“The human heart is a strange vessel. Love and hatred can exist side by side.”
― Scott Westerfield
Enid kept her promise the day after their first meeting.
The two girls spent an entire afternoon, free of classes, strolling through the remains of the old ruins belonging to an ancient abbey and crypt near Nevermore. In another universe, this would have been the resting place and temporary resurrection site of Joseph Crackstone, but the old Puritan did not seem to exist in this reality. Wednesday noted with slight disappointment the absence of his name on the few gravestones still preserved at the location. It seemed that she would have no supernatural confrontations during her stay at the academy.
But aside from that slight disappointment, it had been a... pleasant afternoon. Horrifyingly so. And also hideously tense, though the Addams knew how to disguise it with a tight control of even the tiniest of her muscles. Of course, that didn't seem to stop Enid from noticing her inner turbulence, if the knowing glances and smiles had more meaning than was apparent.
The werecat (for Wednesday was by now fully convinced that the girl must belong to some variety of that subspecies of cryptid) was prone to chatter, animatedly explaining details of the place, local stories, legends, etc. In other circumstances, Wednesday would have listened attentively and participated in the conversation, whether with questions, observations, or comments of sharp sarcasm. But the Addams remained silent throughout the encounter, exercising constant self-control over her body. For although the meaning of the words was lost in the ether of her dulled perception, the sound of Enid Saint-Clair's voice and her occasional Greek vocabulary words caused a virulent reaction in the Addams.
Her mind could focus on nothing else but the figure of the young woman before her. On how every word in that perfidious tongue coming out of her mouth caused that her first impulse was to take her in her arms, lean over her, take her right hand and begin to kiss her, kissing her arm upward until she reached...
Get a hold of yourself Addams!
And every time she managed to restrain herself, every time she managed to stop her baser instincts from turning her into a passionate, irrational creature, Enid would give her one of those looks and a smile, letting her fangs peek over her pink lips.
She knows. She knows, she knows, she knows.
Fortunately, things improved over the next few days, even if they were uncharted territory for both of them. Wednesday managed to regain enough composure to be able to engage in normal conversations and not just follow Saint-Clair with her eyes fixed on her.
§§§
“Ok, so your aunt ultimately tried to kill all of you and not just your uncle Fester?”
“Her inability to terminate him during their honeymoon and the subsequent weeks, despite isolating him from the rest of the family, broke what few slivers of rationality were left in Debbie.”
“And all that after you got back from that racist camp.”
“It was a busy weekend, yes.”
“What I don't understand is the electric chairs. Where did she get seven electric chairs?”
“Eight. There was one for Thing, too.”
“Ah, yes, the living hand... παράξενο... Still, where the hell did she get eight electric chairs??”
"We had a veritable collection of those in the basement. Pugsley and I played on multiple occasions with some of them. I presume Debbie set them up before forcing us to take a seat.”
“With a shotgun.”
“A double-barreled one, yes. She wielded it with admirable ferocity.”
“So she forces you to sit in the chairs at gunpoint... there were eight of you. Did none of you really try to stop her? She couldn't aim it at all of you at the same time.”
“Oh. Anyone could have. But it had been a long time since we've had a multiple electrocution in the family.”
“Well, I'd have to apologize later, but if I were there I'd surely have bitten her hand off before that πόρνη could do anything to you.”
“And we would be very grateful to witness such an act of mutilation. But we'd most likely use the chairs anyway afterwards. It would have been a waste to let it go.”
“Truth is, it's a fucking shame. From what you've told me about her she would have fit right in with your family.”
“Debbie never overcame her own demons. Her psychopathy was weighed down by a fixation on the superficial and the most ephemeral material goods. If she had really opened up to our family she could have gotten everything she wanted, Fester would have offered her the world.”
“But greed got the better of her and she wanted to take it by force.”
”She tried to subdue us. And us Addams will gladly feast on those who would subdue us.”
§§§
“Enid, I know you know how to speak Greek from your grandmother, but you've practically never used it. But now when you're with Addams you're always dropping words in the language.”
“I've noticed that when I speak Greek... it does things to her.”
“Huh? What kind of things?”
“Next time you're standing next to us and I say something in Greek to her use that vampire nose of yours to smell something other than just blood, Yolks.”
“Oh? Oh!”
§§§
Marilyn Munster was happy for her friend.
The young blonde was sitting in botany class, absently watching as Enid was engaged in an animated conversation with Wednesday Addams a couple of tables over. Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that Enid was talking animatedly while Wednesday watched her with a subtly unsteady expression that danced between adoration and frustration.
