind of white in your hair.

It is a doubt. A doubt that you'll last much longer than your years now, and that doubt demands from you a body to discard, and faceless write to be your legacy.

As the water runs frigid down your nose and lips, you realize what a blotted legacy you’d leave behind. You haven’t consulted your typewriter in months. Not in your stories. Viper is fading.

The ink across your records, however…

Those would be legacy.

(Your mother’s tears will flood your crypt.

(With or without your body closed to rest.)

| iv |

| (she lusts silently) |

Arson is your worship of sound mind. (Now cannibal…) Nightmare is your church erected. To wake means forsaken clarity. (Cannibal may very well be your gospel.) Such deities sparsely exist within you.

(Gospel runs rampant.)

Tonight, through your sleep, they found you again. As skin, however. Not fire. Across your body, her skin specifically. Her nails. Her perfume. There was ocean as well. It burned sunlight from time to time.

She traced you. Then indulged you. Bare hands, arson skin — you can’t decipher the paths they drew themselves down, or if there were any paths at all…

(Crave her blood.)

Crafted by nightmare, she was a dream you can't gather now. You are forsaken once more.

It takes too long to realize you’ve been staring into the ceiling above your bed. When you stirred to cognizance, there was no deciding the time. All you grasp now are traces of what the deities left you in dreamscape, and you find those traces warm. Your mind is numb. It oddly pangs. There’s an ache down your body. It pools somewhere new to you.

Sweat again, though it isn’t cold. The bed is, like yourself, fevered.

(Her warm flesh shall meet your pallet.)

The sun in her eyes must have been scalding. Her nails may have traveled down paths undiscovered.

You lean forward, carefully, to find the blouse scrap still in your hand. It’s laced by the dream which found you. Your mind drawls. It yearns for the unfathomed:

You do want Enid. Possessively so.

If only … your body could decide if it should allow such a thing, outside of bleared fantasy.

(Scripture says Enid is divine.

(This nightmare was bathed in gore.)

| v |

| (she lets her) |

Sometimes, she watches you.

It isn’t the same as your stalking. They’re lingering glances, mediated by swift eyes the moment you move a certain way. Generally, Enid snags a few glimpses, though nothing more. Given the air, those glimpses can be traded for eyefuls.

This morning brings you the latter. Enid savors the sight of you, in your closet, changing.

You let her.

The time is taken, and you allow yourself to fuel rut-brew. The musk has always been there, clinging, though to know what it means has brought a murmured, looming interest deep within. A curiosity, of whether or not you could tip her over the edge, and whisk her from Ajax.

By the time you step out, you are weaving down the plaits to one braid. Your eyes snake. She’s locked beside her desk.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.” (Sounds like something.) “Nothing at all. So, um.” (Lodged in her throat, specifically.) “Class. Now? Please.”

“I still have a braid left to do.”

Enid stares. An eye twitches.

She leaves the room. You start the other braid with a drawn exhale, because that is the second time now, and all you’ve done is gotten comfortable in your own space.

Thing drums at your desk as though he begs to differ. You frown.

“What?”

He wags a finger at you. The imp.

“What…?!”

[She is taken.]

“I’m the one getting dressed in my closet.”

[With the door open?]

That damn hand. As the second braid is tied, and your blazer is snatched from the chair, you mutter,

“I’m not above stealing.”

The way he staggers into the lamp is entertainment enough.

| vi |

| (she gathers blade) |

With every Addams is a chosen instrument for death. That instrument is in light of character. For their honor’s name, there is an espoused blade.

Your father takes to his pride, that being his character. Your uncle is the same, though erratic.

Mother is fond of épée. She was never one to enjoy blood on her hands, but she is an Addams, so to your prologued horror, she adopted the estoc. Because Mother would never slash her words; her eyes are biting. There is elegance.

For Grandmama, it’s straightforward: a cleaver. In many of her meals, the trace of who she’s butchered haunts the plate.

Pugsley has his saber, and it’s the very same which survived his Mazurka. Battered still by his explosives, the saber is the only blade in his room. For now. He awaits for the blacksmith to finish his honor’s prize.

Then, there is you. And primitive comes naturally. Your technologies lay as webwork, knives are pincers, sadism the color of oil. Much of you dwells within shadows. Your honor does, and mutely so. You are the first to have your blade hidden, because it isn’t pride that fuels your honor, not like it does loyalty. Instead, it’s pragmatism.

The morning is grey. The clouds will not leave.

What an hour to bring your umbrella to class.

“Alright. Now pair off.”

The room shuffles once the coach meanders. Today, he has irritatingly decided to be creative and not only switch the blades to fence with, but who to fence against as well. Bianca leaves you for Kent. Enid and Yoko split for Xavier and Divina respectively.

And you are left with Ajax.

There’s a pursed smile before he goes back to strapping his glove. You flex yours, then stray to your umbrella. Your épée — a poor, poor excuse for a blade, truly — is kicked to the side.

“Gotta admit, I didn’t expect a puppy to step up to a dick like Tyler.”

“I mean, I’m not … five.”

You glance over. Enid is pulling her mask on, back to Xavier.

“Just saying! Kinda impressed.”

“But wh—? Okay.” (Her head tosses. You know there to be thorn in her eyes.) “I know how to fence too. So.”

Xavier shrugs. There is no need to see through the helm. You know the look. That co*cked smile.

You roll your eyes and cast a glance over for Ajax.

“Quit…! We’re wearing the mask…! Do you know who we’re partnered with?!”

He is struggling. The snakes squirm, and that much is made plain from your end of the piste.

“Bedhead?”

“A-Ah, yeah. Well.” (The helmet is slammed on.) “It took them three hours to find the cold side of the pillow.”

Ajax grabs his rapier in one, steadfast sweep. The hilt hobbles, and the blade wavers, the more he toys with it. There’s an awkward laugh.

“H-Heh. I forget how heavy these kinda are.”

“They’re not made for sport.”

“Well, yeah.”

The rapier. Espada ropera. Rapière.

Your honor.

With the umbrella in your hands, you watch the light gleam its unveiling. The sheath is set aside. You eye pragmatism, just to appreciate.

Carbon steel. 102 centimeters long, 2.3 wide. Double-edged.

Undecorated — it is a white lie to call this a true rapier, though why need the elaborate hilt when its sheath does far, far more than that?

Still, your honor is an anomaly. Ajax watches, and he again toys with the contrived hilt to what he holds now.

“Is that really a rapier?”

“The handle is custom for the umbrella, though it very much is.”

A white lie. You permit yourself few, given the week.

As you reach to apply the unfortunate tip to your blade — in the name of safety, of all things —, you feel your blade shiver against the gall. Ajax watches on still, before a murmured,

“…oh.”

You snap to posture. He flinches his way to mirror.

Despite the fact that you’ve yet to dawn your helmet. Knowing his anxiety treats hubris.

“Okay, just… Please don’t skewer me. I don’t make for a good kebab.”

Mid-reach for the helmet, you pause, sigh, then mutter,

“Ajax.”

“Yeah?”

You dawn the helmet. You step back to form.

“Shut up.”

The first minute is plagued by true trepidation. You’ve never sparred together. You know he is cautious some of the time, then rapid in others. His snakes may whisper. How much help they will be this morning remains debatable. You also know that he’s well aware of your tactics. If you hesitate, it’s to lure him until entanglement, where your web weaves, and your black uniform pounces for riposte.

You prod forward, as a gage. He replies timidly. Then, it’s a darted attempt. Riposte. You reply. Parry. Parry. Parry.

He is fast. That is expected. Gorgons have their snakes, and their stone curse. Both are enough to hide what should truly be revered:

Reflex.

The Vampyric within you may be enough to startle him. But to match a gorgon…

No. You are, still, a psychic furthermore. You are human, just a flavorful one.

Ajax is quite nervous, however. He didn’t have the night before to gather any sense of nerve. Not to best you. Not to ensure that he will leave you unscathed, for Enid’s sake. A boyfriend mincing his girlfriend’s roommate isn’t, exactly, a good look.

Riposte. Parry. Parry. Riposte.

You frown.

What you didn’t expect was this moment, where rather than test the gorgon’s competency as Enid’s boyfriend, and mark him, scar him, scream to him by blade that she is yours and you hers alone, you … instead find yourself testing his flexibility. His endurance.

You test Ajax as a sparring competitor, compared to Bianca — classmate to classmate.

And, to give due credit, he can hold his own. You are still a step ahead. He’s never gotten close to pulling the rug beneath you — figuratively, and literally — as Bianca has done. But, he remains standing.

For now. You decide to give this round its closure.

You surge forward, and your blade drives itself through a faux riposte. You don’t intend to land the attack. Instead, your steel loyalty rushes the air beside him; your invasion suffocates his comfort. Braids, to lick down his chest. Then you wrench yourself backwards. Your braids whip. There’s a whistle of blade.

It’s frantic. Ajax trips over himself, and he lands hard overtop the piste. The sword clatters. He wheezes a stunned, fruitful breath.

There’s a moment where you’re waiting for him to clamber back and face you. You want a grand finale. Until it strikes you: he doesn’t realize what hit him. Or rather, what didn't. Ajax may have thought you managed the knock after all.

You raise your weapon, only to tap his head. There isn’t the spite to prod, not when he’s lumped like this.

“You lost.”

“Damn, yeah. I— I don’t even know what that was.” (Another breath. Perhaps this is relief.) “sh*t. Bianca makes it look easy.”

Your helmet is pulled away, tucked beneath your arm.

“She doesn’t win every time.”

“I meant the falling part too.”

On cue, the match a piste over veers, and Bianca quips,

“I have the ass for it, gorgon.” (She’s languid in form.) “And that was a low, Wednesday. A low and dirty move.” (Kent holds his own as well.)

Evidently, Bianca is still bitter. This trick woven to your sleeve, it’s the prime way you strike her down without fault.

Ajax picks his sword by the handle. It sags in his palm. The blade’s tip smears across floorboard.

“Damn. You do really get all up in everyone’s grill for this, don’t you?”

“I find blitz to be a fair tactic.”

“…unhinged, honestly.”

Another surprise from you:

Your gloved hand is offered. He glances, then stares, before it’s taken graciously.

“Man. Y’know, think I’m still kinda scared of y—”

Swords collide in frenzy. It’s enough vigor to cut Ajax off entirely, and to have his jolted eyes reign yours.

What you find is Xavier. His form is casual — taunting, above all else. His rapier cuts, does so in a jest sort of way, and it’s paired by retaliation.

More than that, however, Enid. She is sparring with a heavy foot, and a swung arm. Clumsy. Like a dog with a set of paws too big for its lunge. She strikes nothing. Gashes air.

Then is quick-footed to avoid Xavier’s practiced hand.

You frown. Either Enid rose with her legs replaced by boulders, or she toys Xavier like a sorry fiddle.

With what musk brews around her, you decide the second. Enid plays her hand defensively. That is routine. Yet, she knows how to match a Fang, where defensive only gets one so far. Xavier is not that. Neither does he have the agility she’s grown into, nor the haste. What he does have is growing confidence. As the minute passes, he lunges more, aims his ripostes, parries less. He is not wary, despite sparring at the end of a Lycan’s blade.

The musk brews tact.

Enid lets Xavier tunnel his own hole.

There is another thing, however. More than musk. More than her quiet skill, veiled behind façade. It lays at the tip of your tongue, the height of your eyes, the more you watch.

Ajax is likeminded — murmurs to you,

“…uh, it’s not just me, right? She’s taller.”

She is.

Enid has grown to Xavier’s height. Her uniform sits taut across her shoulders. It strains from its fixtures. She doesn’t quite hulk over him, yet it’s something alike. As she stumbles, and then sheers from blade, you find that there’s a hulking posture on a rawboned frame.

And Xavier is none the wiser.

He tunnels further and further.

Then furthermore.

Another failed riposte. One that, quite frankly, is easy enough to parry against for novice. However, her deft defense warps itself imbalanced. The rapier clefts her palm, tangles between her legs, before she stumbles, and heel steps onto the blade proper.

Xavier pulls himself back as Enid wordlessly snatches it by the handle. He paces as she pries at the tongue to her shoe, before a confident,

“See…? I’m not saying there’s not a good reason, but Enid… There’s no way you’d be able to alone.” (Confident, for humble doesn’t sit well on him.) “Like you haven’t turned yet, right? That kinda implies other things.”

She straightens. Her glove is tight around the handle, rigid across her teeming fingers. Enid pinches the blade. Smooths her free hand across.

The light follows.

You read it like threat. Ajax stands mute.

“I already won—”

“No you didn’t.”

This … is still their first match. You aren’t surprised. Not quite. More like impressed, truthfully, for Enid has managed to keep Xavier within her jowls for this long. Yoko and Divina still are enraptured with one another, though Bianca and Kent are quiet from behind.

“But I did—”

“You never made contact.”

Cutthroat.

Enid is never just cutthroat. Seldom with you. Never with Ajax. And it’s an absurd lie to anyone else. Yet…, she is.

She steadies herself.

Her blade and arm run as one, continuous stretch.

Ajax tenses, because he knows just as well as you that this is for real. He’s watched her spar with Yoko, same as you. The stance she adopts is not … conventional for the people like in Jericho. It’s rare for outcasts.

Because to spar with a Lycan is stupid. To spar with the Vampyric is the definition of lunacy…

The trick with vampires:

Secure your distance, and suffocate theirs.

Do not let them strafe. Keep your arms to yourself.

And as for your stance, those kept arms, you move like the stake to their heart — embedded to the ground; geared for thrust. Swung movements are too wide. One would flounder. One would give them the body to flay. But jabbed attacks, pointed remarks — those are a vampire’s devastation.

Enid has a rapier in her hand.

Xavier will learn.

“Oh dude, don’t tell me…”

“What…?”

As you glance, Ajax shakes his head. There’s a swallow, and his shoulder rolls into a shrug.

“No, it’s just… Xavier was just talking yesterday. He might’ve let something slip about Enid.” (You … hardly find yourself surprised.) “Was asking how she’d do in a fight. How strong she is. Then went on about, uh… I dunno. How … ‘spastic’ she gets.” (It is no secret that Enid and Xavier fit together like a cog to a rock.) “After what happened with Tyler and his gang yesterday. He didn’t believe she’d actually do good protecting you.” (There will never be common ground.)

You teethe across the tip of your tongue.

“That … has nothing to do with him.”

“Oh, yeah, I-I know that. But you know. He likes to think he’s … your white knight, or something.”

He looks earnest. To the muse of the next few parries, you realize that Ajax is aware of Xavier and his delusions. About you.

“And now?”

There’s pause.

“Enid, none of this is me taking a dig at you. I’m just saying.”

“Do you want to win or not?!”

Cutthroat has burned away for sheer callous.

“Well…” (Ajax sighs. Another shrug.) “Enid’s pissed off about something, so he’ll find out.”

“Alright…! It’s all in good fun. No need to—!”

She lunges forward, teases her blade down his, all to force Xavier back. He stumbles. His stance is wide as he plants himself for balance. Enid lets him.

…so she has learned from you. Taken the lessons from your umbrella, tacked it onto her given schemes.

“Enid… Girl, please do not…”

Yoko.

She has meandered her way to this. Her face is flat, aside for a stray crease along her brow, for her nose. Ajax recoils and nearly steps into you, before his panic reminds him better. Tension in his body doesn’t leave. It merely holds its breath with him.

“What?”

“She took off—”

There is no blade to witness. You hear it. You watch her hand, with the handle, twist violently. Xavier’s blade hurtles — takes after bullet. It pries itself into the piste, then finds welcome across the floor.

Xavier lands dismally. In his bare hand, he holds the other. You hear air hiss through his mask. You know his teeth to bear.

“sh*t—!”

Enid has her mask torn away. Her face is a biting retort, a flippant gasp, all at once.

Red drips from glove to pantleg.

“‘sh*t?!’ You cut my hand through the glove!”

“I didn’t try to.”

Enid.

Just lied.

There’s a tell. Reliable — a constant —, yet always stowed away. There’s dramatics. Those dramatics never mean much.

The curl down her nose — that reign of disgust — says everything. Because Enid is, puppy or grown, a wolf, and wolves have their nose to scent their truths and sinch their lies. She meant to cut him. Her eyes prance glee, nose sinches revulsion, where the rest of her face cloaks everything but. There’s … enragement. Humiliation. The bred between, a sense of shame, then a string of panic.

But in her golden eyes, glee froths genuine.

And that glee.

Is crazed.

(Oh, how you adore this side of her.

(Has you believe in pretend — where your split mind can be matched by vivacity.)

“Where’s the tip to that thing?!”

“I—?! f*ck!” (Her theatrical club taught her this.) “I-I don’t know!” (How to lie.) “sh*t.” (Seamlessly.)

Enid is panicked. Her eyes scour for the blade’s tip.

By peripheral, you catch the coach’s shadow. He’s one of the younger ones. Perpetually bored, disinterested, and a sly bit patronizing — you appreciate what room his turned blind eye grants you and Bianca, though the longer you remain acquainted, the more you quietly wish a vision will foresee a car accident.

Shame your mind has been … tangled as of late.

He stands between Xavier and Enid, aside of the piste, and merely glances for answers. He doesn’t offer a hand. Not for in search of the blade’s covering, nor for his student pooling blood. His face is flat. There’s a hint of another thing that you can’t quite gather.

“She just cut me.”

“Didn’t. Try to.”

The coach frowns. He stares eye-level to Enid.

“What’s going on? You’re a little early to the full moon.”

At once, Xavier stands. Now he realizes why no one should treat a Fur with a languid hand. His face drains of more color. He side-steps away.

“Thorpe, just go to the nurse. Tell her one of her wolves got a little too aggressive at gym.” (Surveys her again. Pointedly.) “And you sit down.”

For an assault — accidental, purposed, or anything between —, he dismisses them both within the minute you expected. The coach saunters off to another dueling pair as Xavier meanders for the door with Kent at his heel, then a grudging Bianca, and as Enid takes to the back wall and sags against it.

Yoko murmurs to Divina. Neither look entirely surprised.

You linger to the wall. Ajax does the same, over your shoulder. He says something. You don’t care to catch it.

Enid picks up her head. She watches you. Only you.

She’s quietly fanged, though as her claws trail down the handle, and the blade teases down the floor, quiet means a hushed lethality. Then, her eyes. Her eyes froth sun, and that yellow is crested by ash. There’s black — eclipse —, though rather than moon, you find daggers.

This isn’t wolf. Yet, this doesn’t speak felid either.

Enid hides a lurking beast beneath her skin. It speaks in tongue. It’s agitated today.

It bellows Dire.

| vii |

| (she lurks in conversation) |

“Well sh*t, Enid. You’re definitely an Americana wolf.”

Naturally, Yoko would know without witnessing the beast itself. Dire gifted the vampires their fangs. And they’ve made great use for them, though you wonder at what cost.

The locker room falls to quiet, aside for cloth shambling around every other corner. Most don’t pay mind. They’re talking, or they’ve stuffed their ears with wireless music.

“…there’s Ossory too. And Lunes.”

She sounds bitter. You’re merely a row down — can’t see her —, though you know bitter means a tight scowl.

“Yeah, you’re the whole trifecta. I know.”

It isn’t often you’re granted the chance to hear the two together, where Enid is quiet, and Yoko is burdened by an all too familiar tone. You think of yourself, with Pugsley, whenever you’re through with strangling him, and he chasing you down with a grenade at hand. Or Molotov.

There’s an intimacy. Familial, at that. Of a doting sisterhood; of a quiet, meandering haven. Yoko wields it far better. Words come to her freely. There’s comfort, the kind you never will manage.

