wyn

it placed her in a manic frenzy. hands feverishly typed away, prose carefully picked and placed, written with the ink of a bloody, beating stone. a raven's talons clenched around her lungs, squeezed and bled its essence onto the paper; when it dried, it left cries of woeful yearn, signed with doomed devotion.

the typewriter chimed, and wednesday huffed. not enough. wednesday ripped the paper out and placed it amongst the rest, wiped her brow, and continued typing.

underneath her sweater, wednesday swore she was developing hives. her skin felt prickly, her breaths came out shallow, her dark eyes darting in frantic lines—all symptoms of the curse.

while wednesday would typically enjoy feeling like death, she loathed the tremble and pulse unique to the curse.

when wednesday was younger, she had seen how it affected her parents and scoffed. she had sworn to never be afflicted with something so juvenile, so stupid and senseless. and, yet, a scorpion's stinger impersonated a synapse, dug itself into her brain and drove her to madness.

cursed with devotion, cursed with obsession, cursed with distraction and fixation. her curse was written in gold and pink, the antithesis to her being. her nemesis, her ruin, her downfall, dressed in fur and claws and pink and blue–

wednesday hates it.

she hates enid sinclair. she hates her preppy attitude. she hates her stupid obsession with pop culture. she hates how she had dug up wednesday's insides from its murder site, resuscitated it with the gentleness of a zephyr, and seared through the obsidian that encased her heart's movement. she hates how enid occupied her every thought, from the morning she woke up until death relieved wednesday of the mortal plane; things like how she twiddles with her pencils forever branded into wednesday's brain, played on repeat as wednesday brewed herself coffee. every frame on the reel carefully dissected and skimmed, every twitch analyzed in psychosis.

she hates how all enid had to do was look at her, and wednesday would spiral for her all over again. wednesday wants to kill enid. wednesday wants even more to kill for enid.

wednesday: you're thinking. you make that face when you think, and whatever despicable thought you have in your head is bound to be horrendous. so spit it out.

enid: i was totally not thinking about anything!

my dear, despicable enid:

yesterday, you asked me, "how do you feel about me?"

as i'm writing, i've stared at my typewriter for 10 hours, messy hands exploding in jargon and incomprehensible sputtering. throughout my 27 drafts, i've come to a conclusion:

words cannot describe how you make me feel.

how is it that you act like the jester of god's deck, yet i find myself still reveling in your divinity? how do you manage to encroach upon my subconscious, when you are thing of feverish nightmares? how do you exist as both the poison and antidote of my existence?

you make me want to puke. you make me want to hurl a knife at your face. you make me want to climb to the highest peak and dig out my own beating void of a heart, then offer it to the sun.

and when i offer the sun my heart, what shall i expect? will it sit back and accept it, caressing my flesh with the gentle rays of appeasement? or will it look down upon me with disgust, reject me with claws that burn, claws that scar and mangle and kill?

you asked me, "how do you feel about me?"

but all i can think of as a response is "i hope the sun likes beating hearts."

english. italian. spanish. latin. french. even dabbling in a little bit of greek. wednesday spoke these romantic languages like a surgeon: strong with precision, easily cutthroat at a simple flick.

something about language and linguistics stuck out to her. she picked it up with natural ease like she picked up her first grave-digging shovel. enunciation interested her; grammar fascinated her with challenge.

enid soon realized how much she loved wednesday speaking in different languages:

cheek kisses were dotted with "mi amor"

kisses across enid's knuckles drew out a breathy "cara mia"

wednesday would mutter "ma chéri" as she kissed her forehead.

enid: and– and next you leave me notes saying "addams has 2 d's" and "don't forget a comma" on my dresser like i'm incompetent

enid: you even gave me the mummified heart of that weird crackstone guy! it was in a jar and everything!

enid: what's your problem with me, wednesday?! what did i even do to des–

enid:

enid: wait.

enid: are you going soft on me?

wednesday: ...the sight of you makes my body react in weird ways. it makes me do things like that.

enid: if this is about that whole killer thing i swe-

sometimes, she dreamt of pitch black. silent inky ocean waves clouding her vision, arms clawing futile against the suffocation of the mossy voids of space.

