LYCOS | tacet anima mea - Chapter 4 - VoltageStone (2024)

Chapter Text

One week is what you’ve granted yourself for this. You followed him by the hour. You schemed through the nights. Slept at your desk. Ate whatever flesh was prepared. Words twisted, kept themselves rattled to your mind, and only slipped for Enid. Even then, they were reminiscent of the beginnings to your relationship.

Companionship. Kinship. Friendship. All truths, yet they feel as falsehoods. Enid, in her entirety, remains … awfully unclear to you.

It was a week of a boa’s starvation.

For there is a ploy to enact. A stroke of satisfaction to consume.

Tonight, when you breached the dorm’s dark spell by corridor’s light, you realized a package, for you, at the foot to your bed. Naturally, you thought of Enid — off to her club, for a late night of her own —; you thought of her, that is, until you realized the penmanship: precise, boxed, a pointed remark.

Yoko.

Only two words, an odd few marks, then a cloak beneath. A vest as well. Pants.

Snap first

^<<brick<<[FORTUNATO]

You frowned, and by the pads of your fingers, you felt ink. You laid your eyes across its back. Never before did you think enthrallment would pass you like this.

I’ll only share Div this once.

It took a moment, before you realized the time, Ajax’s paranoia, and the cloak’s intentions. Because this cloak is of older design — that you were quick to realize —, dated by a few decades or so — that you estimated —, and the Nightshade Society… They meet to their own whim. It is, by all accounts, a social exchange rather than a true, organized collective.

So you roamed across the academy, cloaked. Note in one hand, enthrallment in the other.

Then you stood before Poe.

And now, as you stand, your hand presents. The rare, goading smirk crawls to life.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door —"

He recedes.

And rather than right, you stray left. Bathed in shadows, hood pulled over your head. You hear their congregation pause. A few voices. Several strides for the stairs. As they stalk, you palm across the wall. Your hands pleat dust. The brick is coarse. Up until it isn’t, and you find lettering:

FORTUNATO

Brick sinks where you push. A door gives way beside you — still in the dark — in the same, gathered momentum as the statue’s return. You slip inside. There are stairs, and though you are without light, intuition tells you that this hugs the main stairwell.

Voices are muffled. You hear Ajax above them all.

“Only this, and nothing more.”

He writhes anxiety.

There’s a scoff — it crawls between the grout —, and then a sharp few words from Xavier:

“Dude. She isn’t. Here!”

Your goading smirk creases furthermore.

A minute crosses by. You’ve lurked down the steps, as they to their own. Their conversations remain drowned to your ears, though the wineglasses, and bottles, and shots, all chime loud enough. There’s a faint film within the air also. The odor is disparaging. Blunts have never reeked in ways which call to you.

However, it’s a pleasantry to know what your looming existence does to a gorgon.

And as said pleasantry hums, there’s another scent. It invokes you. Whispers to your carnality. Thrives within the barrels of liquor that adorn the wall, and it gleams within the candlelight, tucked into few indents throughout this enclosure.

Blood…

This is where the breweries leak to, and the wineries drain.

It is where Enid’s bottle was swiped from. The same that did manage to scar you after all…

Though you line your nails across bottles, and toy with spigots, your eyes find the fresh selection of liquid rot. To their own corner. Some in bags. As for most, square bottled canteens. Each labeled. Beyond what any blood-bank would offer.

It is terror, or a mere inconvenience, for those harvested. Food, for a Fang. Wealth, to you.

And a dream-made-reality to an amateur mixologist.

You grin. The conversation buzzes. Blunt waft fumes. And you know grey-red eyes skim for opportunity. Stale brews to make room for your sweet, burning decay.

So this is Yoko’s personal chamber…

You leave the blood and stroll for the canvases across the architecture — another point of intrigue. Each one is fixed to every indentation, and sit as though they are not décor but bricks to the wall. They’re plain, until you realize none face you. Each face the stairwell’s library in thin material, and even thinner paint. You can see them talk, sat across the floor. The Nightshade Society, though blurred outlines, have never been covert to you; this, however, means absolute intrusion.

How utterly remarkable.

Sometimes, this academy is truly a wonder.

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow.
From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore —
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore —

Fire burns ever so quietly. It feeds off hickory. Blankets the tile floor’s sheen in yellows. Yellows then oranges. It ignites the liquor, and sears their goblets to fine, brewing flames.

There’s a new addition: a mattress, gowned by a royal violet. A pillow lays somewhere, you assume.

Ajax, apparently, had found the mirrors you stashed in the art studio. He’s moved from one haven to another.

With you in the wall, however, this haven is just as much a fabrication; his sanctuary here won’t do a damn thing.

“We’re all telling you, it’s fine! She’ll get over it!” (Xavier paces as a blue, midnight shadow. He points to, by logic, Ajax himself, who now sits across his makeshift bed.) “She’s not even the one broken-up.”

You count. They’re all here. Ajax and Xavier. Bianca. Kent.

Divina and Yoko as well. They sit against the bookcases, with Yoko in her black cloak, and Divina the only rational conjecture to be sequestered beside. Her hands don’t … explore, exactly. You doubt there’s anything left to discover for Divina. Instead, they trail, or meander, down Yoko.

“O-Okay, but— I haven’t seen her! At all!” (Ajax waves his hand. Blunt waft follows.) “She’s, like— Wednesday’s stalking me! And you know what they say about, like, lions and sh*t! You’re safe when you can see them!”

“But she’s not a lion.”

“…might as well be.”

The room itself seemingly groans. To your mind, this has been their meeting’s point: console the snake-head; promise him that he isn’t (is) actively being watched.

At the stairs, leaned into the last pillar, there’s Kent. You hear him manage through a mouth wad of alcohol,

“At least it’s not her, bro… You know how Enid could g—”

The room runs frigid. Muscles twitch tension, and panic sets across their shoulders. Particularly Ajax, who scrawls a hand down his neck. Just as he has been doing, for the past week. His tell is serpentine: his snakes, and they worm their way to discomfort at clockwork intervals.

Nameless here for evermore.

Kent waves. Wine slops someplace.

“sh*t! Sorry! I— Okay, I think the last drink got me!” (He’s croaking.) “I didn’t mean it like that!”

(Sincerely,) “I know… I know.” (Ajax burns through blunt. His words are crispened, then slugged, by the high.) “But dude, I know how to deal with that. Because I’ve known her. I just … don’t know Wednesday.”

Bianca, who you realize is the closest to you, snorts into her drink. As with anything, she speaks pointedly:

“I don’t think even knowing her would help you, Ajax.”

No, it wouldn’t have. It never does.

The stairwell drowns to quiet. Glasses chime. Bottles drool into them. Because though the Nightshades are friends, and they are, undoubtedly, loyal, that loyalty isn’t blind. Which you respect. That loyalty judges. That loyalty soothes — drunkenly, as of now.

And, that loyalty leaves room for intrusion.

In the corner of your eye is Yoko, leaned into Divina. Yoko’s face is the only one cloaked by shadow. You suspect she wears her mask.

As she swirls the blood in her goblet, and toys with the fringe to Divina’s slicked hair, Ajax cracks for another time:

“Can we— Can we still check again? Please?!” (He wrenches upright, presumably for the umpteenth time this hour. His shadow is frantic across fire.) “Every day, waiting gets worse. I almost threw up in class! Twice!”

He looks around the room. Pleading for this loyalty.

“Please?! For me guys?!”

The loyalty is true. The loyalty judges.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeated,
“‘Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door –
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;”

He waits. There is no answer.

“Oh come on! I know I f*cked up but, but God!” (His shadow whirls between all those loyal.) “You’re supposed to be my friends! And you know after that sh*tshow last week, she’s gonna take it out on me!”

Not a whisper, yet the room itself rumbles retort.

Ajax goes limp across his shoulders. His arms hang, and his head goes slow as he looks across them. Kent wavers by the pillar, unsteady where he remains on the last step. Xavier is similar, kept to a bookshelf. Bianca toys with the platter that, presumably, has been retained at her side with every glass drained — her territory claimed.

There are only two who remain largely disinterested. They may be the most sober. Or, it’s that the wine has made conspiracy plain upon their drunken mouths. Wine is set aside. The Fang plays with her hair, as she does, and her doting Scale keeps to her side, as always.

“Yoko…? Please…?”

At once, disinterest goes rigid. Rather than play, she reclaims the healthy wineglass beside her.

“Enid was my friend first. Don’t start that again. The groveling.” (Sounds rough — far from her usual, silken melody. Yoko drinks.) “I gave you enough. You know how I feel about people begging sh*t from me.” (She still sounds like bone lugged through gravel.)

“I— Sh-sh*t…” (He flounders.) “Bianca?! Di— Divina?!”

Divina beats Bianca to it.

With the ferocity in her voice, you doubt she’s even dipped her tongue down a glass:

“Oh what do you want us to say, Ajax?! We were still tit*-out! Of course she’d go apesh*t on you!”

“I’m not—! It’s not a-about the f*cking skinny-dip!”

“Yeah! Remember, Enid still lied you know!”

Every head turns to bookshelf. You know the face Bianca stitches on. Within yourself, it boils the knee-jerk instinct to mangle her and Xavier both.

“…you’re one to talk about getting our side of things.”

“Bianca, piss off.”

“Guys… Guys…!” (Kent has trouble mouthing through liquor.) “Let’s all… Let’s all combobulate.”

“Kent, that is not a word.”

There is no doubt. Divina hasn’t been drinking. There’s clarity to her speech. And now that you smell the room, the wine is of quality. Moreover, there’s high alcohol content. It is the very same that raged through Enid and Yoko both a mere week ago. There’s also scant traces of blood. Though…, that may be confused with where you stand now.

No matter.

You realize Yoko’s ploy. The gift that she’s granted you:

Intrusion. Infiltration.

Subversion.

There are drinks. There’s a haze of marijuana. Both Yoko and Divina are quiet — quieter than they would otherwise be, anyway. Her hood is up. Her dark hair is down. Then the mask. Divina guarding her… Obstructing her body from the rest…

“C’mon, Divy! It is! I swear—!” (Kent doesn’t move; he bumbles.) “You know what I’m saying!” (Both Ajax and Xavier dive to catch him. A finger is thrusted to one of them.) “Look, you were a dick about the wholes … kinny-dipping thing. And Enid was a dick about the lying—”

“She lied to him for the whole f*cking—”

“Okay…” (A near-belch.) “Ah…” (Either Kent is a lightweight, or he got a bottle to himself.) “Like yeah, but—” (You suspect both.)

“Xavier, she’s a werewolf. Don’t act like you have any idea about packs.”

“So?!”

You begin to unravel your braids. Left first, then right. Your fingers lace through, and with each pass, the curls are combed out.

It won’t be the same as Yoko’s sheeted downpour. But, the difference will be slight to these drunken eyes.

You grin. Such an odd sensation. Because this— This is fun.

“She’s a f*cking runt, Xavier! And a lone wolf! What’s not clicking?!”

“Yeah, bro…” (Another drag. He sounds weak.) “I’m not— I’m not hung up on that.”

Wineglass, again. You barely hear it. Beside Yoko.

You watch, and as you do, you decide that she doesn’t want eyes on her. Divina likewise. Because they are self-sequestered, against the wall, with caution laid between.

“Seemed pretty hung up—”

“IT’S NOT. ABOUT—!”

Despite yourself, you snap to outburst. Ajax hasn’t left the railing to the stairs. Kent may be patting his shoulder. Bianca and Xavier are staring. One doesn’t move from her platter, though from the way she draws a knife across bread, you know she’s engrossed.

Xavier is plainly alarmed. It’s the same panic you render him to on a regular basis. Always when he steps from his lane.

“It has nothing to do with the skinny-dipping! And it’s not about her being an Alpha, or a lesbian— Oh. …f*ck.” (Panic is rising.) “I didn’t say that.”(It rises to his knees. Ajax quivers.)

“What?!”

“I— I-I didn’t say that!”

You barely catch her.

The painting behind Divina shifts. That is one of two tells. The second is quite plain: the fact that Divina sits alone. Her body murmurs casual. Her eyes strike urgency. She is nervous. A panicked kind. Strays her eyes for the canvases.

For the Raven in the walls.

So you roam once again — stalk your way to the couple’s backdrop. It’s down the curve.

“Ajax… What…?”

Within a mere moment, there’s dead-end. Standing there is Yoko’s lurking stature. Her eyes bead red. Her gaunt skin almost glows in the dark. It scalds grey…

So that is the edge to her ploy. She’s fallen ill out of purposed starvation.

For you.

For Enid furthermore.

“I’m surprised you didn’t know about this one…” (She sounds hoarse. Like a phantom searching for a meal.) “The one you found is hidden better.” (It begs the question how she is lucid — despite both starvation and the alcohol.)

“I suspected it was here.”

In times like these, you’re refreshed in knowing that you are, truly, mortal. No matter the details, Yoko still leers as an existence beyond you. And you stand, stagnant as any natural prey.

The student you stare at now is scarcely that. She is, moreover, a shadow incarnate, and you are the sorry imitation.

She hums quietly, then notes,

“Well make use of the other door you found… The lake is easy to get to down by the siren tunnels. They run over the sewage.”

Yoko shares you something by a careful hand: her mask. Dead predator eyes flick, and that is its only acknowledgement.

She lingers. Red serrates to you.

“I’ll know if you do anything to her…”(Bared her fangs all the while.)

Your mouth twists, and you nod. She shouldn’t have to threat. You consider yourself a gentlewoman, after all.

She leaves you, and you feel the anticipation pass gleefully.

The mask is a corpse’s breath against your skin.

“This is it, and nothing more.”

The painting — that of wine and skull — closes without so much a whisper behind you. Divina stirs anxiety as you sit in one fluid motion. There is no reason to, however, for her anxiety. The rest of them stare at Ajax for his answer. And he’s, still, leaned into the railing.

“She doesn’t … smell like herself anymore… She smells like—”

Your arm snakes around Divina. The whiff you gather off her is like pondwater, and oddly seafoam. More than that, however, is chalk, blood, salt.

Despite starvation, Yoko still has been feeding. You spy the puncture marks down Divina’s neck. They hide faultlessly within her scales — the patch that … doesn’t quite go away. Never does seem to, not with the chain around her neck, grazed across her skin.

“She smells like Wednesday.”

Throughout your body, you squirm unease.

It’s difficult to tell if it’s from the arm around Divina, or knowing that they all are very aware now — about how you’ve stolen Enid, right under Ajax’s nose.

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scare was sure I heard you —” here I opened wide the door;

The room is silent. The mask grows warm against your skin, because Yoko runs colder than you, and you’ve just plunged into hot waters. There is no getting out now. To do that is to throw every effort of yours away, ditch Divina’s, spit on Yoko’s.

Everyone is nervous. Ajax best of all, for he’s utterly horrified.

“What do you mean she smells like her?”

As he shrugs, limply, Divina drapes her arm across your naval. You can’t help the jolt. You’re pressed against the wall. This violent urgency, it beckons to snap at her, without regard to what you’ve committed yourself to.

“I’m not copping a feel. Yoko said you’ve been planning.”

You hear her voice; she knows what tension writhes beneath your skin. It’s swallowed down. You think of being stuck between a literal rock and hard place.

It makes this easier. Barely so, but enough. A cold rock, a frigid place, does well to calm as you lean against the wall. Has you sunken from this gathering. Has you taut by her touch alone. A nagging realization stings, however. It gnaws down your back:

Scales are still warm-blooded.

You are sweltering. There’s another swallow, before you, murmured, ask Divina,

“How inebriated did you get him…?”

“Ajax? What are you talking about?”

“Very… Everyone else too, but Ajax has a lot going through his system.”

You take to wine. It smells of blood and fruit. This one has its way of clawing your throat. You appreciate Yoko’s taste.

The glass is drained until there’s a few swigs left.

“She just does. I was always the third-wheel.”

Ajax looks around again — breaks from the wall. His eyes pass over you. They don’t stall. You’ve gone unnoticed.

“That— That’s why I’m scared, guys. Because Wednesday’s gonna do something cuz I’m finally out of the way. A-And you all saw her arm… She’s f*cking pissed a-and you know she is!” (Weakly, because this is true,) “So … please?”

Silence again.

Then, the statue groans through the walls, down the stairs.

Darkness there, and nothing more.

The three who linger on those steps go rigid, before Ajax darts around Kent and flees for the entry. Xavier and Kent are obliged to follow, leaving you, and Divina, and Bianca to wait.

“There goes Yoko…”

Bianca gnaws idly on her rye chip, before her sharp eyes slip to you. This is your test in evasion. Out of them all, this siren has enough sense intoxicated than a sober psychic, gorgon, and fellow siren would have collectively.

You shift against Divina. Your repulsion flares, then claws into your skin the moment she trails down your belt by fingertip alone. You want to recoil.

Instead, you impale yourself upon your repulsion further; you whisper,

“Just giggle.”

She does. It comes to you as more of a snicker than anything, and it’s another scrap you learn about her: Divina is … far more deceptive than you gave her credit.

Then again, the refinement she demands across her uniform, and hair, and manner, has always spoken to the same. You just never cared to pay attention.

Bianca’s face crinkles.

“If you’re done up there, you can come back before these two start getting frisky on me!”

She doesn’t suspect you.

Because in no world of hers would you be … touchy.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”

One by one, they slink back down.

There is panic in their wide eyes.

Merely this, and nothing more.

Kent sits atop the final step. Xavier lingers beside him, against the rail.

And Ajax simply flops across the mattress. He stares into the ceiling. Through it, if anything, for the chance he’d witness your shadow. He doesn’t, of course. The waft blurs his sensibility to this delusion. And the room settles within it.

Unnervingly.

The mere thought of you — with a scheme in your eyes and the itch to enact —, it does this to people. Has them wait like there’s a storm to pass.

How enlightening. And an awful thing to deflower your ego.

To consummate the occasion, you find the bottle nearby your hand, uncork it, before you drain the last of it to the glass. You snag the label, however.

LA TORRE (DEl SANGUE)

A frown builds. The glass languidly tosses the alcohol by your palm’s dictation.

THE (BLOOD) TOWER

The design isn’t particularly imaginative as it is a comfortable aesthetic to the eye:

An inversion of the Rider-Waite card in color. At least, in a vague sense. Because the lines are red. The shadows blotch maroon. Grey is somber to your world, has the tower alight. The yellow strikes you.

“It’s her favorite…” (Divina murmurs, to explain,) “Left it for you.”

“As a gift or a threat?”

Divina co*cks her head. You wonder if she knows what this card entails. What it means to an Addams, for your family knows what wisdoms to seek refuge.

She doesn’t comment. You decide she knows enough to keep her lips sewn.

The wine swirls in your hand.

And you drink. You did so blindly before, ergo, you might as well. Gift or threat, it does, still, swallow like a barbed wire.

“Look, dude, she’s … crazy.” (Your eyes char for the stairs. Cut into Xavier.) “I’m not gonna say the girl is the worst, but you dodged—” (He doesn’t notice you. Naturally.)

“Xavier, would you stop?!” (The gorgon chars just as well.) “She’s not f*cking crazy. I don’t care if you’re trying to make me feel better, it’s not helping! You don’t get it! She’s trying to do better, and it just slips—”

From beside you, the siren grows restless. She teems the same repulse which froths from you.

“Bro! She swiped at you! What do you mean she’s not—?!”

“Quit talking about her like you have any idea!” (That repulse found her tongue.) “She’s an Alpha off suppressants!”

“So why isn’t she on them?”

These words alone belt the Nightshades like no other.

As though … a pride realized the buck amongst them, and you know there are two that would make for damning lionesses. He doesn’t react, however. Doesn’t acknowledge — is too far gone to. So the room stagnates. Eyes him. Deliberates.

Convenes, through the gorgon:

“It’s like Adderall, dude, but jacked up to ten because she’s an Alpha. She was on them for most of her life. I’m not gonna call her f*cking crazy or a bullet dodged because her emotions are still shot!” (Ajax fumes his blunt.) “Keep her out of your f*cking mouth. I’m done.”

His hands flex. He scrounges for something. The words, perhaps. Ones that would reach a slurring mind.

“My priority is Wednesday. Because Enid is my ex, and—” (He chokes. A panicked mind does no better.) “I— Yeah.”

“And all I’m saying—”

(Divina again:) “Xavier…”

“I’m just saying, Enid’s your only problem now. Wednesday isn’t really going to do anything.”

Bianca moves from her platter. Those scaled eyes of hers, they are muddled by alcohol. It brings flavor to her bite:

“How do you know this?!”

“I’ve known her since we were kids!”

You arch a brow.

“Known of her. You brought her up once when we were dating, and it was about how she’s insane and trying to kill people at camp!”

“You’re just jealous that I still thought of her while—!”

“YOU TWO SHUT UP!” (As much as he will be stone within a mere few hours — a mere hour, if you are as lucky as you hope —, you feel indebted to Ajax.) “Oh my god. I wish she was here so you’d shut the f*ck up!”

Divina chuckles. You feel it reverberate across yourself.

It’s awfully sharklike.

“And what’s with the protecting her now anyway, Xavier?! Just because you’ve always had a problem with Enid doesn’t mean you don’t know Wednesday wants to do me in!”

“We’ve talked! I’m just saying, she’s better about that now.”

No you haven’t. You’ve kept bee wax in your ears.

Quite literally. Him talking at you was an amusing visual for the first day. By the second, a smeared, droning peripheral.

So you laugh. Of course you do.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore —
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;”

And it is a laugh joined by Divina, who knows the joke beyond the mere, walking punchline in all his glory.

“Willing to bet on that?”

It does you in — the both of you. Bianca snaps her eyes. Catches your smile as it submerges. And she stares. Her body goes rigid, and scales gleam down her neck — frill, almost, to the sight of you.

Divina is her stricken mirror. She leans close to you. Antagonizes the limbs, the skin, gooseflesh, to your body.

“…sh*t. Yoko, Bianca knows…”

Her mouth just danced the vampire rather than your name. Her eyes dug straight to you.

How deceptive… Divina may be a useful pawn, a good acquaintance, should the time come.

“She isn’t going to get in my way…”

The room has found its place in dead silence for another time. You feed off the glass. Your eyes do not leave Bianca, who has decided keep to herself, far from the argument at hand. She finds comfort in her platter. Keeps a likewise glare on you.

“Speaking of…, what will you do when you all leave him behind…?”

Ajax fidgets for a flame. His lighter grieves him over it, and refuses to serve tremored hands.

Divina shifts an arm. A watch glints within the fire’s light.

“She’s … waiting over the statue…”

…too close. She is still too close to you. And you know the space she gives. Tries to give. You know what these hands, and her arms — her body, for the matter — have grown accustomed to. You’ve seen the way she trails the vampire’s neck. She wanders down naval, from time to time.

They do not move across you. There is no trail, nothing to wander.

And it is not enough. You are a minute shy from drawing your knife.

Divina may hear the cogs to this blooming urge. She swelters you. Keeps you in a drought. Starves you of boundary. So she shifts again. Breaks some of the contact. Plays it off as a need to check her nails, then her robe.

It gives you the space to resume, and to mind Bianca. She is staring again. Mouths,

How the f*ck, Wednesday…?!

You respond by middle finger. Divina does the same.

“‘Tis the wind and nothing more!”

It does not take long thereafter for the Nightshades to acknowledge the soured night. Kent stumbles, and slaps a comforting hand. His lips bumble what is meant to be a consoling thought. There is none that know the language.

He is, for better or worse, the one to embark before everyone else. The fire is doused in haste, before Xavier is Kent’s close-second, to ensure there isn’t a self-battery down the stairs. Ajax meanders with them.

Bianca stays, until Divina herds her by nod alone.

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door —
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door —

You do not cross the last step. Divina keeps her back to you, aside for one, lingered eye.

There is no waiting for the stone poet. You dart across the tile, lunge for your intended ledge, and you find your place: embedded against the wall, behind a marble bust. Your slight stature serves you now. You are this carved woman’s shadow. Her face is wide and aghast. Beautiful, really. Heinously so.

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Ajax roams back down the stairs, and his eyes bug for every shadow, then every rare dash of light. Her stares down each painting. Glares at which mirrors adorn the bookshelves.

He grimaces. His hands, they are tightly wrung to either wrist.

You know precisely what fear scorches him now:

The dark. You’ve stalked him long enough, from time to time, to know how it bites at his nerve.

So Ajax lurches for his bag. Pries out from beneath his laundry a light, devised for a socket. Not a few moments later, he yelps as an old outlet sparks, and the room is bathed in green. A soft shade, reminiscent of moss.

It does enough to quell him.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore —
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

He does, however, still pace.

“Just you and me, huh guys…?”

Not quite. But, you shall allow this fantasy to chafe the time away.

Ajax soothes the height of his beanie. Shakes his head.

“I’m sorry. I have to sleep with this on again.” (A frown. You hear their sharp breaths.) “No. I can’t take these mirrors down. I’d probably break them. And who knows if they’re cursed?”

More of them now. They’re restless.

The snakes on his head are quite demanding on any good day. Tonight, they prove to be taxing.

“Alex, no you don’t. I’m not taking any chances.” (He slaps a hand over its brim.) “Get— Now get back under the beanie…!”

He struggles for far too long. Ajax flinches twice. You suspect a defiant fang or two. Yet, he does know how to soothe. He knows where to comb his fingers and settle them.

They do quiet, for the time being. You’ve come to know how … mouthy they are. And opinionated.

Told him that he had a chance. That he should seek it. Or that you would share. Or that this was simply a convoluted ploy of Enid’s — in way to spark envy, have a Stoner bloom green.

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

Ajax, being the only sensible head on his shoulders, knows the truth. He knows Enid. He … has summarized your intentions well.

As of now, he glances across the room. With the light to ease him, he mutters a swift,

“So f*cking creepy…” (He eyes the skull across the floor. The Nightshade emblem.) “And cool.”

His musings have him scuff tile, across the emblem’s hollow eyes, then a few petals.

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning — little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door —
Bird or beast upon sculptured bust above his chamber door,

He paces… And he paces…

His eyes stray to catch you. Ajax has not shaken his wise inkling.

With such a name as “Nevermore.”

You remain to be a mere shadow.

Ajax drags a blanket across the floor, and he tosses it across the mattress. He flops over. Leans into his hand. Agitation bests him, however. He seldom ever stays still for long. This, however, is the tell of someone a scare away from soaring back up the stairs and past Poe. You have to wait. You have to let this take its toll.

He meanders around the room, muttering to himself — his snakes:

“…yes, Xavier’s still a friend. We’re just fighting right now, that’s all. He’s just weird with girls, okay! I— I know I didn’t do this when he was with Bianca…”

From where you’re propped, you manage to snag a stray glance of his face. His eyes dart as he listens to them. Whether it be he understands their forked tongues, or that there is a shared conscious, you don’t know.

Only that he remains nervous. He’s wracked by whatever the snakes rumor. Contemplation does linger, however.

“Yeah, he was doing the same sh*t, but like… Bianca kinda liked it? Or, like… Uh. Let him… I-I guess… And Enid was our first. Of course I didn’t know better before that.”

For the better part of this past week, you’ve gotten to know … too many things about him.

He does this often. Talk to them. Everything on his mind, it’s spoken aloud. The smoking makes it worse. Proved itself to be a crutch for Ajax.

An annoyance to you.

And yet though you hardly appreciate the way marijuana mulls every sense of sanity you have left — there are better ways to claim a high —, you will give Ajax credit where it’s due: wherever he gets his, it is of quality. It’s strong. Enough to have almost knocked you from his skylight with a dopey grin from the second-hand alone.

