Chapter 22: Eldritch (II)

 

Much to her horror, Enid Saint-Clair felt the muscles around her mouth twitch against her will, moving into a smile.

Mary Sue had asked her to, and she couldn't say no.

Well, σκατά, this isn't good.

It was a disconcerting and sickening feeling... feeling the urge to do something and being aware at the same time that you weren't responsible for it. It was as if someone had flipped a switch or found a way to turn you into a puppet. If this was how it was for everyone they had encountered on the quad, whatever Mary Sue was, she was even more terrifying than she had seemed at first.

Enid Saint-Clair began to feel anger bubbling up inside her, but even that wasn't enough to stop her lips from curving into a smile and...

Nid!

Needler's voice echoed in her head like a whip crack. The effect was immediate, and Saint-Clair felt herself regain control, while at the same time a strange sensation ran through her body, as if she had been tense until that moment and suddenly a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

The smile faded from her face before it could fully form.

And Mary Sue noticed it immediately.

The thing with the face of a laughing young girl as a mask did not lose her apparent chatty sweetness as she refocused her attention on the werecat.

 

“Hmm? Why aren't you smiling? Is something wrong? I  a̴̡͖̻͎̙͙̺̒̒ s̴̟͈̯̹̎͑͆́͌̊͜͜ͅ ̣͉ḱ̷̡͕̲̫̞́̐̎̈́̃͝͠ ͎e̴͊̍̀̇̂̃̒̅͆̏̈́̉̀ ̳̗̺͙d̵̹̜̤̖̫͈̹̲̬̎̓̐̓̽̀̉̆͐͒̂  you.”

 

As she spoke, something resonated in her voice. Something that caused Saint-Clair's mind to be assaulted for a millisecond by images of rotting human flesh devoured by worms. Mary Sue's sweet smile didn't change, but there was something sharp and poisonous behind it.

“She can't smile,” Needler interrupted suddenly.

The werecat and the abomination turned to look at her, genuine surprise on their faces for different reasons.

“Excuse me?” said Mary Sue.

“My companion suffers from a severe condition,” Needler continued. Her voice was firm, monotonous, with the cadence of a well-oiled machine and the quiet authority of someone who can convincingly make up bullshit on the spot, “It’s a psychosomatic disorder of a neuralgic nature... if she smiles, her brain shuts down, and she could die if the smile lasts more than five seconds.”

Okay, there's no way she's going to believe that, that has to be the most ridiculous thing... thought Saint-Clair, only to have her thoughts interrupted by an alarmed gasp escaping Mary Sue's lips.

The werecat looked at the girl (thing) and couldn't help being surprised by the look of dismayed consternation on Mary Sue's face. She seemed completely sincere... and not as if she were mimicking sincerity. It was real, her feline instincts could sense it.

She had believed the story. Hook, line, and sinker.

“Oh no! Oh my God!” exclaimed Mary Sue, before turning back to Saint-Clair with eyes shining with barely contained tears. She took the werecat’s hands in her own as if she were a close friend. “Oh, you poor thing! Unable to express the joy in your heart and the exhilaration of being alive! I am so sorry!”

“It's no big deal...” muttered Saint-Clair, visibly uncomfortable with the close contact.

“Perhaps it would be best if we continued on our way,” Needler interjected. “I must reiterate the importance of warning your Wednesday of the danger she is in.”

Although I am beginning to wonder if she would be safer under attack from the Normalcy Nine than with you, thought the mad scientist Addams.

“Oh, yes, yes!” exclaimed Mary Sue, pulling away from a relieved Saint-Clair, “Follow me, we're almost there!”

The Ophelia Hall of that dimension was similar to the one they both knew, one from her own universe and the other from her first interdimensional trip to Nevermore.

As they climbed the stairs to reach the top of the tower, they passed other students, whose reactions were the same as those in the quad. From a distance, they seemed to walk with their heads down or on guard, but as soon as they were undoubtedly in Mary Sue's presence, they all stopped to stare at her with an unnatural gleam of adoration in their eyes.

Saint-Clair and Needler observed how, after leaving them behind, many shook their heads, as if emerging from some kind of lethargy. Only a few dared to look back at them with veiled terror before continuing down the stairs.

Finally, they reached the top, the attic converted into a single, familiar room. There were no murmurs or whispers coming from behind the door. Nor was there the sound of a typewriter or any of Enid's K-pop playlists.

There was only silence, as if no one were there, but Mary Sue opened the door and walked in as if nothing was wrong, with Needler and Saint-Clair following her.

And there were Wednesday and Enid.

The sense of wrongness that had flooded Saint-Clair's senses since they had arrived in that universe intensified when she saw them.