sometimes she dreamt of monsters. grimy, disgusting creatures of her subconscious author, the wicked writings of her imagination projected out amalgamations and eldritch horrors.

sometimes she dreamt of her own death. in some dreams it shot out from her chest, a spiny stalagmite bursting out, her heart dug out and lay stabbed at the end of the pyke--she hated these. sometimes they were slow, painful, graced under the hooves of a horseman with disease or famine--she loved these.

but lately, wednesday's dreams were.... off.

instead of the inky black abyss, wednesday saw yellows. she saw blues. she saw pinks. she saw reds and whites and the color palette of the sky, the canvas of evenings, mornings, and sunsets.

instead of monsters she saw people. figures caught between the consciousness of a god and the savagery of an animal. they stood taller than wednesday, yet would caress her face softly with a claw, the fur of the palm softly brushing against her limpid cheeks.

instead of her own death wednesday saw her own life, reimagined with a figure by her side. a partner of blonde and blue and pink. a partner who gently held wednesday and giggled and snorted; mundane scenes of laying in bed and cooking meals would play in the film reel. a sheep in wolf's clothing, who infiltrated her dreams with color and adoration and feelings.

would wednesday visit her every day like she did for eugine? would she update enid as she slept on the latest gossip, hoping to wake her up in surprise? would she play the latest albums of her favorite kpop groups to jolt her awake out of FOMO?

would wednesday sit beside her and stare at her face, dark eyes staring at the absence of blue, scanning for the slightest twitch of movement? would she brush the displaced hairs off of enid's untouched face, black nails gently scraping across enid's hairline? would she plot her revenge for making her worry, making her feel guilt, making her do stupid things like pace around her room and distract her from writing? once her throat is swollen with wolfsbane, once she's properly shut up, she'll learn her lesson.

it's been a week since enid was admitted to the hospital. wednesday stood by her bed, softly caressed her cheek with a thumb, and shakily exhaled.

wednesday loved loudly. boldly. dauntless and unapologetically unafraid. she's give enid a peck on the lips between classes. she's kiss enid's knuckles and hold her hand under the desk, thumb stroking the back of enid's hand as they discuss the anatomy of a snapdragon.

of course she loved daringly. she was wednesday addams. she didn't give a shit about what anyone thought—if anything, she revels at the sight of disgust and the uncomfortable stares shot at her way. she loved the sacrilege of affection, the desecration of all good and holy with a single kiss. she'd confess to a priest of her unabashed escapades to snapshot the moment his mouth started foaming with proclamations of blasphemy. if loving enid meant the heavens would look down upon her with distain, she'd die just to kiss enid in front of the divine audience.

enid starts giggling into wednesday's kiss. "wednesday, people are staring!"

"excuse me?"

"i can see you shivering from a mile away. c'mon." enid nudges her sweater closer to wednesday. "i'm not even that cold anyways."

wednesday look at the sweater as if it was sunshine, a bouquet blossoming with vibrancy and color and allergy. it was pink and orange and everything else vile. the wool sat in her arms like how the sunset sat upon the land, the abhorrent material looping and weaving like the sun's waves, narcissistically parading its own existence.

wednesday could feel her guts twist when she looked up at enid. it was sickening—it felt like enid was looking down upon her shaking form with pity, cerulean eyes narrowed in discontent and stubbornness. the dogma of enid's relentless emotion and compassion shook the atmosphere against the vindictive force of wednesday's denial—and yet, wednesday could feel her barriers sizzle.

wednesday could feel her heartbeat rocket, hammering against her chest, the percussive beat spelling doom and inevitable regret. blood rushed throughout her system despite the cold weather; her head spun as if she had stabbed her own cochleae and ran around in dizzying circles, maniac and crazy and depraved.

it was nauseating. wednesday craved for more.

wednesday: yes.

enid: are you hurt?

wednesday: no.

enid: oh thank god

enid: if anyone ever tries to lay a hand on you ever again, i'll rip them to shreds

wednesday: is this implying that you don't think i'm capable of handling myself?

enid: wh-no! of course not! i just want to protect the things that i like!

wednesday:

enid thought that she was in love with ajax. he was nice. aesthetically attractive. he had a great smile and his face was shaped in a way that was nice to look at. he was enid's friend, so they should've been perfect together.