Explaining those couple nights away upon your return to the dorm were … interesting developments in parsing through both English and Español at once. Then German, the more Enid pried.

“No, I don’t want him with Wednesday. I-I’m kinda scared about her with Enid, honestly… But Enid knows how to handle her, and Wednesday knows what to do with Enid. So. Yeah.”

You want none of it tonight.

Not for what you intend.

“That’s all. And I’m not budging on that. So no, we’re not… No.”

The need to have his agony fester has run itself dry. Bearing witness to much of Ajax’s … wisdom, and how it is derivative of his little minds that know nothing but the felt of his hats — that has been an amusing thought. It has soured now, however. For what you intend. To a lurking, quiet despair as well.

Because the thought of having your frayed mind speak to you, aloud…

(Now, Wednesday…)

It is quite distressing.

(That was just a cruel thing to think.)

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered — not a feather then he fluttered —
Till a scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown before —
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”

You grab for cloak’s pocket, and you hold a bottle. It’s wrapped by rag.

Ajax shuffles in his bed. You hear his bag before its zipper, and he’s clawing through it. Whatever he intends, it won’t be fulfilled. Not tonight.

You pull the cork to the amber bottle, rag balled in your palm. The neck sighs once it’s done, and from the bottle, a frigid ire swells to your nose. It’s strong. You won’t need much of this… Of this chl— Chlorof-form—?!

Now is not the time for this.

Your body spites you, however. You feel—

(What, Wednesday…?)

You swallow down a whimper. You press yourself away from the bottle.

Pressure builds behind your eyes. Vision, now… It’s— It. Mal— Malevolent.

Oh. No… N-No. Not tonight. Not now.

(You don’t want to know your frayed mind?)

This is trudging through a razorbladed landslide. No matter what you do, where you turn, how you try, your psyche leaves, your very mind lacerates.

(When it speaks to you?

(When she reviles you?)

The cork drops. Your ears strain for Ajax, only to find that— That he breaks away from his bed. Pacing again.

His snakes writhe. You hear them.

(You are cruel to her…)

Against your ear, their scales are demonstrable. You feel them graze. A cold. There is a cold.

(Your fault.)

The world tilts.

You grapple onto the bust’s shoulder. She does not lean. She is sturdy for you.

It is tonight’s last breath of mercy, this bust of Maniae, because it is all you are deserved. Woeful is your nature. Adolescence has bloomed to you a Seer’s morbid desolation.

(When will you be free of this? Of your prophetic gift?!)

You go rigid in the arm, violent in the hand. Eyes roll to moon. Bones splinter in hysteric’s name, and your skeleton whole ruptures. Muscle is fraught. Nerves scream all for naught.

And your skin.

It breaks free.

(You know the answer. Of course you do.)

Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”

You succumb. To your very mind, to the blaring moonlight, you succumb far, then farther. The way your nails charr into the stone bust is your only anchor for lucidity.

There is a howl. It’s more like a scream, through this woodland.

Sounds like home, past the manor gates. Strikes you. Lashes you. Marigold.

And there’s a thundering. Dirt sprays into your eyes, and it billows. Claw marks, reaped into the ground. Snakes are writhing, bare their fangs. Tangling in one ear, hissing in the other. They smell it. Through the cotton you’ve dawned, they smell a body, because there is one.

There’s a body.

Flesh lathers the night air where a musk rot clings. Smells like butcher.

A glitch within mentality. Fissures in psyche.

It speaks to you now.

(You blame her for everything…)

Condemns you.

(But she didn’t kill him.)

You raise a hand from the ground. Lightheaded. Snakes writhing. And yet, you have enough of yourself to … call for her. Question through whimper.

The hand is large. Angular as well.

His voice is deep from your chest. It is tight on the throat.

(She didn’t kill that boy.)

All there is to see is her corpse. Her hair is disheveled. Limbs mangled, skin flayed.

She wears her uniform— Wore. She wore her uniform, and it is as flayed as her skin. The midnight blue is a tattered mass amid the meat of this corpse.

A heart throbs behind your ears and thrashes in your mouth. You can’t stomach the sight of it. The snakes are a burdened nest, and they begin to scathe where cotton sits across your brow.

Because it isn’t the hair, her limbs, nor the skin flayed that damns you a cold spire.

(Same way she won’t be the one to kill her…)

It’s her face.

Her hollow sockets where there should be ocean blue. Her mouth is dark. A deep cavern splits from socket to empty mouth.

(Enid will die.

(She will die.)

No breath fogs from her.

Her warmth to the world is barren. She will die in Nevermore uniform.

Enid lies as a desecrated husk.

(Snow will fall. Her corpse will stain it.)

You— Y-You’ve done this to her…

Face like the Devil, eyes as lit oil.

To ravage the life of her — that blood wine.

(She will die.)

The moon hallows in murder’s song. It plucks your body by its strings, only you sway. Stumble, with eyes set on the lake of wine. Ground’s too cold. Has yet to swallow the fruits of what remains.

(Your fault. It will always be you.)

Discarded… She— She’s been discarded.

(You, Wednesday. No one else.)

You stagger away.

The snakes upon your head whisper. Their forked tongues scrape for skin. They twine to try and warm you. Trees blur. You trip. Fear it’s over bone, only to have it be your mere shadow. You fall anyway.

Stop it… I won’t.

Not with her. Stop it.

You whimper. His voice is a broken song.

(Stop…?)

Try to swallow. You choke. It doesn’t stop.

The sight of her… The sight of her.

It tacks to your mind. Refuses your plea for it to leave, to drain away. Let you collapse again. Forget it all.

(Stop?)

Y-You’re—

You’re peeling from his body.

Ajax weeps into the ground. He traps the beanie by his hands. Curls, curling, curling furthermore.

Rot still plagues the night air. Shadows surround him. Hands reach.

(Say you’re sorry.)

There is a body.

And it’s her.

(Apologize.)

The world capsizes. It warps the ground, the night, until there is only moon.

A howl screams marigold.

It splits lively. Shards through their ears. The shadows, Ajax — they flinch to absolute obscurity.

(Apologize to her.)

What is it … that you’ll commit?

For what— For what reason of your hollow?

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore —
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore”

You plummet back into your body. In your bones, you feel the sharp impact.

(Apologize.)

Coherence runs a labyrinth to place where you are.

Behind the bust. Down a stairwell. Poe stands above you. And yet, you merely dwell within your body. Your eyes roll. Limp now. As swathed shadow.

(You’re the one who did this.

(Don’t act like you didn’t fray us apart yourself.)

There’s still the swamp of gore in your nose. You’ve a mouthful of flesh and iron.

(And don’t act like mating her isn’t your goodbye.)

Sorry— So-rry…

(Better. Apologize better.)

The bottle slacks with your brassbound grip. Its amber neck grazes the wall. The rag trails moonlight.

(You already did it once. You will do it again.)

A woman screams, in the distance.

And you are with eyes lolled to the back of your head.

(Listen to her scream. Listen to his mother scream murder.)

There is no marigold here. She keens the color of his glasses, and she howls the final drab of his eyes.

No. N-No.

Chloroform scathes where a hand — the hand — cloaks your mouth.

A grieving downpour. Pine rages arson.

Amidst it all, however.

Sweet decay.

(Esther will do the same. She will.)

This is your scent. It blisters off your skin. You blot the bust by her marble.

Because the thought of Esther… The thought of another mother’s keen…

She’d trade his dark pine for ocean. His glasses for the color she paints her body.

It still haunts you so.

(Enid will die.

(She will die.)

Devastates everything to your very soul.

(Enid will die to Wednesday. Only you.)

Your oil eyes quiver. You sear them across the room.

No. I’m sorry.

Stop it.

Ajax. He’s pacing. Stretches his back. Yawns.

There’s… There’s iron teeth. They glint at you like beartrap.

(No, not like that.)

You try to move.

Whether for him to catch you, or to shy deeper within shadow. You don’t know.

Doesn’t matter. Your body fails you. You’re locked in place. Trapped here.

(She wants you to grovel.)

You want a-a noose.

(Maybe it will be your knife. Or … just your primitive hands.)

Maybe then you will find relieve to this, where your mind is quiet, it doesn’t hound you, and you’ve … returned to hollow’s embrace. A static mind. Without this agony.

I will … leave you be…

(Filthy f*cking coward.)

“Of ‘never-nevermore.’”

You peel your hand from the statue bust. Velvet. Deep in saturation, you’ve left a print behind. You’ve painted her at the shoulder.

Rivers flow.

There’s seepage now, on your tongue as you draw weak breaths. Your nose pounds. Your eyes scavenge across all of what you’ve stained. Your other hand. Chloroform’s label. The rag. You don’t dare look down your shirt. All it takes is a glance at your buckle, and the feel of your collar wet to your skin.

You know. You— You do. It’s bad.

And your head is heavy, yet it lags against the nook as though it weighs nothing at all.

“That thing whimpers too…?”

Your eyes seize for him. They clip Ajax by his shoulder.

He lingers. Stares into the bust. Doesn’t realize Raven shadow.

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore —
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore

Hollow runs cold across your skin. Your sleeves prick. The mask, however, is a cold breath for no longer, not a comfort. It chars you instead. And the world rocks. Your psyche has failed you. Mind’s gone astray, and all you can do is cling to its threadbare hide. Staple it back together. Tie it all by your everlasting collection of loose ends.

It’s—

I-It’s so hard to breathe.

Swallow anymore air, and you’ll pop your lungs by ribcage talons. You grip the bottle until white sears the back of your hand. Your knuckles threaten to split. The amber glass is unyielding.

There’s a haze. It fumes around you. Then you realize. So you flinch your head from blunt waft. The smoke lures your mind farther. Deeper in woodland. There’s gore in your nose. Warm. The gore is steaming within frostbitten air…

A tear of blood finds your arm. It follows down the furrows left behind, the scars that have not healed.

And your eyes carve when they path.

Meant in croaking, “Nevermore.”

The stick in his mouth burns a yellow. You don’t blink.

White veils Ajax. It blares from his hand. The colors are seizing from his phone. You can barely pick them apart. They’re a wash to you.

Until you realize blonde. Ocean blue eyes.

His face.

Then … the living shadow behind them.

“You were always there, weren’t you…?”

Chloroform laces the blood in your nose.

You’re broiling. Hollow festers.

If only … you could shed it, so your mind should sew, and your psyche would wreak a fire’s havoc across your skin. Except your head swims a blearing haze. Your body throbs a dismal weight. Like stone. You feel as stone.

If only…, Wednesday.

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,

You have been their relationship’s shadow. With rot as your scent, and it found Enid. Despite everything, you claimed her, and you didn’t realize.

Now you crave her. There’s an urgency, for her corpse will be laid in her uniform.

There is no time. It does not favor you.

Ajax has kept you from her long enough.

She shall press, ah, nevermore!

He tosses the phone miserably. It lands with the same sentiment, across the bed. He soothes his face. The snakes murmur, though you know an eye is peering for a reflection. The mirrors scattered among the shelves loom over him. Taunting, almost.

“No, I’m not going online to ask about what to do… Abby, please, stop itching that spot, I’m going to have to get the ointment out again.” (Ajax audibly scowls.) “Abby— You too, Aaron. Stop it.”

His voice has degraded to a soft hurt.

It isn’t as though you’ve allowed him the time to mourn.

(Cruel of you.)

Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer,
Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretched,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee — by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite — respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”

He's rambling through the relationship again. You’re lagging, head’s panging. The stone you rest those pangs against is cold enough. Until your bask … swelters wherever you graze.

You cannot explain.

“No, the fudge wasn’t the problem. She knows that I accidentally gave her Xavi—” (He stops. He’s snagged himself on a thorn.) “Oh… Wait, she probably doesn’t.”

The chivalry you devoured … was meant for a friend of his. Not Enid.

“God… So stupid…!”

You scathe to agree. You taste the salt. It burns where it leaks to your mouth — a wound with vacant lesion —, and it pares down your skin. Twines the velvet. Brings out the red when you hear a patter down blood-soaked collar.

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

How a gorgon such has he kept her from you…

The past week of nothing but your stewings, marred skin, then his babblings to those snakes. It serrates you.

“It wasn’t even really the skinny-dip. Kinda.” (He stops short of the mattress.) “She gets jealous, but… Y-Yeah. I know.” (Flops himself back to bedspread.) “…f*ck.”

Vision is a vile poison on the mind, but he…? He is. An astounding spit of— Of e-everything … you are not.

He just has his crimes to answer to. And he will.

Tonight.

With your atrocities held in shadow.

(For you crave to feed your lustful nature.)

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil! —
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted —
On this home by Horror haunted — tell me truly, I implore —
Is there — Is there balm in Gilead? — tell me — tell me, I implore!”

(Thing of evil, you lust for blood only.)

You are collected. Your verve is sutured together by the twine of psyche. So you lurk behind Maniae. Your eyes, through the mask, glare through the dark.

“Okay, but… I don’t know. You think she’s ever been really interested in men…?”

He sits, with his arms wrapped together, legs folded. Ajax waits for a moment. He allows his hair to stir.

“I-I guess so…” (Muffled, now, into his arm.) “But lesbians have like strap-ons and stuff. And she has her own thing, so. I don’t know.”

Those snakes are a blight to your ears.

“Well, that’s what she said— And stop asking. We’re not getting back together. She made it clear we really aren’t.”

Because the snakes are still urging.

Fruitless, however.

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

Their venture to sway Ajax is a fruitless one. They dwell beneath fabric. It is all they know.

“We’re not. And— A-And it’s fine.”

Ajax knows better. Of course he does.

And they quiet, for a moment.

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us — by that God we both adore —
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore —
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”

One slivers out, from the beanie’s hem to the fresh wafted air. He doesn’t notice.

It sways its head, before its dark eyes find you. And you stricken. Press yourself against the wall as your body pricks unease. You run cold naturally. Between bask and hollow, your body cannot decide whether you are scalding, or you are as brisk as ever. But you go frigid now. This one strand of his hair, however, is not enough to claim you. So you glare at it, through the mask, the more it flicks its tongue.

Sees you.

Smells the blood from your nose, draining.

The snake worms back beneath the cotton, and you grasp at the bottle. The hissing is low. The bottle refuses to take to your grip.

“You’re right, Andy… She really has always been there, huh?”

You strangle the cloth around the bottle’s amber neck. You grate your teeth, then flex your jaw. Try to.

The thing — Andy, because why wouldn’t it be?! — managed to lock your mandible. No wonder Ajax falls victim to it — there’s a damn proclivity.

Past the bust, more writhing. They tussle now, beneath his cloth.

You do not have time. This is it. There are no chances left.

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

Several peer now. You duck your head and practically dive your body. There are enough to not stone, but paralyze. In many respects, a far merciless fate. Water — pure — heals stone. Nothing would heal this. So you wrangle the bottle open, ignore where chloroform dilutes Addams velvet, and it muffles into the handkerchief. Bleeds its own, deep against your palm.

The world splits to your eyes. You knock your head, numbly, down the bust’s shoulder to ease it together, stitch yourself back. It doesn’t. You can’t.

But you hear the snakes take cover.

(You smell her body.)

“Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend,” I shrieked, upstarting —
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! — quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”

(The moon now…)

You’ve aggravated them. Because they remember you. They do not dare disobey Ajax, should you have a trick up your sleeve.

There is one. (The moon ignites the room. You see everything.) But the trick is not what they fear. This chloroform, it is for Ajax. Not them. There is nothing. Aside from what mirrors have adorned this place for years beyond your own, there is nothing.

They could very well stone you.

But they hiss for him to reach for his phone. And Ajax does. Tentatively so.

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

He is swift with his technology. The screen blares, and he slides over to the camera.

You do not give him the chance to catch you, nor to stone himself.

The moment the camera focuses on the bust’s shadow, you lunge.

(A howl is screaming in your ears.)

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light of o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Ajax yelps into the chloroform, tries to thrash against you.

To no avail. His phone rockets across tile. His snakes feebly wriggle beneath his garb. The gorgon himself lasts longer, enough to claw a nail deep in your wrist, and to tangle a leg amongst his bedding.

Then he rests. You pull away the handkerchief.

Shall be lifted — nevermore!

You stand, and you boot his knee. There is nothing. (Your feeble mind writhes.) His blunt is a dismal glow at the foot of his bag. You stamp it down. The phone’s blinding light blinks away, some arm’s length behind.

Well then.

A hand graces the marble woman’s chin. You then take both, and you snap her head.

(Her flesh feels cold. The blood is divine.)

You step back. There’s a dark tile, popped from a nightshade petal. So you stamp it down.

And you wait…

The floor’s heartbeat has been awakened. It thuds beneath. Throbs through your soles. Before the bust snaps her head back, and her nook sinks further into the wall. The heartbeat batters now, behind your ears. Two steps at a time. They fall to this rhythm.

Before the final pair — the last heartbeat.

(She will die.)

You grapple Ajax by his armpits. Agency burns adrenaline, gives you the strength.

You drag him into the dark. Not a moment later, the bust returns, leaves his haven empty, and the stairs rise a mere spell thereafter.

(Enid will die to you.)

The gorgon has succumbed. And you, as the Raven in these walls, will crack his skin to the likes of gravestone.

| i |

| (she drags) |

There is only iron to your nose.

Velvet streams down over your mouth as dry-bed rivers.

You do not bleed. Not for the moment, no.

In your mind’s eye, you are walking deep within shadow. As your head rests in wait from where you stand, and there’s the stone against your raven hair, the paths come to you. A maze. The intersections are twisting knots until they’re the paths, scrawling every which way. There’s dirt and grime beneath you. How much of it is bone, you do not know. It’s awfully grey, however. That you’ve captured to memory.

Had your nose not mistaken itself as a fountain, there would be the dirt…, the grime…, and bone. They come together like a dry, arid grave, up until the scrawling paths corrode, and there’s siren water. Plumbing as well. By then, it’s a marsh.

You listen to a few candles. There’s only so many around you now, and they burn a cider, both in color and taste. Pricks down your throat. The least abrasive to your eyes, which is a blessing to this waned psyche.

It was the best the store had to offer. Down in Jericho. You swore you’d break out into hives from it all.

By your fingertips, you drag down your beltline. You are shed of the cloak and mask. There’s some instruments that you’ve secured for yourself. In the moment, you toy with one. Sinch down its antenna.

“What the f*ck…?!” (His whisper snaps you aware.) “This place has mass graves too…?!” (You hilt your jaw for the corner you stand beside.)

The radio is tight in your grasp. You thumb over a button. It is echoed by static. From the right, the left, behind you, forward…

“Don’t be so panicked. You’ve done this before.”

Your voice is a blearing crackle past these walls. It snags down the paths, and wriggles through bone.

Because you are within Nevermore’s catacomb.

Dolls sit within these graves. They are your own. And you sacrificed them for this. You marred them open, stashed your radios, and sewed them, glued them, mangled them back together.

Most are bisque — some Parian. Others, of wood, or felt, wax, china. There’s bizarre amalgamations.

They are all the eternal survivors of your guillotine. Dolls from your early years, where you’d yet to perfect the craft. And they know. They’ve watched their sisters and brothers drop their heads. Lost the hope, eventually, that there’d ever be another addition to their stagnant pile.

Your dolls are lively here.

And to realize that this impulsion of yours, to invite the very pursuit you prepped out of caution — for just in case he slipped from bindings…

It has them rattle anxiety — excitement —, no matter where they sit. They bloom a tremor in his words:

“The f-f*ck I have?! Since when would I have looked at all these— Oh … my god, why does she—?”

“Do not bastardize my ancestor.”

There is one body free in isolation. She was never built into the wall. Never buried.

Because she is Nevermore’s lone sentinel. It is her curse. It is legacy.

“Yes, Ajax, that is Goody Addams. Your society’s matriarch.”

One week is what you’ve granted yourself for this. You followed him by the hour. You schemed through the nights. Slept at your desk. Ate whatever flesh was prepared. Words twisted, kept themselves rattled to your mind, and only slipped for Enid.

Throughout it all, this.

“Why the f*ck is she here?!”

“Who is going to look beneath an academy to pillage a corpse? The one that keeps them content…?”

You followed him with your fingers counting your steps. Those nights schemed were where you paced down here — eyes closed, without candlelight. When you slept, it was over a map drawn from memory; the nightmares were not but you walking, and stalking, and sprinting these paths. You ate flesh to build your energy. The words kept to yourself, they were instructions.

Left. Left. Right. Left.

Stairs.

Left. Right. Right. Right. Left…

You counted your steps. Mulled over what your gait is in walk versus stampede.

Your words for her… Cutthroat. Busied.

An exception.

“She does roam, however, so don’t touch where she sits, nor the rest of those pillars. If you think my temper is cruel, I’ll have you know it pales to Goody’s irony.”

Your words crawl to him now. They fall from you. There isn’t… There’s no clarity. Only hollow. You weigh into the earth more than you do.

“O-Okay…” (Curious.) “…oh. O-Oh my god.” (How his voice manages to anchor you to reality.) “Sh-She wasn’t l-looking at me before…” (To where you are, what you’ve done.) “W-Wednesday, what the f*ck. I’m still high. Why the f*ck would you—? S-Stop staring at me! Please, m-ma’am!” (And to what you intend to commit.)

You inhale. Deeply. Ajax is just around the corner.

With her. To think her face was what he woke to, and is the first to watch him here. A spectacle to your ear.

“Um. U-Uh… Nice. N-Nice … dress, m-madam…?”

“That’s necrophilic of you, Ajax.”

“Wh—?!”

You hear neck snap, and her skull swivel. The wall squirms from behind.

“Wh-What the f*ck…?!”

It is said that Goody never died.

She hexed herself. To perpetually roam. To have her spiteful soul be the only thing driving the life of her bones.

Goody Addams worshipped the undead’s mortality. Much of her word has been … eased from the family. Tucked away in a dark, shrouded corner. Her worship went too far. She had no lover savior. Instead chose an obscure impermanence.

“Also why’s she blonde?”

…and she’s blonde.

“Runs in the family, and do not lead yourself astray, you don’t know the rules yet.”

Dirt, grime, bone — the grey beneath your heels cease. Ajax halts in place. Freezes in stance, mid-stride.

“There’s rul—?” (A stark detail dawns on him.) “Um.” (You hear Ajax palm his face, then his hair.) “Wh-Where’s my beanie?!”

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“That would be your prize.”

Snakes buzz in a peculiar way. Different from bees. More like shifting sands, wherever their scales cross one another.

“This is a game, Ajax. In celebration for this … final stint of ours.” (Your tongue clicks.) “You have two options. Find and stone me. Or, you find the exit. The beanie is just outside that.

“Your pick.”

You know the face he wears: frowned, eyes wide, both cheeks gnawed. Because it’s the face of a gorgon concentrating. Ajax shrugs through logic wherever his stoned intellect permits him.

It speaks to his paranoia, how swiftly he answers you:

“You say that like stoning you is smart. But I know it f*cking isn’t.”

“No, it is not.”

A pause. Your nail carves into the radio’s grip.

“U-Um…”

Ajax shuffles. His toe prods, and it’s followed by a scuff across a skull.

“What’re these swords for…?”

“Either of us.”

Steel rakes down steel, draws a line in the ground. Sounds like the … hunting sword, rather than the saber. Perhaps he noticed the fault down the one blade. A slight blemish to the ignorant. Devastating in its humiliation should it be swung.

And he knows better. So he chose wisely.

You give him the chance to pad away, which he takes. Ajax meanders down a path. Tries to be as silent as he can. He refuses to gamble and gift to you a chance of your own, and dupe him this early.

A sigh. You raise the radio.

“Ajax, that is not the right way…”

He stills.

Your jaw rocks as you wait. It isn’t for long. Ajax decides to flee. He’s sprinting down another path.

A sore mistake.

“sh*t!”

You’ve tied a few or dozen ropes, ankle-high. For the thrill of it.

You embark towards where he knocked his face into the dirt. The impact told to you that he felt stone more than he did powder. And you know where that is. You know where scrambles to his feet.

“Y-You know, there’s only so many times a night I can get knocked out from that stuff!”

Veering now, to the right. You put away the radio. Clear your voice.

“That isn’t my intention.”

“Oh…”

Just past the wall. Ajax doesn’t run. He fumbles, still, with the sword in his hands.

“Mom said to keep away from humans with scents like yours, you know. Scents that fester.”

A thought. Has you intrigued.

He ambles down his path. Doesn’t know where these convene again. Every few strides, the gorgon staggers, and you hesitate when he twists around. Unfortunately for him, he can’t find you. His snakes shift, however. They may smell you through this thin border.

“My humanity can be put into question.”

“I know. That’s the warning. There’s always outcasts people stay away from for a reason. Like you.”

How perplexing of his character. Not many know to watch for natures like yours. You bathe in obscurity. And Ajax has known that. Since the beginning, perhaps. Told not from your manner, nor your dress. But from your scent, the very same which dawns Enid now.

You may wear it differently. Less like the comfort on Enid. More like a hidden blade.

His snakes may have whispered to him the same.

It explains why he’s always been cautious, at least, yet amicable.

…and come to think of it, he is the only one who never confused yours with Enid. You cannot hide, think yourself invisible, with him. Not when the gorgon knows when to smile, or when to strafe, as a greeting — should his company come from behind, around the corner.

Ajax walks again. Back. To whence you both began this exchange. Only for a few strides. Forward again.

He’s realized the parallel paths.

How … adaptive of him.

“S-So why— Why’s it doing that now?” (You gnaw bottom lip.) “Y-Your scent— Why’s it … fl-flaring like that then?!” (Taste velvet matte.)

You don’t answer. The paths are drawing to an end.

“Wednesd—?!”

Ajax flinches his sword. Strangles a breath before its blade clips the dirt, cleaves air, and trembles at your neck.

Stagnancy.

Your hands come together as the perfect mirror. They’re posed before you in a mock sort of steeple, for you are unarmed.

“Howdy, Ajax.”

The steeple breaks. By the back of your hand, you nudge the blade aside. He panics. Drops the thing.

“H-How are you doing all this blind?!”

Black linen clothes your eyes. It is as tight as your braids. And where it ties, either end flag down to your neck.

The fold smells of cigar — Father’s. He is not with you now. Not his person, nor the scent.

Because there is only iron. And it suffocates you from the smoke lingered to the blindfold. You are, indeed, terribly blind.

It is enough to bring memory to you, however. A kind one.

“Father realized I would take after his stature early on. And I am, of course, his only daughter.” (Your mouth’s cavern twitches.) “We took a trip to Paris… He had us find our way back out those catacombs within a week. No light.”

Oh, quelles vacances cela a été…

The disquiet of your mind is a trailing grain. It truly was a remarkable vacation… Truly.

“And I’ve been nostalgic, so I thought to do the same here in my spare time.”

Your jaw hardens. Memory grain is swept away, for this is not the hour, you don’t have the mind.

His hair still writhes. Buzzes to you. Worms, almost, as he waits. He likely stares.

“Is … that bl—?”

“None of your concern.”

Ajax snaps his mouth shut. Between you and the gorgon, there is … a disturbed silence. The snakes fall victim to it so. You feel his eyes on you. You realize he is trying, desperately, to read you. But you are no literature for him to sour. With the blindfold across your eyes, you might as well be an empty spine with all pages scattered.

The words on them may be torn. Or, they’re singed to the likes of ire.

You do not know. You are unfeeling to it all. There is only ever this spine.

As though … your very soul wanders like this. It does not speak. It keeps its eye closed beneath fold.