Enid had always had a hard time fitting in at Nevermore. Too many quirks in her character, too outspoken in her own strangeness and her propensity for using violence as a means of expression. Marilyn knew that, objectively, Enid was actually a sweetheart. But if she sensed the slightest danger to anything she cared about, there would be rivers of blood.
Much of it was an exercise in self-assertion, in maintaining her own identity in the face of the impositions society tried to exert on her. Other parts of her persona were mere animal instinct that had never been able to be tamed due to the absence of progenitors who knew how.
It's what would happen when your parents and elder brother die in a car accident, leaving you in the care of your grandmother until she also dies on your sixth birthday and you spend the next few years in the foster care system dealing with a matrilineal outcast condition that manifests itself in the women of your family only every few generations so you have no living relative who can help you. And so you go on, dealing with violent incident after violent incident, until you end up with a conservative, religious foster family obsessed with molding you into the perfect daughter and sending you to Nevermore under the mistaken impression that the academy will be able to nip your animal side in the bud.
Yep, Enid had always had a hard time.
“I can count with the fingers of one hand the number of times I've seen her smile like that,” said a voice to Marilyn's right.
“Ah, hello Yoko,” greeted the young woman to her friend, who just sat down next to her, ”And yes, Nid seems more...”
“Joyful,” the vampire said, “Enid's never had a problem smiling, but she always tends to have a wild, animalistic air about her when she does so. This is more like...”
“The smile of a normal girl talking to her crush,” Marilyn whispered with a knowing smile, ”Do you think...?”
“Maybe. Too soon to tell,” Yoko replied, also quietly, ”There'll already be talk about the two of them. Addams doesn't spend time with anyone else, not even her roommate.”
“Mostly because Nid won't let her be alone,” Marilyn said, “I'm worried that she might be over-fixating on Addams too much, and if Addams doesn't take kindly to that...”
“The Addams' have a peculiar and rather mutable reputation, but if there's one thing true about them, it's that they never close their doors to anyone. Nah, if Wednesday turns Nid down it won't be because of that,” the vampire clarified. Yoko had heard enough stories about the Addams's to be pretty sure that Wednesday Addams would have no problem with Enid's sexual orientation.
“Well, that's a relief,” Marilyn said.
“That said, if she breaks Nid's heart, I plan to bleed her dry. Addams or not.”
“If that happens I'll help you get rid of the body. I know where there's a pig farm.”
Nodding, not taking their eyes off their friend, the two bumped fists.
§§§
It was only a matter of time before Laurel Gates tried something with the new student. The Queen Bee of Nevermore had taken her sweet time, letting the Addams settle in. But the moment had come to make it clear what was the hierarchy of the place.
“Wednesday Addams!” greeted Laurel, approaching the table in the central courtyard where Wednesday was seated next to Enid. Behind her walked two other female students. A brunette and a redhead. Together with Laurel's blonde hair they made such a cliché archetype that Wednesday didn't even bother to disguise the roll of her eyes.
“I understand you come from a family of some pedigree,” the young woman said, with a facial expression that could only be described as pretentious interest, ”Allow me to introduce myself, I am...”
“Laurel Gates,” Wednesday said, without looking away from the book before her.
“Uh, I figured you'd know,” Laurel said, sending a look of ill-concealed contempt to Enid, Yoko and Marilyn, ”But let me tell you that anything about me you've heard coming from these three is surely false. You see, I think you need better company, Wednesday. The right company."
“The right company,” Laurel's companions repeated in unison, nodding like the well-trained pets they were.
“And I have to assume that's you,” Wednesday said, once again without taking her eyes off the book, her voice absolutely monotone. Beside her, Enid watched intently.
“Of course!” said Laurel, ”Allow me to tell you that...”
Laurel Gates' verbiage became a barely intelligible mumble to Wednesday, ignoring her completely. Wednesday already knew a Laurel Gates, from the stories her multiversal variant had told her. But this Laurel was far from the hypocritical murderous wannabe witch that her counterpart was. This was a spoiled, bratty, prejudice-fermented rich girl to whom no one had ever said “no” in her entire life. A pampered little harpy absolutely convinced that she was the center of the universe.
Wednesday knew how to deal with her kind.
For her part, Laurel kept talking. The others had seen the same spectacle on multiple occasions: Laurel would spout her spiel, a combination of self-proclaimed accomplishments, condescending insults camouflaged as flattery, and veiled threats to personal perceived social status within the school if you opposed Laurel and her desires. Of course, her studied verbal manipulation also served the dual purpose of provoking potential new outcast students. To force them to expose themselves so that Laurel could play her game of being the poor innocent victim and show the world the true unstable side of these animals. Yes, that was her usual plan.
Which was failing.