“C’mon… You almost wolfed-out on him.” (Her free-spoken words lunge after a silent rebuttal:) “I could smell it, Enid. Even if you didn’t look like you’d leave your husk out in the middle of class.”

Enid scoffs. You hear her break into a crisp set of loafers — new, for hours like these where one nature retaliates, and grows, before dormancy. And dormancy is one to approach at its own, snail pace.

“It was just a freak thing. There’s no way I’m gonna shift at this point, so that means the school’s lucky and won’t have to deal with a deflated blonde body.”

Maybe so.

However, she has needed to lug extra sets of everything — from shoes, to socks, to vests — for months now. Regardless of the moon. Routinely in temper’s name.

Your tie slips to your neck, thinks itself a noose’s damning knot. As you grab for the hung blazer, in your semester’s locker, you hear the pause between them. It lays itself heavy.

And takes Fang to pierce it — delicately so:

“E…”

“I want him gone.” (Enid is boiling.) “He irritates the f*cking sh*t out of me, Yoko.”

The blazer is moved aside, for your vest. It’s pulled over, fits to form. You ignore the few who pass. They’re indulgent of their chatter, enough to hardly notice you and your shadow.

“Divina did say you two could’ve—”

“I know, I know. It’s fine. I just forgot how annoying he is.”

“Well, what’d he do now?”

With Xavier, that is always the question. There is a laundry list — a modest one, admittedly — that you’ve accumulated over the semesters. He seldom adds to it. There’s forever a repeated transgression.

You wait. Hear Enid stand, then spritz her perfume. Different. There’s traces of berry, yet … not the same. You come to realize, it isn’t what you gather from blouse. It isn't what you gathered yesterday. Rather than blue, you think orange. Citrus, almost.

Perhaps blue had running dry. She hasn't worn it habitually for months. All of this semester. Though, to that thought, you catch yourself before you begin to ponder a trip to Jericho, cash at hand.

No gifts. No expenses.

Spoiling Enid like a fruit basket left out is … not allowed.

You inaudibly take your blazer.

“—yesterday when Tyler and his goonies tried to corner to us, they kept bitching about being Wednesday’s, like, man or whatever.”

Your hands toy with the first button to the sound of your name down her tongue, and your eyes, they path, and they spear for Enid through the lockers.

“Except Ajax.”

“Oh, yeah. He’s not the type to try and one-up anyway. It was Xavier and Tyler.” (Her voice drains quiet.) “But Wednesday had me step with her, so, that shut Xavier up, I guess.”

“Uh huh…”

“He was going on about me being a runt or, like, not intimating and stuff.” (A growl, or timbre.) “And he kept looking at her.”

A repeated transgression. One of the first. Mild — it’s by far the easiest to ignore.

However.

As the fantasies return, those to pluck his eyes from each stem, you smooth down the blazer. Your jaw grates.

“So nothing new. You know he becomes this creep when he has eyes on a girl.”

“Yeah, I just… I dunno.”

The locker is shut. You round the corner.

“As though I ever give him the time of day.”

Yoko startles; Enid does as well. She sinks meekly, against the door she leans against.

“Y-Yeah, I know.” (Her face flushes red. Eyes bat far from you.) “He’s just…” (Chokes. Her guilt is lukewarm.) “I dunno.”

By Yoko's casual hand, there’s a delayed echo to your locker. She eyes Enid with a skewed smile. Her eyes tell a different sort of wit.

“One of these days, you being Alpha is gonna smack everyone in the face.”

Where her lips mean snark, her eyes allure warning.

| viii |

| (she toes a line to cross) |

Enid has been faithful to your every stride. Like vibrant shadow. The cleft you impress down every corridor is now a dramatic sweep with her at your heel. The students give you a berth you’ve not before claimed. You wonder if she’s noticed. Her eyes tell you not. Her scent foams a rut’s banquet.

For you only.

(Lamplight plays tricks. Has you think her ocean gleams piety.)

The hour is saved for study. You cross into a room. Enid follows without question. As a pair, you slink to the back. Most lounge here, with their papers abandoned. You intend for better. There’s an essay to prick apart, then a short-form assignment to skim through.

Enid toys with her phone. She scrolls through nothing in particular — just a collage of photographs, or edits as she calls them.

Her eyes bask, however. Through minute pass.

You let her.

“So, um…” (Eyes drift. She lounges.) “The dance is…, like, in a few weeks.”

A silent inquiry. Enid tends to dress her questions like observations. Discovering that had been a trial on your patience, though you had uncovered the key: when Enid looks busy, isn’t busy, toys with something, puts it away, meanders.

You’re slow to answer.

“It is.”

She traces down her desk and its grooves by a pen. Meandering, as she does.

“Is your brother going to … light Eugene on fire…?”

Ocean sifts to you, for oil. This is a game. Another round. Another arena.

You’ve yet to hear her voice like this — lower than intimate. Private now, at carnal’s brink.

“I’d imagine there’ll be an incident.”

“For … two people to manage?”

Hopeful.

Her shoe toes along yours as a coy remark, a second plea. You watch the black leather beam in the light.

“Perhaps.” (Then, you sting:) “And a third if Ajax is still by your side.”

“He—”

Enid bolts upright. Staggered. You’ve rattled her, staggered her, to a nervous frown.

“He’ll probably leave early.”

She crumples, almost. Leans into her hand.

“Are— Uh. Do you … have a dress?”

“No, though my mother has found one to my liking.”

Downcast now, like oceanwater ruffled before storm. She nods slowly. Plays with her pen some more.

“Oh, okay.” (Meandering again. Sheepish.) “I still … need to get mine.”

“You still need to shop for it.”

“Yeah.”

A smile darts across her mouth. It’s there, then it’s not. Enid squirms. The tides to her eyes churn.

You return her coy remark. She eyes your shoe as it crosses her own, nicks the heel.

“You’ve crafted masks.”

Aside one, gradual nod, there is no answer. You snake for her sock. Have it unfurl. There’s skin to uncover, however slight this may be. A scrap of body that you’ve caught before — this isn’t new.

But to undress, and to peel away this layer.

Your body may not ache the way it should, though you are quietly intrigued.

“A fox,” (you note, before an added,) “I don’t suppose Ajax has the raven?”

“…no. He—” (She relaxes.) “I was actually going to make a quick one for him.” (Genuinely so.) “But he found a cool one in Jericho.”

She replies again.

The sole gnaws at your toe.

“I see.”

Oceanwater seeps to you. The blue in them flares.

Berry again… Blue. The same, flaring blue. You don’t … understand. She hasn’t worn this for weeks. Yet…, here you’ve found it again. She’s worn it for you. Only you.

“I mean, it was fun in, like, freshman year. The whole spectacle kinda has worn off.”

Bianca, Divina and Yoko. The first seats herself at a desk paces from you. The pair, together, at another.

Your eyes stray for Enid. Her jaw is ironed, and she coats her mouth by a hand. She looks at nothing. Behind her eyes, a deep-seated swarm. Her gaze flickers.

Words brew. They clog up her throat, and there’s slippage. It cracks. Sounds near-feeble. You hear it all.

“What if—”

Quiet…

Enid guards her eyes, far away from them. They chatter without care. Lounging — even Bianca.

“Spectacle?”

“Yeah. ‘Oh! Let’s not get caught!’ That whole thing.”

Her hands tangle. Ocean seeks you, before these tides recede again. You lean for her, to castaway.

“No sh*t. I’ve seen enough of you all to last me millennia.”

“Me too, babe?”

“Most definitely you.”

A low lurking melody… It plays in her eyes, then twines her voice down to carnal’s brink. Yet, there is nothing. Waiting will not goad an answer, or what question dwells in her still.

You murmur to her,

“…Enid?”

Ocean locks. Swims like relieve.

“What … if I, um… For … the dance.” (Her eyes dart. Catches Yoko from peripheral.) “What if … we—?”

“Well, we’re gonna have to tell the boys no skinny-dips. Monday’s was the last one.”

Enid goes rigid. Her face strengthens. Her eyes simmer, before they dart. She whirls around and bludgeons her way into their conversation. Does so standing. Plots two hands across Bianca’s desk.

“Monday’s … what?!”

Bianca, Divina and Yoko stare. The latter pair look near-horrified. Bianca, meanwhile, wears something like pure disbelief. Enid has managed to wipe every ridge of snark to her. She blinks. Then it’s a slow,

“For our … club, Enid.” (Bianca frowns.) “So he didn’t tell you?”

“About skinny-dipping?! No!”

She relaxes. There’s a nod, her distinct clicked tongue, before pursed lips.

“Well, I told him you wouldn’t be happy about it… For what it’s worth, we— Enid, nothing happened. We just swam around. Couples are the only ones who can touch, and even then—”

“Says the walking fish!”

Enid, who has paced away from the desk, waves her off. Bianca teethes her bottom lip — miffed, if anything — as Yoko, cautiously, climbs to her feet. You watch quietly. This spectacle is the same you’ve witnessed in past months.

Where Ajax trips over the drawls of their relationship another time, and Enid is left to scramble for a scrap of assurance.

“Hey— Hey, honestly, E, we didn’t do anything. We just raced around and had some snacks.”

(Divina, promptly, from over Bianca’s shoulder:) “Which was Yoko’s idea—”

“And other people –” (Nervous. You don’t hear that from her often —) “agreed. We hadn’t done it in a while, and the lake’s been at a good temp. But we did tell him that he should’ve asked you first. Anybody dating has to. It’s, like, a huge rule we have. With anything we do.”

“Yeah, we’re not like that, Enid. We’re also just done with it anyway.”

There is a certain look of gold you know to not revere, but downright elude. This isn’t the same of what you discovered after duel, no. This eclipse is moon. Not felid, or whatever it was precisely. But moon, with its sun scalding an arson’s fire.

She snatches her bag from her chair’s back. Paces again. The bag-strap doesn’t quite sit evenly on her shoulder.

You stand. This is an Enid who intends to do brash.

“Where is he?”

Yoko stares. Her tone is pressed as warning:

“Enid.”

“He still f*cking lied! He’s done this before where it’s like I’m not f*cking good enough!”

“E— Enid, you know he’s just being stupid! Come on—”

“It was this past Monday night, wasn’t it?!”

It had been. Divina nods weakly. Yoko as well.

You know it. Monday, he’d ask to go off to his dorm and sleep off a lecture quiz. Enid shrugged him off. (Her foot played with yours all the while.) Said yes. Had an extensive shower the few hours thereafter.

Her bag slips. She strangles it to her hand, and you—

Musk.

It startles you. Lobs you across the face.

“Enid.” (Graze her arm.) “You—”

“Hold this.”

Enid flings her bag at you. It’s less caught and more grappled by the momentum. Air finds a way to break from your teeth. There’s no snapping at her through the wheezing.

Yoko has a like mind. She reaches for her, only to jut into the desk corner Enid swerved around.

“E-Enid—! f*ck it!”

The room … is still.

Divina glances for Yoko. Yoko stares at you. Bianca stands with darting eyes, and a gaped jaw. As for the rest, you find the students perched at their desks, silent as ever.

It’s no wonder why. The evidence ispotentacross the room — there is no mistaking it.

Sweet decay bludgeons perfume.

If people put into question Omega-validity an hour past —,

“Our Miss Blondie’s an Alpha —?!”

this hour will be the one to lay as confirmation.

Yoko is deep in grimace. Divina, frozen mid-flinch.

“This is not what I meant by one of these days, Enid…!”

You jolt to act. The bag is slung to Bianca, who echoes your socked lungs, and you veer for the hallway. There’s a crowd. Not quite what a passing period would gather, but it’s enough for you to know which outcasts Enid shoved through. Some are blank in the face. Others, rubbing their arms as they reclaim their spots.

Then Eugene who, as you trail down her path, you yank from a trashcan’s lip. He thanks you weakly, before Yoko does just about the same — both to push, and to yank.

Through the sea, you hear her, and as your eyes drift overtop the crowd’s height, you notice the clear patch in the hall.

“—re you going to tell me that you didn’t, actually, go to study on Monday?!”

With what stature you have, you bulldoze between the last of this crowd. It isn’t enough. Too many are heads taller than you.

And you are, unfortunately, built like a doll. The chip on your shoulder isn’t something you can gather cuts of porcelain from to gouge their eyes, shank their sides.

“I—” (Squeaks. She has him cornered.) “I did.”

“I can smell it when you bullsh*t me, Ajax!” (Just past this last line of students.) “And I already know. I f*cking knew it when you lied!”

Yoko is the one to break through the jocks. You drive beyond her, to Enid’s heel. From behind, you hear the vampire murmuring. Perhaps to Divina, a worry. Or, it is to Enid, and she lays a threat.

“You wouldn’t have let me!”

“Okay?! Why would you want to go?!”

She doesn’t hear. Doesn’t realize the joined company either.

It’s only Ajax, backed against the wall.

“Because—?!” (His eyes dart. He scans across the Nightshades.) “Because it’s a part of our club?!” (Stares at you, however. Before Enid again.) “It’s what we do!”

Enid flares. Her scent fumes ashen forest. It blisters the bricks to Nevermore. There is no escaping her. Not here, in this hallway.

“You do other sh*t with that club of yours too! Why— Why?! To look at other gi—?!”

“W-What?! No! Yoko’s the only one without a tail—! You know I don’t like her like—! Now you’re just—!”

“I’M THE f*ckING hornie*st BITCH IN THE SCHOOL RIGHT NOW AND YOU STILL HAVE TO LOOK AT OTHER GIRLS?! WHAT IS IT ABOUT ME YOU CAN’T STAND ARE YOU f*ckING KIDDING ME?!”

“NOT WHAT I SAID! I-IT’S NOT REALLY ABOUT YOU! IT’S JUST NOT MY FAULT I NEEDED A BREAK FROM—!”

Air seethes sharp through the fangs behind. Yoko’s.

You know what this is. She does as well.

Enid craves what she craves, and that is what her dear mother never gifts her: praise, reasons to stay, something that isn’t her fault…

There is a line, somewhere, about self-fulfilling. Your throat runs dry to its proverb. Because this is eruption. She teeters between a loose Hell, and a mere, overflown basin.

“No. Finish that.” (She chooses the former.) “Break from what?!” (Rut breaks it free.) “Dealing with me?!”

Ajax shakes his head roughly. His beanie is close to follow suit.

“Dealing with your drive. I-I’ve told you, it takes a lot out of me!”

“So what?! You couldn’t have taken that break with me for a night?! And just watch a show?! Study?! This sh*t isn’t all about the sex, you know! What?! Was I too sick for you Monday?!”

“Sick… I—! But it’s—! I-It’s just heat, right?!”

…Alphas have one renown trademark. It may very well be the only one that is true to the dynamic:

There’s trill. It haunts their aggression. It bleeds the deeper their words fall.

Enid…

Façade or not, Enid is an Alpha. There is no doubt.

And the corridor in its entirety hears it. Her trill burdens low. You doubt she realizes what has broken from her. Because there are her words, and Enid presses them vehemently. Growls,

“It’s not. All. Sex.”

Such trill echoes now. You feel it, deep in your bones. A rattle. This innate urgency for you to run. The same which has a jackrabbit flee, and a fawn prance.

“What the f*ck, Enid…?” (He goes white.) “You— Are you f*cking kidding me?!” (Tears flood dough eyes.)

It has dawned on Ajax.

You know what’s to come. His face ignites. There’s only indignation. He was told Omega. Ajax was told Omega.

And Enid now stews in rut. This morning, that match, hasn’t left her. Nothing since has surfaced to knock her to any sense, and there is no knowing what would by now. Because she is stewing, and it reeks. Has you lulled. Forewarns the rest.

“Is this why you bitch about the f*cking lights?!”

“Do… Not… Call me that…”

“I didn’t— f*ck, I didn’t mean it like—!” (He panics. Every word — it’s all panic.) “God, Enid, I didn’t call you one! But you’re acting like you are!” (He flinches. Didn’t mean that. But his face boils red.) “Since when were you going to tell me that you’re a f*cking Alph—”

She lunges forward.

You reach for her.

“Enid.”

…there is no claw to witness. You hear them. You watch her, with yellow eclipse, twist violently.

Then, a still moment. For once, a crowded hall brimmed of puberty plunges to an utter, depraved silence. Blue leaks with each layer of color lost in Enid’s face. So unlike crazed victory. Pays homage to her white-knuckled at bedside, and you with a beading, warm velvet.

Your arm is— It…

Your arm, it’s torn apart. She tore it apart… It’s extended, and you’re pooling velvet across the floor. A darker, fumed shade than what fell from your nose. From your elbow, curled to your palm. Three trenches, a trifecta, and they together run deep.

Blood beads to the beat of your hollow. Runs to then freefall.

“W-Wednesday…?!” (Voice barely there. Only trill.) “Your… Y-Your— I didn’t m-mean—”

This hurts. So much so that the fact echoes, and throbs, across your body — this hurts. How beautiful. This one swipe, and it’s done this much. Enid could scar you, should she have dug deeper.

(She gathers a cry.) “O-Oh my god… Day—? Day, y-your arm, why did you…?!”

Enid crumples to her knees. There’s a pained whimper. A dog, or wolf, may dwell after all. She grasps after the shreds of your blazer, then the blouse beneath. Shame. Your color — the hue of pinstriped nightmare — may not be dawned wholly for a while. This coat had been the only tailored to you.

But oh…, how it bathes in Addams — that pinstriped nightmare.

She collects them, from blood-pool. It’s a modest bath, in truth. It barely ponds the tile. Yet, it's enough to smudge across her fingertips. And she tries to piece the cloth together. Like puzzle.

Another whimper.

Oil draws back to your prized wound. Then, pathed back to her.

“Enid…? Enid, we— We’ve talked about this, right…? These little moments just hap—”

“Ajax… Her a-arm isn’t a little mom— Wednesday…?! Please…?!”

You have discovered a grand thing:

The perfect shade across her claws, her nails, is you. It’s you.

(A cavern cracks. It trenches deep into your face.)

“Please s-say something…?! Are you— M-Mad at me…?!”

Your hum is quiet. She pleads of you an answer.

(For a rare moment, there are eyes to witness the grace of your teeth, the stretch of your lips.)

Perhaps, the swift blood loss has made quick work, and it speaks for you. Through whisper. A murmured, swayed,

“I will…”

Heels ache down floorboards. You know her shadow to consume her students before you find her herself from peripheral.

Not that you pay the woman any mind. Enid is tear-streaked, still knelt on the floor, and she stares at you. Swallows a coarse breath.

Blood loss is a swooning thing, truly.

(The day’s sanity may have gone with it.)

“I will go to the dance with you…”

Her face creases. Sharp. Almost fanged.

“D-Day, your arm… Y-You’re so f*cking stupid. Your arm…!”

How awful.

By the time your Principal Weems, in all her glory, stands not a body’s length away — hands fixed on either hip, lips pursed —, Ajax remains as if of stone, and Enid is sobbing at your feet. Clawing down your skirt, and your calves. Her broken words crack about a confetti-arm, or something, whilst you stare blankly at the woman who looks just about through with the semester already.

“Wipe that smile off your face, Addams. You just got assaulted — by a Lycan, at that.”

Well, yes, but more importantly, you were asked to the dance, and then she broke-up with her boyfriend. Then bestowed upon you a remarkable offering.

This is a wonderful occasion.

“Wednesday—”

“Am I allowed to bleed all the way up to your office, or can I go to the nurse first?”

“Just get it stitched.” (Your eyes dart to the wolf puddle.) “Yes, Enid may go as well.”

| ix |

| (she bleeds) |

Your arm is being stitched raw.

In truth, you don’t need this. The wound would’ve scabbed over within the hour or few, scarred by the day, lay as a derisory line by the next, before, devastatingly, it’d leave you clean by week’s end.