It is your hollow.

“…a-are you … okay?”

(As though you ever will be.)

A scowl breaks. You click your tongue.

“Bring my mind into this, and I will show you its depravity.”

He has realized just what you are, and what this is.

The hour has called for a stint. Your mind’s frayed havoc is a screaming mute bedlam. So you laid your trap in its beauty. An expansive snare where your dolls will crackle, and your tripwires shall ring alarm.

This is your web.

You’ve sewn your strings. You’re basked in the shadows you run to.

Only you know where to rove without the light.

Candlewicks flicker as the thought crosses you, and you listen to the wax fall, beading amid the dirt. As a way of reminding yourself, perhaps, of this offering of an olive branch, where rather than offer, it’s a bat to swing overtop his head — repeatedly. You hear him swallow. The quiver in his breath instigates. Calls upon the twitch in your hand. You smell it off him. It’s rancid, or, that’s the iron matted to your lips, and the cold sweat is something else entirely.

It doesn’t matter.

(Your depravity…)

Ajax fears you. Deep from the marrow, it’s horror laden on his bated breath.

(He knows your depravity…

(Sees how it stains you so.)

“You can run, Ajax…

“If you dare to fall.”

Your voice throbs to the ear. It strikes a fire in him. Ajax recoils. His heels dig, and his palms flay. The dirt flounders beneath, and then, he bolts.

You tilt your head where momentum’s gust rules. A brow twitches. You path down the maze behind your blindfolded eyes.

And you follow. Dry velvet cracks the more you count. The iron tangs the more you drag your stride.

“Dix-sept.”

Until you halt. Somewhere down these tunnels, there’s a fork. You hear Ajax’s face find welcome in the ground after he trips over another one of your web-strings — rope, not tripwire, fixed to…? You co*ck your head. Rile your nose. He yelps.

So he’s found your taxidermy. Left, then. He went left.

How unfortunate. He missed your blowtorch by a slim margin.

You flex your hand, swallow your throat’s knot, then force your fist into the wall. These skulls were concave already. Bodies, as they were, left discarded. Uncared for by your ancestor. An orbital, then its zygomatic arch, grazes knuckle. A spare few teeth pinch. You feel for leather. And you clasp. You follow the grooves where your grip wore into the handle.

Your flail bludgeons for its freedom. Leaves a crater behind. Bone shrapnel flecks the ground at your feet. The dark chains swing from its joint. Three spheres of iron, jagged in their thorns, move as clockwork before pendulum.

A favorite. You adore the way it lolls to dirt when your arm slacks.

Brings a… A joy to you.

(It is spelled like hysteria.)

You walk again. The flail follows.

An old tune comes to mind. Your cello has droned the same few notes, from time to time, for the moon. It is to harken to the dead’s whispers. To evoke. Soothe them wherever they journey. Swoon them. Bed them just as well…

Should a whole moon rise upon the Addams and light Día de los Muertos…

There will be grito. A howl to haunt the dead and remind them what the living fear.

In the hour now, you whistle. The melody finds purchase within these walls. Musings stir between the decay. The musk, then the dirt, swell to your bloodied mouth. You listen closely for him. Those snakes of his give Ajax away. They sift through every path. Hiss at him. Berate the gorgon.

He should have known… Oh, he should have known the Raven in the walls.

Ajax did though. He was right.

It wasn’t enough. Because it never is.

Every stride slows to a crawled pace. You cease your family’s tune, snap your head towards that same bated breath.

Ajax simpers.

Then—

Plat!

…then … a soft plat! beside your toe. You stall for a moment. Slant your face to the ground.

“What is this?”

There’s an awful sense that a plan didn’t go his way, and he’s teething.

You wait. Ajax clears his throat.

“My lucky charm,” (he says, as if it clarifies anything.)

“You have no charm.”

“No my lucky— Whatever. Obviously not.”

Perhaps he massages his hands together. Teethes again. Watches you, as you reach for this “charm”, and your hand hovers before a nail grazes the cloth. You find a string. It’s a quaint bag.

“What is it supposed to be?”

“I dunno, man! A-A lucky charm.” (After one sniff, you find that it is indeed a … charm. There’s garlic, and some peppermint. You face Ajax with an inclined scowl.) “Supposed to ward off…, you know, creeps. And … stuff.” (Ajax tries to shrug. Skims his back down the wall.) “This one for homicidal maniacs who wanna kill ex-boyfriends.”

The minute curls to silence. There’s a tension now — of a sore pedigree. It’s not exactly in his favor.

“Ajax.”

“Y-Yeah?”

None of this is, really. You do ferment in the fact that Ajax’s spoilt fortune is of your doing, in tandem to his severe lapses in judgement.

Including this charm, which an inkling tells you this had been Yoko’s gift to him, and joke to you.

“This is a seasonal charm to ward off vampires.” (You crick your jaw.) “It’s also why the bag’s red, isn’t it?”

“Y-Yeah…”

Ajax, you imagine, gnaws his bottom lip. You think the skin raw by this point.

A long, dour sigh. And then he’s bolting again.

He backtracks down what he does know, which is a mere few tunnels, before he trips again, and thereby antagonizes your jar brimmed of needle. The gorgon doesn’t fall, however. There isn’t the scream to go by. How enlightening. His reflexes serve him well…

Whether or not this will be enough, for once, is another dilemma.

You whistle now, for another time. The flail drags behind you. These skulls rattle for you.

And Goody Addams cricks once you are her blind passerby.

For the moment thereafter, you hear her follow a step. Just the one. Her left boot, with the split buckle, and the foot made heavy by grime. The whistle isn’t enough for her. You’ve yet to know her picture on the manor’s alter. And it’s left her calloused at the sight of you.

Once you turn another corner, still with this ghastly tune, you hear her arm rest, her hand crack.

The one she had level to your neck.

(It would have fulfilled a wish, for you.)

Air seethes from your teeth bared. You fume a wash of blood and must as your hand pangs against leather, and your head throbs into the fold. Before it swims. And that wash is flowing. You are bleeding. Where your hands graze, you feel wood — raw in its hide — split from skull fissures.

Damn—

Damn her. The f*cking witch.

You stagger into a stone corner. Lean one way, yet balance thrashes for not. You’re gasping. Except there’s moon in your eyes. There’s gore on your tongue.

It’s Enid.

It is all Enid.

Until it’s not, and the tang in your mouth fixes a set ironwork teeth. Welds them to you. And his snakes are climbing. They prick their fangs before they lance. And they’re by your ear. A tangled mass.

You’re lightheaded.

Rather than a mere seething, air is a froth from your mouth. Velvet boils on your tongue. You swallow wads of spitfire.

Ajax…

You’ve lost him. Through all of this, he managed to slip away.

(She will die.)

Fingers claw for your hair. Only scales, then your woven prize. A conflation.

So you lunge for security. Don’t understand. Snag a branch, or… Or a bone. Because the catacomb returns to you. The woodland — there…, there was woodland —, it seeps away. You’re still gasping. The only iron in your mouth is hemoglobin. And… A-And—

You knock into another wall. A few heads roll.

And you pant weakly. What … was it that Enid said…? That— That these … visions of yours…

“You scare me.

“That’s all.”

Ah. Of course you do. Why wouldn’t it be you?

You try to swallow down your matted throat. Clogged, however. There’s no biting this down.

Within this sanctum, there is no breeze to cool you. As you grasp your temple by one hand, and grow lax in the other — hear the flail chip the grime —, sweat bathes your palm. It leaks from your hairline. A misery. A torment such as this, to have a rattled hand soaked by this of all things…

You seethe for air. The clog rejects. In the back of your mind, there’s a small, feeble inkling that you’ve been keeping a gorgon waiting, and this silence without chase agonizes him now.

How awful of you.

Even to the Stoner you abducted, you’re without manner.

You’re losing time. You’ve lost tact. So you draw two fingers to your mouth. There’s a mulch of blood, both wet and dry. You’ll make up for this nature of yours, and the time wasted.

“You scare me.”

By your fingertips, you skate your tongue.

“Day…?”

Per— Perdóname por esta maldición mía, Enid…

You pry them down your throat.

The clog lurches. It billows for your mouth. Ejects itself, violently, at your feet. Winds you all the while. You sag back against the wall. Your damp hand palms your borrowed pantleg, and there’s a note somewhere to clean these twice, just for Yoko’s sake. …after asking if she’d appreciate the liquid rot.

Then you find your stride.

You handle the radio on your hip, and murmur, without fault,

“You better not spoil this for yourself, Ajax… I don’t just let people run like this.”

It takes a moment, as though he wasn’t convinced he heard you — through the walls, by a doll.

“YOU ALREADY HAVE WHAT YOU WANTED!”

You snap to his voice, where he hides. Ajax is still far from the exit. Not quite as far from you.

The flail drags. You stalk down these paths, bring the radio back to your mouth.

“And you don’t have to take care of Enid any longer. You can frolic naked in the water all you want now.”

“S-So you can deal with her rut instead?! You know she would break you, Wednesday. Right? You’re, like, pushing one-twenty tops. And that’s being generous!” (An added, grated,) “She gets pretty intense you know!” (Highly unnecessary — goes unsaid.)

You halt. Come to find, he isn’t trapped in a corner, he’s just been waiting for you. The radio is back on your belt. Clinks against the mirr—

A gust swipes the air, before Ajax holds whatever he’s found in place. It’s not quite eye-level. It’s at your neck. You doubt a blade, for if it was, it is the bluntest piece of rock you’ve known. It didn’t cut through the air. You’d know by ear alone.

Moreover.

It isn’t in his character — to slash the blind, even if it is by a mere fold over the eyes, and you are his walking nightmare.

Ajax is a gorgon. He isn’t proud of the fact. Is downright … terrified, if anything, of the stone he carves. You know it so. You’ve heard as much, have seen it in the ways he navigates Nevermore — eyes down, beanie soothed close. He is more personable when he’s alone. Colorful in his words.

You wonder if that is what charmed Enid in the first place.

You can’t … truthfully blame her.

The things he observes, comments on, in solitude are simple things, both to be considered and lobotomized for. In stalking him, it would be either or. A silent contemplation in shadow; a reflex to lunge from his skylight to strangle.

Shame that the blood upon your mouth remarks the worst of you.

Because you don’t care. You do not care how genuine of a gorgon he is, Ajax is here. Your threadbare mind is tying a noose. Your face is unfeeling. He’s caught in your web. Still wriggling.

Can’t see the eyes he wears. Won’t let them find you, remind you, of … dog. The reason why Enid would have ever let him inside.

Your eyes are bathed in oil. Should there be a slight, there is fire. Face like the Devil. Marked by your velveted red. Time drains to you; there is no going back.

Hourglass.

You are who counts down. You find liquor in poison.

The entirety of you is what has Ajax chafe his hands down the handle he wields. You are a monstrosity. There craves violence within hollow.

And there’s only wit to mask it all:

“Don’t gloat. You’re humiliating yourself with that staff you’re holding.”

Except…, he may very well hear vision’s echo in your voice after all. Your jaw is leaden. Feels like ironwork.

Ajax does play along, however. Cautiously.

“It’s a sword.”

“It is not.”

The conviction in his breath almost had you pause again.

If only.

He knows the spite which stirs in your mouth, how it’d match forked tongue. So Ajax snaps at you instead,

“Sh-She would f*ck you up anyway!”

“I’m not, exactly, easy to break, Ajax…”

At least, he snaps before monotone cracks him back to a quivered gulp.

“Y-You— You are … r-really freaking me the f*ck out…!”

You lick your lips. There’s warm. It strings to your maw, and soaks down your chin.

(Wad of velvet:) “C’est la vie.”

Weary drifts from Ajax in what whispers befall from snakes. You’ve agitated them again. They yearn to coat their fangs by venom before your blood.

“Are you … s-sure you’re a-alright…?!”

“Neurotic. Why do you ask?”

He doesn’t answer.

You snatch the staff in his hand, then riposte. It’s impelled straight to his stomach. Ajax yowls, and he’s curling. The stick is tossed aside. He continues to coil. Sputters, incomprehensively,

“F-Fricka—! Fracka—! W-whor*…?!”

“You two are done, though. Are you not?”

The question hangs on tension’s rope.

There’s a cold to Ajax now — reptilian.

“Why do you smell like her?” (There’s his forked tongue…) “A-And I f*cking know how strong it’s gotten on you lately!”

Your brows furrow.

“Enid is the one who smells like me. Not the other way around.”

“When did you start to sleep with her?!”

Heartbreak again. It rears its head, bares its fangs.

At you.

(Revolting in character.)

There is no scent to gather, for all there is to is what your velveted heart bleeds. It stains your words. You’ve not thought to cleanse yourself of this.

(Progenie desolada.

(Es todo lo que eres.)

You could have captured her lips by now. Bed her within the week. She would’ve welcomed it. Perhaps. Or not.

And yet,

“I haven’t. I’ve yet to kiss her.”

Because you ran. You are coward.

Ajax was already well tangled within this webwork of yours. But you ran to this — bloodlust.

It is all you know. It is the melody your body croons, this melody only. Doesn’t sing for rut, Enid’s body…

You know he stares. You suspect confusion to sprint through his eyes, as it does routinely. At once, however, Ajax unravels. Dirt grates from his wavered tread. You tilt your head to the sound of him leaning, and you wonder if he stares into sockets, or teeth. His snakes sift amongst each other.

“So— So her scent really did just…?”

Guilt. And it’s similar to Enid’s. It dawns on you that he…

He assumed this. Blamed Enid for it. To her face.

Ajax ruptured Enid because of you, and it settles across your shoulders rather uncomfortably. More than you anticipated. Beyond what you can harbor now, with the woodland still a gnaw down your spine, and the moon snagged between your ears.

“…f*ck.”

It is a dismal croak of his.

Remorse … is it? Is that the word for this…?

You don’t rightly know. Whether or not you know this word by heart, or if it is a concept absent to you.

Whether or not what he echoes is your own, or his, or both, and it’s a shared line between.

“It surprised me as well. Your … confrontation outside of Weems’ office was the first moment where that scent was spoken of.” (Your words are slow. You give him a scrap of something, or a remnant.) “It wasn’t … entirely as though I didn’t realize whose it is, though having the fact spoken aloud is a different thing.” (Sympathy, as it were, from whichever dark corner that outlasts within you.) “Enid was … loyal to you, for what it’s worth. Infidelity isn’t on the table.”

“A-Ah…” (Sounds weak.) “Okay.”

There’s a sense of clemency to this. Because all the things he’s committed, they were … misdemeanors. He doesn’t ogle at girls. Only goes along to the whim of his few friends. Tried with Enid, and he did, even if it wasn’t enough, nor what she truly wanted.

He has made Enid cry, however. One too many times.

So none of this has been personal. Not really. Or it has been, just in a way that doesn’t ignite every bone in your body to cremation’s point. He must answer to his crimes, misdemeanor or not.

Your hand itches. You inhale deeply.

The catacombs murmur.

All the candles you gifted to Ajax choke, and the grey are whisps across bone.

You grin.

“W-What the f*ck did you just do…?”

“Oh… That wasn’t me.

“Witching hour draws close… And I promised Thing I’d be back around then. So we will have to make this swift, Ajax, because there is still a grievance I have.”

Your shoulder rolls, and the flail thunders into the wall. Ajax shouts a vowel. He careens from you, stumbles.

Before. Again.

He bolts.

You do not give him wait’s luxury. You chase him down the maze you have locked to blind memory. These walls being to fidget. Teeth gnash as they work their jaws. Every joint to them, they are lively in their stead. Drumming now. This place is drumming.

“Why … did you ever think those dogs were good company?!”

A flaked mouth has granted you a husk in your voice. Monotone is blistered to likes of depravity. Blood shards down your gullet.

“H-HONESTLY IT WAS JUST TO ASK HER BROTHERS!” (He dodges around a corner.) “I-I didn’t know what the f*ck to do about a heat! And they gave me sh*t answers cuz— GOD! Cuz of course!” (You veer after him.)

The bodies of the walls reach. Their bones scrap the air as you dash by. Fingertips brush the ground beneath your flighted gait before they think to claw.

Your throat is lathered again. You feel a heartbeat throb where the blood paints, then thrash once you swallow. And the grasp you have on your flail is maneuvered. No longer is it aimed for the gorgon. You have it in your fist, parallel to forearm. Set to snap at where these souls scratch at you. As a sphered retort. Your shield.

Gone is your grin.

“And it was a-a lot! Y-You have to be a freak, o-or have this b-bull’s stamina in bed to—?! TO K-KEEP UP— WHY THE f*ck ARE THEY MOVING?!”

You sinch your concentration down browline.

They’re restless tonight. Without a full, wide moon to enamor them, you are both to their unsighted mercy.

Goody Addams shall roam in due time. And you’d rather unsighted mercy, because she is, demonstrably, condescending to be around.

Ajax hiccups in his sprint. You realize there’s a wall, and so you rear back. Your braids follow momentum. Lash the air. Your flail as well. You twist your body, guide its bite. Ajax gasps. He’s diving when the chains belt your thorned spheres into stone. A pillar cracks. There’s also tile, a bit of bone.

The flail swings pendulum. You strain your ears for him, because he hasn’t left. He’s here, in the dark. Before your blind eyes. Except the bones are rattling. Teeth are gnashing. The walls still drum a ceaseless agony. You inhale for his scent. Only get iron. Vent from the mouth. Blood—

Grime flecks your heel.

You’re violent in animation. The flail again. It gorges through the catacomb’s fetid breath. In the handle, the leather teems to you what knocks down one chain, and pelts a sphere’s thorn: blade. A knife of yours.

Nerve whips your head from a second as it whirls past your ear. Then a third, which you feel by your teeth…

And bite.

Amid the thrash to your ears, his held breath is deafening. It chimes like regret when you turn your head. Face Ajax. That chime peals a croak from him — strips it from his tongue.

The knife you caught by teeth alone traps your mouth’s cavern to not a grin, but a smile.

“Gah— GOD DAMMIT! WHAT THE f*ck, WEDNESDAY?!” (The horror in his voice —) “F-f*cking sh*t —!” (revitalizes.)

Your flail drawls back to pendulum. As it does, you reach for your belt, and you feel down a mirror you’ve kept at your hip. A durable thing, and a taunt in itself. Because this is Enid’s. This reflection was the only one allowed in his room.

The gorgon shifts. He’s wedged in a guarded stance — likely the same he’s loyal to with an épée, then a piste beneath him. Ajax jolts for a way past you. You do the same.

You throw the flail from your hands. It tangles within itself, and scathes the ground for his legs.

Ajax takes the chance however.

He surges forward, and he quite simply does the one thing he has left to do: he barrels right into you. Shoves you as well. Into the dead. The force is born from panic, however. It’s too much for these dead hands. They break to your body.

And you’re on the floor, mirror at hand, with the knife nicked into your lip. It’s spat onto the ground. You stand upright.

An odd kind of respect graces you. Because that was akin to your move. And he took note.

You press your lips together. Fleet a hum.

The blood is a nice flavor. It drains to the hour’s heap.

But this does truly need to end. The walls are groaning now. You know Goody will walk again, sooner than you’d like. Because time escaped you. And she is, quite honestly, with the condescension a touch unnerving to be around.

You sprint after him. Skeletons claw across the cobblestone; some pound their fists every time he dodges them, maintains his stumbled stride. Until you bare Enid’s self-proclaimed greatest investment, and you hurl your weight into the gorgon.

Ajax yelps. Dirt billows as the two of you struggle, though you have a knee pinned into his back, an arm around his neck. He will not slip from you so easily. And you will not give him that chance. The mirror blinds. Even through cloth and your closed eyes, its white light is glaring. His snakes writhe. The godawful mirror crackles into song:

“There’s a place you can go where your heart is free!”

Ajax shrieks something of pure terror. He manages to shoulder you off. This effort isn’t enough. From the ground beside, you hear the break of stone, a dying scream with its held breath, and the struggle cease.

“There’s a rhythm that’s right for your soul!”

It has been done.

To the tune and rhythm of a plastic, disturbing mirror, you have stoned this gorgon for another time. A final time.

The catacombs still thrash to your ears. They loathe what comes from the mirror as well. Enough to cripple its voice. The song blares to static as you pull away the blindfold. With it, you decide that whoever this Barbie is, you’ll thank her for this venture before dipping her face deep in acid.

Your eyes roll open.

Shadows recoil in woe of this festering light. Bones rattle around you. There’s little time before Goody stalks you again, chattering a loose mandible until you leave her sanctum. You find his face. He gives the bust of Maniae a run for her money.

His body is also contorted — how truly impressive of him.

And through contortion, Ajax bares his neck to you.

A grin digs its way across your lips, and you pull another knife of yours — slim design, meant for artistries like this. You test a running question of yours. So you carve. And you etch…

She drags her feet behind you. Then, she doesn’t move.

Time … escaped you better than Ajax.

This passage is as dead silent as it should always be. You hesitate. Swallow. Twist around.

Goody Addams. Not in the flesh, exactly, but in the grime of her bones, the webbing entangled down her blonde hair. Wears her burial dress. It is not white. The purity which Goody entails has long been forsaken. She wears black. A decrepit shade of it. Not only that, but a collar the color of a rotten gourd. Frayed to the point of mesh.

And she leers over you with her hollowed sockets, and a slacked mandible. Nevermore’s ventilation kicks in, somewhere. It breathes through the catacomb, and it croaks from her maw.

Her fingers rattle her hip. She taps her foot at you.

“I realize the curfew, grand ancestor. I merely … indulged myself tonight.”

She groans derisively.

Then, for once…

Her voice clambers through these walls. They come from her. The floor. Every skull abound (for she does not need your dolls):

“I rose this place to protect them, and steal the sane’s mind…

“You are immune, my Addams… For you lost your mind long ago.”

You swallow. You do not answer her — this prod for question, in warning.

Goody raises her brittle palm, and the wheelbarrow you stashed across this place rolls to you.

She ushers you to leave. And for once, to actually rest.

| ii |

| (then she ditches) |

Moonlight is a drowsy haze, for the sky itself yearns to draw its white eye to a close.

The wheelbarrow was unforgiving in your venture. Your hands burn where the handlebars abraded. Exhaustion plagues you in every limb. You feel every ache, and to your hollow — or … in spite of it —, this means a pond of water amidst drought.

And how fitting of a thing it is, to feel this here, beside Nevermore’s lake. The dock muses quietly. The water laps down its legs, and the planks rasp in rhythm. Fish break across the water surface. Their fins are fluttering once they dive. It’s all a balm to your ears.

(For your mind is frenetic, Wednesday. You cannot hear it all.)

The lake is, indeed, as drowsy as moonlight. The woodland fares no better. Leave bristle, and branches sway, and though there are animals that come to scavenge, there is not many. They’re scrounging deep among the trees. They namely scurry. Few of their eyes, should they catch the crescent moon, flare as you find them.

None bother you, nor the wheelbarrow and its body just behind you. Enough of them know to mind a human, eye an outcast. Then grow scarce, with you. The abomination between.

But it is your scent. It will always be your scent.

And you are thankful. (You are.) For something like a curse, it treats itself to you as blessing. (It is indeed your bane.)

There is coherence within this naught. Has you feel every ache, all of your exhaustion’s plague. There are your burning hands, then the traces of scuffed palm. Your back from hauling the gorgon across campus. Your knees, as they buckle you to the dirt. There’s mulch. The lake does not neglect this land. And you graze what’s here by knuckles alone.

Fallen leaves. A sprouting worm.

…there is another, however. Another pain, deep within your chest.

You fear it is an old wound, or one that has yet to succumb. It weighs an anvil. Throbs like a dying word, a vital agony, all at once. Each breath strikes a clawed ember, and where they settle, they burn. In your throat, your mouth. Your eyes.

The lake does not neglect this land. There is an urge to … spoil this mulch. Add more than it needs. This old wound whimpers to you so. Eyes burn.

And you don’t understand. (Your damn hollow.) There’s nothing within you that can satisfy such a thing. (It gets in the f*cking way.)

Yet your exhaustion tosses down your stomach. You feel all the more void. Because tonight had been one last stint, hadn’t it…? The stoned will not give you a reason to terrorize anymore, and feed into a side of you. A comfortable one. The one you know best of all.

This had been one stint, in exchange for… For Enid.

To … mate her. (Scar her. Bleed her dry.) Just as you wanted. In… In the mere month behind you now. He is gone. He has been out of your way for the week, but this stint had been— It was necessary. To make a point. Though you don’t mind that he was first, he did, still, see her body. And she was … quick to seek that from him. If not intercourse, acts which were just shy of it.

For rut’s sake. Of course.

She is in her bed now. Sound in that bed, without a worry for this drowsy moon.

(But you may have her lose her pretty blonde head.)

You don’t … understand why you wait to crawl your way back to her.

He kept her from you long enough, after all. And you do have her. She is yours. To keep. To mark and worship.

(To slaughter.)

These aches are numbing. You ought to feel more than this. (The Frumps are right about you.) Your lineage has told you as much; mania is meant to consume. (A broken child grows to be a fractured woman.) And to scavenge for it, or pry through a hollow where you know it should be… It is a remark of a desolate progeny.

(You never deserved your sharpest heirloom.

(That is why it hides in your parasol.)

You do not know what you wait for. Just that your hollow refuses your prying hands, and ebbs away every ache.

(You are the worst coward.)

The moon is drowsy. The sky begs to sleep.

Insomnia blooms darker.

| iii |

| (her frayed mind settles) |

Reason and rhyme has all but remained.

You don’t understand where you are. The floorboards are of academy old, yet the air is ashen. Lamplight flares moon rather than sun. In your dorm. Doorway open.

Enid is beneath you. Straddled by your seat across her stomach.

Your uniforms are pristine — yours to the rigidity's muse; hers as a mark of display. Midnight blue burns near-violet. Your skirt flowers across.

Her eyes are vast. You’re sunken deep.

Around her neck, a ribbon. Her collar slacks — fans open. Instead of uniform's tie, there’s the color of a profound, blooming sun, birthed across a morning horizon.

As cempasúchil. Like marigold.

It is the anchorage between lovers departed.

Belle âme…

You hover. Rational plunges.

Because she’s crafted like moon. There’s a calm, and a beauty, unlike anything you’ve fathomed. Cryptic — Enid is cryptic, beneath your body. Her lips part. She awaits for something. Rings a bell. On the tip of your tongue…

You drag flavor across her jaw. Straddle no more. Cloaking, now. You shield her body with your own. Guard it. Revere. Devour.

What do you want? Dis-moi, mon loup penaud.

She tastes like rabbit. Yet, she smells of you. Only you.

Her eyes are knowing. At her fingertips, Enid fixes your tie and collar. Keeps you pristine. She thumbs across your cheek. Follows down what freckles blemish you.

All the while.

Your tongue knots with intrigue. Her lips part again. Still awaiting.

Est-ce ceci? Do you like this, loup penaud?

There is no answer. You try again. Her jaw quivers where you scald tongue. You feel her voice buzz against you. Her droned murmur leaks to your ear, felled to your braid.

Teeth graze across her neck. At one tooth’s point, you feel ribbon’s edge. Your hand claims her wrists. Both of them. They’re tangled to the floor. You bite, and Enid worms beneath. Gnaw, and she turns for a better angle. You drag your tongue back to her jaw, leave a coat of warmth — this now tastes like something you can’t decide —, and she bucks.

Revulsion plagues down naval.

Again.

It incites you. Rouses a lurking famine.

Again. Do it again.