There didn't seem to be anything wrong with them; they looked just like the Weds and Enid they knew... but they were sitting on their beds, with dark circles under their eyes as if they hadn't slept in days, and there was nothing to suggest that they had been doing anything before Mary Sue entered the room.

In contrast, as soon as Mary Sue made her appearance with a loud greeting (“Hello, my favorite girls!”), the two young women seemed to perk up, smiling from ear to ear and looking happy to see her.

Yes, even the Wednesday.

It's like they were standing here doing nothing until she came in, thought Saint-Clair, like dolls locked in a dollhouse waiting for their mistress to come and play with them.

Wrongness, indeed.

What followed were a few minutes of inane teenage banter. To a casual observer, there would have been nothing out of the ordinary, at least at first glance... but to Needler and Saint-Clair, the scene bordered on nightmarish. It was as if Mary Sue and the local Enid and Wednesday had engaged in a conversation filled with all the conventions, clichés, and teenage tropes one would expect from the most superficial television show aimed at the lowest common denominator.

Boys, dates, dancing… nauseating.

Needler's voice echoed again in Saint-Clair's head.

It's unnerving.

Unnerving? That word doesn't even come close to describing this... They're talking about boys, and dances like... as if there were school dances every week... it doesn't make sense...

And Wednesday is participating. I know that the multiverse is hugely varied and it's not wise to prejudge, but something tells me that this Wednesday is not naturally someone who would be comfortable with this kind of conformist talk.

She hasn't uttered a single sarcastic remark!

And she just asked Mary Sue for makeup advice. Plus, there doesn't seem to be any sign of Thing.

At that point, Mary Sue turned toward them, smiling.

Saint-Clair almost jumped like a startled cat.

It happened in the blink of an eye. A millisecond. But in that fraction of time, the smiling girl with platinum hair and bicolored eyes seemed to take the form of a shadow with blurred edges and impossible angles, a jagged, gleaming smile the only thing visible in a bubbling mass of solid darkness.

A blink. Not even a full second. And that was enough for Saint-Clair to feel the urge to scream, barely holding it back.

Please Needler, tell me you saw that too and that I'm not hallucinating...

Hmm...

Needler!

“Nessie! Nini!” Mary Sue continued, completely ignoring the werecat's silent reaction of terror, “Look, I've made some new friends. They've come to visit you, Nessie. Don't you think they look a lot like you two? It's…”

The thing with a girl's face fell silent for a moment and focused her attention on Needler, her face never losing its smile for a second.

“I just realized you haven't told me your names,” said Mary Sue, in a tone that was unexpectedly somber given her bright expression. “That's very r̸̹̖̥͇͙̺̙̠̯̪̟͛ͅǘ̴̧̪̫̖̝̀̒̍͋́͛̀͌͘͜d̵͐͌̅̃̽̑̏̈́̊̋͑͗̓ȩ̵̢̛̩̤̰̣̠͕̪̝̖̞̱̦̘̱͑̾̊́̍̌̍͑̌̌̽̕͝͝ͅ.”

Oh fuck, oh σκατά, oh no.

But Needler took a step forward, with a cold blood that Saint-Clair could only envy, and stood in front of Mary Sue, looking her straight in the eye.

In her eyes shone the glimmers of dead stars.

They were abysses incapable of being comprehended. Any mind would break and fall into madness in the face of such a vision.

But the mind of the Wednesday Addams known as Needler was no ordinary one. For her, madness was an old friend.

“I'm sorry,” she said, “It's true, we've been very rude. But secrecy is imperative in our mission. Granted, it's a mission that was thrust upon us suddenly, with little time and very few details.”

 

“O̷̍̀͆̃̋̊̾̆̓̅̐̀̏ ̡̢̨͖̱̤̙͍͇̩̮̼̰͎̃̅͑̂̑̆͘h̸̡̧̧̨͓̭͙͈̭̬͇͈̣͎̳͚̍̊͗̆?” Mary Sue asked, tilting her head.

 

“I need to ask you a favor that only you can grant me... I need to talk to Wed... To Nessie. Alone.”

The girl (abomination, monstrosity) stared intently at Needler. As if she were trying to read her mind through her eyes. Or just read it in general, as if her flesh and pale skin were pages of a book written in a language that only that creature could understand.

And after a few abnormally tense seconds, Mary Sue smiled again, closing her eyes in a gesture of effusive joy.

“Okay!”

And just like that, the creature left the room, skipping and whistling a catchy tune.

The change in the room was immediate as soon as the door closed behind her. The light illuminating the place seemed to dim, as if they had gone from a clear, sunny day to a gray, cloudy one.

“What the hell just happened?” muttered Saint-Clair, staring at the closed door as if afraid it would open at any moment.

Shadows with teeth... the Shadow Hydes were kittens compared to that...

“Look,” said Needler.