(She still has marked you. She hasclaimed you.)

But knowing you will pull out the threads through a witching hour dwells you intensity. The anticipation is palatable.

Nobody else seems to share the same sentiment. Which, odd, though for all your years in life, you hardly find yourself surprised. You sit in the chair. The nurse remains horrified with herself, if not with you. Enid—

Oh, and yes, you convinced the nurse that Enid would need the bed more than you yourself, the clawed-victim. She griped about it for the first several minutes before, inevitably, Enid fainted face-first into the pillow. Admittedly, she lasted longer than you thought she would’ve.

The nurse glances between the two of you. Enid stirs, and you’re face feels softer than usual.

She’s disconcerted.

You’re merely glad that, out of this mess, you managed yourself quite the slashing.

(What a reality to waltz to, in due time.)

| x |

| (she follows a familiar path) |

For once, you stand in Weems’ office purely to rattle-off an unbiased statement. Enid is the one to sit in your designated chair, while Ajax is awkwardly placed on the other side. You don’t have a chair yourself. You stand beside the lofty desk.

The high of your slashing has been disquieted. Your sleeves — both blazer and blouse — take after tresses. Beneath that, a stanch white. A hide that you will shed in short notice, for it is a bane more than comfort.

Ajax sits pale in the face. You presume there was a lengthy conversation before you and Enid knocked on her door, then took your places. How much was actually said is … unbeknownst to you. The more you piece together his complexion, then your principal’s patience, the less you think conversation. Lecture sounds more appropriate.

Enid, she fares no better. Her hands lace through her hair. Her claws are drawn. There’s a nervous energy. Across her knuckles, in her heel, she fidgets.

Weems is quiet. She keeps her lips pursed, and you know the eyes she has set on Enid. She watches her, the Alpha, without surprise, as though she knew this rut to boil over. It was only a matter of time, truly.

Her hands close together. The desk does its part to hide her domineering stature.

“What is the heart of the matter, then?”

Ajax shrugs. Squeaks, somewhat,

“Just … arguing.”

A brow arches, and Weems prompts through thrum,

“Enough to be a clear disruption between class periods, Mister Petropolus?”

“Uh, y-yeah.” (His face is fumed. Eyes bleary. Cheeks wet.) “Um. Alpha things. That’s … all.” (Angry, yet he is still trying. For her. Enid. The Alpha who swiped at him, slashed you.)

Ajax is too, too gentle. There is no conjuring a reason. You abhor it. What teems down your hands is the urge to throttle a lie, a figment of fantasy: Ajax Petropolus, the demented, twisted soul who dared lay a hand on her.

Because, reality is.

You … don’t entirely mind that he had been the one before you. In the moments — those multitude —, you thought you hated it. Hated him. Possession does something to the mind. Has you claim her before she’s left his side, then you to fawn over her mark before she’s even graced your lips, and body.

“Enid?”

She stills. The fidgeting ceases, for now.

“Yeah.”

Her answer echoes as a blunt confession.

Weems lets it settle, before her grey eyes cut to you.

“Wednesday, give me the clearest picture.”

(Your arm throbs to hollow’s pang.) “Enid was talking to some of our friends. They mentioned a night’s excursion out in the woods that Enid wasn’t aware about, so she went to confront Ajax.” (You trace down stitching.) “And then I startled her.”

Ruminative. She hums ruminative, akin to what you’re subjected to every so often, through the moments you’ve been caught red-handed, and she has no issue in prying for your admission.

“I see.”

“So—”

The room seizes for the gorgon. Enid doesn’t pick up her head, though if she had the ears for it, they would have undoubtedly swiveled for him. Weems stares. The grey is more curious than anything.

You merely watch. Oil glazes him mutely.

“So is … it true…?” (Ajax swallows, now. Toys with his vest.) “Is, um, Enid an … Alpha?”

Enid nods. Nevermore’s domination clarifies,

“She is, yes. And anything more is up to her to explain.”

Ajax searches the chair beside him. Scours for anything. Anything at all, and when there is no answer, he swallows again. A pill, you think, that proves itself hard to.

“So … you’re not in heat, then.”

“I’ve been rutting for months, Ajax.”

From your shoulder, you hear her head crick. Weems straightens against the back of her chair. Grey pins Enid down.

“Months?”

A flinch, and finally, Enid frees her head from either hand. Ajax wears bleary. She has been dawned by flood. There’s exhaustion. A ruthless kind of anticipation. Her resemblance to a kicked dog sent to a corner, still with a shoe’s imprint, is remarkable.

There is a storm behind her eyes. It brews havoc, though nothing gives way. All of it, all of her, is locked behind a dam’s grate. This hour brings spillage. The next…

You don’t know.

Just that it will be to revere, by sundown.

“Enid. I highly doubt you’ll have to answer to Wednesday about the injury, but it wasn’t directed at her, was it?”

Shrinks to her seat, though as Enid does, Ajax holds out a cautious hand.

“I-It’s— It’s fine. I don’t… I’m not mad about it.”

“It is not fine, Ajax. There are a few things of her nature tolerated at Nevermore. This isn’t one of them.”

“I—”

Dough eyes flicker. Between desk and chair, he finds a rut long since trampled, then an authority that knows no bounds.

It is a peculiar thing to witness. Ajax has gotten himself caught between a rock and a hard place — willingly. He should be that made of stone, and Enid the one trapped. You, in a clearer world, would be the one to pry her away.

Yet, you are bystander. You lurk in silence with a numb arm, and a speared mind.

“But… But can it…?” (Pleading.) “This once?” (His voice strains, yet absurdity.) “I’m not … mad about it. Honest. It was just a little fight.” (He gathers strength. Garners more room to beg.) “I-I’m the one who messed it all up anyway.”

Silence beckons him. Weems is immobile. Enid, shackled to the chair. As for you, you silently … hope that this attempt — the final time he tries — will be enough.

“I started it.”

Ruminative again. Her mouth shrews to the sheer sight of his soft eyes, sure jaw. Weems then sighs, and she nods.

“This once.” (Grey leaves him. Finds Alpha.) “But we are still to have a conversation, Enid. The two of you may leave.”

Her words don’t strike either of you until a second’s pass. You meander from the desk as Ajax staggers upright. He murmurs something. You don’t quite catch it, not as you stiffly nod and stride for the door. He is the first to reach it, what with the jagged strides he took. Though, as Ajax pulls at the handle, you both hesitate, then glance over your respective shoulders.

Your principal waits.

You decide to take his courtesy and encroach into corridor. There’s another beat of hesitation before he follows.

The door shuts like damnation. For once, you feel the tendrils beneath hollow squirm. It is a horrid feeling, one that you’ve not met in years. You've just abandoned her to expulsion's pit. The sheer number of times Enid has been where you stand now, wondering…, agonizing…, over your principal's verdict…

How cruel you have been.

(And how cruel you shall continue to be.)

Ajax looks far more squeamish, however. The scales which gleam from his hair — or his equivalent — are now a dismal shade of green. A moment more, and you realize that he is flaking down his uniform. The snakes beneath cloth, they are twisting.

“Thanks for … taking the swipe. I-I guess.”

His choke snaps you from observation.

“Evidently, she was still worked-up from Xavier.”

“Y-Yeah, no kidding…”

There’s breakage. He cracks at the seams, more than skin. There is a cold to his voice, however. Awfully reptilian. You almost hear the snakes whisper in kind.

“Why—”

His dough suffocates in oil. There is no match to torch him, not now.

“W-Why … do you smell like that…?”

You frown. co*ck your head.

Reptilian bakes dough to callous. His eyes are burning. There is no match, for he holds the box himself.

“Like what, Ajax?”

“I used to think … that Enid smelled so … s-sweet for a werewolf. But then it changed.” (One match.) “I didn’t want to believe it, but they —” (a hand, thrusted for his hat; two matches —) “were always saying the same thing.” (Inferno.) “And it’s you. It’s y-you.”

…never have you been struck down by the very thing you’ve hoped.

“Sh-She smells like dirt. Like— Like this rain that just won’t quit— And the ash!” (Blistering now. He is seething.) “Your ash is all over her.”

(How despicable…)

Your hollow does not bend to him. It writhes. Somewhere deep, once comfortably lain, your velveted heart plummets. The lights down the corridor — both lamp, and window — are blaring. You clothes itch. Your skin fears rash. Your heartplummets to Nevermore tile.

(You have been. Your scent — you’ve long since claimed her.)

And as for Ajax…

How he ever became your second exercise in empathy, you don’t know. It may very well be this moment only, where he stares at you, or glares at you, and you are … bothered. Because this face was never what you wished to take from him. From anyone, really.

You adore knowing you can break a swine bigger than you, and have them toss beneath your heel. You snap their bravado. Degrade them back to a child’s misery.

(Your stolen scent has been what lulls you.)

What you stare upon, it is no swine. This is pure despair. An Addams’ revulsion.

You’ve bludgeoned the gorgon to demonstrable sin:

Heartbreak, Wednesday… How could you…?

(Disgusting. You are revolting.)

This is not the shade of blood you want on your hands. You want it real. You want it earned. Not this— This numbing avalanche, where this means crime,and where his only sin was…

Was a skull a circumference a little too thick. The many, many times Enid had succumbed to lapsed judgement.

(You may be revolting, so memory serves to you a vindictive tongue:)

“You’ve kept her from me long enough, then.”

You leave the corridor, and Ajax, with not a glance over your shoulder. He is forsaken with only decimation by his side.

| xi |

| (she craved fur, once) |

(There was a weak moment, some time ago.) “Enid?” (One moment, where your eyes paid mind.)

Any memory that likens her to a blonde stranger is a wicked thing to behold. Purely nonsensical — Enid fits to you as a last piece, though to know when and where she was found…

It wears you thin the longer you know her.

But, there was a time when she was a stranger, and you hated her. Loathed her. Treasured her. Wanted every-nothing to do with her.

At one point or another, you got yourself sorely confused. It’s hard to decipher what it was now. You know it has grown, then flourished beyond antagonism.

Or, it’s that Enid grew as well, and she wasn’t quite your last piece from the start. She’s dramatic now — was bombastic then. Her colors do not burn you (if you neglect liquor-breath), not as they would have done before. And her words, Enid finds ways to snake them quietly, and maneuver what her past intensity never granted.

She has … changed to you.

Be it like camaleón, or not, the truth between is your dilemma to uncover. Your hope is for anything but.

“He’s the academy’s stray.” (You found her, crouched alongside one of Nevermore’s many cobbled paths. And with her, this academy’s stray.) “Well, I think Yoko said Chelsy’s going to take him home… But he’ll be around here until the summer! For free pets all year!”

As a stranger, and a bane, Enid had you crave the felt of an animal for another time. It’s a gnat of being human, the urge to touch things. And to grab. To mangle, or tinker. Tear apart, put back together.

She did so with an orange tom in her arms — the academy’s stray —, and a pair of wide, blue eyes to scour you whole. Pleading, because what else would Enid have been but an earnest stranger?

(She looked so … giggly, back then.)

“Don’t you like cats?”

(You didn’t know how to reply, nor how to take that perpetual, schoolgirl smile across her cheeks.

(Not that you ever did.)

That had been the first daunting moment where you realized how Enid was trying, in her own way, to … speak with you, and she resorted to this defiled human urge. Because she’s the kind to read into things. Connect one glance to a library of implications. You knew that then. Your body was taut with how aware of it you were in the moment.

She reads into things. That has remained a constant.

How animals approach a person is one such thing.

You paused for far, far too long. Then staggered. Physically staggered because your body was taut by apprehension specifically. In fear that Enid would discover a morbid truth. In this vile hope that this stranger would become a last piece.

(Life has never played with you nicely. It loves to toy with satire. Thinks your life should be a comedy. It is, perchance — darkly so.)

…Enid had you wary. There’s a part of you, a hint of something, that warns them — the animals — of your presence. It grants them the time to run. Whispers your nature in a tune blind to humans.

Your omission was quiet:

“I’ve only pet dead ones.”

She didn’t quite recoil from you. It was something less than.

“O-Oh. Um.” (Her face squirmed for solace.) “You … didn’t, like, kill them or anything, did you?”

“No.” (A frown. Why … had that been her first question?) “They were already run over.” (What about you… Or was it everything about you?)

“Well…, this one’s not.” (Enid held him for you. Presented the answer to urge.) “He’s very soft, and very … alive.”

Alive, and vigilant of you. His stare hadn’t moved. His eyes remained sharp, and his tail lively.

That tom bore the look of an animal who wanted nothing to do with you. The green of his eyes meant thorn. His irises were sharp as venom blade.

You backed a step. Shook your head. There were no words. Her disappointment was loud. Though, had you reached for him, then spilled velvet at her feet, it would have been profound. She would've realized the hollow to your humanity. How it festers in your scent. How far it goes beyond mere gothic attributes, your depravity.

Enid, as a streak of vibrancy, would've witnessed the mask you wear, and its slippage. Your skinned humanity, stapled back across your face.

And despite yourself, you didn’t want such a thing.

Through the months following, there were times where Enid would fall in stride with you, or you would roam alone. It wasn’t the same, grounded routine that it’s become. You would argue. She would run to Yoko. Come back smelling stale, or like Ajax.

Admittedly, that sentiment alone hasn't quite changed. However, your care over the abandonment has. Months ago, it made no difference. Not until Thing gave his lectures, and you begrudgingly muttered your apologies across the room as she slept. To toe down the taped line would’ve been sin. Thing babbled about it, until you turned yourself blind, then deaf, and he was left to resignation.

Sometimes, she’d walk with you the next morning.

Other times, you found isolation.

A brisk November morning had been of the latter, where the early snow laid bleak overtop your drawn umbrella, and your overcoat roamed like shadow through the quad.

Amongst snow, there was little color. Some midnight, then a pair of mittens lost. There was a blotch of orange with his vampire perched beside him, as well. Catching sight had been entrapment.

He braced before snaring you in vine and thorn.

The vampire — a corpse-blonde, Chelsy — twisted in her seat. The bloodred of her stare boiled in grey.

“She’s not going to get to you… It’s okay, buddy.”

Her coo to him was a slight. You meandered past, though to say you didn’t hesitate in the doorway inside, with your umbrella knocked to shed its snow…

It would have been a lie.

The ache down your hand for his fur was cold. Wondering how warm it would be on a live body ran your mind frigid.

Both ache and mind thawed during the break. You were sequestered to the estate, far from Nevermore where Enid’s family decided to spend the holidays at Jericho’s proudest hotel: a measly inn. You were far from the spawn of your ache as well, though another gift for your family had fixed him to memory. A black cat had been laid before the gates Christmas morning. She had been pregnant. The kittens didn’t make it either.

It was the best your hometown ever gave you. Her fur was soft against your hand, though you felt how brittle that raven coat was beneath ice.

And, it paid memorial to Uncle Fester. Reminded you of the year where he’d run over one by mistake.

(Its grave was quite the spectacle to dig, with him. Visiting it brought you a tender memory.

(Little Tire Kitty may have been replaced by his name, upon the gravestone, to your fragile mind.)

The weather thawed in kind as you made your return. Enid practically lunged at you for a hug, of all things, the moment you crossed the door. Her breath smelled like sour wine. Her eyes were wrung by the same red as mistletoe.

It felt as if you found the dog you left out to the cold, and the dog couldn’t have been happier, despite everything. You might as well have. Her mother is as biting as any frost.

Your eyes paid mind. Down your hands came to you another ache, one that sought to calm her, and to soothe the vibrancy which had trashed the room. By the end, she stole your bed for the night, Thing gathered medicine, and you stewed the fantasy of Esther, skinned of her sheep’s clothing. Then Ajax for good measure, where your nail-gun was made ready. That fantasy did strike the week following. You could only dream of the former.

Within time, the green sprung to fester against your eyes. Pollen charred. Colors began to blot your grey world.

The bees, and their bee-keeper, was a bloomed charm to the spring season. You strayed to the keep even when Eugene wasn’t there to tend to them, busy with his classwork. Most of the time, you collected the honey. Sometimes, you treated yourself to a hunt when the cafeteria grew bland.

The tom lingered when you did. He would stare. Vines tangled with spring.

He kept his distance. The ache blossomed beyond urge, and slipped to compulsion. Out of spite, if anything. For Chelsy to catch the grace of your scent, and for Life itself to quit gifting them dead.

Or, Enid was more of a bane than you realized, and she’d managed to wrangle a child’s awful wish.

By the third visit, you cut a portion of trout. It was cold in your hand, and the skin, slimed to your palm.

He watched your offering. In your grasp, then tossed to him. He slunk and kept you caught within vines all the while. That first bite had been cautions — the same you trained yourself for poison. The second was less so, and the third less than that.

You … reached for him. With a dry throat, because though blood spillage is a wonderous thing, you wanted his fur.

The tom paused. He gathered your scent. The flat between your index and knuckle graced his head. Only twice, before you found yourself satisfied, and backed away.

Your mind stirred as he consumed his morsel, and your hands buzzed for typewriter keys. Once he left, and you cooked the rest of the trout, you stalked for your dorm.

I pet the tom today.
As Enid said, he was soft.
Learning that required flesh, however.

There’s loose comradery.
A sense of acknowledgement,
for I require the same.

Boundlessly.

7 February 2020

Thereafter, you left his fur be. He came to you for flesh. You reaped to spite — gave him the offerings that his vampire was too squeamish to acquire.

The orange tom kept his distance still. You didn’t mind. He gave you enough.

Months later and at the cusp of summer break, he granted you a final, devastating Widower’s mite. He drew blood.

He reaped her wine, your godly incarnate.

Your eyes paid mind down the same path all those months ago. The tom fled from her, and bounded between your legs. The orange smear was the last you saw of him.

Enid hissed with her hand grappled around the other, before she noticed you, smiled weakly at you.

“Oh, hey.” (Her eyes pricked sun and oceanwater.) “Guess the pets aren’t free after all.”

Required flesh… Comradery burned truer.

Wine was a salve to your eyes. You felt yourself teem grey at the mere sight of it.

“What did the cat do?”

“He recognized me. Then … he didn’t, I guess.”

You itched to rapture, or to sew. You couldn’t tell the difference. The urges — touch, mangle, tinker — thorned together as one, violent mass.

What a gift for a cat to bestow upon you.

“Maybe he thought I was you wearing my face.”

“How unfortunate.”

It was.

Devastatingly, because you never realized the implications. Nor thought to realize what your scent had done to her already. Because Enid means Alpha. Her nature takes. It mimics.

She has known.

Knew why the cat slashed her. Knew her scent to decay through the summer months at home, after the tom's reaping. The first had to have stung. The second would have been her internal hellscape.

And you never realized. Beneath Omega-impression, you only thought how her face would rupture again. That alone you knew to be unfortunate.

“I— I-I guess so…”

That tom had you realize what tsunami means to her eyes: harrow. It means teeth bared, and a plowed lapse of judgement. Tsunami only brewed then, though come the morning after — with her arm bandaged, and Ajax meekly forgetful —, you saw the same — recognized storm. A gift of hysteria. You can’t fathom who in their right mind bequeathed such a thing to her, if Enid didn’t steal it for herself. Because her rupture is revered for good reason. You’re awed. It’s treasured. Every time, you harken it to an Addams’ volatility.

(Her complexion was a somber shade. You learned cold guilt and its scent.

(Then memorized how gold sparked across blue. She would trace the wound miserably the days thereafter.)

Revered for good reason…

She draws her claws longer now. Beyond what any cat could dream of. They blister.

| xii |

| (she stalks, affectionately) |

Sparring with Xavier was of swift hostility. There was a flippancy, matched against spite.