Reason and rhyme, reason and rhyme — this isn’t something you know. You indulge, however. Because that revulsion has turned to swarm, and now, your throat clots with web. Your teeth scrape rather than graze. Tongue, left to sow what lines you leave down fair skin.

And by your other hand, you wrest for invitation. An entry, a place to scavenge her. Nails scuff down thigh. There’s blood from your mouth; you— You’re smearing past parted lips.

She whispers in a tongue you don’t know.

But your hips dock. You find your place. Her thighs are strong, open barriers. Revulsion spurns to hedonism’s demand. There is no feeding it however, that plague down naval. Because you already have wine melding to the velvet in your mouth. Your teeth have sunken. You are grinding. Her knot’s bulge cures plague — through skirt, reached for your stomach. Breaths run tight. You swelter against Enid.

Mine… You’re all mine.

Her voice froths to your ear now, for your bite has claimed collarbone. Wine and velvet pool to stain. You’re draining her through the floorboards. You’re humping her with a newfound, mindless will.

She locks you in your place. Legs tangle. Your knees scuff into academy old.

Sweat clothes you. Then words, broken to disarray.

You—

You are whimpering.

Enid. Enid, you’re mine. You’re all mine.

By your mind or your mouth, you can’t tell. It lays as mystery.

You don’t search for answer. Enid croons beneath you. She whispers mantra. Her hands come free, and you palm wood. Blood soaks one hand, for your mouth seeps a downpour. Bleached lamplight does the other; it washes ashore.

Enid begins to toy with marigold ribbon. By the corner of your eye, you see it all. The sheen down ribbon's cloth. The line down her neck. She whispers again, croons another time. It sounds like warning. Lips mouth your name.

You unlatch. Still, however, you rock into her in rhythm to a perpetual tide. You are grasping after your moon.

Or, it's thatyou are the tide,and she has … lured your momentum.

Spindles of wine and velvet come together. Lined by your teeth, flavored by your mouth, they bead across marigold, then lips once you catch her eyes. Those lips mouth your name again. Sounds like warning.

But you’re mine now. You’re mine.

Upon my crypt, down my spot in Hell, I swear it.

Her toying finger pulls ribbon. Eyes roll. Lips bloom dark.

And as with lamplight, her skin bleaches.

A stripe is drawn across her neck, where the ribbon had tied. It’s of wine. Her head turns over as lulling imbalance. Tipping, now. There’s meat — red, a delicacy. There’s esophagus, then spine.

You don’t let it fall. You catch her by your bloodied hand. Your tongue craves down ribbon-wine. Feels down flesh. She is warm. Of gourmet. Lips burn to glue. Enid doesn’t. Tongue tries to bond again. Head and neck together. Head and neck. Enid still doesn’t.

All the while.

You grind. And you grind. And. You grind.

Est-ce ceci? Est-ce ceci?! Tell me. Tell me how to suture, loup penaud.

Eagerly now, you’re desperate to heal. Your tongue spins a twine, one needled by your teeth. And your tongue paints her. Despite you, wine pools for academy old. There is blood. There is so, so much blood. Velvet lathers across, to convict your bloodied mouth.

Tongue spins twine… This feels like utterance. A vocal song, and it hemorrhages from you. You still grind. These are whimpers. Mind spinning. Your tongue…

You meld it to open flesh. Her neck is warm. There is … no pulse. This wine of hers has bloomed dark. Still, you roam, and you scald. You can… You will mend her, this way. Truly.Yet, a depraved secret kept from you. It pricks. You wonder bone. Until you pull away. Something writhes between head and neck. It emerges, from its coil around her spine, and its raw blanket folds. This shadow comes from esophageal depths.

Dark curls to follow. Pinches skin. A bent stroke of ink, and then another, and then another, before red hourglass.

Black widow.

Her eyes gleam oil. Her pinchers mock. Though, she promises to spindle true-twine, from within. Mockery moves as her sickle. Oil burns devotion’s ghoul.

Your gaze flecks. You search Enid’s face.

Blank as ever. Peace as dead.

Lips, still, parted.

A bell tolls. Your tongue claims Widower.

You should have told me… Pourquoi tu ne viens pas de me le dire?

Desperation has you keep her head tight to her neck. As you lean to capture, your mouth throbs agony. Blood. Black widow.

It pains you. Enraptures you. Taunts you.

It … satiates.

Your mouth marks deliverance. Sewn to Enid’s. And Widower crawls. Burrows deep. Goes back to esophageal depths. And you don’t stop. Simply can’t help yourself. Your lips are buzzing. Your mind, reeling. Tongue slips to follow. Whimpers seep to revitalize.

Enid replies in kind.

Mine again… Mine again. I’ve saved you. Another life, another chance, Enid.

Her hands grasp for you. She murmurs curled, throbbed harmonies. Reaches to catch your grinding, to palm sex.

A smile flickers. Head utterly detached through your haste. You don’t have the mind to fix it, for she is, undeniably, recovered. Not the same, but recovered.

Breath hisses from her. She coos something. Her eyes are still rolled, still knowing.

Enid reaches beneath cloth. Strives for your vulnerability. Her own is tented. Her own is then pulled to meet ashen air.

She moves her thighs from you. Guards them on either side. Because her vulnerability, it’s swiftly guided to you. Her knot. Slipped for cloth, cleaves down sex, before entrance.

Enid fills you. Her legs are rooted for this. The hand throttled across your back is grounding. The one to your cheek, thumbing across blemish, maintains your buzzed lips.

Comment as-tu pu, Enid? What is this…?

You allow her. Despite it all, you do. And the world is to a tilt, or it’s not. Enid is driving you to a mind skewed. Her lips are of wine. Tongue of velvet. And her voice—

(It's your fault.)

Her voice… A grito. A howl for sex.

(Should’ve done better. Ignored marigold.)

She submerges, slips away, remerges as though her head is still sane, and her eyes aren’t rolled to the hue of moonlight.

Enid. My sheepish wolf, what is this?

She thrusts. And she thrusts. And. She thrusts. Into you.

Goes taut. Moaning. Her seed pillages.

Then you wake.

You don’t lurch to the security of your headboard as you have done, in the past. Rather, you lay shivering. Your body teems, and it teems frostbite — fevered, though, as cold sweat. Exhaustion has found you, it appears, and it has laden a … balm. Down your back, pooled to the small of it; though, it’s notably your thighs which draws your thoughts to unease.

Your heart hammers in spite of hollow, for it has reached you, right in the jugular.

The room wanes before clarity dawns, and your eyes adjust. There’s frostbite. There’s balm. And then, what twists you as horrid revelation, a stewed, broiled warmth. The balm nulls. The warmth pangs — down your chest, then turmoiled through basin. Not stomach, however. That would feel different. Gut sounds more appropriate.

Your frown is tight. Your glare spears through the ceiling.

This was no damn vision. That you know.

It was something else. Something entirely different.

There was incoherency, disjointed by a cruel fable. As pressing as vision, yet distinctly frenzied in air. Strummed through your mind in … quite frankly pretention, and it strikes you like an insult to your character, before the convolutions of this— This mirage’s language. Before it hits you what this was:

Nonsensical. It was ultimately, entirely, nonsensical.

Very, very few times has a mere dream — or nightmare, you’ll take your pick — left you physically ill. The symptoms vary, depending on what specter possessed you those nights. The garage’s poltergeist usually has you in unfavorable positions. Bent arms, knobbed legs. Contortions which are always debatably amusing, by the end. Every phantom does the same: relive their traumas through you, without asking. Ghouls are particular; the banshee stolen from the Isles (behind your late grandpapi’s back) is loud — and you’ve told her as much, with the most crass, spitting language imaginable.

This…

This has to be a succubus’ fault. The spirit of one, at least. Or a phantom widower who had forgotten the throws of intimacy, and was desperate enough to find such a thing within a student.

One may have followed from the catacombs… You didn’t initiallyplanto toy with Ajax the way you did. There was none of the proper rituals to reassure the spirits.

How careless.

You peel yourself from the mattress to find that you are rattled, to the bone.

Because this specter, it went out of its way to defile you.

It gifted you a nightmare, then left you with a body numb. An experience that is usually delightful. This would’ve been the same, if not for—

Enid…

If not for the marigold around her neck, nor her dilapidated smile. Decapitation. Seed. One swallowed black widow.

This utterdepravity.This slight to your psyche.

Your eyes stray to her side. You search through dark, and see that Enid sleeps still. Deep in slumber, vulnerable to any invasive entity.

“Enid…?”

An utterance not directed for her, necessarily. Deep in slumber, so you know your breath now won’t do to reach her. It’s for yourself. A way to ignite urgency, and to, even now, ensure that you are awake, and that you have broken from spell.

You hear your voice. You feel it leak from mouth.

It’s reassuring enough.

Gingerly, you twist within your bed. You step onto floorboard. There’s an ache which follows. But your eyes keep to her, and your strides meander across the room. Thing sleeps in his drawer, surely, so you are left alone to guard her.

Enid’s rug is soft beneath you. And she herself appears … locked in dreamscape.

You tilt your head.

She always sleeps in odd positions. There’s no rigidity to her. Sometimes she’s muttering. Other times, her fangs gnaw into her pillow, or they’re catching bites. Tonight has provided peace. For her, that means curled in some respects, stretched wide in others.

You intend to keep her there. As much as peace is your agony to doze through, Enid seems to rejoice in it. She always rattles on about her sleep once she wakes regardless. These nights have her dreamlike, through the morning hours.

No specter will impede that.

Not unless it intends to over your dead body. And even then, your presence would wreak scorn's flavor upon those who dare.

After a minute, you resolve to watch from the other side, just in case something lurks at the door, or the window. Or, if the phantom is, still, above your bed, and it plans to make its way to Enid.

As you wait, as you guard, you stare at her. Enid drifts through slumber as with any night. She breathes like soft billows across a dying moon sky. Slowly, for there’s none of its light — the moon's light; her light, truly — to bring hysteria. You know she’s coiled around something — a pillow, or stuffed animal —, and that within her dreamscape, it’s something fostered. An egg to a dragon. Gold to a prospector. It’s in her nature to.

Her scent, your scent, brews warm around her. Odd, until you realize where you are a cold frigid night, Enid is a warm body, still with flowers live and well to her gravestone.

She is safe, and secure.

You stare, and you watch, then you behold. Her head, it remains fastened. And what a sight it is, though a pit of you wonders if ribbon would add to her. Compliment all of what you see across her neck. Her skin is as moonlight. Her hair, similar, though it’s sand almost, dipped in color. Like coral and water, you decide. Like coral and water.

Me tienes cautivada, Enid…

Comment as-tu pu, Enid? What is this…?

Enid stirs, and you realize her gaze is slipped to your bed.

Even in the dark, your sheets are visibly pulled back.

She sways her head. She surveys the room. Before her eyes crane over her shoulder, and—

“WHAT THE FU—?!”

Enid lurches off bedside. It’s violent, the ground shakes, and the lamp she practically smacks to life is blinding. You flinch. Whatever thoughts that had begun to enthrall, they now are left to sting you.

Though she remains on her feet, with her hair wisped and her eyes tired, Enid sags into her palm, at the desk’s corner. She doesn’t question why, exactly, you are lurking. Rather, she lets the ground settle, and you to realize that your whereabouts are still evident across your body. Scales have been replaced by stone, at this point, so you can only imagine how much of the siren water and catacombs Enid sorts her nose through now. And blood, should you still be without mercy.

She swallows. Then, it’s a meandering, slogged,

“When did you get back?”

You don’t fare much better; rather than slog, you’re croaking:

“Witching hour.”

“It’s—” (Enid checks her wrist before grabbing the watch from her notebook.) “It’s four-fifty.”

So it is.

You wring through a silent question. Because it doesn’t matter if Enid doesn’t ask, she’s always one clinging for answers. Half-asleep or not.

“I was possessed.”

Her eyes flash, and she perks with a hilted chin.

“What—?”

Blue catches lamplight. (Not like moon… An orange haze.) All at once, sleep rolls off her as water to duck, and she … flushes at the sight of you.

“Day, oh my god, are you okay?! You’re sweating.”

A blink, because she is right, and that sweat is cold. You shake your head.

“No. There’s a ghost forsaken of any manner.” (Her brows coil puzzlement.) “It forced me into this dreamscape, then wrenched me out of it, so I awoke to my body defiled.”

Enid grins. It isn’t full. This one doesn’t crease her face — doesn’t reach her eyes —, but it is one nonetheless. Her nose flares the way it usually does, whenever she gathers a room, and reads every page to every person in one moment of sly attention.

The grin is growing, however. You witness as crescent blooms to half.

“…no. No. D-Day, it smells like— It—” (Enid bites her tongue. And waits. For an obscure moment.) “You don’t know what you just had, do you?”

“A dream. Which an ill-mannered ghost subjected me to.”

The half blooms to full, now. And she’s cracking. She’s giggling.

“What?”

She—

There is no cease.

“Enid. Tell me. What…?!”

It strikes you that this is frighteningly parallel to what your possession sought. Enid here, all-knowing, as she routinely does. There is something amiss which you fail to grasp. Except, this isn’t a passing remark down a hall, which goes over your head and right to Enid’s. Nor is this jumbled with the rest of them — Yoko, Bianca, Ajax and the twins —, where there’s a reference point, and you’re sorely blind to it.

Enid shakes her head.

“Some naughty ghost, Day…” (Grin falls. There’s sympathy.) “But you do look like it was intense…” (Head cricks, as like with any dog.) “So… So what was the dream? Was it … bad?”

You ponder, and scrounge for it.

“It was a pleasant dream. Just … erratic, I suppose.”

“…and the dream itself? Like, what … was it?”

In the face of possession, and then Enid’s face as she sinks deeper to sympathy, your lungs pull. There’s a hesitance which claims you. It takes a careful breath to sway its authority.

“It was about you.” (Careful, like glass to handle.) “We were together. I kept bleeding from my mouth. You wore a yellow ribbon around your neck. Like marigolds for ofrendas.”

“Cute…”

“And then you pulled it off, and I tried to keep your head on. The laceration was from a guillotine blade.”

“…n-not … cute…?”

You gather more of the nightmare. It stings in ways you can’t comprehend. Namely down your back, and your sternum.

“I tried to … resuscitate your neck as well. Then a spider crawled out. A black widow. I gave it back to you.” (Flush, rather. It doesn't quite sting after all.) “You were still active, though more as a puppet than anything.”

“U-Um.” (She’s tense. A little pink as well.) “H-How … did the black widow get there?”

“Crawled out your neck.”

Enid blinks. You dart your eyes.

“…and … you gave it back to me.”

“By mouth.” (Her sheets are a snag of sudden intrigue.) “It crawled back to your neck.”

“And it— It got in your mouth because… You were— Re— Resuscita—” (Eyes widen. You don’t know when you checked.) “Oh … my god.”

You can’t for the life of you decide if the bed between you both is the appropriate barrier. It is wide enough, yet, as she stares at her linens, then the pillows, you believe it off-putting.

“It’s what happened.”

“I… I feel like I should wanna throw-up.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. It was a nightmare. There was no control.”

“But you got off from—?”

“It left me defiled.”

Enid snaps her jaw shut. She remains all-knowing of this specter of yours, and less bothered by it and more the nightmare itself.

“…I don’t know if I’m more terrified that … that was your dream, and that … you actually…” (Pressed lips. Confusion, you think.)“Or that I just … am not as fazed as I should be.”

If you had gone into the explicit details, she may very well have fainted. Something which you didn't think over before this. Not that yousought Enidfor… For solace. No. You— You aren't sure.

She looks at you again, the same way that she does, time and time over. Like she spies something about you — traits you cannot fathom without picture or reflection. And even then, conceptualizing yourself is piecing together an anomaly. Such is your routine in the mirror.

You offer to her, as a consolation,

“I was checking to ensure your head was still on.”

“Well…, it is.” (She pieces together your anomaly, digit by limb.) “Are you sure you’re okay…? Did it get to you that bad, Day? Like a nightmare…?”

“The nightmare itself enthralled me.”

Yet, you catch yourself. There’s a hitch to that truth. Because, to the thought of her body the way it was, your skin crawls. Against your nightgown — sleeves and collar, namely.

“Though, I do not like the idea of your head leaving your body. That was … disconcerting. Particularly because I couldn’t put it back on.” (Then,) “And, I don’t appreciate this spirit. When they’re malevolent, they’re rather invasive.” (A dejection.) “This one was to an alarming degree.”

Already, Enid has pieced through anomaly, and she sees you whole. All-knowing, except there’s comfort to find that in ocean rather than rolled moons.

The lamp is quietly subdued. You hear Enid slip back into her bed, though as your eyes adjust, you find that she then lifts the blanket. For you.

“You can make sure my head stays on.”

You nod. Numbly, before you slip alongside her. You lay.

Thing comes to mind, out of a panicked lapse. Because he will say something, in the morning. Something that you’ll ignore — turn yourself blind. He does, every time you’ve found yourself slipped to her side.

He always mentioned Ajax through it all. Told you to be respectful.

As though you had the mind to mate then.

You didn’t. That much is clear to you. And because you didn’t, but do now, the bed feels warmer than it should. It basks in body heat, and settles as a basin for slick to come.

To that thought, even if she shouldn’t have heard it from your silence, Enid shifts. The same rattles — this knowing of the inevitable. Or, she thinks more than that.

“Day…?”

Her voice … sounds mature as it was in possession. There is no hilt to her, however, nor is it strewn by that carnal grito. Sometimes, Enid speaks like this. Where her vivid colors are left to pool, and instead, there’s maturity. She speaks lower. There’s a raw underbody.

You always answer:

“Yes, Enid?”

The bed is frozen, aside for the deep, pummeling heartbeat between you. It’s hers.

“Was it … really about me?”

“…it was.”

“And…” (Dry throat, perhaps.) “And we were … doing stuff together?”

That heartbeat doubles.

Yours may’ve joined Enid’s.

“Like, intimate things—"

“Yes.”

“A-And, um… Or, so, you— Did you… In the dream, did you … like it?”

You—

The air tangs. The nightmare, it follows. There’s blood, and there’s lamplight, academy old, ribbon. It brews even now, if only by mere traces. Yet you do still feel it. Blood beneath your palm, body docked — it’s branded to memory, this simulation.

“D-Day?”

“I don’t know.” (Branded to memory, amongst fog.) “There was no clarity. It was … bizarre.”

Her eyes drift. The world always tilts when they do.

“O-Oh…”

You don’t know why you surge to console. There may not be a reason.

“There was a haze to it, almost. As with any dream.” (Quiet, now:) “I wasn’t entirely lucid.”

“But, like…” (Enid croaks.) “Was it like … bad?” (Her question rings.) “Like it felt wrong, I guess.”

“I don’t know.”

Silence has never been more nauseating.

“Oh. Wait…”

Enid shifts. She reaches for bedside, then pulls from the floor a stuffed animal. It’s yet another one from the fair, one that she won herself. A plush, far too round to feasibly resemble the cow she claims it is.

The monstrosity is set between the two of you. As a barrier. You find yourself … mildly appreciative. The air stills. You hear the distant, mulling activity from other dorms.

“Goodn— Good morning…”

You pause, and come to find, her bed is quite comfortable. All of what you’ve collected from her laundry, it’s rampant here.

“Good morning, Enid.”

Falling asleep to the sheer thought that you’ve unconsciously been mimicking her bed within your own isn’t, exactly, kind to your ego. It is another strange comfort, however.

You sleep quietly.

| iv |

| (she guards) |

Your showers usually come before the sun breaks across the horizon, or in the absolute dead of night when sleep is below you. Yet, this morning brought you beneath the showerhead hours after the fact. It is, indeed, something you regret; lugging two-hundred pounds of one stoned-ex was tiresome, even for you, and though you realized this catch in your plan early on, you still are kicking yourself over it. The exhaustion. Pushing your return at an ungodly time and pace. How heavy a gorgon could be. And all of what those implied for your psyche, its defenses, then a specter’s visit.

Because this morning, of all mornings, is the worst for you to shower late.

The sirens have their own bathhouse, designed in such a manner to keep them from flopping across the tile. Said bathhouse was trashed by Furs the last full moon.

Something which you neglected to consider.

As you stand beneath the showerhead, the frigid water is tainted by scales. On a normal day, it wouldn't scorn you more than wet dog. But alas, having your skin reek like sailor is not, in actuality, a blessing. You deliberate whether scalding water would burn it away, or if it would rot the scent to your revulsion.

Not that it would be worth the trouble, either or. You require showers which liken themselves to hail.

Yet, another thing you didn’t consider: the steam from every other stall now leeches to your skin. The tile in your own sweats in kind.

You know Enid is the worst culprit. She bathes to shed the dermal layers. And then some more. To the marrow.

Your fingers lace through the last of the soap in your hair. Gunsmoke, cider, moss — livened by the loose dirt to a grave. All to pair with resin fog. Your hair is darker shade of raven than you intended. It feels silken this morning. You wonder if claws would do better than the teeth down your comb, or if blonde would feel the same, should you…

The lever is strangled, and your hail comes to cease. The last of it all drains. Steam gnats. What a ghastly hour— Never again.

You brush aside the curtain and reach for your towel. Black cotton finds its way across your skin, fresh from shower, and it does well to dry. It staves off the worst of this steam.

…Enid did sleep well. You awoke to her mid-lunge off her bed, and the stuffed “cow” still marred by her resumed dreamscape and its strangulations. A few minutes thereafter, you lingered. Your mind wandered far, only to stray back again and mull over the specter, or succubus, who degraded you. The one that likely followed you…

You ought to cleanse the room.

Come to think of it, you hadn’t gotten to the chore since August… How neglectful of y—

(A bellow:) “HEY SINCLAIR!”

“What th—?! OH MY GOD!” (Footwork, frantic across tile. A fragile clutter. Curtains shiver.) “WHAT THE f*ck IS WRONG WI—?!”

Eruption. And it’s brazen by a collective cheer — hollering, howling — once Enid’s stall plays an orchestra. Water drums. The curtain crescendos as the rings jangle, and the rod snaps. Something tips over and batters down to the floor. Hits her on the way down. The faucet head, then, screams, and the water drums no longer. Chooses to gorge across tile instead.

From where you veered around your stall, you watch as the wash foams, riddled by her soaps. And ice. There is ice.

Enid, with the curtain mangled around her, finds you. Dives for your security.

You have your comb at the ready. The shiv-end gleams in the light. There’s too many of them. Furs. Clustered around, clothed, still howling. They knew to shower long before the rest of Ophelia. There’s a lashing. It’s a towel — from just over your shoulder.

Not Enid’s, however.

Smells familiar. There’s another few lashings. They strike at the Furs; the towel lands a few hits.

“A knotless Alpha?! I can count on my two hands Omegas who—!”

“Get the f*ck out.”

The pack, still with wide maws and proud fangs, scamper off. More howls. Their octaves rebound against tile.

You do place the familiar scent, however. Far too late than you should have. Finding Bianca in her mere towel, then another in her hand, shouldn’t have been the answer. You know how much of a bane that salt is to her. Salt and breeze, the kinds that burn holes through your tongue, and chip across your skin upon a frozen day.

She turns. Stares with her stark eyes. They land apologetically, onto Enid. Others peer from their stalls, each in their own stage of cleanse.

But more than that, you feel her grasp on you. Enid. One hand clawed into your arm. The other, dug into a shoulder. Your head tilts.

“Enid, are you okay?”

Her eyes are glassy, though you wonder how much of it is shock alone. She nods.

“They just—” (Shaken.) “They just r-rattled me.”

The curtain is a white linen. It covers, though hardly veils. Your body does better to shield, because the linen sticks to her skin, and where it sticks, it leaves little color and form to the imagination. You catch a red streak, among the linen’s white. You glare down the stalls where the peering eyes linger, just as Bianca ducks into the dismantled shower.

Those peering stoop away.

Red again. It’s the shade of wine. There’s only a few drops on bathroom tile, and they trail for you. A razor as well, discarded. You glance back over.

“Your leg.”

“I just nicked it. It’ll be gone, um, later today.” (Enid moves. The curtain smears down the cut.) “Ow, ‘kay. It does kinda sting.”

The shower’s onslaught dies a sudden death, and Bianca stumbles from the stall, tin bucket at hand. It’s set down.Her one arm's hide shimmers in the light, before dark talons calm to her refined nails, and the webbing recedes to form.

“Are they a part of that one Beta’s pack?”

Bianca’s voice is hoarse by hangover.

Enid is slow to nod.

(The answer, a feeble:) “Quarren’s, yeah.”

She meanders, though her hands remain firm on you. There’s ocean. It’s bathed by those startled tears.

“Thank-you.” (Looks away. Nods again, to the siren.) “A-And you too, Bianca.”

Bianca has her way in sheathing her sharp edges. Her face is soft.

“Go finish your shower. If they come back, they’ll be the ones walking out smelling like wet dog.”

Enid strays away.

“But the—"

“Use the one I was just in, Enid.”

“And I can get your things.”

Sheepish. Enid goes into the shower you just occupied, still with your soaps stashed along the modest rack. They’re left for the meantime, whilst Enid drapes the one curtain over the hung barrier. The showerhead rains again. It is quick to steam, however you hear a dismal hiss, then another twist of the lever. Bianca sets down the rest of Enid’s things at the foot of the stall, though Enid doesn’t move to reach.

It’s quiet. Even the few plagues of music — which you’ve grown habitually used to ignoring — have been silenced. There’s only water, and the occasional regurgitations for soap.

Bianca is decidedly through with her shower. From another stall over, she dumps a similar bucket and drops the few rags she used.

“I thought something like this would happen… You’re going to have to keep an eye on her, otherwise they’re going to do this type of thing again.”

She lingers beside, fixed to the other dividing wall.

“Why?”

A shrug. It’s one where Bianca is contemplative, and resigned.

“Those dogs are the most dense motherf*ckers I know. I swear they grow their knots before their brains. Or their ovaries, depending.” (Glances over, to admit,) “Except Enid, I guess. She’s got good head on her shoulders.”

You both glance around the tile. The water’s pillage has left a swamp across the better half. One shower ceases. Another girl, a vampire, slinks through the doorway.

“They’re dense, but they also have the sketchiest fights here. All that pack sh*t… And this one is the biggest since I’ve been here. Biggest one Yoko’s even talked about, and they fight dirty. There’s none of the, uh, traditions Furs have for their hierarchies and dynamics. They like to say it is, but…” (Bianca doesn’t watch anything in particular.) “They get away with it because none of the teachers here want to get involved with that. Parents have even tried to sue over it.”

“Over what, exactly?”

Another shrug, and rather than contemplative, it is, purely, resignation.

“Over not letting their kid get their ass beat, or beat someone else’s. Like I said — pack sh*t. It’s all of the same competition just to boast.”

You hum, more to yourself than anything. Because this— None of thisis a reasonable concept to understand. There is a difference between a grandiose display and peaco*cking.

One is an expression of your father’s mania.

The other is … frankly pathetic. And entirely nonsensical for the amount of effort spent.

“Even though she’s not a shrimp, I don’t know how Enid would fair in a fight, Wednesday. So … keep an eye on her if it’s already ramping up. I highly doubt Ajax was the actual reason she lied about her dynamic. She kept it from everyone since freshman year.”

“Okay.”

“Speaking of…”

Bianca leans her head forward. Expectantly.

Her eyes strike you down. The way you come to expect.

“He’s not dead.”

She arches a brow, and with it, her nose and lips curl.

“He’s in hiding.”

“Did you stone him?! Again?!”