“...Have you even heard a word I just said?” the young woman asked, after noticing that all this time Wednesday hadn't looked away from her book, hadn't moved, hadn't made the slightest sign of acknowledgement or that she had been listening.
And so that's how she continued, unresponsive.
“ADDAMS!” exclaimed Gates, slamming the table in front of Wednesday and coming face to face with her. Wednesday merely looked up slightly and raised an eyebrow.
Laurel emitted an irritated snort.
“So that's how it's going to be isn't it?” she said, “You must be a freak too. I've heard stories about your family, after all."
“Which ones?”
“Excuse me?”
“Which stories about my family have you heard?” asked Wednesday, putting down the book and fixing her stare on Gates, “The one about my great Aunt Calpurnia and how she danced naked in the town square before seducing a minister? Or maybe you've heard the stories of how Prospecto Addams gave up searching for gold in the Yukon to go live with a family of sasquatches... Perhaps you mean when my Cousin Itt was exhibited in a zoo? Or that time when my parents conceived my little brother in a fit of passion in public during a charity auction…"
Laurel had been stunned, opening and closing her mouth unable to respond to any of that. After a few moments, she seemed to regain her wits and turned a look of utter contempt towards Wednesday, raising her nose in a gesture of smug superiority.
“You really are a freak after all, Addams,” she said, “You'd better watch your back.”
“Ah, an open and clear threat,” replied Wednesday, with a predatory grin, “That's the only interesting thing that's come out of that cesspool you call a mouth in all this time.”
Laurel's face reddened, lit up with fury. The girl turned, and retreated at a brisk pace. Her companions behind her barely able to keep up.
“Fuck, Willa,” Enid said after a few moments, ”You poked the bear.”
“I'm more surprised that you haven't intervened more directly,” Addams said.
“Oh, I'd love to. But if I do anything against Gates her family has enough connections to send me to juvie. Or even convince the authorities to try me as an adult. And the little fucker knows it..."
“But Enid's right, Addams,” Yoko interjected, ”That was basically a declaration of war. Gates isn't going to let it slide, she's bound to do something."
Wednesday merely smiled. A small smile. Spooky.
Enid loved that smile.
“Tell me, Tanaka,” the Addams said, ”What makes you think I'm going to stand around waiting for her to do anything?”
§§§
The morning after that encounter, Laurel Gates awoke wrapped in her sheets and blankets, bound with ropes and hanging upside down from the balcony of her private room in Nevermore's tallest tower. Her panicked screams were the rooster crow of that new day.
The authorities found no fingerprints. No trace or sign that any access to the room had been forced. The rope was one of those used in the gymnasium for climbing exercises.
A couple of Jericho cops stayed on as extra security. That didn't stop Laurel from finding her room turned into a breeding ground for spiders the next day. Hundreds and hundreds of them. The girl ran out into the hallway screaming.
The next day, despite a change to another room, the same thing happened again.
The next four nights there were no morning disturbances, no awakenings in strange places, no arachnid invasions. But any casual observer could see a progressive deterioration in Laurel. Rumors spoke of her not being able to sleep, of murmurs of voices in the night, of noises in her room, fingernails scratching wood, gasps of sickly breathing, the scurrying of something under her bed... The constant feeling that she was never alone and something or someone was watching her.
On the fifth night Laurel awoke in the dark, past midnight, to see a shadowy figure at the foot of her bed watching her with deep black eyes, void of any soul. A figure that vanished as soon as the lights were turned on.
The episodes went on and on, with Laurel falling into a downward spiral of unfounded accusations incapable of being proven, finally culminating a week and a half after her run-in with Wednesday.
Laurel Gates woke up completely bald.
Her hair was gone. There was not the slightest trace of any of it, no remains on her pillow. No sign that it had been shaved. Again, no fingerprints, nothing that could suggest that anyone had been in the room with her.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Laurel Gates suffered a panic attack followed by a psychotic break that led her to assault the first student who came into her room trying to help her after hearing her screams. After that, she experienced a nervous breakdown.
She was admitted to a mental hospital and was forced to leave Nevermore that very same day. The whole situation seemed like the kind of madness that would end up becoming part of local folklore. A macabre school legend that future students would tell the newbies.
Wednesday and Enid were just two of the many students who witnessed the departure of Nevermore's former Queen Bee.
“How did you do it?” whispered Enid.
“I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about,” Wednesday replied.
“Bullshit,” Enid countered, fighting back a laugh, “Will you teach me?”
Wednesday smiled.
NOTES
Oh, Laurel.
Wednesday poked the bear?
You poked a fuckin dragon...
Also, some translations:
παράξενο: (greek) strange/weird
πόρνη: (greek) whore/bitch
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