The fight now is brutal.

A body is slung into brick. Her claws are the rapier’s persistent choir, long after the fact. Yoko has the dexterity to flinch away, then the strength to shunt Enid back. They move to the pace of swordplay. It’s fast. A blink means to blind yourself from several rhythms of this exchange.

Enid snaps her hand around Yoko’s ankle. You watch the moment where Yoko knows what’s to come, and the yelp that tears from her mouth is more of annoyance than anything. It breathes the same kind of indignation that Bianca has for you, whenever you pull the same tactic. Largely because Enid has done this thrice now, within the same match.

You do this every now and then, perhaps a little often. Keep an eye on her. Sometimes, Enid is knowing. Whether it be at her month’s fixation — a club, though the wood-crafting has stuck —, or a lecture hall, you’ll find a dark nook, she’ll find you, and you’ll be sent to scour for a snack or few, the odd book she left at her desk… Most of the time, however, your stalking is refined, enough to dodge a Lycan’s nose. You don’t let her discover routine.

Today proves to be the latter. She has yet to discover you, from beneath the gym bleachers. You figure that has more to do with dungeon musk than anything, because though vampires do not froth their scent like Furs, stale does clog. The undead have a way in reminding their nature. There is no escape, truly.

This gym — the one of two, kept far from sunlight — is ripe of stale. It does more than clog, if you have to be honest. You are reminded of the attics at home. The same you dig through whenever Mother so much as mentions the existence of another photo album of you.

But, it is the only gym which pays no mind to Enid. The vampires, thanks to Yoko, have taken a liking to her. That, and Enid does have respectable habits in the way of hygiene. She wouldn’t froth this place with her scent.

For another time, Yoko plummets from the rafters. Enid swings along the equipment before she lunges down. The vampire barely has the time to dart from the weight. Enid is hurtling. She’s not quite the size she managed to get to this morning, though by hands alone, you know there’s still that rawboned frame.

Yoko lands a kick. It’s enough for Enid to curl by reflex, bark a whimper. On Yoko’s part, there’s hesitation. Enid takes the advantage.

Again, she snatches Yoko by the ankle, and it’s a body flung into the wall. Yoko lands in a heap. Dust settles. She stands, then staggers, before her arms weakly cross — fists closed.

“Bat.”

Enid relaxes. At once, the tension between vanquishes. Yoko strolls to where Enid lingers.

“I’m telling you, girl, I think they’d let you in the top class this year.”

“The coach said I can’t wolf-out and that’s it.”

“Well, you’ve been tossing me around like a rag-doll.” (Prods her shoulder.) “And, he probably heard of the stunt you pulled with Xavier.”

The academy trials. Every outcast is evaluated, both to strengthen their abilities, and to mark those who’d pose a threat for everyone not. Werewolves have their arenas. The top class is sent into the woods. Vampires as well, for their own. As for the rest, you are kept to the classroom.

Apparently, watching two Seers loll their heads together isn’t a spectacle to watch.

“Look, I’m just saying, since you switched from the brunt work to what we do, you could easily go through that course with a bunch of … drooling Furs after you. And leave them in the dust.”

“But the coach is right! You know how they get! I’m still gonna be like this, Yoko!”

Enid has, safe to say, been weighed down by her inabilities.

“Brawn only gets you so far. Dexterity is where it’s at with you.”

“KICK THEIR ASSES FOR US!”

Both startle, and daresay you do as well. From the gym corner, there’s a huddle of them, with one arm raised. You can see the glimmer down his fangs, then a matching pair from over his shoulder.

“Yeah! Team Vamp!”

As said. They’ve taken to Enid as their adopted Fur.

Yoko rolls her eyes, and she guides a hand to her shoulder. They murmur. There’s a few strings of laughter. And you are painfully too human to hear it.

“—a cadav in never—?!”

More so when you’re not the only one beneath the bleachers.

Your eyes dart. Further down, sat against the wall, a handful of Fangs. By the looks of it, seniors with their chosen freshman. There’s always one. Maybe two, by midterms.

This one is particularly cautious of you, as expected; his panic illuminates between the nonchalant of the rest. They wave him off, shake their heads.

“—worry should be about her being an Addams, kid.”

“She just follows her roommate around sometimes. A lot of times.”

The freshman bulges his eyes. You find they’re a stark yellow. He hisses to them,

“—wolf?!”

Amongst them, a shrug, then a playful lunge and bite, some laughs. The freshman jolts. Another one assures, accurately,

“She’s chill if you leave her alone. She doesn’t care about anyone.”

“Except Enid. And the bee kid.”

The first to calm the boy whacks him across his tie.

“She’s not a cannibal.”

You—

(…what is it? Something the matter?)

Down hollow, there’s a snag, and a sinch. You turn away. Your thoughts trail down your scent, and what kind of nature it betrays. Animals know to pick it off you. A cat has. Fangs evidently do. It is betrayal. It robs much of your solace, whenever you’ve seldom craved touch — fur; always fur. And now, it’s gone and tacked itself onto—

Onto Enid.

You brace for the moment they find you by scent alone. Neither Enid or Yoko do. Not as they cross the court, then rear to the last bench down. It strikes odd, until you realize that you are invisible.

Enid stole your scent. A betrayal. Though, the nuances in how you wear the same is to be deciphered, hers is made strong by adrenaline. To anyone none the wiser, there is only Enid, then Yoko just beside her. You can dwell for however long the bell permits.

As they settle, and Yoko drags her open bag to their side, you hear glass clink. The open pocket sheens against the hung lanterns. You suspect a bottle, if not a pair. She reaches inside, and pulls away her large hydro-flask. Black, with a myriad of stickers pasted across. Enid has her own — pink, with not a myriad but a heap.

It’s quiet, until Yoko leans. Some is murmured. You don’t have the ears for it. The rest, you barely catch:

“Well are you two going to talk…?”

Enid nods. Yoko waits, until she’s murmuring again.

“—eaking-up?”

“I’ve been wanting to.”

“Obviously, Enid…” (Yoko watches her. Perhaps to wrest, or to goad.) “How bad did it get…?”

The question trails as a drawn breath. Enid shrugs. Mumbling now. As her words gather, you’re permitted the few strings to catch:

“—her when we’d… Like with a strap instead. I guess.” (Yoko tilts her chin. Enid adds, a whisper borderline,) “This rut’s getting worse, Yo…”

“I know. I can smell it.” (A nod, or few.) “What I don’t get is how you haven’t jumped her yet, E. The way you were smelling would’ve been enough for half the sh*t Alphas around here to take their chance on the spot. And this now is like…” (Trailing again.) “—saying, I’ve never seen an Alpha rut for as long and hard as you have, and still not do anything. It’s, like, freaky, if I’m honest.”

You know what glower spreads across Enid. She stares at her, then mutters,

“Well I’m not a rapist, Yoko.”

“Y—!” (It’s a retort which stakes the vampire.) “Yeah, I know. I was also just talking about, like, courting things, Enid. And not keeping yourself in the friend-zone.” (Enough to startle.) “Of course you’re not a rapist.”

Her eyes linger. Enid leaves her assurance aside.

Yoko runs her shoulders limp.

“…point proven though, I guess. You Furs got it bad, don’t you?” (With a smile hitched,) “Like to blame it on stupid sh*t like pheromones. Even though that’s just their nasty B.O, and they need to take a bath. Eh?”

Pheromones. The puppet strings for bees. The primitive, the imperfection, to hide beneath perfume. The werewolf’s excuse. Because scents mean the world, Furs don’t howl in moonlight, and those scents can be controlled — more than what’s spritzed on to a juvenile degree.

You stand comfortably, knowing that you and Yoko are likeminded. Pheromones are the cousin to raised hairs, blushed skin, cold sweat. Physiological. There is no control, though you’d be damned if you don’t admit that to incite such things is for hubris and its glee.

Yoko turns for Enid, to see if her audience was at all receptive. With no such luck. Enid doesn’t crack a smile, never mind laugh. Yoko’s face falls from the grin she tapered on, before she is leaning again.

“—t you so worked up, Enid…?”

A shrug. Without a glimpse of her face, you’re can only read it as sheepish. With what whispers barely reach your ears, and her vowels strung incomprehensively, you doubt that sheepish could ever portray this. It would imply embarrassment. A shame, perhaps humiliation.

Her whispers suggest dejection.

Yoko shakes her head. It starts slow, then builds momentum.

“No. You— Even before, y—”

Yoko leans. As she whispers, and her mouth snakes to her, you smell it: traces of scent, burning cold guilt. From where you stand, there’s only the trace.

Between the two, you suspect a potent smog.

“You rolled out of bed wanting to break up with him.”

“No…!”

Snapped. Not quite cutthroat, but not far from that either.

“Oh come on…” (Yoko is unimpressed.) “Girl, you didn’t even hug him back this morning. You were off last night. And don’t think I didn’t catch how you were talking to h—”

“Okay! I got it, Yoko!”

She pauses. Studies Enid. Does so in the same way she did with you, back in Nevermore’s library. There are no books laid between them, however. There is no barrier. Yoko reads Enid. Beyond what you can gather from scent alone. As she does, something blooms. It crinkles down her browline. Registers, to you, as a dawning.

“…how close were you to ch—?”

“I wasn’t going to f*cking—!”

Yoko flares. Her eyes are warning.

Because when the words bite, and cold guilt festers, that is the only evasion. Enid does not want to talk. Not now. Her voice still flees, and those biting words tremble, though you hear how they’re laid as barbs rather than the routine gossip.

“I wasn’t…! I— I just…”

She falters before Yoko, however. Barbs do not do well against a stone wall, flat face.

Yoko does frown, however. Creases concern.

“What…?”

Yoko is prying, and it’s done with expertise. She knows how to gouge. There’s a dissection. Has Enid unravel swiftly.

“—pha.”

“I know she knows now. Why would that change anything, Enid?”

Of course…

“Or is it that you let it change everything…?”

(Your fault.)

You should have known what knowing meant in that moment, what it means now. Another reason — the first of the final few nails to a coffin now lain.

“You’d think after dating someone for long enough, they’re the ones that … actually pay attention the most, I guess. But Ajax … isn’t. You—

“You are, though…”

Knowing means to fathom what she hides away, within dimmed lights. To read what her tongue swapped for Omega heat.

She told you. She acquainted you to rut. Unveiled, to you, her anatomy’s shape.

You are.

And between then and now, a blurring of chaste into … not that. Chaste has been, or was it only ever fabrication…? There is no answer in mind. You can’t find it as you walk back down the semesters past. Before blurring was smudging. Before that was blot, then discolor.

Bombastic then, dramatic now — you should have realized this. Vibrancy has always done you sin. It blears your world to sheer disorder.

Enid did this the moment she blotched your grey world in her blues and blondes and pinks. You committed the days where lapse had you take notice.

“I just… I don’t care anymore. I just want to…”

You … had wanted nothing to do with her. Then it changed, and now you’re caged to this hour. It’s too late. How you’ve managed to drown in her eyes without realizing antagonism’s breath…

There is no knowing. You search from the bleachers. You ears, to strain for anything at all. They murmur as your velveted heart limps from hollow, to your throat. Because you can’t find it. You don’t know. There’s only Enid, then Yoko, as her scent — your scent, remember — brews like a bitter frost. The ash dwells without arson. She’s too solemn for fire.

The rut that reared its head has been tucked away. It retreats. Enid is far from a rawboned frame.

…why is it that you only know your velveted heart now?

Why when you’re masked by shadow, and it’s too late, and you’ve done enough…?

“And so what? You’re just going to hang your rut out to dry? You almost— Don’t… Bullsh*t me.” (Her fangs snap. Sternly so. Pinch you as well.) “I’m with you. Alright, I get it. Not taking back what I said with you rutting. But you were thinking about it, Enid.”

“Breaking-up with him…!”

Yoko eyes her, unconvinced. Because you heard it to. Enid’s voice seldom cracks like this. It’s seldom ever brittle to do so. Nevertheless, Yoko may catch a stray tear, or a miserable hue in ocean. She leaves Enid and the matter be.

“The bell’s going to ring in a minute.”

“I don’t— I’m not going to class.”

“Stay here?”

A mere wilting shrug.

“Alright…”

There’s quiet. The Fangs that had been down the wall have now, presumably, left for lecture. You have the mind to leave as well.

You are rooted to the spot, however. To leave this dark corner, and to brace the light again, has you sink in dread.

“So what’d Weems say…?”

“Same thing. She asked me if it was a suppressant thing again.”

Dwelling here is no better. You know this. There is no regret — you found her, you watched her. Enid is here. And you’re dwelling. It’s no better. You know this, but you refuse this— Turmoil.

“Like you just got off some, or what…?”

This is turmoil.

Such a thing has had trouble in finding you, watching you, but you are here, and it dwells. Your hollow rings heavy. In your chest, across your shoulders. Then your stomach. Your throat.

“I mean, it’s not like I can take them anymore even if I wanted to.”

“…do you?”

This is … what you craved. Ajax is gone — out of your way. Enid has yearned for you. She’s marked you, claimed you, and you shall dance as one in the weeks to come.

You will mate.

The cost of it has been paid. By you least of all.

“Enid—”

“No, I don’t. I’m not doing that again, I’m just tired of this sh*t.” (Burden — there is burden in her voice.) “And I already scented myself to her. It’s already kind of too late.”

(It is. Has been.)

The bell tolls for departure.

Yet, you are tangled within a webwork strung by sorrow. It’s of your own doing, because you wove, and wove, and plaited in a corner too close to light. (As Father had told you to do.) The pattern stretched further than you intended. So the blood to a gorgon's heartache stains now. You’re slipping. The red in your hourglass gleams a sour shade.

You didn’t want this.

(Father didn’t mean this.)

You’re slipping. (Fault… It’s your fault.) And slipping. Slipping again.

Slipping away.

You don’t let her catch you in this hour.

| xiii |

| (she is irritated) |

Nevermore finds your life a comedy as well.

In the time it took for you to break from Enid, stalk the one corridor, foist your presence into the lecture hall, the bell laughed. The hands on its damn clockface have spun in frenzy. So you’ve slipped through the door, and though the benches stir, there is little acknowledgement. The class is dark. The projector is blaring.

This professor seldom comments on your ways. Both in praise and criticism. The papers for his class are returned blank, save for the red 100.

“—all which you need to know for the psychic and telepathic evaluations will come from these lectures in the upcoming weeks. Both the practical, and the written responses afterwards.”

His glance snags you. The shine across his spectacles impale. Though, as in custom, he doesn’t comment. There isn’t so much a pause in his announcements.

You spy the empty seat in the room. And, naturally, it’s the one Xavier saved.

There’s a bare nod to Eugene as you pass his row. He smiles back. Soft, but a flicker of something. It’s gleamed behind lens glare; you can’t decipher.

“And we’ll start with Dr. Senile’s Instable Mindscape.” (The room murmurs in a paper chorus.) “The first chapter, page one—"

You sit. Xavier thumbs across the corner of the assigned reading. The pages flutter. The spine has the book closed.

He doesn’t pay attention. You find his grey eyes nailed to the same hand. The wound is held together a scattering of white tapes, then a few threads, akin to what dresses you beneath bandage.

You judge that this wound isn’t so much the mark of a graze but instead a burrowing. Enid had managed to riposte through the rapier’s lavish handle, spear the glove, and cut a line down his wrist. Through the meat of his palm. Her pulling away had collected lavish ego and sent it flying.

This is not a scar that will ever fade on him. It will knot his hand, and callous to the shape of spearhead. Or, Lycan-nail.

What a nasty lesion.

Daresay, it pries from you envy.

“You know, your roommate’s a little insane.”

“‘—a typical occult gathering as it was kept to the shadows, just as with any other outcast. Another day of worship to the—’”

Xavier has yet to pick up his head. He only stares into his palm.

“You provoked her.”

“No, I just said I was surprised you let her step-up to Tyler.”

You loathe when he does this: worm a smile as though his words weigh charm. They don’t. Instead, they nest maggot-tangle down your ear canal. His voice alone shrills to a horsefly’s liking.

Then, there’s the eyes he sets on you. They are cold, but they are poised.

Most of the time, Xavier comes across as a respectable peer. A good head on his shoulders, with a set of morals that points an arbitrary compass the right way. He knows which words to choose. He has a tight handle on his image.

Until you remember one thing:

Xavier is a brat.

The kind that your mother would deck across the mouth, and Mother is far from the kind to do such a thing — lay a hand. (And Lucifer knows you’ve more than earned the privilege.) Huckleberry poison is enough to sour an act of sabotage, never mind a brewed retort. (Lucifer sings that huckleberry poison scours for oil on habit.)

His words are chosen, for his set of morals, arbitrary compass, are a means to an end. And whatever fantasy he has in mind, sometimes it gets to be too much for him, and the compass slips. It points not for true North, but instead aligns to that fantasy’s magnetism instead.

You eye him carefully. And then, grated,

“Why…?”

Xavier shrugs.

Just that. He shrugs. Before spout:

“She’s Enid. We’ve been in the same class together for longer than you’ve been here, and she’s not once been intimidating. The Fur can barely growl at people. She doesn’t even howl or bark like the rest of them. And, she’s the last person you’d think would be legal already. She acts like she’s the youngest, you know? Except maybe with the sex.”

There is a wry crack down your face. It splits your mouth, teethes your nose.

“If you said as much last year, I would’ve agreed.” (You glare into lecture projection. You find a gathering. Sable cloaks, except for one made of shadow.) “But that was last year. Perhaps you should step outside that shed, Xavier. Touch some grass with that hand of yours. Enid isn’t the same schoolgirl you think her as.”

“…she still is one.” (You feel his eyes dance.) “Will admit, the claws do a lot, I guess.” (It scorns down your arm.) “All I was saying is that she’s like a puppy. And I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”

Except he did. Not cruelly so, but he questioned her place with you. Her value to you, as your chosen security. As though he has the say.

“She’s also a wolf, Xavier. They don’t stay puppies.”

“Yeah, well she kept tripping over herself. That whole match kinda proved my point.”

“She fences with a vampire. Even if her form isn’t as practiced as it could be, she knows how to spar with Yoko, and do it evenly.”

He stares at you, and his brows twist confusion. You glance back. The tension which crosses you is tight. It fits to your skin, around your eyes, down your jugular, as though you’ve passed through netted webbing. Your own again, because damn your begrudging to keep Xavier sated and out of your way.

You may have given him ideas after all…

How downright gauche of you.

“It was an act.”

“That—” (He sputters now. Doesn’t believe it.) “How…?!”

The sheer disbelief is an insult alone.

“If you’ve never thought Enid intimidating, you never paid attention. She likes her dramatics. She likes striking people silently more.” (Then, as mutter,)“Enid would make for a great magician in that way.”

Xavier still insults. His eyes are wide. There’s a frown.

You press,

“So again. You provoked her. That match was a warning to quit being an ass and watch your mouth.”

“I—” (Finally, a wince.) “Okay, ouch.” (You’ve gashed him.)

Silence. A long-awaited reprieve.

You keep your attention to the podium. He reads through the pages. The projector, intermittently, scrawls through the slides prepared. At his desk, there’s another student with a book at hand, and a hand on what’s projected.

“‘—so they could reach into dreamscape, and aim for enlightenment. A flock of ravens and doves, together, for such a goal. Amongst them was one such psychic, cloaked by boiled wool, with a mask like the foxes which roamed the area.’” (A page flipped. Some follow along.) “‘Beneath their attire, none could be certain if this psychic was a newcomer or not. The flock accepted boiled wool, just as any other, and paid no mind. The rituals—’”

“But how do you know that…?!”