“He’s not dead.” (A … crease does find its way across your mouth.) “And you didn’t stop me, Bianca…”

The siren worms her jaw.

“…thought so.”

| v |

| (she seeks the unexpected) |

Your mother would be proud.

Not because you’re seeking help from authority, no. That would be to her dismay. Rather, you’re seeking help from a friend of hers. A friend … to her. Whether or not the same is said by your principal is a different matter entirely. The day she admits her association with Mother would be the day where Grandmama has finally allowed your grandpapi to cease his grave-rolling, and Hell would freeze by the palm of his last frigid hand.

This hour leaves your dignity barren. Has you long for a grave to roll within.

You didn’t grant yourself the time for your hair to dry. The moment you slipped into the academy uniform — without your blazer —, you began this endeavor.

Thankfully, your principal works in habit like any panther, or lioness, and she stalks the halls in regular intervals. In the present, you find her close to her office. Weems is in deep conversation with Mister Drear — a dry, impersonable lecturer, with too many essays per week, and too little patience in class to care. He is a teacher you keep in some regard, naturally, despite the grievance you have with his comments on typewrite.

You give them the space.

Your principal towers over the man — a siren built much like Father, without the vigor nor dexterity.

“Of course. I will be sure to review it then.”

Mister Drear nods shortly, and he grooms his slicked blond hair, crosses a scaled, green eye at you, before marching off. You watch Weems, and she blinks her frown to a meager arch.

“Wednesday. I nearly didn’t recognize you.”

“That is not relevant.” (You gnaw.) “…ma’am.”

Her grey eyes remain sharp on you. She stares down the bridge of her nose. You find it contemplative, as though her thoughts are lagging behind your urgence.

“Principal.”

“You do have your mother’s hair, after all…”

This woman has a way in lambasting you.

“There’s a more urgent matter than my grooming.”

Weems never truly sighs. She exhales, shortly, before her mouth twists to reclaim form. You imagine it’s a learned habit of hers.

“What is it, then?”

She also has a way in schooling obedience. It is ingrained. There isn’t anything in your nature that can weasel out of its grasp.

And you know as much, because you’ve tried. And failed. Fruitlessly.

“Four students came into the showers and poured a bucket of ice water onto Enid.”

“Which students?”

“Girls. I don’t know them by name, except they’re associated with Quarren. I believe three were freshmen. Or sophom*ores.”

Her nod is slow. Weems then ghosts,

“‘Quarren…’”

“They are wolves.”

You words have struck her. Her mouth stalls open, in place for reply, only for Weems to snap it shut, in room for grimace.

This wince is foreign on your principal. It doesn’t sit right. She wears it as awkwardly as you in yellow.

“Would you say this is … pack-related?”

(A blink.) “Yes.” (Turned frown.) “Why would that matter?”

She shakes her head, cutthroat. Grey rattles across academy old, and she then gathers in wearied breath,

“It shouldn’t. However, neither of us are considered Lycan.” (There’s hesitance. Has you locked in apprehension.) “Unfortunately, because this is between packs, there is not much I can do.”

You stare. This corridor, now, is cold to you. Because you are stewing. There’s a fire ignited. It simmers rather than boil, but you feel it all the same. It doesn’t belong on you. It misjudges its place.

Thinks itself deserving of this lapse in manner.

(Blears like yellow. You prefer shadow, or a flame burned to blood’s liking.)

“Why?!”

Weems now breaks into a quiet smile. It’s passive, in a manner, yet all the more knowing. She doesn’t impale you. This isn’t to stand in your way.

Rather, it is … acknowledging, or a stray concession.

“The academy legislature passed a statute which prohibits non-Lycans from getting involved in Lycan-dynamic disputes — up until the point where it’s potentially fatal, and other concerning behavior behaviors. Beyond mere aggression, that is, for the non-Lycans.” (Her lips are twisting. She swallows a bite.) “It was seen as … discriminatory against their practices, though given enough non-Lycan students had died from getting themselves involved anyway, as collateral, the compromise was made.”

On any given day, there’s a squirm down your back for every time Bianca is right about something.

In the moment, rather than squirm, there’s a writhing, and it pummels one cast-iron gauntlet from your jugular, straight to your gut.

You detest this. Furs have incrementally become the most incessant outcasts in Nevermore.

“‘Compromise.’”

“True Lycan disputes are near-fatal in nature. As to … establish their Alphas and Omegas, something that has overruled answering to the brutal nature. Being able to get involved in that at all is already a stride.”

Incessant, and downright appalling. There are decrees for them. Legislature.

And you thought that you’d see a break from the damn law breathing down your neck. But alas, you are an Addams.

That break was your lunatic’s fallacy.

“This is psychotic.”

“Ever the melodramatic, Wednesday…” (Her sly retort begs for a likewise grin.) “But, it is. I know. It’s one of the few regulations of Nevermore that I have actively pushed against. For a number of reasons. However…,” (as a gripe, now:) “most alumni and the families here would sue if I did so in front of the student body. And, I suspect that the Sinclairs, particularly her mother, would not appreciate the involvement.”

This is a joke without a laugh. And neither of you make for good comedians.

“It’s— It’s her daughter those wolves are harassing.”

She nods — again, knowing. There’s an inkling in her eyes; it dyes like odium.

“As far as my history with Esther Sinclair concerning Enid goes, my hands are tied.” (Finally, there is a break in her stoneface that goes beyond restraint.) “I am sorry.” (And it beats you over the head like pity.)

Esther … Sinclair…

She is a nag. A fly on the wall when she shouldn’t, a worming presence by mention alone, and then … a clot of hair to vomit, all at once. You don’t understand it, how a woman as outwardly collected — presumably poised to a womanhood alike Mother’s — could be this pit of yours. A root to it all.

Everything abstract, asinine, difficult about Enid — follow those down, and you get Esther.

Anything deplorable about Furs, and you will pry from that Esther as example.

She’s the one in your way. You will mate her daughter, worship her, without blessing. Only invitation, by Enid’s hand alone. Because you will be the only to explore Enid the way you intend, to satiate this rut of hers.

There is one reason why you’d ask the woman for such a thing: tradition, or something. And yet, you would smite her to an ember pile if she thought to play a quasi-bishop’s interview, never mind bare testimony to mating’s consummation.

She is in your way… But you will mate her daughter regardless — that is as inevitable as anything.

“Your tailored coat as yet to arrive…?”

You fold your arms; it does little to ease the restless prick down your skin.

“Yes. I’m not concerned with that now.”

You back away. You bite your soured tongue. A waste of time. For once, you lugged your ego over glass and hot coal, and it left you down an avenue without answer.

Weems, however, lurches from contemplation, and she presses,

“I realize, Wednesday. But, I had a thought with that custom uniform of yours.” (You crane your curiosity.) “Your … qualities may very well include you in these disputes.”

This look in her eye is both familiar and terribly alien to you: there’s a scheme within grey, yet she’s revealing her hand.

“They would…?” (Your frown creases.) “I’m no true Lycan, principal.”

“You are an Addams, however, aren’t you? Your family has enough association to count, doesn’t it?”

The gears behind your eyes are slow to churn.

You are yourself … Lycan. If one were to squint and pool citric acid within their eyes.

Weems continues, slogging through her own scheme. The pieces require mastery to join together. An art of manipulation.

“And with you in particular…, that allergy of yours is an indication of … another nature.”

“It’s genetic. Passed down by my father.”

She nods. In the light, you’re obligated to mistake it grim.

“It is. You’re both sensitive to red pigment in particular… Even in rose petals.” (Wheels turn. They mash in place.) “However, he is not to your extreme…” (Articulating your nature…) “Gomez gets himself hives. Your skin recoils off the bone.” (Speaking it aloud…) “I would suspect some of it comes from Morticia as well, being that it is a rather Vampyric quality.” (It is the grime clogging this scheme.)

You realize that she is calling back to memory. Rifling through pages of the academy regulations. Your nature is ambiguous. The academy’s ruling is convoluted.

They marry together like a fish and bull.

Except, this woman knows how to hook, and she knows how to steer. That is her art.

“Principal?”

“By chance…, there is an Addams-shaped loophole…”

She laces her hands together. Holds them in place. There is a foreboding sense of conviction to her, and a senseless breed of confidence.

“Given your dynamics… I will turn a blind eye, Wednesday. Should anything more come of the matter, do as you wish. But just this once.”

You principal leaves you.

The tall, grand doors to her office close, and you are … distressed.

| vi |

| (she scours for scent) |

You are losing your mind.

Which in itself is a given, yet in the hour now, this feels like a taunt.

A nagging.

Because you have mulled over Enid’s perfumes for another time too many. Feared that she’s run dry of one. The same that lulls you. The one as blue as her eyes. It has been a scant trace lately…

Berry. A specific murmur to your nose, a dwelling on your tongue’s tip — you can’t place it, and there’s no finding it. The reason is unfathomed. This is a favorite one of hers, and damn the promise to keep your money from indulging her, you—

You are, quite embarrassingly, spiraling over it. Had she not kept herself to the balcony — phone at hand — upon your return, her side would be scathed by a whirlwind. Of your own making. You’ve scrounged through her trash anyway. There’s nothing. Uncapped every bottle across her dresser. Nothing.

All of it is fruit.

None are your ache.

You don’t understand. Why, the Hell, can you not find this?! It’s her favorite. And it’s blue. Yearns like wine. Festers in your nose as this longstanding vinery—

Concord.

You stall at the foot of her bed. Too many of her perfumes burn your wrist. But…, the name has bludgeoned to you now: concord grapes. Of course. You remember this, the way it bombarded your first step through this door, and then outright assaulted you when she rushed for an embrace — her fervent welcome.

It’s sickly in ways rot can only dream of. And she stood there, before you, wearing a cluster.

As you meander back to the bottles — read through each label —, there is a pang, and it’s devastation. Some are hearts. Pink glass, most of them. None are your slender delicacy.

(You need this. It’s no mere yearning.)

Months ago, there was an argument. It had been one of few erratic strings conducted by Enid, and Enid alone. Thing made himself scarce. Yoko was a cold presence the day following — stern to Enid; frigid to you.

You learned it was her favorite. Enid told you so. The bottle was a parting gift from Murray for the semester.

And you had, apparently, stolen it. To wear it yourself.

You did not. You voiced to her as much with a biting mouthful. The staunch in your words left her quiet. Perhaps Enid finally listened. Or, you’d inadvertently ebbed her resolve.

The bottle has not been here. Not since April.

…as you stand here with a mind whirled, and a memory torn, you feel more lost in your sanity. The brands and scents Enid has aligned for herself are numbing to the eyes. Had she … bought herself another? Saved it from you, or found the bottle to do the same?

You did ebb her resolve, then. Pushed her to this, to the point of habit. And such habit has been reinforced by the laundry’s stash kept within your bed.

Enid has left her basket in the open, as she has done. It sits where you’ve stolen from. Those blouses were never the same as that bottle.

Your eyes stray to her closet. It’s cracked, and its dark sliver is inviting. Yet, you stall. Shadows are haven. To encroach is to bastardize.

Another pang. Bitter, now. And your strides are sulking across the room. You sink into your chair, at your desk, and soothe for memory.

The bottle does not come to you. Only blue, and every moment where her nose grazed down your neck, and her arms captured. Brief moments, where nothing — alike the bottle — found you. Because Ajax was a bane. Thing was your jury and executioner.

Concord blue enraptured you then.

And it’s your persistent agony now.

You limply toy with a knob of your typewriter. It tacks earnestly, only for it to chime hollow. There is nothing. The bottle evades you. There is no scouring for it. The most you can manage is to … mourn, and hope that memory doesn’t befall to despair every time Enid decides to spritz it on for you.

Woe sinks its brittle fangs to the thought.

How awful. You’re to Enid’s whim evermore.

There’s an itch to peel your skin by the joins. Nothing — this has been a morning where you could do nothing for her. At most, you ditched her ex in the woods. But it’s not enough. Not when that had been an inevitable. You can’t figure your way in desecrating those Furs for what they’ve committed. There’s no opportunity to wash dear Esther away. You can’t find this perverse and forsaken bottle.

You frankly trip from your desk to your bed. The bed groans censure. Your nails dig anyway, and you gnash, fervently, into the sheets. Some if it — the linen — frays to your lips. Your mouth seeks to collect the lasting remark of this perfume from bedding's hoard.

Only to fall limp. Again, for another time. You stare into academy old through your unruled fringe.

You’ve found it. Scraps. Of grapes, trampled of their fragrance, skins in disarray. The stems are left behind. It has all been treated by musk, and rot, and the rest of her.

From around your bed, there’s a gradual pattering. You slide your eyes.

[…why are you pouting?]

(Muffled, into the bed:) “I’ve failed her. To lavish her skin with her signature perfume, I would do anything. I would even let my hide peel from the marrow to soothe the fruits across her body.”

(No, you do not think to remove your teeth.)

Thing, with a cloth slung over, then his shower caddy tied around his wrist, lingers. He’s staring at you. Judging you.

[Okay, Gomez.] (You force a glare. Your teeth sink to cotton.) [Anyway, I am taking my shower. I will see you after lunch.]

There are a multitude of things you don’t understand about Thing. The imp.

Not in the ways he attributes your every quality to Mother or Father. Nor in how long it takes for him to cleanse all five digits and one knuckle row.

You rest for a moment. Then you pull away. Your drivel twines after your mouth. And down your spine, splayed across your shoulders, you feel… You feel a dull warmth, and with that, a pang. The morning’s damn specter haunts you still, whether or not it in itself remains.

How ever so insolent.

From your desk, you snatch the handle to your favorite blade. You straddle the most of your bedding. Unclothed now, to its naked plush inflamed by her blouses, and you bear witness to what’s been defiled.

The blade winks in the light.

You slash into the bed. The blade cries as it sores down springs. Cotton follows your knife in whisps before you hail down again. And again. Your breaths carve your throat like glass, your mouth as burning coals. Again for another time, with a fist closed around the handle, your knuckles vehement against skin. You tear a ravine. After ravine. Into canyons. Enough to hide a body. More than enough to seal her away — bed Enid this coffin.

With you beside.

Raptured together. Chained by bedsprings, garbed by your nest of laundry.

Something cracks beyond your teeth. It thrums incongruently. Your mouth is bent to the shape of disorder. Cackling… You are … cackling. To yourself. In soft, whispered bursts, a laugh that a coven would grin to.

Both hands strangle now. You keep the knife raised above your head, glinting for another onslaught. There’s animation in your face. It grows tiresome. But your teeth are baring, eyes burning. Air seizes from you. This onslaught will ease you.

“— what you called me for?! Why are you drinking at— It is like … five-f*cking-o’clock over there! Mom!” (Enid…) “Okay, yeah, watch my lan— Quit—” (She sounds disturbed.) “Okay, so quit calling me?!”

You relax. Your face favors null, and your arms hang on either side. The knife drawls across the bed before you unhand it entirely.

“I don’t answer them because I don’t even know what you’re trying to say! Y— And?!”

Enid paces across the window, with a hand wrung through her hair, and the other trapped to the phone held against her ear. She’s terse. There’s lines from her nose to her brows rare on her.

There is no question.

“Y… Y-Yeah, Ajax and I are going to— No— N-No he doesn’t know! Why would I tell him?!”

The damn woman you can’t drain away.

Her dear, doting mother.

Esther. This is Esther on the other end, and you loathe how a mere mention in the halls evoked her from across the country.

“Mom. M— Mom.” (You peel from your wounded.) “Mom, you said you didn’t care. Why would I keep you updated about my b— Boyfriend?” (You shy from sunlight.) “N— Uh, no, we— Yeah we’re waiting! I’m not— I’m not gonna let myself get pregn— He—” (She paces still.) “Okay, he’s not gonna get me pregnant, no kits during school, and Ajax— He wouldn’t be a deadbeat, what?!” (Esther snakes tongue on the other end.) “I’m— I’m just saying, he wouldn’t do that…” (Clips Enid by her ear.) “Okay. No. He’s … fine.”

Enid pauses. She stands at the window’s median — back to you.

You wait for detonation. Rather than that, Enid pools her ire.

“Whatever… I’m— I’m going to breakfast. Okay.”

There’s always a tell after a bad call: Enid raises her arm far from her face, doesn’t look, and pinches the screen.

Then promptly kicks at the wall. She has a new chosen pillar, once the first — a mere pace to the left — threatened to fall upon another dorm. Enid stuffs the phone into her blazer’s pocket and collapses against the ledge. Arms crossed. Her weight almost bows over the side.

You step quietly into the light.

“You haven’t told her.”

She slumps her shoulders.

“No.” (Her eyes peer. They burn.) “Um. S— I-I’m sorry. She just… She’d lose her mind if she heard about you.”

Beneath hollow, there’s a shivered sting.

It’s what you’ve figured. However…

You smarm your poor excuse for a smirk, and you reply,

“I meant your waiting.”

Enid flushes. She deflates all the same.

“We don’t even talk. That was the first phone call since… I don’t even know.” (A tilted head prompts. Admits,) “She never calls me sober.”

“I’ve noticed.”

Never, in your time here, have you heard otherwise. It’s infrequent — her calls —, but there are tells, and they’re laced by what Enid has thought she left behind.

She didn’t, of course. You know she longs for graduation.

“Yeah. She usually talks to me through Mack.” (Her nails carve down stone.) “It starts out fine. Sometimes it ends fine. Or it just … spirals.”

Enid digs until a chip breaks. A chip of balcony. She surveys the nail. You realize she’s yet to repaint them, or dawn them by acrylics.

Somewhere, there’s a lurch by the sight alone. Seeps like mourning.

“She’s been on my ass since summer break. My scent just kept … changing, Day. And everybody there noticed.” (Enid finds you.) “Your scent’s kind of … unique. So.” (Her eyes roil a quiet storm.)

(Your fault, Wednesday.)

“I got into a fight with my cousin. He kept following me around asking about it, then he put two-and-two together. So…, yeah. We fought because he kept challenging me, I guess. The rest of the pack figured out that I was an Alpha after that.” (Goes back to scarring the ledge.) “Mostly because of my howl. He still beat the sh*t out of me, though.” (Enid glances again. Snags your turned brow.) “Middle-schooler.”

“Your howl, Enid…?”

She bites her cheek. Her face fumes again, for … admitting her tyrant's immaturity.

“You know that … some wolves scream, right?” (Of course. It’s a scream like no other.) “Yeah. And the trill with it’s a dead giveaway.”

Her laugh is sour. Because it is a cynical, fitting revelation: the fact that, out of everything, her voice — words, character — is what has been façade’s undoing. With Ajax, then Nevermore by association.

And before that, the Sinclair clan.

“I have a broken howl. The rest of them don’t do that. But it … scared them into knowing, I guess. I don’t know.”

Broken.

It has been a word echoed around Enid for as long as you’ve listened to her recounts of family. The little things, the big moments, and every slight that lands between. She calls back to years ago. Murmurs her predictions for the school breaks to come.

Enid would make for a fair psychic.

Dramatics included, but nevertheless accurate. That, or the Sinclairs live by patterns — a script which Enid has read time and time over.

You ask,

“And your mother…? What did she do?”

She frowns. Her face creases with her brows, to the shape of a bewilderment not yet settled.

“She actually defended me. Told them all to leave me alone.”

“That is … surprising.”

Quite. You expected to hear about the same pattern and its script, just as Enid had predicted.

Life is without these bizarre turns, however. They are enough to fool even you.

“I know. And I thought it was because she finally accepted it, but… No. I got … sloppy with hiding my rut. I mean, my scent changed. I did tell her it was Ajax’s.” (Enid shrugs. Toys with her hands.) “I don’t know if she bought that, but she took it and left me alone too.”

“Enid…”

Her eyes find you. They bathe themselves mutely — singe to glass. Guilt. It broods cold. So she swallows it down, looks away. Avoids you again.

You meant … to be a comfort. Not this.

“I have my own room, since I’m the only daughter, so there’s a little bit of privacy, but I still would wait until I could take a shower to deal with … it. I didn’t swim at all, since I only have, like, one-pieces or bikinis. And I was so not about to ask for trunks. They’d be ugly on me, and just a dead-giveaway. So. Um. I just … kinda tried to do my own thing.” (Her nails trace.) “Maybe I got a little bit comfortable because, like, she told them all to back off, so … I thought it was okay. But uh … yeah.” (There are lines left behind.) “Then one night, my brothers were all hogging the freakin’ shower. And I was rutting like f*cking crazy. I felt like my head was gonna pop off, it got so… Uh. Rutty.” (They carve stone rivers.) “So I just went to my own room.”

Down your arm pricks not rivers, but trenches. By stare alone, you feel how deep her claws etch into stone. Even now. A week later.

The scars have been smeared by color’s blot, however. They are clean dashes no longer.

Trenches. And they’re overgrown, long after warfare.

(Enid continues in croak,) “We don’t have locks on our doors. They’re just all really old. And, my brothers busted the doorframe to my room.” (Her eyes roll an old, bitter gripe.) “So, of course, she um… Caught me mid— Um.” (Then they wince, as her cheeks bloom.) “…mid-thrust, I guess.

“And she just went batsh*t.”

Some moments hold their breaths. Others blister, or they run cold.

This one recoils, because this story isn’t new, it’s merely few and far between. Including now, Esther’s volatility — her knack for the detonation — dwells in days recounted.

Or, it dwells behind ocean eyes whenever Enid does the same. Because, you’re afraid, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Rather, one fuji had fallen from granny smith.

“Maybe I was only allowed to be an Alpha because I wasn’t … doing anything like that.”

“Relieving yourself…?”

Enid near-scoffs. Strikes you cynical.

“How about ‘trying to knot a pillow’?” (Another shrug — resigned.) “Her words, not mine.”

A nail bites into her watch’s band. Her eyes strafe. They merely brush you by the shoulder.

“S-Sorry, I know you … don’t get what I’m talking about.”

“Why apologize?”

“It’s … raunchy, I guess. That’s how everybody puts it when it’d be too triggering to say Alphie whor*.”

You can’t help the flinch. It’s a flight across your hand, a dash down your nose.

“Enid…”

“It’s fine. It is what they’d say. Girls can’t be Alphas. We make slu*ts out of it.”

As she slips to this stewed silence, there is a knocked reminder that her dramatics… They will always breathe. There’s no asphyxiating them. No gouging by their tongues.

Enid knows how to dress, but she drowns herself in color because she may as well. She has claws to bear, yet she’d trade them for rhinestones if she could. Her hair needs more to it. Her face could do better to pop her eyes and invite her smile. Then her hands, and her neck, ears too — they require jewels to sing their worth. The rest of her body is never … spoken of.

If it’s not a canvas, it is something to hide.

You wonder … if her knot has all to blame. Her knot, the fallacies which Furs subscribe to…

“Perhaps I don’t understand it. Not the fixation over which biology is more ‘appropriate’ for Alphas, nor have I had that urge to relieve.”

“Never?”

“I’m not as easily aroused by my emotions, and that isn’t limited to lust.”

It isn’t a lie. You swear by it.

But, there is a bed that would weep otherwise, and it’d croon over the knife still amongst the sheets.

Enid nods, however.

“I guess so…” (Looks to you.) “Never ever?”

She looks to you with hope, almost, in her eyes. It doesn’t mask across her face, nor gleam as bright as you’d think such a thing would on her. You realize it’s a quiet, submerged ember within her blue. And it beckons for something. Calls upon a ship you never shall embark. Or not— Not quite that.

You don’t know.

Because never did you imagine yourself to sail her eyes, nor to— To answer when the time beckons.

“I’m not quite as confident as I had been in the past, if that’s what you’re asking.” (Then, a damning admittance:) “And I was always indifferent to physicality. It’s the people I don’t like, not entirely the acts themselves.”

Honestly, it is true. It is. Your revulsions are of character, and how often you are reminded of your parents. As for bodies, there’s no great difference. None that matter.

Until you realize who wears them, and you are left to discern what eyes would ogle across your body, or, if they’d be the face to cherish you.

Enid smiles to herself. It’s about as gleeful as she could feasibly manage, a mere few minutes from the dear wolf in her ear.

“Sounds about what I figured.”

Those words of hers chime bittersweet. A flavored delicacy for you, bittersweet, yet … it does not belong on her. Not like this, where as it chimes, it breathes like she’s known for longer than she should have.

And that you’ve been lagging behind. Far, far behind, until now.

Your nail draws a line down a knuckle, then another.

“None of that is to say I won’t listen, Enid… To— To you. With your physicality.”

You do not look at her. You stare down the castle and, absentmindedly, configure all the ways a person could lunge off.

“…even if it’s too much?”

Seven come to mind.

The one that sinches you is dull of gore, but it’s the one that has your stomach twist: a heart murmurs, a head drains empty, and a body faints over the edge.

“I’d argue it all is ‘too much.’ But yes, even then.”

Her laugh is quiet. It rings like a bell to your ears.

Your eyes path, and though you find her not as lively as you could beg for, you have managed this: a graced smile. One as quiet as the laugh.

“What?”

Shakes her head. The smile stays.

“What is it, Enid?”

She debates, whether or not to answer you. In humor. The bane of her mother has been shed, until the next call.

“I don’t know. I just never thought we’d be here, I guess.”

You glance across the horizon.

“In Nevermore.”

“Like … kinda, a little bit, together.” (A sheepish fumble, then,) “I-I guess.”

Enid breaks from the wall. Her arms fold once the grime is dusted off her sleeves, and there’s only a mere haze of grey across midnight.

“I remember when you hated staying in the room with me. You almost were never here.”

A hum drifts from you. It is the only reply you can offer.

Because it’s true. You longed for the manor. The insomnia you conjured for yourself wasn’t enough to stave the stir-craze in your waking moments. Thing was familiar enough. Enid was … far too foreign. Until she wasn’t.

…you still don’t really know when you began your quest for that perfume.

It may have been a mute urge of yours, the moment where she went from foreign to not.

(That scent was stolen, Wednesday… You’ve known it, beneath hollow.)

| vii |

| (she is brewing) |

“So like, you— You didn’t do anything to him, did you?”

A project’s ministrations have you pulled back into the academy library. Unfortunately for you, the windowed sector. The sun doesn’t stream overhead in the hour now, yet it is a brash influence on the building clouds. Their grey is near-blinding. Though you adore the color, the hue alone is enough for your eyes to ache.

Last night still weighs heavy on you.

Her blonde does flower to you, however… The blues flourish with ocean. Purple is the rolling aftertaste. Pink scorns. It’s pleasant on her.

Enid has her hands planted firm on the library table. She waits.

“Why are you concerned?”

Between the two of you is the mess of papers collected, then the books Yoko managed to pry from a freshman before a final biting retort, and the urge to whack its spine over their head. Enid sits across.

“Well— I… I dunno. You didn’t … actually hurt him, did you…?”

You pause, decide the pamphlet in your hand is not necessary, and reach for another document.

Your stare flecks. Yoko handles another book.

And, coyly, you have Enid wait. For enough time.

“…no.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Okay, but what did you do?” (No answer.) “Wednesday?!”

“He’s alive.”

Enid flares, sews her mouth tight, and for another time, you’re reminded just how malleable her face is. Elastic, in a way. It may be the shape-shifter in her, and it isn’t the moon she changes to, or it’s the vibrancy, for she is her own canvas.

Before she has the chance to wrest more from you, Yoko mutters,

“Dead or alive, we gots this recipe to find, Enid.”

The Fang glances from behind her treated lenses. The windows are a blight to her as well. It was a flustered decision, made at the last minute.