Saint-Clair turned to see how the local Wednesday and Enid had fallen back into complete silence. With their heads bowed, as if in a trance, each walked to her respective bed and sat down again, without saying or doing anything else.

The werecat approached her counterpart and ran her hand across her face, but Enid didn't give the slightest sign of noticing. Her eyes didn't even blink, and her breathing was very slow, almost non-existent, like that of an animal about to enter hibernation.

“I don't think you'll be able to talk much with that Wednesday if she's anything like this Enid...” said Saint-Clair.

“I wasn't counting on it,” said Needler, leaning over her local variant, staring face to face with the equally paralyzed Wednesday, “I just needed to buy some time.”

“What are we going to do, Needler?” asked Saint-Clair, slumping into the chair in front of the small desk on Wednesday's side of the room. “The Normalcy Nine and that Nothing stuff are bad enough, but something tells me that even if we stop whoever they send here, this universe is screwed anyway.”

“It's a very unfortunate reality, to be sure,” Needler replied, almost absently, surveying the room with an almost clinical gaze.

“Can we kill that thing?” Saint-Clair asked. “Because seriously, I don't think I'll be able to sleep peacefully for the rest of my life knowing that Mary Sue exists, even if she's universes away.”

“Mmm…”

Saint-Clair frowned, “Needler, are you listening to me?”

“Lomonósov-Lavoisier,” said the Addams.

“The what?”

“Mikhail Lomonósov and Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier,” Needler replied, “The law of conservation of mass… Of course…”

“Needler, what are you talking about?”

“The urgency with which Mr. Morningstar imparted his information blinded me. I got carried away by appearances, the promise of deadly danger, and lost myself in the idea of meta-universes and their implications, but at the end of the day, it's all very simple…”

Oh yes... so simple it almost seems insulting.

The Addams mad scientist stood up and began to pace around the center of the room, “Matter cannot be created or destroyed. An Anti-Big Bang that would end this multiverse would only be the first transformative step in the birth of a new multiverse later on, once time was reshaped... yes, of course, I see...”

The Addams turned to Saint-Clair with an almost insane gleam in her eyes despite the eternal expression of monotonous boredom on her pale face.

“Enid Saint-Clair... do you trust me?”

“You asking that question is a little scary,” muttered the werecat.

Needler reached into her pocket and pulled out an object that she held in the palm of her hand.

A silver sphere.

“It lost its gun shape,” she said. “I think it's psychically reactive to the bearer.”

“Wait, that's...?”

“The weapon used by the trespasser who attacked us in Weds’ universe, yes,” said Needler, “Norman Normanmeyer’s weapon, the same type of weapon used by the Normalcy Nine in their multiverse assassination campaign.”

“Honestly, I had forgotten that you had kept it.”

Needler said nothing, but closed her fingers around the sphere. It became malleable, for a moment it seemed as if it were melting in her hand, but after a few seconds...

“Mmm, interesting.”

“Fuck!”

The sphere in Needler's hand had turned into a handgun. But it didn't resemble a revolver or any other mundane gun Saint-Clair had ever seen. It looked like the classic ray gun from old B-movie science fiction serials. The kind that looked like they had been made from hair dryers repainted to look like futuristic weapons.

Except that this one was completely silver, looked terrifyingly real, and Needler was holding it while studying it as if she were making thousands of calculations per second in her head.

“Needler,” said Saint-Clair, feeling a growing sense of alarm that she couldn’t explain. The feral cat inside her was writhing like a caged animal.

“Needler,” she repeated, “What are you thinking?”

Needler continued to stare at the gun, “Why a Wednesday? Why the Nothing?” she muttered, before turning back to Saint-Clair, “I must repeat my question… do you trust me?”

Saint-Clair stared at her.

She knew from what Willa had told her that Needler had been instrumental in saving the day during their first multiverse adventure.

She had fought alongside her when they stormed the fortress of The Brigh One. Needler had been pivotal in weakening the monster and dismantling its entire infrastructure.

Over the past nine years, she had been a constant and tireless presence, always improving their equipment so they could jump between realities more safely.

She was always willing to help them all because, even if they came from other corners of the multiverse, they were all her Family.

It was never in question.

Given all that, there was only one possible answer.

“Yes,” said the werecat, her voice firm, “I trust you.”

“In that case,” said Needler, “Try not to be alarmed.”

And she stretched out her arm, the one holding the silver weapon.

She aimed without looking.

And she fired.

Hitting the local Enid Sinclair squarely, who fell onto the bed and began to disintegrate in a matter of seconds.

And Saint-Clair, of course, was a little alarmed.

“NEEDLER, WHAT THE FUCK!?”

 

NOTES

Okay, but seriously, Needler... what the hell??

Relax, I promise there's an explanation for everything. Maybe. Sort of 😁

 

Translations:
σκατά: (greek) shit.