His sharp whisper stagnates in the seconds you leave to pass. Your glare pricks.

“She’s my roommate. Don’t think for a second I haven’t rubbed off on her.”

Poisoned her, truth be told. That is your nature. It isn’t something you ever intended with Enid, but her hands have graced you from time to time. Every embrace left its mark.

Indelible. For better or worse. You’ve yet to decide what you’ve done to her.

Xavier has, evidently. He figures it doesn’t count for much.

“Okay…? Enid still isn’t going to be strong enough.”

“There is a conquest of sutures up my arm, Xavier.”

He glances, then pales. Your sleeves are shredded. You are wounded, despite the way your pristine image deemed such a thing impossible. Another thing unintended, for you admire how velvet strays across your grey world.

A grey far from his eyes, mind. There’s too much verve in Xavier. You prefer bleached shadows, not the steel which dulls the more he ripostes his eyes onto you.

As he does in the moment.

There is a fervent parry:

“I decide what she’s strong enough for. Now quit whining that I chose her to be by my side, and lick that little wound of yours already.” (You turn your eyes away.) “This little spat of yours is petty, and frankly childish. Quit being a Godforsaken asswipe.”

“Alright. Alright. …sorry.”

He sounds sheepish, a touch remorseful, though you know your hollow to bristle. Xavier is remorseful to you, for wearing you down to petulance. Not her — the dog to his mind.

“‘—marveled at the visions, both for the spectacular future, and the doting past. By sundown, the—’”

You feel Xavier glance down your arm, then stare again. His eyes weave through the wrapping. He follows down the cloth, from your hand, then beyond that to your shoulder, neck, profile.

“Really cut you up to ribbons, didn’t she?”

His voice rings soft. Xavier keeps maggot-tangle to himself, for now.

“Tis but a scratch.”

“Liar.”

A brow arched, your eyes strafe. What you find is a light smile. As though he’s won a point to something.

“I knew you watched it…”

“Only for Eugene. It’s one of his favorites.”

“Uh huh.”

“Do not test me after slandering Enid.”

The smile drops with the flinch you whip from him. He shrinks miserably in his seat.

“…alright.”

“‘—boiled wool roamed to the alter. They watched in—’”

Xavier stares again. This simmers as the same in hallway where you, Enid and Ajax were encircled by widened eyes and one collective, held breath. Your arm stings. Mind throbs.

This is probe.

And it bodes a retort like thrush in your mouth — swallowed down, however, for later.

“I can feel you asking that question.”

“What?”

“Just spit it out.”

“Well if you already know it, just answer.”

You are stewing because, for another time, Xavier has decided to play your conversations like a game. A banter between ripostes, parries, and the footwork between. Despite knowing that you are one for claustrophobia, and he wouldn’t stand a chance.

He doesn’t. Even in conversation.

“‘—reached for dreamscape, and they found nightmares. They reached for mindscape, and they found the same. That of whom cloaked in boiled wool was, indeed, a raven — a conceivable thought which—’”

You do not understand it, the reason why.

Never have you played into it. You are not Bianca. You don’t willfully humor anyone who wishes to court. Because you are the one who chooses, which you have. Not him.

“…so?”

“Yes, she is.”

Enid however…

That was a choice regardless of dynamic.

Oil cuts to his grey. You smolder in accusation:

“Why does it matter to you?”

(Another shrug.) “I thought she was lying about the Omega thing, but I didn’t really pin her as an Alpha. Just a horny Beta, or something.” (A nod now. As though you’d agree.) “You know. Considering Enid’s … Enid.”

An itch. Whatever image of Alpha he has in mind, you know it to be the same as game and prize. The kind of thing to boast about, even though there’s little substance to boast over.

There is a reason why there’s only a dozen, or two, of legitimate Alphas in Nevermore. There’s a reason why Enid is one, and the face of them — a Beta — is simply not that, despite machoism.

And it’s simple, really:

“Alphas are exceedingly emotional and struggle to contain themselves, have a high pack-mentality because they get sensitive when they’re lonely.” (Darted eyes. You pin them, pin him, to his seat.) “And, there’s the aggression in rut to parry an asshole.”

He blinks.

“Well when you put it like that, she’s the epitome of one.”

“She is one.”

“I—” (Stutters over himself.) “Well yeah.” (You’ve won.)

There are things behind the why you’ve grown tired of Lycans. As a little girl, you were engrossed. Every book you managed in the family library was near-memorized. The spectacle of them, the nuances — it all was divine to the eyes.

Until a side of the family brought to you their pack. For ransom’s sake, with the note of money to crawl down their fingers. A little thing, really. You found them too… What had it been…? Boring, or fraudulent—?

Counterfeit.

Lycans became counterfeit to you, at that time. It had been the last straw — a small thing — which had you set the books aside and discover other matters. Because all of what you read was a lie, a concealed truth, and what was alive and moving and babbling on was … a reality. They smelled like dog. They acted like dog. Stole like them.

Shame they dragged your family into that.

But, those uncles, and aunts, and cousins… They did sever their ties with you for the sake of the pack. Even though you worship the moon just the same.

“‘—then they awaited for the vision from boiled wool. The vision came, passed down through their body and into the basin, and it was a spectacle. Yet, it was frayed. Soon, the psychic in boiled wool buckled, and they began to seize by their—’”

You realize that it has been quiet, and you were allowed a moment of recollection.

It is disconcerting. An Xavier lost in thought, stirring whatever delusions he has, is never a good thing. For a moment, you debate breaking this comfortable silence for your sanity’s sake, or to keep it so for the quiet.

You choose the former once you realize how lost he is:

“What?”

“Mm? Oh.” (He shakes his head.) “Ajax is a nice guy, you know. And I mean legit. He’s just … a blockhead too, sometimes.”

…come to find, it was a thought you do agree with.

“That’s one way to put it.”

Xavier shifts, before he glances over. He weighs his chin to either shoulder. Then, mumbled, he explains,

“He was really nervous with Enid at first.” (Adds,) “Alpha, Omega or not. Those things really mean the same thing.”

“You just said you thought she was a Beta.”

He chews on his hypocrisy.

“…okay, still.”

Annoyed, you fall back to recollection:

“Omegas are responsive to ruts. The moon’s cycle is one thing, though mated-heats are entirely another.”

“I mean … yeah. But they have them with non-werewolf mates too.” (Xavier shrugs.) “Ajax couldn’t have known the difference. They didn’t start doing it until, like, months after they got together, so it might as well been a heat. So like, for us it’s the same. Doesn’t make a difference.”

“Fair enough.”

The projector flips. Catches your eye.

There are shadows, enclosed by sable. By frame alone, it pains of agony. Your hollow stirs. The frame, it moves to your eyes. Like flame. A seizure.

“‘—vision it was not. The psychic in boiled wool writhed as though their very mind sought to spurn their life. It was not vision, as it went far, far beyond—’”

It croaks to you a vision’s plea. There is forest in your mouth, moon across your skin. Iron velvet pangs in your throat, and you reach for your nose — to catch.

Nothing.

You know vision’s plea, and that it is teasing. But your hollow stirs. You hear her. A croon, in the distance. Whimperings. Of your name. Wants you now, but you’ve left her. How could you…? Why did—?

“But, he was really nervous about it. Because it’s a lot. I guess… I dunno what happened.”

You stall. The projection pans for another slide, and you are forced from daze. You catch velvet swiftly. Xavier doesn’t take notice. He eyes the lecture. Doesn’t listen.

Down your tongue you teethe.

“He is in the same club as you. Don’t tell me you’re dense as well.”

Another, goddamn, shrug.

“Okay, but she did put a lot on his shoulders with the sex. And … we helped give him a break.”

“She … did, yes. Though I’d argue if you’re planning to date a werewolf, you take into account their biology.”

Xavier scoffs, and again, he’s clowned by that co*cky smile of his.

“Enid still l—”

“Enid’s insecure. She lied about it for a reason.” (Now, more for yourself,) “Even if I don’t understand the point.”

“‘—with future prospects, they witnessed the traumas which lived beneath the mask. They came to realize that their fellow was puppeted, and each string would lead down times of—’”

This slide bears not agony, but instead anguish. Seizure is traded for rift — of the psyche from body and soul. His narrations murmur to you. The lecture hall cradles your devotion. To the slide. And your hollow.

A plea. Sounds eager beneath your skin. Feels anxious through your ears. The hollow itself, it churns to—

“Still don’t understand how she hid her dick.”

Again, Xavier steals the lecture from you.

Why did you have him talk again…?

“She doesn’t have a dick. She has a knot.” (Stares at you. As if this is honestly news to him.) “Knots are a specific kind of tissue. It’s what swells and keeps the Alphas inside.” (The staring favors gawk.) “For male-inherent, it’s only at the base, and it’s subdermal. In female-inherent, it’s entirely knotted.”

You watch the moment where it hits him — Alpha reality.

“Their whole thing…?!”

“Yes?” (Your eyes roll.) “Theirs are more flexible so that it can retract with minimal friction. Enid likely kept it retracted, and had the lights off. Though, I do assume it’s a similar mechanism to holding back any other physiology.” (A followed note:) “The slick probably distracted him enough.”

His face squirms repulse. As for why is beyond you. Nature prides itself in its abnormalities and exceptions. It doesn’t save humans from that, especially outcasts.

“I didn’t think they were that different. sh*t… Enid would be a bitch to bed with.”

Your teeth stamp for blood across tongue surface. You glare.

“What?”

“You know nothing about their anatomy, do you?” (The iron boils. Singes velvet to clot.) “The tissue is specialized for knotting. It has a higher release of oxytocin and dopamine, enough to trigger whoever they’re with.”

Xavier is blank in the face. Stumped by what he should already know.

Though, given this hour as evidence, it isn’t a mystery as to how he’s this sorely baffled.

“And given there’s not a true dermal barrier, female-inherent more or less forces the contractions in their mated.”

“Dermal barrier?!”

Jaw ironed, eyes rolled shut, you listen to the class. It’s silent. The stares are shrill enough to cut through. Xavier shrinks, and he pads across his book.

“…sorry.”

The professor is hesitant, before the narrations return. The projection flips. Shadow pools to the floor.

“‘—room grew quiet, and they stared upon the crumpled remains of the raven in boiled wool. Minutes, it took, for—’”

“The hell do you mean…?!”

You should have known better than to expect another moment in thought.

“Do you not understand what slick does? It’s hardly just lubricant for Lycans.”

“So the wolf chicks plug you until you have a seizure…?!”

“If you want to be crass about it, yes.”

“Um. What. The f*ck?”

“Again, coupled with the overabundance of dopamine, Xavier, both are put into a trance.”

He pauses, ensures a low voice, and asks,

“…um, what kind of trance?”

“Like a hit of meth.” (He recoils. As if you care.) “Quit gaping like I’m describing a torture, because I will explain, in excessive detail, what I have had in mind for you and a skewer.”

Xavier grows pale.

“Meth…?!”

Not for your threat. Devastatingly.

“How are you this unaware of Lycans? They breed and mate and remain loyal to their partners as they do for a reason. It has nothing to do with their bonds, or whatever they’ve come up with for themselves.”

“…how do you know all this? People barely get this sh*t with a class. And I didn’t take you as one to be fascinated in this kind of thing.”

You are well aware of what lies people play into, and the truths they neglect to read. It’s a common affair, truly. You find it not just in Lycans, but across every outcast, every nuance to humans. Nature itself. The whims between.

Including anything revolved around sex, which your parents were keen enough to warn you about. They presumed you would remain abstinent by your sixth schooling venture, so they detailed three things:

1. Do not weep for those who take advantage.
2. Kill them, if the law shan’t.
3. Shun those who excuse.

Behind each doctrine are a dozen tragedies where an Addams was slaughtered, then a dozen more where another Addams took vengeance and reclaimed their rightful honor. You are not removed from such a thing. Sexual or not. It is the way of Addams.

Being well-versed should not be a surprise.

However, the astonishment of his does speak to how reserved you’ve kept yourself. You can hardly blame Xavier. Not as the same has taken hold onto you with every subsequent visit to the library since the first.

“‘Fascinated’ is pushing it. My intrigue has merely been piqued as of late.”

The material gathered between then and now have been — more or less — revisits. Things that you’ve known, with details that have faded in time. Knots in particular.

As memory rattles down every depiction you have scoured across, you mutter, pointedly, to Xavier,

“Not to mention, my parents made for damn sure I and Pugsley are well-versed in intimacy. What to do, and certainly what to not. For one thing, you don’t get tangled with Lycans wearing cold feet.”

…it isn’t that you yourself have cold feet. You aren’t Ajax. You know precisely what you intend. You will have her. You will mate her.

That entails everything which exhausted the gorgon, and then some. Enid shall fill you. She will plug you, and lock you both into delirium. Your arm may not scar, but she will brand you by teeth alone. You yearn for that. You have done as much.

But … the knots on those pages. None spurned you. All they accomplished was a depraved realization:

You don’t care for it. The fantasy. Just as you don’t care for any other set of fangs, nor another body of flesh. Blue eyes. Blonde hair.

“Okay, but still…”

You can’t blame him. But you want to prove him wrong, in a way.

That there is one, and you’ve chosen correctly, and it’s Enid.

“All that doesn’t explain how you know the plugging-seizure thing.”

You gnaw cheek. Then, another mutter:

“I’m informed of biology, regardless of outcast status or not. So I have known, because why associate with something or someone who you don’t understand?”

“People do it all the time.”

“Good husbands understand their wife’s menstruation, rather than treat it alien.”

Xavier pauses, and his face scrunches in prompted thought. Slowly, he nods.

“Yeah, good point.”

“Any partner, for the matter.”

His frown is contemplative, and his eyes beneath do little to leave you. Something lingers. You don’t understand what you’ve said.

“‘—reached for the vulpine mask. What they found was a rind. Neither human nor outcast, but rather a figment of psyche. Nobody of the flock—’”

“Do you … swing that way—?”

“What?”

A shrug. Dawdling.

“Girls… You know.”

Swing… From time to time, you hear the students murmur about it. There’s been a few gay boys undisclosed, though the academy has collectively made assumptions. Another few lesbians as well. Some nuances. One trans girl, yet that matter is a different one entirely. It involves an egg, from what you’ve deduced.

You’ve yet to hear what the school stirs about yourself.

Then again, you have never bothered to listen.

“Like for relation—”

“I got it. And I don’t care.” (You reach conclusion. It feels right.) “I don’t swing.”

“But you just said your interest is piqued.”

“Physically, yes. That doesn’t hold much weight.”

Xavier eyes you with a shrewd glee.

“…well.”

“Not for relationships.” (Grated now.) “Sex is a biological mechanism to establish and maintain them, purely for the purposes of offspring and social affairs. If there isn’t any interest beyond that physicality, there are no grounds for a relationship. My parents are the epitome, and they’re excessive in their manic devotion. Physical pleasures only go so far, even with them.”

Another lapse of prompted thought. This comes to him slower than the last.

“Huh. Not wrong, I guess.”

There. A matter to leave be, and the podium to strive your eyes back to—

“So anything’s on the table?”

The question reeks of it — this hope.

You sit frigid. Hollow jolts. Mind spins. You stare into grey and reach to choke his soul.

“I don’t. Swing.

“I burrow.”

This nod is slow. There’s pondered thought.

He doesn’t get this one. Your words have reached him. You fear that Xavier may let them slip out the other ear should he not realize what you mean. His frown feeds such inkling.

You don’t comment. You’re through with this hour. So, you watch the podium as the book is closed, and the professor looks across the room.

“A short narrative, but it’s stories like these that are the most pressing to understand. Any thoughts?”

Hands raise. He nods to one siren.

“Anderson?”

She stands, somewhat awkwardly, before her voice cracks to the room:

“Reminds me of the Red Death. Like, it’s like a warning or something.”

“Could be.”

| xiv |

| (she ponders) |

Walking with Xavier down this path is a begrudging habit of alliance.

It’s the most convenient for both you and him, where you trail to Eugene’s bee-keep, and he to his personal shed. The habit only grew to fruition because the shed — his art studio — is the halfway point, meaning that, given Xavier respects the rejection, you have the walk to yourself. Rejection within this begrudging habit hasn’t resounded for weeks now, mercifully, as the offer to trek with you the rest of the way has been kept to himself.

You know it’s still a question which bubbles beneath his skin. There’s a trick to it: just keep him at a literal arm’s length away — Xavier’s arm, not yours —, and the question will not be born. Stray too close, and the offer will nail your mood by an anvil’s havoc.

For your own sake, you really should ask Father to find your heretic’s fork from your room. The one you purposefully kept blotched with rust.

Tetanus should fix Xavier. That you’re sure of.

You’ll get around to it, eventually. As of this semester, you simply haven’t been bothered to even scheme over the issue.

This afternoon’s walk is the usual silence. The woodland is dreary. The sky burns grey. It is, despite Xavier, a tranquil hour. You anticipate Eugene’s presence, and so too Pugsley’s; thoughts of him always lurk when you are alongside your beekeeper friend. The bees as well. You wonder if you’ll get stung today. That is a treat Eugene grants from time to time, whenever the bee is of ailing health, or is elderly — either or, on its last leg.

There is no sadism to be born within him, though you appreciate Eugene’s attempts. Even if with every bee lost, he winces, and his fawn eyes glimmer behind glass. It’s a tradeoff you’re willing to take for bee-sting.

“Wednesday…”

You nearly snap at Xavier for the intrusion. If it hadn't been for the stupor to his voice, that snap would’ve been a lashing.

His grey eyes are not on you. He stares through the trees, and your oil follows.

Enid.

And Ajax.

Both of them, animated with faces split by anger, erupted by what livid streams paint their skin. Their octaves twist through the brush, yet the words cannot be caught. They are, simply, too far from you.

Though, the two of you watch. Ajax barrels his arms behind his neck. He paces. He tosses his head. Enid is hammering. Her claws are extended, and they press against her tie. Her canines are strong. They add bite to each word.

You know spit sprays between them.

Ajax thrusts an arm to her. He snakes his tongue. The cotton dawned upon his head is writhing.

A frozen moment. They quiver as that moment sheds.

Her face ruptures.

Then she breaks to her knees. Her hands claw her face, and to match, you hear Enid’s howl gash through the wind. It pierces you. It flames your hollow to savage. Your hands prick primitive, not antique. There’s the urge to lunge after Ajax. To hold his neck against boulder, and to tear pleas from his tongue.

Yet, you don’t.

Because his leaking eyes, broken face, is paired by drowning lungs. He’s heaving. You hear him whimper.

Ajax … isn’t like the rest. You know that. He is merely a gorgon comfortable with stone, and it has its mark. It grew his skull thick. Crafted him dense.

He is not whom you kill.

Just whom you’ll break against a mirror.

Xavier watches you. His stare is laced with caution. You feel it. The weight scalds you.

“You’re not going to do anything to him, will you?”

Your jaw rocks. Your blazed oil seethes across the path. The land which runs beside it, it is dark. Like fresh earth. Starving after a body to cover. Your home reeks to memory. The dust. The rot. Old floorboards. Sweet decay.

It’s natural, how your eyes line down reminisce. Your bedroom wall, decorated by instruments collected… You don’t need it here to feel them, to run your teeth down their handles.

You miss this. You crave what violence Nevermore managed to sedate.

In the same breath, or a like mind, the bandages around your arm have unraveled. You strip bane away. Stanch has been traded for a seething hourglass red.

This frozen moment comes to pass. You realize your heavy breath by the time it cools beyond your lips. Your glare strains Xavier to the spot.