For such a simple project, it has been a strain on group effort. The research is made tedious by the rubric. Namely for the potion’s instruction itself, which had to be researched within academy books through a week of sophom*ore exams.

Hence Yoko having been an insult away from reconfiguring a ghoul’s jaw.

As the group’s resident crone, she handled the recipe and the background context for the paper — with minor incident. Enid, who bemoaned to you both over her schedule and clubs — because there are multiple —, she is designated the … support. And the cook. Who would have to risk singing her brows over a cauldron in the next class period.

Then Eugene, who enrolled himself into Honors Concoctions to further his entrepreneur journey, and he now sags into a hand as he scrolls through his computer. He managed to skip a year of class given his talent in chemistry. It, conveniently, landed him alongside you.

Said talent refuses to lend its hand now, where he scrounges through every file he collected for this project, then the internet.

“This is going to take forever.”

The recipe has been a bitch to find in this library, and it’s known to be the same in practice. Yoko warned him that the books are horribly outdated, so he took her advice. Pulled out his technology.

Which leaves you, pen at hand if not the texts scattered overtop the tablespace, and you mind-numbingly keep track of citations.

It is meant to be a short paper, with today’s class as the potion’s conjuring. You know it will be written within a night. It isn’t difficult, and for once, you yourself aren’t the strain on group effort out of sheer spite. Because you do work well together. You don’t mind these three.

You debate drowning yourself in the cauldron when the time comes.

“Lightheaded?”

You don’t jolt, exactly, though you realize how reliant you’ve been on your hand to keep your head afloat. Enid watches you from the clutter in her grasp. Yoko, however, is who leans for answer.

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah, well, the blood on you this morning said otherwise…”

Enid frowns.

“You … just said—”

“Not Ajax’s, Enid.” (Yoko hesitates.) “The blood was day-walker.”

If you focus, you can taste iron bile, rooted on your tongue, in the back of your throat. Her bed did well to distract you, and the shower. You’ve yet to truly shed this film.

You dodge ocean. There’s no need to stain the waters now, nor to invite storm. Can’t do that to her. Not after the week you’ve put her through.

“I’m just saying, I have blood if you need a fill.”

A curt nod.

Enid is unrelenting. She murmurs a strong current, and you are a breath shy from getting yourself pulled under:

“Did he hurt you…?”

You wish she snapped at you. Lashed you. It would have made this easier.

“No. No. He hardly laid a finger.” (Not in his character…) “It wasn’t anything.”

“It— It wasn’t from your nose, was it…?”

Y— You don’t mean for your eyes to skid to her. She still searches. You know she will find everything by mere glance. This isn’t a mere possession. This is a cat in her arms, and there’s a threat here. A silent one. To carve you open by a simple gesture.

Unveil your character.

“I’m fine—”

And you are … far too nauseous. Abruptly so.

The quiet here unsettles you. The light bombards you. There is no mercy.

“You had another one of those visions—”

“I am fine. Enid.”

She halts in her word. The storm in her eyes…, it burdens a deeper color than what dear Esther could ever pull from her. It’s new. A blue that swells at random, within these meandering hours. You know she wants to talk. It’s why Enid waited for long enough to ask about Ajax. To inquire of you just what you did to him.

…there is no right answer to give. There’s no knowing what you did, for you… You lost your mind.

When you close your eyes, there is only woodland. And Ajax, face wept into the ground.

Then midnight.

The very uniform Enid wears now, beneath a night with a breath frostbitten.

It is now October.

Time knows how to escape you…

You will wait until Ajax emerges from the trees to read his face, and to know what you’ve done. Last night is blurring by the minute. Enid may gather the resolution on in your eyes. She stays quiet. Bites down her worry for you.

You clear your throat.

“I may be inclined to take the offer later, Yoko.”

There isn’t much elegance in the way you drift back to project ministrations. Eugene is slow as he types, before he builds momentum. His glasses shine the light. Ghastly so. Yoko hesitates. Then, she’s drawn back to skimming through the pages for the specific text she has in mind. Her foot is a rapt hammer on the floor. It’s echoed from behind keyboard.

The hour is dwindling.

Enid has another few papers in her hands. She doesn’t read them.

And you spy marigold. Just for a moment. One trick of the eye. A ribbon, tied around her neck. Of Le ruban du cou. The sight speaks for itself. You want to affront whichever window dared to spite you, and trick your eye, streak the sun across her neck.

Your iron bile… It may have given the succubus artistry in nightmare, after the catacombs gave it invitation.

Or, those bodies merely had your mind go astray, and your room needed its cleanse. You don’t know enough of Nevermore to discern the difference.

There is one, however, who would. She found the catacombs years ago, and made home in its twin hiding place: Fortunato’s cellar. She has also dormed within Ophelia Hall long enough.

You’re also in her good graces, for the time being. So you gather your question. Prod it to her as a passing thought, nothing more:

“Are you aware of any hauntings in our hall?”

Yoko doesn’t budge from her focus. Instead, she rattles off a quick-witted,

“…uh, other than your rituals?”

Eugene’s keyboard slows. You know he hears ritual first, then the implication of many above all.

There … may have been an incident within your first semester here, with blood drawn on the ground, and a raccoon’s skull in your hand. It had been to clear the spirit’s tether. Honest. It had been frenzied.

You stare a cavity through the tome Yoko holds.

“My condolences for not knowing how to remain connected to past relatives.”

She folds it with her thumb still caught on her page, and eyes you. As though you’ve committed a crime.

Which you have. Several counts in this week alone.

None of them include drugging several students into a stupor for abduction.

“…why am I not surprised that creep in the mirror was like an uncle of yours?”

His eyes are wide and aghast before they snap to the other side of the table.

“Enid, did you know this?”

Like Yoko, Enid has yet to budge in way of your habits. At least, in reflex. She does lift herself from mild research, blinks, then almost rolls all of her body.

“Ugh. Yeah, Thing told me after Wednesday did a séance where some old stupid book was.”

“It was a family album.”

It’s an heirloom for good reason. The album was crafted to stand the test of time, and to be sealed behind spell and ether. She’s wearing a partial glare. So you pause, recall the memory of Enid sprawled across the floor, then offer,

“Not every leather-bound book is a cursed object.”

The album with the bubonic plague, however…

“Anyway, what,” (Yoko asks, leaned into her hand,) “was there a haunting in your room?”

Insomnia does not usually gift you a lapsed judgement such as this. A demented psyche, sure, though not … bovine. Yet it has on this October morning. You did not consider Yoko’s tact in gossip, and the ways she reels her manner, and hooks what she knows. And you just… You just wriggled your demented little head onto gossip’s doorstep.

The thought that Yoko would be unbothered by you … dry mounting Enid’s headless body is laughable. A succubus’ perversion would not matter to her.

Red narrows from over treated lens. It boils against the grey tinged to her skin.

And then, her eyes flicker. Before they’re skating across the table. She frowns. You follow her gaze to find Enid.

Humored. Enid is humored.

She’s refined, now, in the ways she keeps a joke to herself. For too many attempts she tried with you, to banter. By the time you realized the grin she wears presently, and how it’s fitted for a pun, or in jest, you swiftly discovered how she flinched to you, and your own … attempts.

As of now, she’s refined, and it’s waved off, kept for another ear to feed.

“What…?” (Yoko tilts her chin. Her smile is a faulty mirror.) “E, what’s with the smiling?”

“U-Uh—”

You realize why this is a joke to be waved off. Enid stares, her grin plummets, and she stumbles within herself. She doesn’t want to answer. Not here. Yet, she winces, then she sways. And as though a string pulls at her shoulder, Enid follows down the momentum, rears around the table, plots herself right in the seat beside the Fang.

It’s immediate. It’s why they are the friends they are.

Yoko leans — preemptively giddy — where Enid whispers in her ear.

Her eyes widen. A grin flourishes. It downright splits her f—

“…no f*ckING. W-WAY!”

She—?! She is cackling?!

Yoko is wracked by what howls through her mouth, and in leaning towards Enid, her weight tips over. She sinks onto the floor on both hands and knees. It may be the lack of blood. She perhaps is lightheaded herself. You eye Enid. She’s appalled, if not outright baffled. You assume this is disorder, and that Yoko is horrifically unwell.

It is.

…silent. In the library.

You stare at her. She has her glasses in one hand, fixed to the floorboards. You don’t understand the face she has tacked on. Her eyes are the widest you’ve seen on any Fang. There are strange creases in her skin. And they’re growing. She’s— Yoko is wheezing at you—?!

And. And she cackles. Again.

At— At you?!

“What are you doing?”

Her hand is a frazzled smear over her shoulder. Contortions stream from her mouth now. There’s noises which belong to other animals squawking out her throat.

You turn to Enid. Hope that she has any godforsaken idea of what— Why did she turn away when you turned for her?!

“Y-You…?!” (Yoko is snorting like a goddamn pig?!) “You— Y-You of all people g-got scared…?! From a—?!”

“Enlighten me, Yoko. What is it?!”

She wheezes. Looks over her shoulder, and you find tears streaked down her face.

Yoko breaks again. It is worse, somehow.

“I get possessed by an ill-mannered, offensive ghost, and it’s the funniest thing?!” (You snap your head.) “Enid?! What did you tell her?!”

And thankfully, you find a sense of reason within her. Enid holds her face. Soothes her hands until they’re worked together in a jumbled mess. Timidly, just as she did before, Enid meanders to you and leans for whisper:

“D-Day, I— I-I, um. I just don’t want the whole dorm going on a hunt over a ghost that doesn’t exist.”

You’re numb. Confounded. And Enid glares at the vampire crumpled around her own stomach.

“Babe… You—” (She chokes.) “Go explain. E, please. I-I can’t— I can’t—! Help!”

There’s a proverb, somewhere, about life being its own bastardization of everything logic and continuity.

And decorum.

And a f*cking pause on mauled psyche.

It takes rolled eyes, hesitation, before Enid snags your shoulder, and you’re careening from the library and down the hall.

“E-Enid—! What are you—?!”

Doesn’t answer. You’re tripping over yourself from behind — just to find solace in the floor again. You realize why Ajax never could seem to find his footing. There is a terrifying strength to her. That much is quite evident when Enid shoulders through the first door she sees. It’s swung straight into the wall.

And you’re staggering across restroom tile.

The door trembles its way to closure.

“Get the f*ck out!”

Two other outcasts, both sophom*ore blurs, scramble at once and bolt through the door. Enid flexes her hands. Her eyes dart down the stalls. By the time you realize this is the same she half-dismantled weeks ago now, she shunts you forward.

“En— OUGH?!”

You slant for balance.

And you find reflection in rippled water. Your hands burn where you smacked them to catch your weight. A nail bites into the grout within tiled wall.

The stall shudders. There’s a swift lock. Before Enid — all of her — knocks into you.

She yelps. You hear her claws dig. Wood shrapnel flecks into the toilet bowl. And from the back of your neck, you can feel the air she sucks in. This sounds like a grimace. The kind that is entirely her fault.

You eye down the ravines she just decorated the stall on either side. Your jaw locks. You glare down peripheral, where her legs are parallel to your own, and she is abysmally close to you. Her weight is spread across your mid-back. Her hips are planted.

“U-Um…”

“You couldn’t have chosen the bigger stall, Enid…?!”

There is no asking for the next minute. Enid strips herself off you, and once you face each other, and the light is a line across you both from the door, you fold your arms. She’s sheepish.

“Nobody should hear us in here.”

How you’ve been lambasted from the library with its incredulous Fang to here deserves a slur of its own.

“Okay… I— I should’ve just explained before.” (She toys with her sleeve. A part of Enid may strain her ears for anyone past the door.) “It was— It was just so early, and I was still, I dunno.” (That is, until a landslide.) “My butt still kinda hurt from hitting the floor so hard, and I thought that maybe that woke Thing up, and I— I really don’t think a hand is good for this kind of conversation. Even though he’s the one that explained what freakin’ formicophilia is, which is like, ew but…” (Enid snaps her eyes to you. Her mouth hangs. The landslide halts.) “I mean. It’s cool. I … totally don’t judge.”

Her smile is at an awkward bend. There is either pain or fear in her eyes.

“I’m not aroused by insects, Enid.”

“Oh thank God,” (she gasps.) “Anyway, it was just so early, and —”

“…Enid —”

“honestly,” (seethed low from her breath,) “think I was kind of getting turned o—”

“Enid.”

Snaps her eyes. Her mouth hangs. This budding landslide — an aftershock, if anything — halts.

Enid is flustered.

“Why are you panicking?”

And she may know about great aunt’s tendencies with her … pets.

You work through the overflow from her mouth, then her smile. The panic.

“…does it have sexual undertones?”

Her wince says all.

Enid soothes her neck. You’re a moment from explaining to her your research over succubi, and how appropriately degenerate they commonly are. And that restrooms, of any kind, are not the best for these conversations.

There is something amiss, however. Enid doesn’t scour for her words like this often.

“Do you know what … a wet dream is…?”

Numb again. Because the sheer thought that anything related to dreamscape — psyche — has managed to pass you by is not kind to your ear. Yet, her wince confirmed to you the … undertones. They dwell within an area you’ve never needed to explore. Not for your nature. You are a broken Addams.

Or— Or not after all.

How … strange of you.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with water.”

“I got that, Enid. Just explain.”

Enid gnaws her bottom lip. She scours again, before a murmured,

“Okay, um…” (Pauses. This means venture.) “They’re when, uh, you’re asleep, and … while you’re dreaming, you just get overly stimulated and org*sm from it. Usually that’s how people wake up, but not always.”

Nocturnal emissions.

It comes to you as a memory crammed deep wherever you cared not to bother with. Father had mentioned it as an off-handed comment a few times. Explained it to Pugsley on one knee, with a hand on your brother’s shoulder.

“I see.”

Of course, the general sentiment you gathered was that the matter did not involve you. There are other banes to your body. You found blood and the sharp agonies to be quite fitting.

And yet, you’ve … acquired another bane. A true misery.

“So that was what I woke up to then.”

“Um… Well, what … were you feeling?”

Cold sweat, though you were boiling. Your heart managed to find its way to your throat. A balm. Horrid revelations…

“Sickly.” (You gnaw your cheek.) “My head was panging, and I felt rattled.” (And now bite.) “And warm.” (Hope for an agony.)

Truly, it had been your own horror to wake to.

Enid plays down her knuckles. You don’t know when you began to avoid her eyes.

“…okay, y-yeah. That—” (Her breath cracks.) “That sounds like that would’ve hit anyone pretty hard. But, it … sounds like you came. A little kinda lotta bit.”

You ignore the last stretch of pure waffle. She has incrementally weened herself off them for the past semester, though her convulsions in words still manage to find their way.

Because there’s a snag, and you find yourself as lost as with everything else.

This is trudging through swamp where it is all above your head. Far above your head. And you do not have the stature to reach. Not in where you stand, nor in what your nature blinds you of.

“…came to?”

“Well, yeah. But. No, that’s—” (She is … a brick red across her nose.) “That’s not… Wednesday, that’s not what I mean.” (Inflames her cheeks.) “How much slang do you know of this kind of stuff?” (This is … another sore point to ask from Enid.)

You stare at her.

She knows the answer.

“…never mind.”

Enid folds her hands together, as though she wants to find a semblance of poise, enough to bridge the wide margin between a vulgarity and you. Because you aren’t, exactly, vulgar. At least, in colloquialisms. And in inclination. And nature. And … familiarity.

…she may have reason to hesitate.

“Okay. Um. So org*sm is a weird word. People don’t like it.” (Enid doesn’t like it.) “We call it other things.”

“As with a multitude of topics.”

“Y-Yeah.” (She still tries to find her words. That had been deferment.) “So … there’s coming. But it’s not— It’s not like the other coming. It’s, um… Uh— Oh. That.”

You eye where she grazes the stall border. Carved into its wood is a mess of words and other, more simple, “artworks” on display. Enid points to one in particular, however. It’s drawn in poor calligraphy:

CUM

What an insipid word.

“Or, well, that’s not cumming. But, uh, cum. Which this means, like, ji*zz.” (Enid realizes how unhelpful that is.) “Oh. Well. That means, like… Uh. U-Um…”

She is … wringing the air with a loose fist. With a grimace, she doesn’t like this, though her eyes are desperate for you to understand.

Which, no, you do not.

So Enid decides to drop her hand, closer to skirt-line. Rather than a mere fist, her fingers come together to muscle memory. A delicate jostle, almost. It’s the same wringing again, yet with an odd grace as she emulates—

Oh.

“Like—”

“I know what masturbation is, Enid.”

“Okay, but like, cum is the—”

“ejacul*te. I realize.”

Your gaze lingers while Enid pulls her hand away. You rattle down your school years, to the few exchanges which never quite sat well with you.

“So a cumrag is an insult like whor* then.”

“Wednesday.” (Choked. How odd.)

You lift your head and watch Enid bloom in color for another time. This is more pink. She’s aghast.

“And a cum-pocket?”

“Oh. My god.”

Again, you’re reminded how much reality can sting Enid like backhand. You seem to have a knack for it, as well. You’ve never had to swing at her. It’s only ever taken language, and language alone.

You frown.

“I’d like to know what past peers have said behind my back.”

Enid is tight-lipped. There’s knowing to her eyes. A singe of something as well.

“I just … don’t like most of the slang, you know?” (Her nod is slow.) “But, yeah, they can be insults. A lot of it is degrading.”

“And that’s why you don’t like it.”

“Yeah.”

Degrading. For once, a word such as that doesn’t sound like one of her dramatics. If anything, it … hides from you. It does everything to bury an underlying sentiment.

The way she glances at you, as to gage whatever she can read of you, it’s nervous on her.

“You’re uncomfortable.”

“And you’re not?!”

You arch a brow.

“Why would I be?”

She’s disconcerted, and her eyes are scanning for a thought.

“Because … you’re not interested in this kind of thing…?”

“I’ve obviously taken an interest now, and as much as I detest my parents’ overabundant displays, I understand this is part of the human condition.”

The moment it leaves you, it dawns:

The human condition is one thing. The Lycan has more to say, and they are known for it. Their courtships are the subjects to written erotica — the ones that stirred in past schools, far removed of outcasts. There are classes devoted to their sexual education.

For a reason.

Lycans are proud. They howl to an abrasive degree, and those howls are proclamations. Of rut and heat — it is all you hear from them within this academy. Heat has slick. Knots are rut’s face. They whine and whimper over their courtships. They bark in passing, or they growl. Over mates, if not their standing in a pack…

There’s an hypersexuality to them. A hellbent need for companionship. Ceaseless pressure.

As much as Enid is her own, she is a Lycan, just as you are of obscurity.

It is exhausting, being an epitome.

“Wet dreams are pretty common, just … so you know. People get them. Furs get them a lot. It’s one of the things that come with rut and heat, actually.”

“And you?”

She nods. Her lips press together into an awkward line.

“I woke you up a couple of times last year from them.” (To your frown, she clarifies,) “Earlier on. We still had the tape.”

“Those nightly fevers…”

Infrequent, but disorientating to awake from. The cold sweat would bathe the room and drag you straight from nightmare. She always looked bothered those nights.

“Yeah.” (She swallows.) “Those ones weren’t bad. I only rutted when the moon was out, so.”

“Then this semester. You had vomited.”

The only one you found yourself throwing yourself out of bed for. Because she had collapsed from bedside. Was rattled to the core.

As she does now, several weeks after the fact. The look she wears now is belted across her eyes, and it’s a sharp pain in the rest of her. Enid swallows. An ache down your hand pangs to reach for her.

“Enid—?”

“It was, u-um, a really weird dream. Not like … yours, but…”

You pause. Your hand relaxes.

“Are they generally visceral?”

Enid weighs her head. She blinks back her belted eyes.

“Uh. I… I guess so? They’re pretty intense sometimes.”

“And are they sexual, then?”

“Usually? Obviously doesn’t have to be. Since dreams are, like, weird.” (She waits. Eyes you.) “Was this one sexual?”

It goes unsaid, really.

Everything spoken between you, it’s spoken your answer.

“I would say it was.”

A hope, however, is revitalized when you do regardless. As though having it spoken aloud, admitted to her, for Enid to hear… It means something.

“And it was still…, um, confusing?”

(Nodded:) “Bizarre.”

This just as well.

She doesn’t prefer this, though. Her face falls, just enough, when the dream’s reality sets in. It was bizarre. Abhorrently degenerate in its incoherency.

There’s reluctance on her. An odd breed of acceptance, as if this is what she figured.

“How did you know?”

Enid shrugs one shoulder, and finally, there’s almost a genuine smile. Almost. It has been nonexistent to you through this.

“I live with five brothers. And two of them rut. And one of them goes into heat. I … know what a wet dream smells like on other people.”

“I see.”

Mack is the Omega. You have not cared enough to know the others. Not by name, never mind dynamic.

That may very well have to change, should you figure the ways to swoon her. Esther may be the one in your way. However, she has her willing pawns by the sounds of it, and those pawns are not across the country. They are here. There are several.

Enid rocks her jaw, sways to herself, then looks for your eyes.

“…sorry. I didn’t realize it would’ve taken Yoko that off-guard. She’s honestly better at explaining this stuff than me, and…” (Enid shrugs weakly.) “I thought she could’ve helped. She honestly did with my stuff. Especially before Ajax. So…, yeah. Yoko never … rambled either, like an idiot. And she’s … so not awkward—”

“Your explanation is more than I would’ve asked for.” (Then, you add,) “And I don’t mind the rambling. It means significant effort on your part.” (You avow,)“And it means you.”

She thumbs over her watch. It lights, and she stashes it, swiftly, behind her. Sways again. co*cks her head.

“Are you embarrassed…?”

You think for a moment.

“Not entirely. It is a physiological response. And, I’ve dealt with enough possessions. There are many perverted specters that get left behind. It genuinely felt like it had been one.”

Her face pulls like how she used to, back a semester ago. It’s near-comical, if not for the revulsion in her eyes. The abhorrence.

“You mean ghosts actually…” (Her nose sinches.) “Um, okay…”

“They’re left behind for a reason.”

“Got it.”

A road trip comes to mind. The first with Pugsley.

“One of them had been a peasant hanged for seeking the mayor’s children.”

“Oh … my god.”

Enid looks to be paling.

She sounds stunned more so.

“Mother did handle that one. I doubt a spirit before that peasant knew the wrath of the Earth’s center. We are only buried a mere six feet…” (If not in a shallow grave.) “We were visiting Salem, actually. He confused me for one of them.”

Tried to suffocate you first, thankfully. Yet, upon what you’ve learned of human depravities since, you are … uncertain if that had been a purely violent act.

Mother’s face had been warped to the Devil’s liking that night. You had never seen her fangs before, nor how red could molt a day-walker’s eyes. The hue of ash, however, was what had you realize how terrified you could grow to be of her.

“Wednesday, that is so f*cking disturbing.”

Morticia Addams has the family’s depraved streak within her. And it gowns her in deranged elegance.

“I’m aware. Pugsley and I were trained how to protect our psyches from that kind of assault as well, after the fact.” (Your hollow rolls.) “Of course, I was under the impression I had failed that much last night, after … being negligent in precautions.”

Enid tilts her head. The storm in her eyes, yet it is … calm now. She is not wracked by the same brewing currents. Instead, there’s blue. In this light, a kinder shade to you, in shadow.

Begs of you, silently, for last night.

You do not know. There is no answer. No good one. It’s a smear between vision and not. Reason has been the only way you’ve managed to parse through it all.

Reason can only do so much wherever psyche’s melody blears for your insanity.

“I chased … Ajax in Nevermore’s catacombs. I didn’t ease the spirits before I did, and I … was…” (Lost.) “I lost track of time.” (You yourself was lost.) “I was closer to the witching hour than intended.” (Still are, truthfully.)

She stares at you. Rattled.

“…w-we have catacombs?”

You offer to her, almost in coo, just to ease her worry,

“I will show you them, someday. My ancestor dwells there.”

“O-Oh… Cool…”

“It wouldn’t be to receive a blessing. She isn’t … all that personable. Worse than I am.”

The clarification is more of a warning. It doesn’t soothe her, nor yourself.

Such is Goody’s influence.

“Is that why it got to you…?” (You snap to the sound of her low murmur.) “I-I mean the … possession thing.”

You swallow tightly. The trace of blood has no mercy on you still.

“I was shaken when I awoke. Possessing my psyche is no easy feat, and it would imply more about the perpetrator than myself. Though … no, that wasn’t entirely why.”

You’re rigid. You can’t expel this from yourself. There’s a coal to swallow now, and it scorns for hollow.

Enid steps closer. Just enough.

She waits. Your eyes patter across her uniform. You skip every few lines of the blazer, before you’re following up her neck, to her jawline.

Then her eyes.

You are … far too rattled in the mind. You want her to know everything. You want to urge it all from yourself. Nothing, however, comes to find you. There is your grey world. The exhaustion bed within your marrow.

Perdóname… Perdóname, Enid…

You cannot find the words. There’s no ease.

They are all thorned within hollow.

“It felt invasive, and those are never spirits with good intentions.” (Your teeth skin down your tongue.) “I’d gotten apprehensive that it went to you next.” (This breath of yours…) “Because of my … impulses, this morning… I-It— Would’ve been…” (It aches.) “Would’ve … been of my own…”

Enid… Enid is smiling at you.

And you’re numb for another time, for a different reason almost beyond you. Almost, because you do … catch the fume across your skin, and you realize she knows the last few words you failed to utter.

She knows your confession.

“Don’t repeat that.”

“…I won’t.”

You can hear her smile growing when you don’t even look at her. Can barely stand the sight the more she’s warm in sound alone. It’s in the mellow of her voice. She’s smiling more in her words than on her face.

You glare back.

“I’ll carve every word from a dictionary into your back if you do.”

And her eyes. She— She smiles in everything beyond her lips.

“I know.”

“Quit grinning like a jackass when I threaten you.”

Ignores you, as she does. Enid doesn’t think to flinch to your snaked tongue. Might not believe you. You don’t know if you believe yourself, and it’s an incredible concern — you don’t believe yourself.

Silence is scalding.

There’s no counting the waif shimmers in ocean blue. Just that it’s all you see of her, for a moment. Before you notice her blonde in this light. How much of it drains away in shadow. Then… Then her grin, as it fades.

Her lips part. A bell tolls.

For what … reason…? Why—

Why now, Enid…? In here of all places…?!

You don’t answer this. Not her lips, nor the stray furrow to her browline. Rather, you knock backwards into one of the stall’s canisters. Your eyes dart. Panic. She’s just— Enid has just rattled every…

The stall door’s open. She’s stepping over to the sinks.

And you are … numb. This isn’t your mere hollow. You’ve just been rattled to this… This anxiety. A hand soothes down the other’s wrist. It pangs where you’ve lashed yourself. A bruise is blooming. Your shoulders are brisk where you backed into — the stall itself.

Distantly, the academy ventilation.

“I rose this place to protect them, and steal the sane’s mind…

“You are immune, my Addams…”

You swallow. Iron bile, it’s barely faded.

“For you lost your mind long ago.”

Your eyes clip a tile, because you should have known…

You should have known.

What reason would a ghost haunt a desolate mind? An Addams, without a lover’s rhythm in her heart?

A faucet twists. You hear it whimper from the sink, and its water cascades without cease. Her nails are carving. Ceramic breaks. Rut ails.

(You are cruel to her.)

Your stride from the stall doesn’t have any grace. There’s a bumble to it. You nearly trip over the light’s glare across tile. Enid has decided to wash her hands, and by her reflection, you decide it’s a task idly done for she is absentminded. There’s a trace of pink across her. She’s found a way for an absent mind to cleanse fervently. Her brow’s furrow loiters.