but loving ajax felt like an obligation.

even with all these factors, all these pluses that would definitely please her parents, she felt nothing. no spark in her chest that people talked about. no giddiness in her stomach that the books and fanfictions paraded. not even the explosion of color that songs emphasized audibly. she felt like she was forced to like ajax, even though no one was explicitly forcing her.

then life decided to throw a confusing fucking mess of a curveball at enid, shake everything she knew up to magnitude 9.0 with the introduction of wednesday.

to enid, wednesday was just natural to love. she felt like an instinct, like it was ingrained in her psyche to fall for her. she's prickly, decorated with spindled metal needles, but enid still chased for embrace. enid would sacrifice hours carefully combing the black waves of frigid icy seas if it meant seeing her face crease. enid cares little for removing the thorns that adorn her stem, instead falling for wednesday's natural coexistence of beauty and violence.

and as enid carefully combed and moved the thorn bushes out of the way, she finds layers to wednesday. her secrecy intrigued her. her hidden feelings of vulnerability and buried remorse made her breath hitch in fascination. she wanted to know how how wednesday thinks. she wanted to know how wednesday feels. she wanted to know how she made wednesday feel.

why did enid fall for her, but not him?

ajax has all the perfect things in a guy that enid could ask for. so why didn't she naturally fall for him? why did she fall for the scary goth chick who's probably plotting her murder instead of cool, funny, friendly ajax?

enid: not to go outside and dance in the rain.

wednesday: and what did you do?

enid: ...went outside and danced in the rain.

wednesday: and what happened?

enid: i got sick :(

wednesday: that's correct. now sit up.

enid: wednesday, why are you even taking care of me? you knew it was dumb for me to do that. shouldn't you be, i don't know, chastising me or relishing in my suffering or something?

wednesday: yes?

enid: do you still love me?

wednesday: enid it's 2 in the morning–

enid: :(

wednesday: ...but, if you insist.

wednesday: i've written letters to shakespeare about you, enid, unafraid of the madness that spirals from love. i've told sartre of the stupid mutt who lives unapologetically, who defies what it means to exist, what it means to be. i've confessed to shelley that, perhaps, the beast is to not be feared nor tamed, but to be built upon, to be accepted, to be loved.

enid: holy shit

enid: god, you dork

wednesday: you're no better. you woke me up just to ask if i still love you. we've been dating for years, enid.

enid, softly chuckling: yeah, you're right. i am no better

enid: i've told the moon about you. and the stars. the comets know your name. even the fireflies and crickets are tired by how much i talk about you.

enid: don't worry. i'm sure they like you.

wednesday: ...

when enid returns to their dorm for the evening, she would enter seeing wednesday furiously typing, eyes narrowed in concentration as the ink blossomed and transcribed her ideas. at night, enid would fall asleep to the rhythmic punching of the typewriter, the metallic percussion leading her into the hours of the night. when the bar slid and released the paper, wednesday would look down upon the ink of the narrative, pause, then swiftly crumple up the page—annoyingly, this had become wednesday's process for the past week. her trash bin would fill up within 2 days, overflowed with rejected prose and articulation and pages of struggle.

sometimes, ideas that filled plot-holes felt dubious: easily excusable, acting as a mere patch up to tuck away in the background. not meant to be interrogated under the guide of critical thinking and contribution to theme. stuck together with fickle, feeble ink and bandaids painted like cream.

other times, it felt like her mind had played a cruel trick on itself and built a prison. concepts and ideas blanked, danced across the page absently, spilling and parading the invisible language of writer's block.

(wednesday's latest draft looked something like this:

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafkgkkfdjisswnjekckxkfkfshdjfuck)

one night, enid returned to the dorm and paused. absent was the rhythm of metal punching paper—for once, it was quiet. enid peers over at wednesday's desk and her breath hitches at the sight of wednesday asleep, arms folded in front of her, her forehead resting against her forearms. thing, upon seeing enid approach, waves silently to her and resumes clearing wednesday's desk from scrapped balled-up drafts.

enid's gaze softens as she watches wednesday sleep, her back rising in a slight crescendo and sinking with every exhale. her gaze lingers on wednesday's form for a second, before enid turns and walks out of the room.