“I’ll gift him my creativity.”

| xv |

| (she seeks bloodshed) |

Sometimes, your psyche strays a little too far on its own. It will break for vision; delve into waking nightmares; splice your churning mind within reality. Or, there is severance. Of mind and body — one stays dormant, and the other wanders to another volition.

Sometimes your psyche strays. You find it to be a glitch within your mentality, because when a busy mind overflows, there’s a dam to break, and the leakage at your feet brings … clarity.

(These are, as old family scriptures put it, fissures. They bring luck.

(None of their words specify good or bad.)

You stride through the persistent wafts of Eugene’s smoker. In your hands hang a few clumps of meat within string, all picked from different animals. The bee suit you wear is bright against the sky and its grey blanket. Incessant to your eyes, though Eugene insisted, so it is another — far kinder — begrudging habit.

Shame that today you won’t get yourself stung.

It’d season the slashing you’ve already acquired.

Eugene ducks into the shed with his gathered honey. You know with the quirk across his brows that he means to start inventory collection now. As you stalk through the trees to meet the vulturine hives, you eye the remains of their last meal. Beef, and rabbit. Beneath where both were hung, minimal spoilage.

You begin to strip the leftover string from noose fixtures. It’s pocketed. A few bees fly from your fingertips. Then, your offering is tied into your nooses. A gallows, almost, where the crowd is not that but a swarm instead, and you are an executioner dressed in white, for once…

A lapse. Feels like psychosis, its embarkment. Your psyche strays, and it leaves to you hanged rather than hung. The flesh writhes. Only heads — slung by noose, trapped by string, they are swaying, and the vultures are feeding.

You stare into one.

The snakes grown from his head wilt down his face. His eyes are burdened grey. Sunken as well, as with the rest of his face.

Your jaw rocks. Those sunken eyes ooze in turn. Blotched rivers follow a tearful route. There is no stone. Only flesh, and blood, then a withered skull beneath it all. Maybe it’s thick. Perhaps it’s not. It’s decidedly irrelevant, for the time being.

Because the wind is whispering. The breeze caresses.

There is no muting this ring in your ear,

Heartbreak…

He ruptured her. You already flayed him. She’s broken. He’s shattered.

And all it took was your scent, and you none the wiser.

You will mate Enid. Yet…, to kill Ajax? No. Draw blood? Yes— No. No. Maybe. Yes. …no.

“You know, the more I think about it, I think you’re like their human equivalent.”

Your eyes veer to your shoulder, and you stare at Eugene. He watches the hives passively. There’s a light smile hitched. You path your stare away, for the bees that murmur across the suit’s netting.

“Vulture bees?”

Eugene nods. You hear the suit when he does.

“Why do you say that, Eugene?”

The hollow worms to your scratched throat. You felt the bite in your words. Didn’t mean it. Never would’ve intended that, with him.

He takes it in stride, however, as though the tension down your tongue was never spoken.

“Well, bees for the longest time were like the prime vegetarians. Not until David Roubik observed them take meat for their hive in 1982. Honeybees too. If there’s nothing else around, they’ll feed off of meat.” (He shrugs, then,) “But bees are, like, vegetarian wasps. Wasps came first.” (Looks to you now. Keeps his hands together.) “I just think you’re approachable because people assume one thing, but you’re not.”

“I’m approachable, Eugene?”

Another shrug, and his eyes trace you meekly.

“Did you think of me a vegetarian, Eugene?”

“Eh… A little bit, I guess. You know, it’s kind of hard to picture you tearing into meat. Since you’re so refined and pretty.”

You stare.

Eugene watches the hives, his pride and joy, without a fault in his face, nor a nerve through his meek eyes. He does frown, however. A thought plays. He glances at you.

“There are rumors that your family are cannibals, though. It that true?”

“My family’s legacy is only ever told under hushed breaths and rumors, isn’t it?” (He nods so, so.) “But, yes. Though not actively.”

“Ah.”

Another thought. This one twists him. Breaks Eugene to a fault, and nerve, before his hands toy as one.

“…would you … eat…?”

He struggles to even ask. Eugene waits, however. You aren’t certain he believes you’ll answer. And you don’t know yourself.

Not until it is murmured, and your revulsion leaks past your lips:

“There is … a deep-seated hunger.”

An utterance. Confession.

He takes it in stride, as though it wasn’t one, and you are the same girl who wandered to his bee-keep — clipboard at hand — a year ago now.

(Eugene has done this always. He is no Puglsey. The grit he has is something else.)

“Like the vampire in you? Your family’s all day-walkers, right?”

You nod slowly.

The reality is reflected by a mixed bag of traits. Your mother’s lineage is fresh compared to Addams. There is more of the Vampyric, though that hides in psychic shadow. Father has the strength, and eyes made for night. Uncle Fester is, or was…, a little of everything. Grandmama has her age — so too a wicked nose for her concoctions.

Pugsley doesn’t have much in the way of anything-Vampyrism. He shares your durability. He has Father’s eyes, yet remains blind in the darkest shadows. His reflexes, however, are his own. You know that your brother will grow to be a mountain of a man, one far too agile than he should reasonably be.

His skin has burned grey, on occasion. Mother’s lineage may dwell quietly within him.

As for you.

You take after corpse, like a sort of walking dead. You run colder. Emotions drain to hollow. There are yearnings, both for the moon, and for blood. That hunger goes deep. It lies in marrow. Of intrigue and satiation, not for a stable mind, nor an aging body.

Blood may be your wine.

Though flesh is not your mere banquet. (What you reap for, it’s lust-ridden.)

You wish to devour. You crave to harvest.

“Vulture implies another thing…” (You keep your eyes away.) “I’m sorry to disappoint, Eugene. I think I’m more black widow.” (Strain them to the hive.)

Eugene hums thoughtfully, and he nods.

As he does, your eyes clip the hanged meat again. Another string, another noose. You follow it down.

You find Xavier’s head.

“That is true. I just don’t know spiders as much as I know bees. Am starting to learn, though. I found one with a bunch of her babies in my room! Which … is something I need to figure out. Little spiders like that aren’t easy to contain, and my roommate would probably freak out.” (His voice hazes the longer you stare into the hanged.) “Spiders are good moms, though. Very nurturing creatures. And misunderstood. Because of the eyes, and the legs.”

The vulture bees have found him. They wriggle for it, his head, and pry at the string when it keeps them from their bounty. As more flourish, the hanged bleeds a river.

You may have … not drained as much as you think you did.

The bee suit you wear is stained. Old and new — there’s splotches across the white. Brown, mostly. Though now, there is red. It’s vibrant. Diluted as well, given the cloth. You are reminded of showerhead. There’s cracked tile. And as you stand, memory bathes the water across your front. Your wrists sear against cuffed reminisce.

Your eyes stray to the third hanged.

You find the jock. The damn pig who brought you here in the first place. And my, has his face rotted over. The vultures have taken to this one better than the fresh pair. Swine, then… These hives like swine. You take note. Both for the butcher in town, then … to thank the jock, at some point. For stranding you in Nevermore.

Alongside Enid. And the rest.

Including Xavier.

You stall, and you find his head again. You seek his grey eyes. Find them cloudy.

I burrow.

…there are moments, you think, where you are searching for a reason to claim Xavier as the second dead, the better murder.

There’s something so intrinsic about it. Deep in your blood, rooted in your stare — your habit of alliance is begrudging for a reason. Because he never does learn. Though he has largely kept to himself as of late, you know that there’s an inevitable.

I burrow.

He speaks to you as though he knows better. Like his childhood memory — of you — says the world, and money means the rest.

Xavier as a child is a blurry fabrication to you. And money… What money does he have that you don’t?

I burrow deep.

The longer you stare into his gaunt face, slung head, the more it rots in rhythm to your violent mind. Because Xavier has never cared about what blurry fabrication means. He’s never thought beyond green and coin for your attention.

Has only ever sought you as an unmarked canvas. Gleamed from your words a coy promise, rather than the dismissals they are.

I burrow from you. And those like you.

Will never emerge for you.

Vulture black worms through his skin. It drills from pore to maw. There is no blood to this dappled husk. Each socket drains to vacancy, and his hair preens oil.

His voice is empty. It squirms every deflated retort.

Before bloat, and his head defiles in rot.

There’s only her.

“Enid still isn’t going to be strong enough.”

As if Xavier would do better. As if—

“Did something happen, Wednesday? You look a-a little homicidal.”

Eugene’s soft voice is almost pleading. It cracks — in weight of the man he’ll grow to —, then splinters in ways that startles violent mind. You shake your head quietly.

He is unconvinced.

“Well something’s up.”

“Nothing is ‘up’.”

“Oh come on! When’s your next therapist appointment?”

Despite the frail twinge to his words, this push of Eugene’s chars like brick wall. It’s remarkable. You watch him. Then, it’s a muttered, quiet,

“…a few weeks.”

He gasps.

Sharply.

“Hive Code says we have this Hive Free-Talk. Now.”

He stamps his foot. Sets his hands on either hip.

Just short of five minutes, and you’re idled at boulder-pile. You sit. He lays along the flat head of another, across his stomach, and his legs sway.

Eugene didn’t give you the time nor room to strip the bee suits off, despite straying far enough from the nests.

He doesn’t pry. The two of you are tucked beneath shade, and it’s shadow enough, for you. Eugene waits. He pays no mind. Rather, he toys with the tips to his gloves, then the boulder itself.

You gather your words. Work through the gears to your rattled psyche. There is never cease to it, just a blurring, a grand smear, until you find a dark corner of the world. When the words come, they’re soft:

“I want to kill Ajax.” (Your jaw sets. You slump into your hand.) “But I won’t.” (Because there’s Xavier.) “I will stone him, and then hide his body.”

You eye Eugene, and he, in turn, rolls a casual hand. He doesn’t look at you, though you know the way his lenses beam. He listens.

“And … why…?”

“He doesn’t deserve Enid.”

Another rolled hand, before he glances. You sit quietly. (There is no yellow to find.) You ruminate within what shadow Eugene has managed for you.

“Ajax is rather confusing. Admittedly, he is a better option for a boyfriend than most. Or was. Because he … did try. And he does … care about her.” (You gnaw your tongue.) “I don’t … exactly mind that he got to her —” (before you —) “as much as I thought.”

He listens intently now. His eyes watch you. They’ve settled on your shoulder.

“Yet, he keeps mistreating her.” (Your tongue feels raw.) “And I have had to fix it.” (You don’t draw the blood you’d like.) “Every time.”

You glance at him.

Eugene folds either hand together, then sets them in gesture.

“Mistreat how?”

“Little things. Things he should know better.” (Things your nail-gun has shot to remind.) “He doesn’t know how to take care of her as a Lycan.” (Shot, then burrowed.) “When they first got together, he made a comment about her nails. Something that I’d say.”

An off-handed comment, at that. And though you held your tongue, you agreed. Because yes, her nails did scuff down her uniform, and yes, they were too sharp for him — warned of a wolf-out that has yet to come. Ajax wasn’t wrong. She didn't shift into a ravaging beast, like he anticipated, but no, he wasn'twrong.

It was something you’d say.

However.

He brought Enid to a breath drained by liquor. The comment was a mere, clumsy arrow, but it had managed to find its way past rawhide, straight to sore.

You stare into your hands, through the gloves. You see the color that stained your palms, back in January. The burning as well. The dismal agony.

“…and?”

“She cried over the paints and got her nails chipped after slashing a few tires. For winter.”

“I remember Principal Weems said something about one of the buses… So?”

Those scars have faded by now. It took months.

Every mark on you bestowed by her, they don't — they never did — just leave. Not with those claws, not with those colors. (Never when her words prance alcohol.) And as you fold your hands together, there is a dwelling nerve. As you sit on your boulder, cloaked by shade, you wonder what kind of Enid you will find on you return.

“…Wednesday—?

“I helped her with her nails. She chose the most coma-inducing colors imaginable.” (They burned. They burned your skin like nothing else.) “Neon.”

(His nod is musing.) “Those were nice nails.”

By the end, perhaps they were. Their colors blinded you. Sent you to seek refuge in your closet’s shadow. To potion bottle, a salve, for your flaking skin.

You managed to hide it from her. Most of it. Enid had to have caught it by nose alone.

“What’s the most recent thing?”

Eugene waits, and you snap to him. A pause. You conjure the most tasteless offence of the gorgon’s.

“He gave her fudge.”

“For her he— Rut?!”

You nod. He gasps, wide-eyed, with a hand hovered over his net.

Before Eugene promptly leans back into his palms. His eyes shrew, legs sway.

“And how did you fix this?”

“I gave her the meat. And ate the fudge for myself.”

He pauses. Wide-eyed again, though now via awed surprise. Eugene had witnessed the harvest himself. The fudge, however.

That had been a wonder to you as well.

“You did?”

“She told me to.” (It was a tolerable flavor.) “It was … salty.” (And bitter enough.)

Eugene merely hums, and he lets the trees rustle their muse. They chime mellow beneath this overcast. Nothing brews, though you think it enough.

“So … today? Was there anything?”

Of course there would be no slipping by him. He’s caught you, the question was pointed, so you nod.

Today was another thing he’s witnessed for himself. There is no verbal answer. Eugene eyes your sleeve. He knows how far and deep those claws maimed you. The moment you stepped into the shed, that had been his first prompted concern. He winced at your coat. Shrank from your wounds.

You dodged him then.

Naturally, you wouldn’t now as you wear this damn suit. The one he practically mummified you within.

“She did cut you, Wednesday. And that didn’t look like it’s going to heal easy.”

You know that.

This isn’t enough to scar, though you will feel these remains for the week to follow — the remains to a, now, corpse. A desecrated relationship specifically. One where you stood at the center. Have always stood at the center.

(Your fault.)

Enid is … not the schoolgirl she was, but the beast that dwells beneath her skin, that has been.

You swallow a dry knot. Your utterance, it almost croons,

“She didn’t mean it.”

“Enid meant it. Just not for you.” (He lays each word firm. Soft as well, however.) “But you took it. Even if you didn’t think she’d cut you, you knew she meant it.” (Like … hot coals.) “And you didn’t want her to actually hurt him.” (To a fire. You seek huckleberry.

(You decide the dark in his eyes, it’s a close second. Not quite huckleberry, but close. Fawn. It is fawn.)

The words play over.

“You didn’t want her to actually hurt him.”

Then over.

“You didn’t want…”

Then over again.

You didn’t want to actually hurt him.

And you find that… That it is true. Beyond what you would ever reasonably admit. Shielding him, it had been bred from the same… Respect, is it? Or pity? Whatever it may be, shielding him is twin to your blade’s tap on his helmet. You long for his skin to crack like stone. You don’t wonder what shade of blood he wears.

It is a twisted contradiction. You are comprised of them, for better or worse.

Still, however,

“She would’ve gotten in trouble.”

“But, she did, right? Weems doesn’t let that kind of thing fly.” (Eugene smooths his hands together. Watches the distant hives.) “You protected him is what you did.”

You hum. Your violent mind simpers.

“He isn’t a bad person. Just dense — especially with her. And it has always annoyed me.”

He chuckles.

Oil wrenches for Eugene. You find his eyes remarkably similar to Ajax’s as well — not just huckleberry. Yet, to break these fawn eyes… You don’t know if heartbreak could be a feasibly name for what you’d do to him.

Not with how he laughs now.

You frown until he glances, then explains,

“You really are like a spider.”

“What?”

He shakes his head.

“Nothing.”

Eugene leaves you to yourself, for a moment. In that moment, the sun breaks through a cloud or two. Its light doesn’t bathe you, though the yellow is enough to have your focus rattled. Fortunately, grey is swift to blanket sunlight’s threat.

You thumb across your sleeve, absentminded. Your fragile mind, twisted mind, it reels to each dawning realization you gather. They’re like bones to pick from Jericho’s cemetery, or the trinkets to pry from dead hands. They are worth more than you can fathom. One in particular.

“But… What now? You were … okay in our Seer class. Xavier was talking your ear off, but like… You look really pissed now.” (He is distant, for now. Speaks behind a wall.) “Like homicidal pissed.”

Everybody … knew. Everybody important. Ajax has known. Yoko has known. Presumably Divina. And—

And Enid. She’s known most of all. Her scent flourished from what it was to your rot. It quite literally decayed from the schoolgirl she was. Then left you alone, to your own whims. Without… There was … never any malice to it. Nor resentment. When she’s ignored you, snapped at you, it had been from lines you know you crossed. Things that you could, usually, trace yourself back to.

“You were off last night.”

(Your fault.)

“You rolled out of bed wanting to break up with him.

“You were thinking about it.”

…everyone. Except you.

Because you are … hardly an Addams. You handle your blade well, though it does not hang proudly. It’s stashed away. Kept in secret. Same as the stories handed down to you. You know not to break hearts, but you just did. You’re told to listen to them — that rhythmic, Addams compass —, though you are terribly deaf, horribly foxed by your cardinal sins.

And to nurture.

That is your ineptitude.

(Your fault, always.)

“…Wednesday?”

There isn’t a good reason to hurt him. Ajax. You may still search for one. It’s undoubted, actually. In Enid’s name, for the sake of your ghoulish devotion.

But Xavier…

That blood would be sacrificed by you, for you. A selfish thing. And it is hardly blood you would ever want on your hands — a deep rose; how terribly poetic of him.

But that is just it, however. You can swallow down the fantasy; your wonderment for his shade has been satiated today. Because his blood has been drawn. By a slight of hand, at that.

Enid meant it for you. She did, hadn’t she?

Her laundry isn’t enough now. It’s grown to this.

Stealing roses from another. Presenting every drop as a warm bouquet.

“He’s the one that set her off.” (Falls from you without realization.) “He’s obsessed with me. And not in a good way.” (Can barely feel your mouth. Mind stuck to her.)

“Yeah.”

You pull from where you’ve stared — the ground; nowhere, really. To Eugene’s curiosity, you gather explanation:

“We had a run-in at town. The four of us with Tyler’s gang.”

“Oh.”

“Tyler wanted me specifically.”

“He’s a creep with you too. So… What happened?”

“Nothing much. I chose Enid to stand by my side.”

You did.

She replied in kind. Stepped from Ajax. Joined you without hesitation.

“Xavier didn’t like that.”

“Oh.”

Your hands fidget to the memory. It grows fond. The drawn blood grows fonder evermore.

“And for fencing, he kept antagonizing her.”

Eugene, at once, sighs. He shakes his head, and the suit tosses with him.

“Like I’m not that good with girls, and even I know that’s a sh*t move.”

He draws quiet. His voice sounds like trepidation, almost. It cracks, and each word of his rings like autopsy:

“So it’s not really Ajax?”

…no, not true. You shake your head, because though it should be, you are still bitter. This isn’t the same as before. There is no sharp cut down your chest, this realization that you should reach for your nail-gun. Instead, it’s an ache, and it doesn’t leave your hollow.

“Ajax made her cry. On the way here. They were fighting just east from Xavier’s shed.”

“And now they have broken up.”

“I would assume so.”

Eugene leans across the boulder.

“…and?”

You hesitate, then,

“I have a suspicion.”

He stares, expectantly now.

“And I—” (It comes out as glass shrapnel.) “I think—” (Up your throat, down your mouth.) “Think I want…” (Chips through your teeth.) “I want that— That—”

He practically vibrates across the boulder. His body teems. A smile perches.

To tell him anything more would mean combustion. And you can’t have that.

“I want that suspicion to be true.”

All his energy, at once, dissipates.

Eugene lays casually like he did before. His legs sway, and he leans into his hands.

“What’s the suspicion?”

“Not telling.”

He pouts, enough to limp his body across the boulder-face.

“Okay.” (A smile digs deep.) “But did it feel good letting it all out?”

“I feel hollow and less disturbed.” (A frown.) “And less like stoning him.”