Downcast.

The blue in her eyes, it’s dejected, almost, if not a sodden shade. And you linger at the stall. Like a fool. A miserable, gothic little fool in Nevermore’s most ordinary bathroom.

Who truly, wholeheartedly, wants to beat her face in with a shoe of hers — one the size of a brick.

You are the only who can tend to Enid now. You’ve ditched the last one. Spent a week doing so, because you are the most miserable coward.

“Day…?”

Enid caught you by reflection. And the faucet turns. Her ocean is deep evermore.

She reaches for the paper towels before facing you. Soft in the face. Doesn’t … know what to do with you. Her hands dry. She cricks her head.

“E-Enid.”

It is your ruin.

A plead for something you do not know. Blind you are.

Enid is careful when she strides to you. She wants to hold. Can only graze air. You don’t move. Bell tolls, yet there’s a storm in blue. Her eyes are wading across your face. Within oil. There’s only slough, and Enid anchors a hand on your shoulder. Tangles the other with your own.

Her peck is … warm. She’s found the corner of your mouth. Only that.

Before your cheek. Down your jaw.

You let her. Bare your neck for her.

And she mouths every kiss that has followed her. Enid pants them down your neck. Her voice is drawling before she’s whining. Every breath curls. Hands smooth from your blouse to your vest. Enid leans into you. You don’t know when you’ve dug your nails to her waist.

Neither you nor Enid care to find the stall door. You’ve teetered into the border between. It’s enough to rattle the room. You hiss air. Enid has found the other side, and when you bare, you find what humidity she’s traced into your skin already.

The peck of hers burns you. A writhing. You don’t understand why she didn’t just … capture your mouth whole.

Unless she read it off you — enough of your character.

Because it—

It isn’t the blood. Dwelled in your throat, the blood snares you here, like this. Yet it isn’t the worst of you. Because will only be just you. A. U-Un progenie desolada.

…she pauses. Enid pulls back, and you find her terribly nervous.

“Can—” (Desire still remains. There’s a smog.) “Can I-I scruff you…?”

You eye her mouth. It’s preemptive, how your neck washes of static.

A nod. You nod eagerly.

Enid mouths again. Kisses your neck fervently. Before a fang grazes, and it is sturdy in her mouth. It will gorge you. Marr you. It won’t be deft. It’s not slender.

She bites.

Your voice escapes you.

And your very hollow rolls. There’s a stagger somewhere, amidst the haze. You bury your head. The bite is lulling. There is only blue. Concord grapes, and it flourishes now. You’re both tangled in the scent. This nest. And it froths in your mouth. Floods over iron.

There’s only Enid.

Something is boiled down your thigh. Her hands are sculpting the shape of you. And they’re firm in their graze. She’s soft in her grip. A kiss fumes across the bite. You feel a heartbeat. It may be yours, or not. Because it’s lively. The wound is boiling.

Enid is unrelenting forevermore.

And you’ve remained clawed to her. You’ve a fistful of her blazer. A hand sifted within her collar, intermingled along uniform tie.

She returns to the other side. Her lips burden fervor. As she does, Enid finds the pleat between thigh and ass. Firm again. She gathers verve, swells in her breath, before a low murmur crawls against you. Because you’ve allowed her. It’s yet to cross your mind to reject this. So Enid mouths again. Continues to massage. Craves skin — you know she does. She teethes, and hesitates. Tension hangs. Her nose nudges your jaw, and she returns to the skin over your thyroid cartilage.

Until Enid jolts from you. Her fangs are torn from you.

Enid staggers, and her eyes are wild when you snatch the stall’s handle for balance. The tile is a severe reality as the restroom pillages back to your eyes. The light isn’t kind to you either.

Then, to put it mildly, the obscenities which cascade from Enid are … beyond flavorful.

You don’t have the chance to console her, for your glare is strung by what you snag from the open door:

A fanged, sh*t-eating grin.

Life itself is laughing over Yoko’s shoulder, down at you. For this horrendous display of yours, where you are of a obscure stomach, a mind swam too far, then … anchorage, to the tile, by the sheer embarrassment of it all.

A comedy. This is a comedy despite the whirlwind behind your eyes.

Yoko quips something. About a bell.

Your whirlwind eyes path. Enid’s barely in your peripheral.

But you smell it all the same. It’s pungent to you, this building dread. It gorges where Enid mouthed, tremors where her tongue smeared, and then pangs, right down the line where she scruffed you. Blood flushes — brings color to your neck. Shelled beneath your tongue is your heart, and there’s no ease as you bite it down. Rather, every pulse is an engorging break in your conduct. You may as well swallow glass. Then warp it, the longer your fever strikes and thinks itself tempered.

The building dread is pungent.

Enid’s slick between you is cloying.

She is red in the face, to her ears. Reading her red face is as insightful as skimming down an airhorn mid-scream. Something has … transpired. A severe, crude error — on your part, even though you didn’t ask for this. Then again, however, you might’ve done. Unbeknownst to you.

(You only wanted a moment.)

You didn’t feel her knot, no. Instead…, it may have … vomited. All at once. Projectile, though it did not go far. Enid detonated before it could.

On herself, namely.

Yet, the humid patch across your leg is not beyond you.

“Are you going to show her now?”

You do not know if Enid is on the verge of sobbing or dismantling the restroom in its entirety.

“I just … n-need a quick minute.”

Her words ring to you like a command. So you stumble forward, still without a shred of grace, and now without dignity. You pass Yoko’s elation. As if she’s proud of you, and it simmers in the red to her eyes.

The door shuts hollowly.

Eugene is gaping at you, before he realizes correctly to wipe the wide smirk off his face.

“What?”

He shrugs. Doesn’t seem to be capable of restraining himself. He is giggling.

“…even I would’ve skipped class. And I’m the bee loser.”

Yoko sighs, and she folds her arms together. The longer you stare, you realize they have your bags lugged over their shoulders. Enid’s on Yoko’s, yours with Eugene.

Helpful. Really.

You are a second away from treating each as a bowling bag with their heads stuffed in.

“I don’t know what’s worse…” (You hate her crawling smile.) “The fact you just blew your chance, or she just blew her load.” (And how her smooth voice licks your ear.) “C’mon… I doubt Enid would love the idea that we stood here while she cleans her skirt.”

You are the first to take heed and strip the bag from Eugene’s arm. Because damn them both.

They will rue for the barked cackle once you throw open the next door.

| viii |

| (she minds the fang) |

Yoko Tanaka knows too much.

About you and Enid, but moreover, about you alone. And she laughed. As though confusing a carnal dream with a possession is the funniest thing.

The reality with this vampire is like any other, where at the face, she is a collected individual. The moment that face breaks reveals a character bored enough to find entertainment in anywhere she pleases, and to perpetuate it in anyone she chooses. Which you respect. However, to realize that your … blunder might’ve burned itself to be an outlasting memory is a horror in itself.

And the moment she summarized in that restroom added flavor.

She knows too much. She’s even smug about it.

“Ugh. Watching you two is like sitting in front of the driest telenovela.” (Yoko shifts her eyes from her notes. A fang stays caught on her lip before she remarks,)“I’d have more fun watching grass grow.”

How disparaging is she for reminding you of this lush lawn, groomed on the regular. It isn’t tall enough to hope for snakes.

When this class period was announced, you hoped for rain. Instead, the sun has decided to cascade upon you an incessant yellow, and the day it has birthed is … jovial. The trees have begun to glimmer in color. You are without mercy even now.

Except for the stray ounce, because you are far from alone within these sulking shadows. The woodland is just behind your cauldron. Every vampire in the class have sat their projects parallel to yours, where the grass is cool at least, and the shade annotates the autumn’s growing chill.

Yoko best of all, in fact. The night excursion has drained her just as much as you. She teems a red in her eyes. Is sharper in the face. The grey beneath her skin practically glows here, in the shade’s vacant light, for the sun doesn’t cross the thick wads of branch and leaves. It hides in mid-morning.

“Will say…, half of us won our bets.”

It doesn’t stop her from being a vampire, with a face broken of any manner.

Enid glares with the vials Eugene hands over in her fist.

“Don’t tell me all of you have been betting on our relationship.”

“It passes the time for us Fangs, babe.” (Her kind’s namesake — that fanged smile — chips Enid, before it does you.) “So thanks for getting yourself all wound-up in your sleep. I’m gonna get myself some nice kicks this weekend.”

You do find minimal satisfaction in being proven right about Yoko, and any other vampire.

Because of all things, they chose to find entertainment in your … blooming sex life. Blooming — yet there’s a second thought: seeding is more apt; it hasn’t, exactly, begun. Nor is it truly at infancy.

…your predicament is at its bare conception, if anything. If that is what the bite on your neck means. Perhaps. As though you’re one to know.

“Yoko…!”

“All I said was … you two will start being freaky before Ajax is out of the picture, and it’ll just get worse once he is.” (It’s a testament how well she knows Enid —) “And don’t be a little puppy —” (for how swiftly she catches her scowl.) “Playing footsie is so cliché, I don’t even know if Wednesday felt any of it with the cinderblocks she wears, and, you just marked her in a school bathroom.”

Somehow, a stray bullet found you in the midst of that. You can’t help the glance. To the ground. These aren’t even the most criminal in height. They are your oxfords. They give you an inch to feel a mile.

Yoko smirks now, and her eyes are crawling before she snipes them down Enid’s skirt.

You just took a stray; Enid eats buckshot:

“Is the draft helping?

“I—!” (Her eyes flare. She panics.) “I-I was just scenting! A little … bit.”

If not for her half-lidded eyes, you’d mistake Yoko’s raised browline — hilted to an arch — as bafflement. Instead, it’s rather she doesn’t buy this. Not at all.

“That’s all it took—?”

“Shut. Up.”

Fortunately for Enid, she isn’t lying. It did only take a bite, and then … the scenting, where her hands only wandered so far.

Something about the red hue she dawns tells Yoko the same.

Still.

Her blood-boiled eyes skate for you. They drift. Before her Vampyric grin, and Yoko prods at Enid again by word alone:

“You see the lip-prints you left behind too, right…?”

Enid presses her lips to a meek line. She tries to avoid her eyes, yet they gravitate to you regardless.

A chuckle. To your side.

“I’m just here!”

You find his humored smile, and the way he glances between the three of you.

“…Eugene.”

He shrugs at you, still awfully amused by his entertainment. From Yoko herself, Enid’s predicament, to the lip-pri—

What?

You’re diving for Enid’s back, and it’s a belligerent enough of an urge to have restrained her to silence. You shuffle through the largest pocket before one of three mirrors — she hasn’t organized like she said, apparently — is ripped away, tight in your grasp.

The reflection glares back you, with prints down your neck, layered over the bite, then your jaw. Some speckle a cheek. And one mark, it scorns the corner of your mouth — clear enough to identify her by shape and ferocity alone.

They’re faint enough to not be a violent display.

However, each imprint burns where Enid stamped them onto you.

So you lash your glare. Yoko is the monstrous imp over her shoulder — beyond what Thing could ever be. Eugene is quietly laughing.

And Enid.

Is meek in the face.

Yet her eyes are knowing. She knows what she did, and she’s proud with herself.

You start by scrubbing down your jaw with an alcohol wipe. Then the stamp aside your mouth. Your cheek. They’re mulling over the cauldron while you do, adjusting a measurement after Enid knocks over an extra vial by mistake. And you… You hesitate with your neck. You catch where she drew her lips to the bite, and where the blood stained, and where she continued to besmirch your skin. The velvet is painted like scarlet.

A marriage, really, between what she wears, and the blood you shed.

She’s bitten you. It will scar. Faintly, should your obscurity damn you. So Enid shall decorate your body with another, and another after that…

Yoko throws another comment at Enid. It earns a hearty retort.

As much as you’ve craved violence always, this … routine of obnoxious banter has been an odd charm to have discovered at Nevermore. You’ve taken to it well. Perhaps this is what having friends is like — multiple friends, at once. There’s only ever been one at a time, if that.

It feels like the kind of thing you’ve gathered in movies, or from down the halls in your past schools.

In due time, when Ajax awakes, much of everything will be smoothed over. And in some respects, it already has. Enid is over the cauldron, stirring the mixture to what Eugene rattles off from his notes, and Yoko lurking over his shoulder, brows furrowed. A return to form, in a way.

The sun decides to breach through the leaves and scorn the mirror. It flecks across your face. When you glare into reflection, you find … you.

And you are tired. You are not who you ever saw in movies, or in those halls. Without your blazer to cover blouse, the white sleeves bring out the gaunt to your complexion. The morning’s shower has left your hair raven. You can’t … smile, even to the likes of a vampire — with fang or not. The entirety of you is inarticulate in where you belong, how you slot yourself in place.

You don’t know how you fit in moments like these. You seem to have managed a way. However…

What was it that Kinbott said to you…? Maintenance, was it? To keep them around.

It’s something beyond you. Yet around the cauldron, there’s a Fang with her crawling aristocrat smile, a bee-fanatic, and a walking canvas. Then you, after you stow this wipe away and join them.

Perhaps … the answer is to fit yourself where everyone is a cobbled mess anyway.

You still don’t know how to keep them.

(Never will.)

You doubt what you’ve managed will be enough to satisfy Kinbott’s advice.

(No. It won’t.)

Enid eyes your neck, between what the project demands of her and her nose. There’s a hint of pride off her. A glee. Because the bite hasn’t gone, and you kept the lipstick she pattered overtop the wound. It will scar. She knows it. Yet, Enid cherishes the color she’s managed to leave behind, even if it will drain away beneath showerhead.

There’s a slow realization that … this color doesn’t strip your skin to agony. Your neck is lulled where your arm is marred. …when she figured to find shades that wouldn’t gnaw you off the bone, you don’t know. Enid’s pride is blinding now, however, knowing all of what she’s done for her lips alone.

Her growing smile flickers. Enid stalls. Her eyes drift, before they snag your neck again. She listens to the chatter a cauldron down. Downcast is her skin’s color, more than the red that begins to dust complexion.

Yoko is rigid beside her. The treated lenses are slipped from her face when she glares over Enid’s shoulder. Your own follow.

Three Furs together. Two of them, they were with bucket and ice water this morning. At hand.

They notice Yoko before you. Their words drain. Not to absolute silence.

As you turn back to the cauldron, Eugene is confused and mid-page of his notes, and Yoko winces once she replaces her eyewear. The shade is enough to protect vampire eyes on the average day, not when red boils.

Yoko is farther along her starvation than you thought. You wonder how she isn’t lightheaded herself, about to tip over.

Or she is, and Yoko is the kind to watch for.

A grave note on vampires: the ones who know control through starvation have been starved enough times, and their hunger can discern no bounds.

For the meantime, she is a kind presence to you. Yoko mutters,

“God, mutts like that piss me off…”

(Enid, near-mutely,) “Well, she is pureblood, Yoko. Purer than me.”

If you had to guess, the one of your year. A ginger. She stands tall over the cauldron behind you.

Soft in the face, Yoko shakes her head.

“You have the best from all the breeds, E. She got the dump.” (An added,) “And, your family’s old as sh*t. Older than hers.”

Eugene perks from his notebook. He watches Enid in awe.

“It is?”

She nods. Then glances at your notes, where you’ve detailed measurements, and procedure.

“Yup… We go way back. Even my dad’s side.”

You pull your pen from its spine before amending for what was lost in the grass — quarter of a vial, roughly two milliliters.

“Isn’t your dad from the Sinclair Clan, then?”

Enid shakes her head no. Clarifies,

“Mom is.”

“Huh.”

Indeed.

The maternity in her name speaks to old traditions, and it remarks the difference between Addams and Sinclair: your name is old, perhaps noble; Sinclair means ancient, because through the years, fewer Lycan-borne clans follow this motherhood. Too much of the recent past had its way in corruption. There was squalor, degradation, centuries ago. The lasting remains are irradiated now.

But they are lasting. If disorientatingly so.

Clans like these speak to a certain history, where Omegas reigned, or, they spell a time of the female-inherent Alphas and their reserved dominion. You can’t tell which history the Sinclairs fall from. Both are ancient. One is Gaelic; the other is Greek.

And Enid is a conflation of the two.

“Now that I think about it, our families go way back too, huh?”

“Oh yeah.”

You turn away from your notes, and what will eventually be embedded within the project’s report. Your eyes shift between them both, because though you’re aware of their shared history, to realize that it extends beyond the academy is … a highlight in your intrigue.

“You two met before Nevermore…?”

“We’re both old lineages, Addams. We get invited to things. We socialize.”

“As is and does mine.”

She pauses, conjures a thought, has you realize this Fang likes to slough her exhaustion through wit:

“Pure lineages. Not a bunch of monster-f*ckers looking to f*ck more monsters. Which is how people like you happen…”

You open your mouth to riposte. Then close it. There’s nothing to say, nor admit. Because that … was just the most foul, obscene and honest way in summarizing your existence.

What an utterly degenerate compliment to have been bestowed upon you.

“Which, speaking of, you better not drag Enid into the whole full moon—”

“Don’t give me ideas.”

“You two—!”

Enid scoffs, rolls her eyes, and there’s a lone claw impaled through a page of Eugene’s research. And, of course, there’s Eugene mouth agape.

“You two are such assholes.”

There’s a concerted effort to pry the claw from the pages and not outright sabotage Eugene’s work. As Enid reaches for the pot of water sat beside the cauldron, to temper the solution from its green to a yellow, she…

You know the look on her face.

It’s whenever a scheme of yours has unraveled, and she’s the one with the loose string.

Enid whips around, ignores the water, and thrusts a finger — at Yoko specifically, whose eyes are wide and round behind her glasses.

“You two are such assholes! Did you help her?!”

“I—” (The human in her shows.) “Dunno what you’re talking about.” (She isn’t nearly as sly-witted as the Fang.)

“With Ajax!”

For the second time today, you stand in place, caught within your own doing. Except, rather than Yoko’s sh*t-eating grin, you’re matched by Enid and the deductive reasoning that is quite horrifically equal to your own. Yoko grooves into her bottom lip.

And Eugene is the witness. He gently pours the water into the cauldron’s bowl.

Then Divina, who spares an inquisitive eye over as she strolls by, having visited the central station for vial refills.

To which Enid snatches her by the shoulder and wrangles the Siren, until the cauldron flounders for its own balance.

“Enid—?! Oh my god?!”

(Hissed, to Divina’s ear,) “Did you three stone Ajax?!”

Divina’s stern brow and otherwise composure says everything at once. Namely how much of an anchor she is for Yoko, and as she works her jaw through whatever it is Enid has pulled her into, you catch more than mere Vampyric knives. Her bite is sharklike. It’s the same you discovered last night.

It has you wonder if Divina and Kent were triplets, once, before Divina ate the third in the womb.

The Scale knows how to wade through trepid waters.

She knows how to navigate the brewing ocean of Enid’s eyes.

“We just … helped a little bit. Made it interesting.”

Her grin is cunning, yet good-natured. It disarms Enid enough, in any case.

“And then I chloroformed him.”

“I knew that’s why your dad mailed—!”

“Is there any issue here, ladies?”

Everyone around the cauldron twists around and stares at Mister Treple, who you tolerate in moderation. Another Scale. His eyes shard.

Enid fixes on a wide smile. She’s never been in his good graces, exactly.

“Um. N-No.” (Squeezes Divina by the shoulder.) “There’s not.” (Divina’s toothy grin is wide. Concerning.)

After a last pat on Divina’s back, Mister Treple sighs, is through with Enid, and goes off to another cauldron. Divina lingers before she ducks to Yoko for a swift peck, planted firm on the Fang’s cheek, and strolls off. Leaves Yoko a modest pink.

“You guys are unbelievable.”

Divina’s last remark to the conversation is thrown over her shoulder:

“It’s nothin’ personal, babe!”

And that is that. All there is left is for Ajax to wake.

Eugene, however, glances over his notes. Stops. Then stares, with a hand nudged against his glasses.

“Oh, do we need more firewood already?”

You, Enid and Yoko watch the concoction. It is an absurd shade of green. It also pops.

The damn Siren. He didn’t bother to advise any of you how the cauldron threatens your grade by the frothing as it coagulates for the lip.

“Yes. We do.”

“I’ll go get them.” (Enid flexes both arms. Her grin digs deep.) “I’m a strong chick.”

“I’m aware.”

Your eyes follow Enid as she meanders around the brush, and disappears into the trees to collect her second batch of firewood. Eugene asks what could be done in the meantime. Yoko murmurs to just stir — that much will generate heat on its own, and the water could help to keep the potion liquid.

As she begins to work through the top layer by the cauldron’s stir, you scrawl through your notes and record this development. The water bucket is a third gone by the time you’re satisfied, and there’s nothing left to do other than wait for Enid, and watch.

“Actually, regarding last night, Yoko… You did put quite the faith in spontaneity.”

“Oh… I know. I was ready for nothing to come of it, or be this absolute sh*tshow.” (She doesn’t pause in working through coagulation. A grin flickers anyway.) “So you having a Hannibal IQ really saved it.”

Yoko shrugs. You catch that boiled red in her eyes once she strays them to you.

“But I was thinking of ways to get him back, and I knew there was no way you wouldn’t go after him.”

There wasn’t.

Anybody with half their mind knew. Yoko did. Divina was undoubtedly in agreement. Ajax himself. He above them all knew what would happen, and it did, for stoning him was of conviction.

(Chasing him down, however… That had been of another.

(You dare not admit it to the Fang.)

“And…, it was a little bit to pay you back for … the last Tuesday…”

Your arm pricks. The trenches left behind run deep, you feel.

“Of course, Yoko.”

A bleat of silence. Her guilt has no scent, yet it tastes stale. A cobweb on your tongue. Has it hard to swallow.

“Divina and I came up with it just before. So, you know, there wasn’t a solid way to tell you. We got them drunk. Figured they wouldn’t notice.”

“Well, Bianca did.”

“Yeah, I knew she would. And the girl remembers everything, even if she’s plastered. So…, I just hoped she’d let it slide.”

You hum, and as if to echo, Eugene murmurs a soft,

“Wow…”

Yoko chuckles. She keeps her attention onto the mixture, which has been stirred to a thick paste. It will do for the meantime.

But you know Enid is the crux of this project now. Stirring has only done so much. You need the fire she’ll birth.

“So… ¿Puedo unirme a tu próxima salida?”

The rare, creased grin finds you. Eugene has practiced more, then, after the last bee-keeping. His mothers would be proud. His inflection has gotten better.

“Sólo si me quedo pequeña.”

“Yes!”

“Y si creces otra pulgada.”

He blinks.

“What?!”

Yoko, leaned into the stir’s handle, snickers, and she nods to him.

“She’s got you there.”

The grin drops, and you tilt your chin towards the same chattering. Yoko mirrors you. She’s dark around her eyes. Eugene is left with the best he can do: a flat face, without his benevolence.

Yoko doesn’t give them another glare. She carves a nail into the stir’s long staff.

“The sh*t they pull…” (Growled, all of it.) “There’s a reason why it took forever to allow Furs here. They had to secure the whole place before they got to just toss each other around.”

You glance at Yoko. She wears a familiar shade of distain, and it’s the same one that has you far too cynically inclined, the more you dwell within their proximity.

Enid is the exception. Because they told her so.

Unbeknownst to these adolescents, however, is that Nevermore’s architecture has grown tired of their ways. There’s only so many times a brick can be mended, and there’s only so many ways to irritate a Fang before they bite.

Eugene winces to himself.

“Oh yeah… I heard about what happened to Enid this morning. She’s okay, right?”

“She is okay, Eugene. By now, I don’t think they’ve left a mark.”

He nods.

Yoko cricks her head.

“Okay, uh… I don’t think this should be brown.”

“sh*t—! On it!” (Eugene jolts away from the cauldron, and he’s already stumbled a few strides to another station.) “I-I’ll go get the serum! I guess we’re ready for it now?!”

Eugene leaves the two of you with … whatever monstrosity grows within the bowl. It isn’t as pungent as it looks, though it is a cruel sight on the eyes.

Fascinating.

You’ve never seen a potion resemble the mulch of a digestive tract. Neglecting its froth.

To no surprise, the vampire beside you doesn’t seem as enthralled. She crinkles down the nose, and she goes back to stirring.

“…really would love Enid’s nose right now. I can’t tell what we need.”

You pause and allow what she stirs to waft for your nose. It takes a minute. You don’t have Enid’s precision. However, inkling tells you enough.

“Salt.”

“That’s it?”

“No, we need the serum, but salt to keep it from going over.”

Yoko is nodding as you reach for the appropriate vial.

“Okay… I guess your nose isn’t half-bad. How much then?”

“Just dash some in until it quits frothing.”

Within the minute, it calms, and you catch Eugene where he stands in line. He looks relieved from afar, knowing that the potion is in competent hands. You cut the stir short of its path. The two of you wait. It doesn’t congeal, though the mixture begins to froth again. Another dash of salt. You estimate it will take the vial by the time Eugene pours the last serum.

The salt is handed over to Yoko, and as she tends to the cauldron, you’re back to the notes. The page isn’t as organized as it could be. Already, there’s too many annotations and edits for you to sort through. Not that you’re entirely surprised. This particular potion — an aromatic inhibitor — is known to be quite temperamental.

“You’ve been delaying a relationship because you don’t know what you’re doing, haven’t you…?”

You’re mid-scrawl.

Neither you nor Yoko look at each other. She continues to ensure the project’s condition. You are caught rigid over the data.

There’s no answer. You can’t answer. You don’t. Because you have a rough idea of how to open your legs for her, yet it is … theoretical by nature. Textbook.

In practice, you know it to be the same as what stirs in the cauldron — without serum.

The moment you will add sex…, it means a volatility.

One foreign to you.

Your silence is answer enough. Sits on you miserably.

“Thought so.”

| ix |

| (she feels unease) |

Enid has not come back with wood.

So the fire stews as a dying light. Leaves Yoko and Eugene desperate. Has them fan the flames into puckered wads of their notes. Fatigue begins to set, with you heaving the stir through this slopped concoction of yours, Eugene grasping for his inhaler, and Yoko notably pale. He coughs. She sears Vampyric.

You cease.

“I’m going to search for Enid.”

It is several minutes overdue. You wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. To assume that … Enid had gotten herself distracted, or she’s within a blunder, after collecting far too many than she could manage.

But there is a feeling. And it nags. It teethes your neck. Tries to pull you away.

And it isn’t one that found you immediately, no. Time elapsed. You paid no mind. Divina returned to her cauldron with Bianca and another siren. There was a coy wonder, yet nothing more.

What … unnerved you to this were the whispers. The few Furs in this class, not including Enid. They’ve been quiet. Remarkably so. More than what they were, as though you stuck one of Eugene’s ailing bees into their mouths. But their voices are snaking. There is one missing… The ginger.

“Yeah, alright.” (Yoko nods with her last page crumpled.) “If she comes back with a tree, tell her she’s an idiot.”

Her grin curls sardonic. Her eyes, however, are in equal standing to you. There’s the same nag, dwelling behind each treated lens.

You waste no time. You duck for the trees, and the moment you step into shadow, the feeling is a psychic’s bellow. There is something wrong. The world has not paused for Enid. The ground has swallowed her— You cannot spy her.

And you’ve devolved to gnawing your lip. You hope for blood.

Divina strolls by you instead. Rather cautiously, as though she didn’t intend to tail you.

“Hey.”

“Howdy.”

Her chin veers from you. You don’t know what your tone spoke to her.