“Good.”

“Not good.”

“No, it’s good.” (His smile is toothy — how appalling.) “You’re learning.”

You open your mouth to snarl at him — with any words you can feasibly muster —, only to find that … it would probably skewer Eugene. Your jaw clamps. Your teeth grind.

And then.

To the appalling smile of his.

You uncoil.

…damn Eugene.

| xvi |

| (she is tamed) |

The moment you slip back to your dorm, you find Enid in her bed, mangled within sheets as her own everglade of tearshed. Thing is desperate at bedside. There’s a flurry of tissues. A wine bottle knocked over. Claws shredding. Enid weeping.

(You expected this.)

And, above all, decay. It’s blotted by that tearful everglade — nothing but salt, and whimpers, and, distinctly, her sloughing perfume.

The hollow in your chest blisters. The urge for Ajax’s head cracks down your hands.

(You should have done better.)

You run cold. Like blade, not ice.

You crave stone before bloodshed, though as a pair, it’d be your absolute fantasy.

(Your fault.)

Without Eugene’s intervention, you do wonder if this would’ve been a snapping point, and you’d already be across the academy as its gothic Perseus. There would be no regard for Eugene’s dismay. Nor Thing’s disappointment, and Enid’s regret.

Perhaps your dear beekeeper has a point. You are learning after all.

You’ll save another attempt, the second murder, for a bigger hill to die on.

Curious, you meander a few strides. Enid watches. Her eyes are wide. They’re a stormy sort of blue. In her arms, she has a stuffed black pig in a chokehold. One that took you a mere two darts to win. You glance at Thing, then stormy eyes again.

She gags.

A frown spreads. Enid is the most intoxicated you’ve seen her in a while. The worst had been when she decided to pour Malibu (pineapple — a favorite of hers) into a Coca-Cola bottle. A glass one, after your parents had visited another family estate down south. And, it was a near-empty Coca-Cola bottle at that, because despite what anybody reasonable would assume, Enid is hardly a lightweight.

It’s the Lycan in her, you know. The fact simply works against a stronger impression, until that one is proven undoubtedly mistaken.

As wine’s odor aches across your head, you soothe your frown. The night shall be long. There’s the feeling that your blackboard will be reintroduced.

“You’re a mess.”

Enid whimpers quietly. Words are meant, but they’re hardly uttered.

At your toe, you pick up the incriminating bottle. By glass alone, you know it’s of quality. It didn’t deserve to be gorged straight from the neck. The … paint scuffed across glass and label — doubtfully warranted.

With the wine, you smell a hint of blood, as though it was singed onto the fruit itself.

This was one of Yoko’s.

You scan the label as Enid fumbles across her bed, for another tissue. There’s a picturesque landscape with a lighthouse, a raging sea, then a shadow, hulking across it all. Fangs are hidden throughout the design.

Then, you find what you scan for:

ALCOHOL 22% BY VOL.

Your hand burns. It’s ignored, for the sake of her wept eyes.

“Enid, how much of this did you drink?”

“A— A-A lot…”

There’s a pang. It tells you she started drinking before meeting with Ajax in the woods, to which she — with you at Eugene’s — ran straight to Yoko. Again. As Enid does.

Shellac, of clots and resin, had been left broken from the cork. It flakes to your fingertips, and you ask,

“Was it already open?”

Enid nods. It’s wept, but honest.

“Where was the line?”

Her swallow is tight.

Incrementally, you understand Thing’s panic. Enid is not sober by any stretch of the imagination. (This is worse.) She handles herself well enough, but you can smell the wine from her throat. (Far, far worse than what one off-handed comment managed.) You can hear it toy her words. And as he pats and soothes across her hand, his skin flecked with paint, she sinks deeper into her blanket. (You see it in her eyes. You hear last night.) It’s a new one, you think. Dark against her bedding. Like nightmare. (Her whimpers, namely.) New yet … awfully familiar as well.

“By— By the lighthouse.”

You blink, then stare across the landscape.

“On the light…”

The pang plunges.

Enid drank two thirds of this basin for a bottle. With or without Yoko, it’s an absurd amount. (Your hand begins to scorch.) Because as much as you believe Enid when she says it had been opened, (some of your skin moves with the bottle, not your palm,) Yoko had to have only tasted the— Wet paint. The paint, it's wet.Lurid around the bottle.

It’s—

Your skin is lathered by hives. Pink and orange — yet velvet already stains the bottle’s landscape. Not just at your hand either. It’s up your forearm now. These hives. This seeping bloom down complexion.

(This is no neon.)

“…ah, carajo.”

Panic is an odd feeling.

(Instead, this is you, your own money.

(The bite is rabid.)

There isn’t so much a breeze through hollow, nor does it quite twist your mind in the way your Father proclaims.

It does, however, run cold across your skin. Your hollow remains steady, but the world closes in. This is worse than in Kinbott’s office. It’s akin to the few times you’ve been ambushed by flamboyancy, where your keen eyes and nose betray you, and your body locks until the world ebbs away, and you can just … do, without thought.

As for now.

You’re trapped to the floor. This didn't take that yellow room. This didn't take a collage of lights and color, both to pulsate as a blinding, desert sun. No neon. Nor a parade, where scents pillage, and noises seek to deafen your balance.

No… No, this took the very colors you gifted her. And then a wine bottle. You feel green. The same shade as cash, because it doesn't leave you. This reality doesn't.Leave.It only took that, and that.

And then another.

Enid herself, and you find that to be the most demoralizing reality.

“You’re not drinking anymore.”

It comes to you without realizing. You can’t rely on Enid to tell you whether or not it sounds feeble. She’s too far nestled within her blanket, cradling the doll.

“…mhmm.” (Enid toys with its ear.) “I know that.”

Her hands are multicolored. Not by bruises though, no. Nor by, what you’d argue, artistry. Instead, by paint, stained to the symphony of tantrum. And the colors are bright, especially against the black of her—

…Enid, please do not tell me.

You blink. What the Hell. This isn’t phantasm.

Enid… Enid, no. What did you do…?!

Enid has your blanket. On her bed.

You catch yourself staring at your own for far too long. It looks bare. Yet, even from beside her desk, you see smudges of orange, yellow, and pink. Then cream, assuming she managed to meld them together. Hand stinging. Crawls beyond forearm. Beneath your torn sleeve, there's warfare. You eye your blanket again. It has the same.

If you had known Enid would get herself wasted today, you would’ve left your bed untucked. You wouldn’t have done your laundry last night.

You choke. Then you rattle. Until, finally, you manage,

“Did you try to do your nails?”

A slow, tearful nod.

“Wanted to feel pretty.”

At your shoe, the swamp you stepped into is, again, the same. Orange. Yellow. Pink. Then a spoilt cream.

“I-I’m— I’m sorry."

It has become so hard to breathe.

You don’t feel your hand. Don’t know if it’s the blood past your palm, and the skin stamped throughout the paper, or if it is the tension down your arm as hives bolt across your flesh. You know that it’s set down, just before her lamp.

You hide the gore from her.

Because despite yourself — then the impulse to throttle Ajax for all he’s worth, kick Thing for good measure, blind Yoko by sunlight, tear Thorpe by his tongue —, you can’t bring yourself to have Enid rupture more than she already has.

“Enid… The paint…”

She is small in the blanket. Her eyes are swollen red. They leak rivers.

“You said this brand i-is okay…”

“I said… I said dr— Dry. Dry… Dry paint.” (Your throat— It clogs.) “You … got it everywhere, Enid…” (Swallowing does nothing.)“The pink…”

Enid keeps her head down, and her eyes pleading. You don’t know what she asks of you. Forgiveness? Or is this for mercy?

“…y-your—” (Her eyes swim.) “Y-Your scent means s-so much to m-me…” (You drown in them.)

“Okay…” (Shrapnel. Your voice.) “You—” (Like debris.) “You still got paint—”

You feel him tap against your shoe, tentatively. You nearly kick the hand.

Instead, however, you harken to restraint. (A hollow's gift.) You seethe, through a clamped jaw,

“What-Thing…?!”

Thing grimaces the only way he can, and steadies himself against your building rapture.

[Come. And please try to breathe.]

Unlike your arm, your legs feel like sandbags. Each step takes all of yourself to navigate. Through the sole and sock, the paint leeches to you. It doesn’t burn. Logically, you know how thick the barrier is. You have to remind yourself. Because every bagged step of yours threatens to slip. The paint is wet. You watch it stamp the floor. There’s already faint trails. There’s—

There’s one to your bed.

Enid?! Enid, what did you do?!

Your hollow starts to shiver, for your lungs are aching. Air. It bites now.

So you belt,

“She was alone for, what?! For one hour…?!” (You glare down at him.) “What happened?!”

He flounders. Thing knows what he did. Or, what he didn’t do.

[I went to check the mail.]

Your stomach twists as he rattles down sign. A boiled chain wraps around you. It mulls across your neck as well — the back of it.

[I came back as she did. Divina had to drag her and Yoko together. I said I could take care of Enid.]

A slow, grated nod.

[I was mistaken.]

“I realize.”

[Divina did say she would check in. Probably will any minute now.]

The world is smudging. It begins to ring as well. Thing watches you; the moment plays like memories, where you’re locked by color’s vehemence, and he is left to attempt his consolation.

And you realize that this is the first time he’s alone to do so. There is no Mother or Father to run to. No uncle either.

“Her nails, Thing.”

[…well, she wanted to do the acrylics, because—]

“Th-They’re really pretty, but he didn’t let me…!”

Her voice is close to you. Her breath washes across your ear.

There is no boiled chain. That wasn’t an obscure emotion taking you hostage. It had been Enid — still is Enid —, and her arms are a warm blanket across you.

Until you realize her hands.

And the smudge of orange, and yellow, and pink across your uniform. There’s a streak, even. It drips to the floor. You cannot fathom how that is possible.

Your face numbs.

Body, quite simply, deadbolts to the likes of stone.

Thing is as ice, before he damn well chips his nail across the floor.

[Enid! They are still wet!]

She jolts. The yelp in your ear is splitting.

Then, five minutes, or ten minutes, Enid is collapsed to the ground amongst the plume of your blanket. She sobs. The vowels which stream from her are nonsensical. And you stare, as though it’d do you any favor for clarity.

It doesn’t.

You’re fumbling across the buttons down your blazer. Thing, tissue pinched between his fingers, wipes your shoe with a haste quite unbefitting of him.

The blazer drops.

It sprawls to the floor. The remains of your thick skin — your prestige, your armor — with a tattered, bloodied arm, and color. There's color. On the coat. And— And then your—

She managed paint on your vest.

Enid… What— What the Hell, Enid?!

Thing drums against your shoe’s toe. You don’t hear it. Barely feel his question for your eyes.

[She was handling herself better than Yoko. So we had a talk. Like usual.] (You don’t find that to be the comfort he intends.) [And … she drank. I did not realize she had another bottle on her.]

“On an empty stomach.”

[That … was my bad.] (You know it was.) [When I realized, I ordered pizza. But she got to your blanket while I did.] (This fixes absolutely nothing.) [Then it has been one thing after another.](How insightful.)

Your arm leaks. Not just your hand — your arm. You don’t want to look. You can’t find it within yourself to. Because, if it is paint— You think candy apple. Despite you, and the fact that Enid seldom uses the shade, you think candy apple. The same as the tacky shade of blood concocted for Halloweens.

The same as clown.

And as— As the very last color you want across your skin.

[That had only been fifteen minutes ago.]

A frown creases. That, or it has worn you down by strain alone.

[She is taking the break-up hard.]

So too the glare you blare down at him.

You don’t care if he’s nervous.

[She is taking the school knowing harder.] (Thing is rattling.) [And taking your injury the hardest.]

The slashing. Hours ago. This morning.

You stare down your arm. All of it — stitches, wound, everything — is inflamed by hives and rash. You bleed between the sutures. The blood is your velvet.

There comes a breath. It isn’t relief, exactly, but instead an anxiety abandoned.

“Have you eaten anything?”

Voice low, and words careful, you try to goad her to settle. Enid does. She peers from the blanket’s lip.

“Ordered out. P-Pizza…! Thing’s gonna get it.”

Still so panicked. You don’t know what she reads of you.

You don’t know if she does either.

“Since lunch, I mean.”

She pauses. Her face flinches for recollection.

“N-No…?”

At the tail-end to her drifting answer, there are three knocks on the door. They bellow across the room. The sound of it alone seizes down your spine. Your strides are eating. You grasp the handle and hurl the damn thing open.

(Bloodstain. The doorknob welds to your flesh.)

Divina and Yoko, startled. Together at your doorstep. The hallway’s lamplight — coarse to your eyes, now. Rummages through your head. Swarm. It cries to the likes of bee swarm. Yoko bares her fangs. It’s meek. Divina stares with her bright pools of crystal.

She sounds like she’s tethered to the bottom — washed by larimar, as you salvage from frenzy:

“…oh sh*t, you’re here already.”

Oil blooms to suffocate. Your glare ignites. You swear it burns the hair along your fringe.

“H-Hi … Wednesday…” (Bottomless again. Still null.) “I see, uh, the bottle finally hit her.”

Enid is a weight welcomed. She grounds you to the floor. Her breath, it soothes across the conquest for your skin.

“Like a truck.”

Her arms wrap around you. As chains again. As chains. Warm. Like fireplace, where poems waltz to memory. And her nails. Despite intoxication, they do not paint you now.

Yoko hides. Behind Divina.

It doesn’t do much. Invites you instead. Words crackle from your chest to scar her. Head spasms against lamplight. You grate,

“This is your fault…!” (Lash her.) “Just as much as Petropolus.”

“…tell her I’m not here.”

Barely caught. You’re kept grounded. Otherwise, you would’ve brought her to sun’s elation.

“She’s not here.” (Divina presses her face flat.) “Just go with it.”

Her scales. Along her neck, they dance to lamplight. Orange. Orange again, with yellow. Pink down her scales. Darts the color right to you. Ceaselessly. There is no— Evading this. There is no skinning her. No dousing the hall in shadows.

Why is she paling? Yoko is the only undead.

“Are you … okay, Wednesday?”

Still pales.

And you feel your face break into snarl.

“What do you think…?!”

Divina flinches from you. Same way as her kin would, beneath water. A jerked chin. Wide eyes.

Yoko lurks over her shoulder.

“Wha…?”

“She’s overstimulated, Yoko…”

Larimar flecks. She looks beyond you. Words a dead whisper you can barely fathom:

“Enid… Enid, get off of her.”

“W-What…? Wh— Why?”

“Enid. Is fine. It’s the paint.”

The truth. Because she is as anchor. The only to keep you from spearing every outcast by the blade deep in your umbrella. Or perhaps you are itching for another. To resort to primitive, rather than antique.

Your adamance seethes farther than the hives across your body. Blouse-collar stings, however. Enid’s breath may not be enough to bathe it.

“Okay…” (Cautious now. Hand raises to guard.) “Do you want us to—”

“The last f*cking thing I want is more people in our room.”

Nodding. Her lips thin.

Moment drawls. You can’t— Fathoming against swarm. It is a task too difficult as seconds pass. Every second chimes. The academy groans. There are footsteps.

Bell.

The hour howls.

All three flinch. You do. Not.

“What happened?”

“She got. Color on me.” (Mouth moving. Conjure words after the fact.) “She’s been in my. Bed too.”

Losing— You are losing your words. Smell acrylic. Her voice, blooming from her chest. Against you. Enid.

“Got cold. You smell nice.” (The hives. Thrashing to her voice.) “Your scent always made me feel better after Ajax.”

Choking. Lapse to silence. They’re staring. Enid is your only. Constant. The anchorage. Floor steady. Academy old — feels almost like home.

“They already know.” (Whispered breath. Lulling to calm.) “Cuz they promised me a bunch of times that it doesn’t count as cheating.” (Not— Not enough. Smells like wine.)

Divina is ringing across her lips. Smudging with Yoko.

“Wednesday, your arm—”

“I. Am aware, Divina. It’s my skin. Boiling.”

Sounds like you. Though it wasn’t. Quite necessarily. Too monotone.

Or you are a stranger to. Your own ears.

Their eyes drop. Yours as well. Before you realize. There’s. Shape of light. At your heel, Thing. With… With light. It dances color. Pinging. Chiming again.

“What’s that—”

“Pizza?!” (Yoko whirls to you. Shrinks from you. Whispers,) “Oh, sorry Wednesday.”

Nodding into your neck. Enid, squeezing tight. Feel her purring. It— Has you understand. The light — it's phone. Hers.

“Can I have some…?”

“Yeah…!”

Excitement prickles. Not your own. Enid’s. Chars down rash. It— It has climbed. Too, too high now. Why did you… Why did you— You answer the door…?!

“Your— Oh my god, Wednesday, your—”

“My neck. I know. Divina.”

Push. Into Enid. Away from bell chime and lamplight. Usher for haven.

Divina’s song. Snakes to you. As promise, like a. A favor. Or an apology. You aren’t certain.

“We can go get it…”

“Bring Thing.”

The door closes. Lamplight leaking across academy old.

You. Stare upon desolation.

Blazer on the ground, by— By window co-color. Prints across room. Blanket. The bottle. Then. Where?! Bottle. Paints. Pooling to the ground. Paint bottles. Not— Not visible. Anywhere. Could be—

Enid.

Where—?! Where … did she…?!

You are. Breaking from her. Jagged stride. Rigidity trounces. Down spine.

Fumble words through mouth. Feels like maw. What. Did you say?! Pleading to her. From what— What shadow of your. Head?!

She. She reaches. Paint bottle. Can’t— Wrenching thing. Can’t. Where— Enid, w-where—?!

Where di-d you put the bottles, E-Enid?!

She reaches further. Sobbing. At the brink of it. She— No. No, stop. She's reaching. Herhands.Color. Wet paint. T-oo much— Vibrant.

Reading lips. Voice— Sounds like … bell. Hour’s howl. Eyes like ocean. Beading yellow. Like beacon. To lighthouse.

“C-Can I help—?”

“ENID! NO!”

You don’t. Know where that came. From. It— The room. Harder to breathe. Again. Closet. Mother’s— Moth— Mother’s potion. Brewed like. Huckleberry. Skin peeling away. Flesh. Sloughing off. Your bone. Bones. Your bones.

Enid looks. Stares at you. Scared of you. Eyes— Eyes like deer, caught in head— Hea-hea-d. Lighthouse. Dear caught in ocean fog. Snapped sober. Still not quite sure.

“No.”

Comes out. Hoarse. A beggar’s tone.

“You’re…” (Whimpers. Tear-streaked again.) “W-Why are you bleeding…?” (Butterfly. Beneath your heel.)

“Enid…” (Didn’t. Mean to.)

“Did I-I—?” (Eyes, skipping through— Down your arm.)

Backs away. Rupturing. Scared of you. Butterfly. Or moth. The moth, still be— Besmirched into balcony stone. Clean later. After weeks. Enid’s sake. For your arm, screaming. Ravaging to your neck. Demands. Guillotine. Craves her.

You dive. Into closet for security. Can’t ground your feet without her. Floor feels like. Landslide. Mother’s potion. Sits. Second shelf. Sits on … your second-cond shelf. In the dark, you feel by. Your memory.

There. Find it.

Hands clammy as you tear. Tie strewn. Vest pools, to be followed— Followed by blouse. But skin scathes. Tremors abound. Bra follows. Hives rage war. Rash swells. The likes of storm.

But potion. Crisp at hand.

Panting? Or is this— This relief? Air feels. Like moth — writhed for gullet. Writhing dow— Down.

Salve burdens like ice. Winter across harvest. Cooling. Body boils. Steams from mouth. Staggering back. World has been. Blurred. Stings down your cheek. Tastes—

Tastes like salt.

Ocean blue.

Curling. Back to the. Wall. Curled in shadows. Nobody. Can reach you. Tucked— Tucked away now. For. Aftershock.

| xvii |

| (she loathes memory) |

World grey, though on. That day, you bled. Paint. It was the day you. Realized you are a. Runt— Runt yourself, that you should take to blades — to antique —, how a. Reality where you belong means friction, and… And your father. Your mother too. You realized they both. Have a streak of sadism. It is something. Inherited.

“Wednesday…?! My dark cloud, what have they done?!”

Above all else. However.

“They’ve painted you r-rainbow!”

You found that you are. Not compatible with vibrancy.

Not as you stood in the classroom’s corner, dripping with. Every shade imaginable. Velvet pervaded, however. From your nose. Your eyes as well. For once, you felt. The teacher’s sympathy, and it was the first and only time a missus. Or a mister snapped at children for you.

Curses were building. Behind your parents’ eyes. Poison dripped from. Huckleberry. As for your father, ink swam every scorned obsc— Obscenity imaginable.

“Why…? Why would they do this, my Friday dove…?”

You remain small. But you were. So weak that day.

(Words seldom ever dripped from your mouth. Your voice was mirage amid wasteland:)

“I’m not colorful enough.”

Still, though, even now you’re not. Sure if there were tears. It might’ve been the blood only…

In the coming years, each and every one of them fell ill to plague. They all survived the strain, though it took their molten boils to burst. And what an array of colors those were. Such vibrancy had. Charmed you.

Except for the very boy who dumped the first bucket. What a bright red it was — candy apple.

“My child…”

“You don’t need color!”

One child to go, during the final year at that establishment. The curse had left him for you.

You cornered him, with a rock. At hand. Just as before, he was larger than you. Like a boulder. It was a detail you didn’t care to acknowledge.

“You’re beyond such simple pleasures!”

That had been the first expulsion. You were still small. It was laughable, though, how adamant the teachers were that a little thing like you couldn’t have. Done such a thing. Not until you raised your blood-soaked hand. And as you spoke, they may have noted the same down your tongue. His blood was remarkably the. Same as can— Candy apple.

You were, truly, that school’s Black Death.

“Exactly, Wednesday… Now let’s come home.”

…you don’t know how, or why, Enid thinks. Of you enough. You cannot fathom why she took your allergy as it is, and not some snide remark. The fact that she threw out the worst of her attire, dumped all of her blinding paints, without question remains to be inconceivable.

She is an utter abstraction.

Has to be. The sheer thought that anybody who douses themselves in color, willingly, can let you belong without friction…

It is asinine.

It’s completely foul to your cohesion.

“Howdy roomie.”

You don’t understand it —,

“It’s just a little overhaul. No biggie.”

— why on that day, your grey world allowed itself a dash of moonlight. And it felt as blue as her eyes. Her embrace felt as warm as sun.

Like morning sun, almost. Like in past vision.

(You clung to her as though she had no one to be loyal to.

(She did the same. The line was blurring that day.)

You loathe this feeling, that it’s always been this first embrace behind it all. A face like the Devil. Eyes as lit oil.

Every moment between you, there comes not friction, but abrasion.

You just wanted a moment with her. That’s all. One moment, where her heart pounded into your breast-pocket, and where you, Wednesday, felt the world tip your weight into her.

Not nightmare, or vision, or heartbreak.

Anything but this.

| xviii |

| (she tries to heal) |

Air has never come to you so readily.

The moment you step from your closet, you realize that sticking to sweatpants and an undershirt — arms bare — was the right way to do this. You smell of potion, though it’s swiftly overridden by alcohol pungency. Not liquor, no. Antiseptic. Isopropyl.

There’s Enid, partly cross-legged on her rug, with her bottle of nail-remover knocked over, and her hands dripping evidence. From where you stand, you see traces of alcohol all across your blanket, overtop tearshed.

You take this as another sign that Enid is well beyond her limit, and she won't remember any of this when tomorrow comes. So, you tie your braids together and off your shoulders, stroll to bed, and grasp for your kits. You find surgical gloves. They’re pulled across your forearms, where the left stings as to retaliate. You swallow down agony.

As for now, it will have to just be. Once you’re healed enough, the sutures are to be pulled because an infection is never a joy to be had. Even for you. Where wounds bring ecstasy, something close to true feeling,infections mean only unease.

And unease is too closely related to your hollow.

You move across the room, careful of the paint splotches. A minefield, though it’s dry now, and you’re aware enough to remain steady.

Enid doesn’t look up at you. She’s as bleak as the paint rubbed off her hands. There’s still traces of it, caked across fair skin. It's painful to watch. There is no coordination to her; in this hour, Enid has maintained none of her craft.

“I can do this…”

Knelt to her side, you grab her wrist. She tugs, though it’s a meager attempt. Your grip is ironclad anyway.

“I’d argue not, at the moment.”

Still she tries again. Enid’s tangled in your blanket, even now.

“But I— I can’t touch you.”

The blue in her eyes, it surges yellow — to the rhythm of her words, she's wavering, between human and not.

“I can’t. E-Ever again. It even got to your neck…” (Tears prick. You don’t understand how she isn’t dehydrated. After everything, aridis logic.) “I-I’m … so sorry.”

You ignore her, for a minute. Just to focus on gathering her hand, and to use the rag she foraged from her closet. More color clears away. Your sober eyes allow you the tact.

Yet her distraught echoes.

This isn’t the same as with Ajax, even though he’s the root of everything today. Nor Xavier, that damn catalyst.

Rather…, it's you. It'syou.

You are a wretched excuse. And a coward. It's only ever running, hiding, recoiling with you.

“You’re allowed to. The paint isn’t.” (Her palm now, sponged of pigment.) “Especially the red and blue.”

“And green. And purple. And—” (Enid whimpers.) “And pink.”

The other hand is better in some ways, worse in others. The colors are dry, to start. However, it’s the one with painted nails, as well as a devastating smudge across her wrist. This is the hand, you know, that got to your uniform.

Pink, for the most part.

“Wanted to feel pretty.”

Of course she does. It was the first thing you knew about Enid — such a loud, ravaging fact. You'd be laughingstock tonothave known.

However, it took a while to understand what it entails. Because Enid is different with beauty. Never has it been a matter of proving anything to anyone. She dresses for no one. Paints her face and nails as assurance.

For herself, in the most devastating way possible.

Beauty means stability. As with every ocean, she clings to those hours where the sun settles across her just right, and the colors bring calm. When the inevitable comes, and the waters are thrashing, and she is drowning, you think of it harrowing for her.

Because Enid knows the ocean’s beauty — the one she admires, strives for — never lasts. It will always follow the moon’s havoc. Acrylics will always be traded for claws. That ocean blue will be singed to the likes of sun, spread across reflection.

“I-I’m sorry.”

“You already apologized.”

“I’m sorry.”

Your eyes fleck. She’s been watching not your hands, nor her own, but you yourself.

“I should just stop.”

“You don’t have to.”

“You get hurt.” (Broken. Has been ruptured despite your efforts.) “You f-fell into the street because of me.” (This is her aftermath.)“Could’ve gott-en run over.”

The discolored rag pauses on her hand. You stall.

Because you realize why her words weigh the weight they do, and why she is as distraught as she is.

To think that snapping at her over this, a month ago now, would’ve ever been enough to have Enid rest… That had been one doltish slip — a rarity, for you —, where you told her it had been a mere touch in front of that favorite store of hers, and that visions will claim you without a moment’s notice. It is never the fault of anybody.

But, you did fall towards the street. You vaguely remember a horn blaring.

And you awoke with Enid frantic. She looked just about the same as she does now, the more you think…

You press your lips to a firm line. Your words sound tired, even to you:

“You’re still going on about that, Enid? It was weeks ago.”

“It keeps happening.”

“Your touch hasn’t done that since—”

Enid wrenches from you. Stands with your blanket still wrapped around her. The stuffed pig is choking at her elbow.

“It will. Vision or not. Stop lying.” (Eyes dance tsunami.) “It’s my fault.”

You remain knelt, with a hand offered.

“No.” (Firm now, because you have gone over this.) “No it isn’t, Enid…”

She doesn’t take it.

“Still.”

As you get to your feet, begrudgingly, she looks across her hands. Staggers a little bit, then sways.

“Is this good enough?”

Your jaw has been locked. There’s a few flecks across her skin, then some creased into her nails. However,

“It will suffice.”

She turns her back to you. Flops onto her bed. Remains sitting, despite imbalance.

“Enid.”

You know she tucks the pig to her chest. And along with it, she bundles herself further into black, before an arm snags more of it, then pulls the blanket over her head as well.

“Enid.”

The longer you wait, the more you feel exhaustion sink. Your eyes are heavy, farther than what insomnia will ever manage. It’s turmoil — the same that has settled deep in your flesh. You’re not called to sleep. Exhaustion bribes you for another thing entirely:

Respite, far from the moments that often find you as lurking draughts down your neck. Those … have been a demoralizing constant as of late.

And your typewriter reeks of them.

(A part of you dwells in hollow.

(Whispering to you that its keys are the reason, and that Viper awaits in baited breath.)

“I-I try to remember, okay…?”

She sounds … as drained as you are.

“Physical contact isn’t the issue.”

“Since when?”

“Since you.”

Enid permits you her profile. She’s turned, still cloaked in black, with her eyes down. Her jaw, again, has you wonder maturity.

“But— But it hurts.”

“Visions always do.”

Ocean finds you again. Gold blooms as she does, as though you stare into water’s reflection. It warbles, and she turns away. Sweet decay burns cold.

Guilt.

Like any dog, sat in their corner. Before Enid, you never did understand what was meant by it, how such remorse could go beyond words and blister across the body.

She twists again, as though to brave herself to you.

“Whenever I touch you, Wednesday, they look worse. Those ones scare me… They’re not normal.”

“What do you know about a normal vision of mine…?”

“I—!” (Knuckles sharp. Her nails claw into the pig.) “I can—! I can just tell!”

The sound of fabric, despite the moment, is music to your ears.

Never have you witnessed a toy’s head be ripped so cleanly. What’s more, rather than plastic, the pig is nothing but felt and cotton. The fact makes this all the more a feat.

There’s a blink, and you realize that Enid is staring at you, trembling as her tears leak into its fur.

Because, oh no, she expects you to fix something. Fix a doll, no less.

“I don’t know how to put them back on.”

Enid chokes on her sob. And it’s laced by the viscous down her nose. The pity it raises from you is ghastly. How she is, still, able to erupt like this is frankly something to behold.

You stare as Enid does the same, but to the beheaded thing, before you nod.

“…alright.”

Rather than hand it over, she tucks the pig to herself. Exhaustion pleads. You gravitate to the bottle. Not only will your blackboard be introduced, the night shell need the desired fuel to maintain.

Enid yelps at you. Then snaps, and it sounds rabid.

You drain the last of the bottle in chugged swigs. It’s dropped unceremoniously into her trash. Thuds like rock, with only a dejected fracture.

Pink and velvet, together, are dusted from your gloves. Enid is staring, tight across her face. If it wasn’t for the haze in her eyes, you’d mistake her sober.

“Give it.”

“Why did…”

She looks at the doll, relents, then hands the pig over.

The buzz down your throat implores you to work immediately. Your typewriter is set aside. The taxidermy kit replaces it. With alcohol wipes, you begin to wash it of vibrancy. Enid looms from behind. There is only quiet, for a while.

Eventually her pizza comes knocking on the door, and you are the one to answer. The exchange is wordless. You slam the door before any of the three can manage an apology.

And you promptly lock the handle. Just for Thing, who you’ve decided is not sleeping in his mess tonight.

You’ll resolve what to do with Divina and Yoko later, if you have the energy for anything at all. Ajax is priority, after this pig.

(You will save Xavier when a stone is engraved, cut to the ground's liking.)

Once the fur is shed of flamboyancy, the gloves are stripped away, and you allow yourself the precision of bare hands. You pull at the doll’s skin, away from its internal stuffing — body first, then the head. The process has your weary mind reconcile, and the rest of you, to ignore what dull aches remain. This is like taxidermy. You think of yourself a demented, amateur surgeon once more.

All the while, Enid is sprawled beside your chair, on the floor again. The box is open, and aside for a few slices — swiped by Yoko —, she has it all to herself. She gnaws her way to the crust. For one slice, Enid downs the last few bites. The next, she’ll slip the crust across the desk with a pigeon’s grace — pecking, pecking, and then some more until you take the piece and chew with an absent mind.

It takes three gnawed crusts offered until you notice the claws digging into academy old.

You look down to discover Enid has been carving hearts. Then slashing them, possessed by a slug’s scorn. She chews on a crust. Glances at you, without moving her head.

“…c’n make them … goth.” (Another few marks.) “Skull.”

It is not.

You don’t tell her such a thing. Instead, you take to surgery.

For the sutures, you make the decision to choose the … colorful. Most of what the kit offers are black, or clear. Then, for the sake of … inclusivity, there’s others. Including pink. Because of whatever sheer blasphemy.

It will serve you well now — in both ensuring there is less pink thread in the box after this, and for Enid’s well-being —, so there is little complaint. You’re immersed long enough to believe she had fallen asleep, until there’s the giggling.

You glance over. The pizza is gone. She uses the box as a pillow.

“What is it, Enid?”

Enid watches your heel, and she prods a claw into the desk.

“If … things’re different enough…, could’ve had a pregnancy scare…”

Surgery takes pause.

“What?”

She frowns, and propped onto her arm, she says,

“If things … were different enough…, could’ve happened.” (Goes back to makeshift pillow.) “And I’d be so scared. More scared than now. I think I’m relieved.” (Then there’s a final note:) “Mom didn’t like Ajax.”

You loop another few stitches. The head begins to sit on its shoulders cleanly.

“Then be glad you didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“Get yourself pregnant.”

She cracks to laughter.

“Not me pregnant!”

Said as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Given her dynamic, you’re well aware of the possibility. Yet, Enid laughs as though her biology isn’t an amalgamation of two.

“Otherwise it wouldn’t be a scare, Wednesday. Me getting pregnant would f-inally get her off my back.” (Still giggling. You realize it’s been bitter.) “But I rut too much. Cuz I’m an Alpha.”

You parse through drunken meaning.

Only to find, you are as lost as you’ve always been. To her words, how they weave through a character blurred to you. She dances in color. You know to seek shadows.

“It would’ve been terrifying for me…” (Her eyes glaze ocean. Words stir the last of her lipstick.) “I don’t want kids. Definitely don’t want to get pregnant, but like… Like to be the reason like that. On accident?!” (Blazing now. For this obscure moment.) “That’s like… Like putting a bomb in someone.”

Enid frowns again. Has you question sobriety another time, until the moment her words slur again:

“I don’t wanna do that.”

You go back to sewing. More of the neck — or whatever stump this has — reclaims the body’s flesh. The pink is vibrant against black. To focus on it, it means to stare deep into sunlit depths.

“You’ve said as much.”

“I really don’t.”

The sutures discover shape. They cross each other. They bind a promise: to survive whenever ocean strikes, and pummel the moon’s rupture.

“And I can’t…

“I think I still hate that though.”

Your eyes find her again. For a moment. She still lays beside you, with the box, and your blanket. The needle glints light as you pull. Cotton seeps. You thumb it back into the doll’s neck.

“Do you think of having them, Enid?”

She thinks. It takes another moment.

“…t’get off. Sometimes. Every other time.” (Enid curls into your blanket. Black clothes her.) “And then cry after, usually. Makes me feel disgusting.” (Does so in a way that strikes envy.)

The pig’s mouth bends to the head’s angle. Sutures guide. By the seconds, it salvages more.

“With who?”

It isn’t a pointed question — not really —, though the moment freezes as though it is.

You watch her, and you find Enid staring with wide eyes, and a face broken to vex.

“That’s not fair. Wednesday.”

She rolls over. Keeps her back to you.

Again.

You work your jaw, then retort,

“You’re the one talking.”

“It’s my fantasy. And you’re not gonna ruin it.”

“Enid, you’re being incomprehensible.”

Enid wrenches back to face you, and there’s a thrusted finger.

“I’m drunk, dumbass.”

“I— I realize.”

Vex splinters across ocean as shipwreck. Gold burns, until it doesn’t, and Enid is left disbalanced. She sways to herself. Her brows are firm. Her face, lined by what maturity had bloomed behind your back. Felid or lupine — you can’t decide which it is.

Then, for another time this hour — the second to this exchange —, she rolls over, back to you, with your blanket as her permanence.

(You didn’t mean it.)

Her claws trail academy old. She carves again. You can’t hear the word or words exactly, only that there are letters, and those are what float to her as wreckage.

The silence beyond that festers. Between the floorboards and through the walls, it seeps to tangle down your throat.

(You never do with her.)

It was only one question. Not in retaliation, nor spoken by malice.

Just … a question.

Yet though you try now — try to be better —, there is no escaping the reality of you and Enid. There will never been a time without effort. You lash. There’s burning. She will always rupture to you.

(You hate when she drinks like this.

(The Enid who understands you, she has been tucked away.)

Stitching now, and you find that your mouth clots for words. Your throat is dry. Your chest weighs heavy, despite hollow. You do find your tongue, then murmur,

“Why is it a fantasy?”

You think her asleep. After all, what she carves had drifted from your ears.

“I’d be less broken.”

Enid isn’t however. She’s been as drowned by the silence as you had been.

“It doesn’t matter where you look, I’m n-not … good enough to be a werewolf…” (Her voice cracks. These wounds are old.) “I can’t turn… I can’t do anything with my knot. There’s no mate that’d want it.” (Older than your time here.)

Pink threads numbly, for your ears strain for only her.

“I don’t even dream about the moon…”

There’s pause, and your eyes cast down.

“Dream…?”

Enid pulls into blanket. Burrows deep. Her words still find you, though they are buried into the linen first:

“Every wolf gets them… It’s the moon choosing you.” (You’ll seek those words through your nightmares.) “But I never did. It never chose m-me.”

“What do you dream of, then, if not the moon…?” (Still burrowed.) “Enid…?”

She’s drifting, the same kind of way her clawing had. Enid, hoarse, breathes,

“Raven feather.”

The vampire’s wine has finally claimed her.

There was tsunami, and aftershock, then you as the lone sail caught within it all. Yet, it has, and the room rests soundlessly. The tides are weak. Enid sinks to slumber at your heel.

By your deft hand and tired eyes, the last thread closes, another wound is sealed, until the inevitable.

You stand from your desk. Your arms find her, then what she scrawled across the floor:

EniAd^da_ms

Enid’s weight is loaded by the blanket, though you manage, and she’s slipped to your bed. She murmurs. Already, she’s castaway — to dreamscape, whatever that means to her. The doll is closed to her chest. And you… You are hesitating. There’s a drowning urge. It’s bleak to your reason. Until it finds surface, and it twines down your tongue,

(You will mate her.)

“I will mend.”

A whisper.

Puppeteering, for it strings from depths beyond you. It remains blurring.

You don’t reach for it tonight. Instead, you meander to your closet, then step over disaster. The very same which had flooded wood a mere hour past. You find blackboard. Your eyes strafe for Enid.

(But it is too, too soon for that.

(He remains tangled within webwork. Perhaps, you could just let him slip away.)

Eyes strafe, all to decide that her blonde, it is the only color which bleeds natural against your shadowed bedding.

Blonde and ocean.

The drowning urge blears in the water again. You, still, don’t reach for it.

(But it is too soon. Your body has yet to sing for rut.

(You will do what you know.

(And you will run. Run away. Right into bloodlust.)