“Enid isn’t pissed, is she?”

“No, she isn’t, but I don’t know where she is.”

“Oh.” (Her frown is … strange.) “I thought she got back to you guys.”

You slowly shake your head. Your eyes bare into her.

Divina, with her quaint bundle in her arms, gestures by elbow down a woodland stretch.

“She was just over there with a bunch of branches a little while ago. Had a pretty healthy hoard going.”

The trees are groomed by wind. They leer over you. Bat their leaves, dress themselves coy, they sit innocently. Your nag whispers otherwise.

“How long?”

“The last time I went out here for wood. We’ve been eating through the stuff I’ve been getting.”

You don’t wait for another remark. The time has no room for conversation. You don’t allow it.

For too long, there is nothing of note. Your classmates linger, but they do not ask. They never do. They’ve long since learned to leave you to your devices. And before you realize, you are trailing down the border that Mister Treple has marked. His ribbons are tied around every other tree. No Enid. You keep to the vague area that Divina pointed towards.No Enid.

You find a hoard. Realize it is the hoard — enough to have lasted your cauldron the rest of class.

Thrown into a heap. Stepped upon, kicked over.

(This is not Enid.)

The branches lay to tell a cataclysm. Has the ground itself be its canvas. Dirt strays in odd patterns. There’s an ambush of footprints. Clustered together. Fanned apart. They breach through the shrubbery. Past the perimeter. So you clamber over, and scan the ground. For anything.

Her watch glints at you. Sunlight beads a tear, across the glass.

It lies as beaten and buried as the branch-pile. You practically dive for it. The screen ignites. There is a canyon down its face. Your hands fold together as one fist. It’s still warm. The watch hadn’t gone cold within your time apart.

You stand. Tuck it away. One hand sifts for your vest. You find not your favorite, but another blade which will do: an antique. A pocket-knife. You allowed rust to singe this one. Its bite will burn.

At your feet, there is a trail made by two trenches.

Dragged away. She was dragged away from you…

(A mistake. A devastating one to commit.)

You follow down the path with a twitching mind and cricked jaw. The things you will do to them. The skin you will flay, the bones you will break — it will all be a suitor’s promise, a vengeance, within one slash of this decrepit blade.

You will reclaim her.

So you follow down this path. You allow your fantasies to writhe. They are frenzied. They’re manic. And—

You stall.

There’s a scream.

It sounds human, though there lies an uncanny blanket, strewn across each vowel, which tells you that, no, it isn’t really. Sounds human, but not quite. Not at all, the more it echoes. And you adore the melody. Not a scream, but it is, yet there’s howl. You can’t decipher. In a grey world, however, it strikes you oddly marigold. It sounds like home, and the forest just past the manor gates.

Still, human or not, it’s panicked. For a reason beyond you, it sends your heart to soar. And you can feel it. And your chest is a quiet, rapid agony.

Another one, far more piercing.

A fox.

The first to come to mind, except you realize, no, it isn’t. Because your heart is a constant behind your ears, and you’ve begun to feel adrenaline seep down your hands. You are violently aware of your blade pocketed. You feel your legs begin to wind for lunge. Your skin teems against your uniform’s collar.

The air is stained by one scent. It is trapped to this trail.

Your scent, actually. But not you yourself. Instead, an opus of every seizure-inducing color to your world of grey:

Enid.

You know her when you hear her. When she cries. When she laughs. Yells at you, jokes with you… Now as well, when her embedded nature yowls from her mouth. Neither human nor fox. A melody all the same.

This is the beast beneath her skin.

And it does scream.

You barge forth, with only this howl as your guide. There’s no need to look down upon her scuffed trail. The blade is in your hands. She howls for you. Has to be you.

And I shall answer…

It takes a mere moment, a brushstroke of woodland, before you trip from sprint to gait. Not only does she howl, or scream. You hear Enid’s trill. It rattles deep. Chips the air as expected of her dynamic.

You draw close. You allow her scent — your scent — to obscure your presence.

“What the f*ck is with that howl?! STOP. SCREECHING!”

In response, there’s another cry. It’s angry. Guttural, so with it, a biting timbre. You can hear Enid’s teeth snap at him.

And not a moment after, a hand across her face. Her whimper strikes.

You see them now, through the trees, in tandem to the red print blooming against her complexion. This is the pack again. By the inkling down your nose, these are Alphas. Except for the Beta, and then an Omega.

Quarren.

And then one you recognize from the showers. She stood taller than the rest of them. She’s dwarfed by the few who restrain Enid now.

The ginger…

One has his arms trapped around her shoulders, and he keeps Enid hoisted off the ground completely. His hands are locked on her head, as best as he can manage. The Alpha’s one, continuous brow is furrowed. She makes this difficult.

The other two claw at her wrists.

Enid struggles. Struggles well for someone snared the way she is — makes it difficult for the one, and downright grueling for the others. Despite the blood leaked by her nose, and the thriving ache down her jaw, Enid is animated. Her claws manage to lance. She aims her kicks into the Alpha’s knee.

He threatens to buckle. His brow creases furthermore.

“Get the— f*ck a-away!”

Enid, however, screams at the Omega in particular — not an Alpha —, the moment the Fur steps close. Lashes her teeth at her. Lunges to split ginger hair.

The Omega steps back. Scowls.

“For a runt you’re so goddamn annoying!”

“Yeah! Just let us f*cking see it!”

The same cannot be said for you.

Your hollow is a pounding smog behind your ears, and it fumes red in your eyes. The heart beneath… It’s going rabid.

You bolt your glare across this clearing. There’s Quarren, stood with his arms folded as though he observes a theatric. The Omega, who tries again. And two other Alphas — freshman, there is no debate by the look of them — who are sidled on either side, left to merely flank the scene in its entirety.

Enid flashes the white of her eyes. Her teeth bare.

“Not unless you wanna choke oN IT BITCH!”

There is a grand bark of laughter. A choir more delirious than to your liking.

You lock onto a freshman. He’s close to you. For his sake, too close.

You dive, and you snag. Your pocket-knife is laid across his neck. A hand smacks over his mouth. All at once — there is no time for him to realize, not until you herd him backwards. His phone fumbles down his leg to the dirt. None notice. They’re too charmed by their degenerate ideas for a show.

Lucky for you, your depravity knows no bounds. You know what it takes to break a degenerate over your leg, to snap them beyond repair.

“You so much as whimper and you are dead…”

The freshman whirls an eye — tries to —, and his sob chokes against the blade. It dies across the handle, fleets your palm’s skin.

“Choke on what?! What kind of f*cking Alpha—?!”

You hear Enid’s stolen breath.

Before your eyes serve to you a call to war:

The Omega has her paw on Enid. Gropes her skirt to the shape of her body. Ignores the legs that wind to beat her skin off flesh and bone. The one Alpha holds her tighter. The others snatch at her ankles.

And you…

You feel this kid’s heartbeat reverberate down your knife. You know his neck to cry down a red string, to the fold in his white collar.

“Well, it’s f*cking damp, I’ll tell you that. So I guess she’s got something—”

Enid yowls, and she thrashes, and she reclaims enough of her anatomy.

“YOU STUPID BITCH! GET YOUR f*ckING HAND OFF ME!”

She bashes her head. Cracks the air the moment her temple meets browline.

The Omega staggers. Violently. She snarls with both hands clutched to her face, and Quarren grasping her shoulder. Enid is left to plow through her daze. Her wince is mortifying. Yet she writhes. Her nose spouts a darker river. A brow screams likewise.

And through it all.

Your whistle is of ruin. What follows is shrapnel, or debris, that flays your mouth:

“Touch her like that again, and I will shove you to guillotine with your tongues marred together.”

They snap their heads. Complexions pale.

And the more you stare at them…

The longer you betray your eyes, the more you understand. The two freshman are merely the only kids. Soft in the face. They’ve not been graced by maturity. The other three Alphas are just as much lowerclassmen. Their quivered lips say it all. The way their shoulders slump them — keep them from true, sturdy heights —, damn the fact.

…this had been a cruel invitation. Entrapment, for you.

And for them, a likewise ploy to test their ranking. You haven’t seen these ones lurk by Quarren before. Not as religiously as the Omega has.

In fact…, she’s the only one who may as well be leashed to him. Or the other way around, should the snake in her eyes mean anything.

“Oh look who decided to pick up her runt.”

Enid—

Pinche estúpida, Wednesday…

You didn’t want to look at her. Not like this, when she is, truly, with a body battered. Red in her hair. There’s color to her that does not belong. The tears tracked down her face do little to clean. There is grime. They’ve knocked her down.

There is no relief to her — not without dread.

This is not the canvas she prides her body to be.

She stares at you as a savior to reach for, as a sacrifice to stow away. Pleads for you to cradle her. Yearns for you to run. There is no in-between.

“We’ve been waiting for you, you know!” (The grin hitched is wry. Quarren believes it menacing.) “Addams, huh…? Seem pretty f*cking small to be walking around like you own the place.”

“Get … the f*ck a-away from her!”

Her heels scuff the ground. Enid cracks down her hands, lures her claws. And there’s arson. It rages in rot. She’s flaring. Both in body and scent, she is flaring.

And Quarren eyes her.

“Oh calm down… Highly doubt you’re packing anything the size of my hand.”

He nods to the Omega. A silent command. To return to Enid.

Lay her paw.

You thrash and snatch the boy in your grasp by rather than his mouth, his colored hair. He whimpers. Knows better than to scream. Your knife’s hand dives for your right boot. Finds another.

“Wow, okay, now she’s rearing, but still not anything— sh*t!”

The second blade spits. It skins, it breaks — submerges from her wrist to knuckle. Aligns itself to the back of her hand.

“WHAT THE f*ck?!”

“That is my second warning. Do not. Touch her.”

She, once more, staggers back. Her arm trembles. The Omega doesn’t know what to do with the blade. Doesn’t know how to salvage her hand. Because there isn’t an answer. Fate granted you the perfect throw. Her hand is at the mercy of its regeneration. And there is no promise that it will do so correctly.

Quarren glances over. His eyes spark fire, but he scoffs. Rolls them. As a way, perhaps, to undermine you.

Not … that he has the room. There’s only gall. But you know how to strike a nerve, and paralyze.

“Whatever.”

He keeps his back to the Omega. Doesn’t notice how you’ve mangled her.

You’ve gorged the fascia between meat and skin. And you’ve damned complexion to glove’s liking.

His glare is on only you, and the freshman you keep trapped in place. Your blade reclaims his neck. Your other hand is snarled into his hair. He gulps. You feel it down the knife.

Quarren’s sole remark to the girl is an off-handed,

“I told you, boners don’t just happen like that, babe. So hold off for now.” (Those sparked eyes shrew.) “I need to get someone to sit still for the show first.”

There is a swagger to him. It instills a strut rather than stroll.

Quarren is, theoretically, the image of what an Alpha should be — according to everybody aside for the very outcasts who have maintained that, no, that image is shoddy at best. Until they were beaten to believe in theory. Lycans were never the ones who coined Alphas as Alphas, Betas as Betas, Omegas as Omegas. There were other names. Better names. Burned to death, now, within fabled libraries. You crave to know what those were.

“C’mon, Wednesday… We’re just sizing-up the new so-called Alpha. It’s not that big of a deal.”

From where you stand now, in a time where the fabled are fabled for a plundered reason, Quarren is the image of an Alpha. He is tall, and built like stone. His hair is groomed to the military’s taste — shaved, clean-cut, with the nuclear family’s blond locks. His eyes are a stark blue. He reeks of musk. Like sweat, not dynamic. Testosterone, ultimately.

In theory, you are staring at an Alpha.

“How else are we gonna know if she can run with us instead?! We’re just having fun!”

Except…, Quarren does not rut. He may have the nose, and the brawn, but he will never know the touch of his knot trapping him to whoever he lays, nor the feel of it draining his very soul until it’s depleted. He will never have his scent brand his devotion.

The fact that to be an Alpha means a body to betray you, to demolish any sense of secrecy, is what he neglects. How it is an enslavement to fidelity is beyond him.

Quarren only assumes how Alpha means an erection which can plug, and that rut equates to mindless ferocity. A peaco*ck’s fantasy.

A fantasy, which, does not encapsulate any of the Alphas here. The freshmen are still boyish. The Omega is built more durably than the two still struggling with Enid and her legs — the same that are rooted to the ground, steady in place. And then the one who towers above them all. He’s broken to a sweat. His hair is far less groomed than what it … should be — more apish, less lupine.

And then…, of course…

Enid.

She doesn’t look it. She’s crafted for agility over anything else. Yet, there’s both feet rooted in place. Her skin teems an anxious energy. Her claws are drawn. She— (Wednesday, she is standing…) And where her hair falls over her face, dyed in blood, that ocean blue births two blaring reflections. Gold — both of them.

The fabled strength is present. From her mouth, Enid breathes a low, ceaseless rattle.

You follow its tune as you would your cello.

The boy in your arms seizes.

“Q-Quarren! Quarren, she’s k-killing me—!”

You pause. It’s only a mere scratch. Nothing that would scar over on a Lycan.

“I’m not. At least, not in these few seconds I’ll permit him. If you step away, his neck and pretty blue hair will remain clean.”

It may be the threat itself, or the sight of this boy at your mercy.

Regardless, you have Quarren cornered. He is locked in his stride, in the clearing’s dead center. You’ve blown the swagger off him, just like a film of dirt across your shoulder, down your sleeve.

And in this moment, iced of everything…

Enid jolts. She rams her weight — all of it — against the ape. A grunt is slammed from him, not before she whirls, and those claws find their mark. Blood streaks. It follows her strike's curve.

“YOU LITTLE KNOT-GUZZLER!”

She disregards the shout. Slashes his uniform instead — again, and the blood follows. She’s damn near eye-level to him now. Her clothes strain. The world seizes. Howling. Dirt billows.

You’re shoving the freshman aside. It doesn’t matter where he runs to. He’s a mere blur. Your knife finds another. Quarren bleeds a bright shade. Violent to your eyes. It simmers in sunlight. Boils your humanity…

From periphery lunges a shadow’s smear, then another body. Or two. You’re quick to strike them. They flinch away. Leave you back to Quarren.

(No. To your left. Look. Left.)

Nerve swings your eyes, then your head. Your body follows.

The last freshman. He’s remained, and his closed fist barrels for you. His aim is impeccable. Socks you square in your face, and your only reflex is to nick rust down the arm, to turn your head from this rush of agony. It spears your nose. It inflames throughout your skull.

Yet you don’t fall. You don’t rightly stagger.

Your eyes find him. Stunned. The boy’s gone and dumbfounded himself over what he’s done. So you return the favor: you club his cheek.

He eats yours as you did his. So he swings again. Except…, claws dance in the light. You catch her brazen eyes before the pattered sun — through the leaves — ignites her blonde.

“YOU DUMBf*ck.”

Enid flouts the two who lunge for her. She snares the boy. You duck away from Quarren’s yell, and the attempt he’d just announced by proxy. Her arm winds. She slashes. The Beta … beats his chest. Sprays his coarse language. Charges you again.

Your blood is pumping. (Your hollow simmers.) You feel the dawn of a smile. (Your hollow rejoices.) There is enthrallment to this, though it … occurs to you, how this feels more familiar than it should. You’ve been in school fights. You’ve earned plenty to your name, though none of them were outcast.

This one feels the same.

Your knife is the only claw which croons in your ears. Your bared teeth are the only excuse for fangs. Because none of these Furs draw their claws, nor their fangs. They are … as far from outcast as they could be. The only lasting remark to their designation is the classic, unbridled strength. You dodge their swings, and the followed breezes gash you, in echo to the weight in each throw.

How disappointing.

Your mind wanders as you navigate through Quarren and his endless ripostes. It’s made clear to you that he has been taught how to fight; he didn’t study much. His fists are big enough, but he has no form. The footwork is sloppy. His balance is thrown, then swayed, and thrown again. If he’s used the moon as leverage in the past, he hasn’t realized—

There…

Of course. They don’t draw a claw nor fang because they simply can’t.

Tonight has no face. It will not wax. It will not wane. These outcasts are a few steps closer to humanity than you could ever know.

And Quarren, being ever so green to outcasts, has neglected such a reality.

…same as you.

How … did I forget…?

There is one, unconscious detail which has distracted you from this realization for far too long:

An Alpha still has a trill. Not the human’s, but the beast’s. An Alpha here has kept a set of claws, and of fangs. Her rut brews bellicosity. Her strength goes beyond what the eye reasons. Her rawboned frame hulks in stature — threatens to ignore tonight and shift beneath the sun.

Her eyes are golden. Their irises think themselves bladed. (Vulpine. You understand now…)

Enid…

(They are vulpine.)

“You’re a little early to the full moon.”

Enid. Enid, they’re swarming her. They’ve realized something. Something ghastly — simply appalling. There are five charging her. There’s panic in their eyes. They do not act out of domination. Not what fantasy Quarren keeps himself to in your peripheral.

Those Alphas who follow Quarren. His pack. And the one Omega here as well.

They are ruled by hysteria now.

Boiled down to fight or flight. A primitive mind, backed into a corner. There is no reasoning to them. No logic. With the panic is betrayal.

And Quarren is none the wiser. He doesn’t understand the fight he picked. The one he lured them into. His sweat, this musk he uses to proclaim an Alpha’s scent, has no rule over sweet decay.

Rot has dominion. It wafts from you. It’s bludgeoned from Enid.

You snatch a rock from the dirt. Your fist can barely close around it. And you hurl it, straight for the Beta’s chest. The air is knocked from Quarren, his eyes bulge, and his weight trounces him to the earth.

There is no time. Enid screams again, right into the ear of another. The rest flinch. A yelp — not her own — follows. It’s pierced by whimper. And you’re surging forth.

The first one you find is mid-reach for her hair. He snaps his face to you. His dark eyes are tearful — thought this would be a mere schoolyard fight, with you. But no.

You are in the woods now…

In this grueling second, you swipe and dash him a partial smile. From his mouth, to his ear. The same length as his one brow. He lunges away. You’ve snapped him from fight to flight. He bolts now, and his heavy strides thunder through the woodland.

You hear an attack descend. Enid howls. She’s fronted further into the tree.

Air snakes from you. A depraved obscenity may have followed. You don’t know. All that you do is another snapped face, this one scorned, before he realizes who spoke revulsion. This Alpha recoils before you cut his mouth. He runs.

Two others join. An Alpha. The Omega.

The last requires a fistful of his vest stolen, wrenched back, before you find his face. Enid has already impaired him. These wounds will scar over. The skin around one eye has ballooned.

Rather than slash, you sock the knife-handle into his nose. It breaks.

He whimpers and shoves himself into Quarren. Stops the Beta in his tread. He cries a few words. Those refuse to fall onto your ears.

But they find Quarren. They aren’t enough. So the Alpha strangles a large hand around his shoulder and throws Quarren forward — away from you. Scampering now. You dart a last few strides at them. Dirt billows, and you feel shards of it pelt your shins.

They leave.

You’re panting, you still hear them, but Enid is a few trees behind, and you remain to be the force that drove them away. There dwells a rattle, deep in your jugular. The knife is tucked back into its pocket. You fume from your mouth — cold. You straighten to rigid composure.

There’s a breath held around you, by the woodland, until the moment when there’s quiet. Those pitched howls grow mute to your ears. Enid is the only breach of absolute silence. Her sharp gasps for air are the sole, lasting echo to it all.

Until she swallows, and her voice faults:

“W-Wednesday…?”

“I’m here.”

You barely realize your own. It fell from your mouth effortlessly. You can’t tell if you maintained yourself, or if you, too, are cracking at the seams — like a blistered hide, stapled to sunlight.

But you turn for her. It is to the dismal beat of your hollow.

It plummets.

Enid can barely stand. She sways as a body hanged. The beast beneath her skin has left and resumed its slumber. Her lips are darker than they should be — split as well —, and down her nose runs blood and black. (Your fleeting desperation hopes for grime.) The worst of it, however, cakes her hair to the side of her face — from along her ear, stretched for her winced eye.

She thins split lips, then croaks,

“I don’t … think I’m feeling too peachy…”

Then, she tips.

“E-Enid.”

You lunge for her. Catch her. Enid falls into an open cradle, yet the world lurches, and with that, the ground tumults from below. A morbid spire writhes down bone. Flesh seizes. Enid slips away.

You are falling.

And as you fall, you drown in blue moon.

The woodland is layered by its haunting shade, and everything is blurry, until you blink, and you hear Enid whimper. There’s a tree that you are trained beside. Malformed,twisted,in ways that wouldn't bat an eye. The branches twine with its fellow brush. Its roots tangle deep — earthbound.

This tree has a gnarled center. Not enough to bat an eye; its disfigurements are worn unassumingly.

You stare at it. As Enid. Not yourself. Nor your repulsion. Her heart thrashes behind your ears. She claws through grunge.

Covered in blood.

Ever so broken.

She croons your name. A mantra. A devastating cry of woe.

You twist Enid’s body. Through her eyes, and those eyes scale down her leg. She’s naked, caught in moonlight. There’s a glint. It is a beartrap. And its teeth has her locked in place. Your name bleeds from her lips. Again. Always. She's weeping. This wound is one hellscape. Her chest, though, is the cruel agony.

You guide her hands to the trap. Fumble for a lever, a switch — anything —, only to find … there isn’t one.

It’s antique, yet you are gravely unfamiliar. Square — rather than mouth, it’s square.

You can’t think Enid’s way out of this. Aside for one, however.

There is one.

You pry her hands between its maw. It whines, it gives way, and the bite pours wine by every gouged mark. The world blurs. It rocks to the sway of your stomach. Her stomach.

Enid whimpers.

You can’t save her.

The beartrap snaps shut. It steals more wine.

And she weeps for you. Finds a shadow. Reaches out.

A face like the Devil. Eyes as lit oil.

And lips, the shade of charcoal.

(You are covered in blood not your own.)

The world churns, and you feel a weight in your chest. On your chest. Across your body. It’s warm— She’s warm. And alive. And whole.

Almost.

There’s still blood. You smell the iron fruit off her…

And then you blink.

And you’re staring high, into clouds warbling sun. Enid’s weight presses you into the earth, though as you gingerly wrench yourself upright, you find that she is far from conscious. As a dead weight. Breathing, though. Dead weight breathing.

Your nails graze across her torn jacket. Midnight bruises red, between the stripes. There is no saving it — this blazer. Your eyes drift. They snag a tree. So unassuming. With a twisted branch. And a— A gnarled center.

This hollow of yours coils.

You follow down its trunk with your eyes, and you half-expect iron jaws, beneath the mulch. There is nothing, however. (For now.)

The matter is left aside. You trample your hollow’s trepidation. Because she is here. She needs you.

So you cradle her, and as you move your leg, experimentally, Enid whimpers.

“Enid?” (Cascaded down your tongue as waterfall:) “Mi cachorrita…, you’ll be stitched back together again…”(Your lips scald the crown of her head. Inhale as you do — loyalty’s whisper.)

Your hands urge her to find a scrap of coherency. Just enough to stand, and to follow the scent she stole. You take minutes. Within that, too many attempts for your liking. You are her only support, and with each stumble, it reminds you how much taller, how much stronger, Enid is than you. Because this isn’t a stride from your bed. This is woodland, several courtyards, until Nevermore’s open door.

Still, your thoughts have the space to muse — bitter, though it is:

Mi cachorrita?

It doesn’t sound as right as it should. Not for Enid.

(Your swift lips still burn.

(What a devastating, silent urge to have fleeced you.)

| x |

| (her skin scorns sunlight) |

…seldom do you feel the scream of your body. It is a song evoked by few. Such as the blitzkrieg, a conquest, in your electric chair. Or, the defilement of your prized, woven plaits.

Above all else, of course.

It is what you have gifted to your brother after every school tyrant.

It’s what you’ve gifted him tenfold.

(You paid a visit. To a previous school of yours.)

“What … the f*ck did you just do…?!”

(Reclaimed the very textbook that had you expelled. Hardcover. Bent by the last broken nose.

(Wreaked havoc. Broke another. Then smeared a busted lip, a botched brow.)

Bloodlust.

Bloodlust always.

(You looked back at her. The camaleón.)

“I told you. My brother needed his sister.”

(She never did understand. Not truly.)

It is the mark upon the vow you swore. He is yours. To shape, to have grow a stature beyond your own, he is yours to protect. You do not nurture. Seldom grace your dear brother a hug. There is no telling the last time his hand brushed you. Not by your shoulder. Not by an arm.

Because there is no need.

Those embraces are occasional, and despite that, he has crawled to you every time, for his eyes are not bathed in oil. There’s huckleberry, or a rhythmic shade of ink. Worn soft on him. A fawn’s.

“You—! You just beat him to a f*cking pulp!”

You took to his pleads, take to them now, every time.

Oil would ignite. And as for your body, it’d scream bloodlust — bloodlust always. An ache down your hands. A pounding behind the ears.

Then, a violent kind of scorn. A fire. Not a flame. It is always wrath… Likened to Helios, where yellow is a stray bruise across the surface, and there is nothing more but red swarm, a black as well. Blistered beneath your skin. A molten, searing affliction.

In light of such a bane.

Bloodshed is the only equivalence. The warm blood cools. Their paling faces draws you back to a mind frayed, and a psyche basked in moonlight.

“He submitted.” (For once, this tyrant truly looked subservient.) “He won’t touch my brother anymore… Won’t you…?” (He shook his head. Tears leaked a feeble apology.)

Once it is done, and you have committed, and they lay draining, you can recede to shadows. You submerge, you set yourself, to horizon’s line.

You leave those tyrants. After the fact, you keep your brother at a distance.

(Stared at you.) “You said you were just a goth.” (She stared like you wore a mask, and it reeked like ghoul.

(It was no mask.)

He knows your love, however. The distance could be minimal, or it could be across lightyears. He will always know.

Because it isn’t something to feel for, to look at. Not with you.

(This was devotion’s ghoul at play.)

Pugsley knows all that you’ve done for him. He knows the sorrow you’ve kept at bay. The vermin you visited, and whom you forced to stare into what inferno your oil has scorned to, and they, always, felt your rapture. Quietly done. Silently so.

You lurked before their very eyes. They knew your presence. Got themselves comfortable. Thought they could spite you. Fight you. Drag your name across cracked glass and scorned embers.

Until the moment where their skins peel, and you impregnate them a cancer:

Fear. Of you, and the scent which rolls off your body. It is as a warped horizon through a morbid heat. There is no running from you. Not in the light. Nor the shadows. They burn in one; they are drawn insane in the other.

Pugsley knows to feel your loyalty through the warm haze of blood in the air, and to see it in those shadows you curate.

Because … Sol…

It’s a whisper to your mind. Because you were born from your mother in its bask. You were born Sol.

Day-walker. So you are dressed in black. The stronger the day, the more depraved your black dresses are against it all. The more … they are reminded to never get comfortable, with you, and to never stare too deeply in your eyes.

The mind behind them, it’s not something to understand. What dwells within you, it mouths to run.

“Gothic, Parker. Do not mistake me for whatever skins you wear to spite your mother.” (You roamed past her. Left the school gates. Opened the soaked tome to your favorite chapter.) “And don’t look at me like you’re about to shed it.

“I am an Addams. And do not mistake that for anything else.”

(No adult ever caught you beating that boy to the ground.

(She did, however… Of course. And she never forgot. Not that day. It clung like a ghost in her eyes.

(Only to you.)

The feeling of your hollow’s Helios…

A song and dance evoked by few…

It has found you again.

[ . . . ]