Chapter Text
The first time it happens, I’m six.
Tio is leering, leaning, looming—big mouth and bigger teeth flashing white against the light of the moon. It’s dark, a BBQ, something my mother insisted on us attending even though she knew what would happen. Regardless, we are there. Smiling, laughing, playing—watching Tio flip the expensive slices of meat on the grill, an expert with food despite the destruction that lines his palms like soot.
My older cousin, his daughter, does her best to lead me and the rest of the children away—but she’s only nine. Coltish and pale, the bruises on her shoulders and wrists go purple, green, blue. I trace them when I spend the night, sequestered into her room as the only girls. It’s impossible to move when on her bed, it squeaks and squawks and squeals, a million bubbles popping with every tiny shift I make. A restless sleeper even then, I trace her figure in the dark, my eyes taking in her face, back, or bruised, freckled hands until I fall asleep.
(It’s like I knew, somehow, that seeing her would become rare.)
The first time it happens, I’m six, she is nine, and she is pulling my three year old brother away from Tio—just about to turn and reach out to me.
Fear is not unusual for a six year-old. Fear of the dark. Fear of monsters. Fear of leering, leaning, looming figures. The first time it happens, I am surrounded by all of those things.
And something inside of me wakes up.
We don’t have the money to send me to a fancy school.
That isn’t a surprise, really. We hardly have enough money for our necessities sometimes. I am forced to sneak away in the dead of night to the bigger cities—hunting for food that no one will miss. For the most part, I break into supermarkets. Sometimes I come across people—leering, leaning, looming—and break into those instead.
Regardless, the letter finds me.
I was sitting in a park. It was dark, the moon a slice in the cloudy sky—a murky darkness that existed even in the morning because of all the smog. It hurts to breathe in the bigger cities near me, the valley air trapped between the mountains and escaping only on the coasts near the sea. A constant suffocating reminder of where I was, slipping down my throat and into my lungs, drowning me in poverty, grapes, and gasoline.
I chew on a chocolate bar, part of my spoils from one of the supermarkets—take off the sunglasses that had become a permanent fixture to my face, and consider making my way back to my tiny town, my tiny house, my tiny bed—when it comes.
It flies down from one of the pine trees and onto the top of the park table where I sit. The beady-eyed raven shudders, flaps its wings. I commit the sight to memory, the curious golden cuffs around its feet, the black letter in its mouth, the way it watches me—waiting. It bows its head, pressing the envelope into my hand, a small caw escaping its beak, only just piercing the fancy, red wax stamp.
I put the chocolate in my mouth, reach out the palm of my hand and wait until the raven drops it.
Humming in appreciation, I thumb at the stamp—slipping it off and pulling out the letter. It smells of something rotting, fermenting. The grapes the field workers don’t pick up, squashed between the firm rubber of their boots and the packed ground. There’s also something else, something that tickles at the back of my throat and burns—poisonous, peppery, alcoholic.
Black painted nails slide over the parchment, fancy and thick. The calligraphy was perfect, the crimson ink scent wafts into my nose—coppery.
The letter is incomprehensible because I simply do not believe that it can be true. I simply do not believe in it because it is too good to be true. A fancy, distinguished education at an academy for people like me. Sponsorship from a wealthy, affluent family who are nevertheless on the fringes of society—outcasts even among outcasts. Security for my family. The promise that they would be well compensated for my agreement to attend the school.
Paying me to get an education. Paying me to leave.
“A scholarship,” I murmur. My eyes flick back toward the bird. “Is this a joke?”
Its eyes change—yellowing. It shakes its feathered head.
I look back at the letter. The last line makes my mouth purse, my teeth ache.
Eat the bird.
If it had come to me at any other point, I wouldn’t have done it.
But the day had been long. I had argued with my mother. My youngest sister was two years old and showing signs of a peculiarity—not mine, thank God—but still something that wasn’t human. My brother was sullen that our cousins wouldn’t come to the house. My abuela refused to tell me what my great-grandmother was that made me (and more worryingly, my little sister) this way.
I was tired.
Reaching out, I gently lifted the feathered animal in my hands. It was handsome.
“Descanse en paz,” a murmur. Then the bird was gone—less than a second had passed and it was like it never existed. The only sign it had been there was the letter in my hand, and the blood in my teeth. I lick at my molars, slip my sunglasses back on, and then bow my head in silent prayer.
I go home afterward, more chocolate dripping down my mouth in an attempt to get out the taste of bird. It only sort of works. Lugging the groceries home is easy with what I am, and I move faster than any car or train, quieter than any animal. The frozen foods are packed away with only minimal meltage, and that was because I’d stopped in that park on the way home.
My mom likes to pretend she doesn’t know where the groceries come from. Still, a kiss to the forehead greets me when she finds the refrigerator fully stocked. It means more money spent on bills, means she can drop the second job on the weekends to rest and bond with her youngest daughter.
They find me in the morning.
“Hello, mija.” Her voice was slightly accented, nothing I was unfamiliar with. The use of Spanish simultaneously makes me worried and puts me at ease.
The way she speaks—a too-wide mouth and a slow, dripping drawl. It reminds me, suddenly, of watching the last remnants of a syrup bottle drizzle onto a plate of pancakes. She is taller than me, looming and leaning. Thankfully not leering. Her dress is black and silky, with long and open sleeves that didn’t hide her pale, perfectly manicured hands. The features of her face were objectively beautiful, pale brown skin, thick plum colored lips, high arched brows.
Beside her is a girl about my age dressed in old fashioned Victorian clothing probably not out of place on a ghost in a horror movie. She was a great deal shorter than I was, though her posture was wide and her hands were capable. Her eyes are pits of darkness in a handsome, yet emotionless, face. Her mouth is a perfect cupid’s bow painted black.
The both of them looked perfectly lovely.
Nevertheless, they radiated the sort of aura that would have my abuela gripping at her rosary and kneeling to pray.
I should know. She did it often when she saw me.
As it was, I only smiled politely—and my sister actually tried squirming past my legs to grab at them.
“Hello,” I say. I put one hand down to block my sister from wiggling through, the other going to fiddle with my sunglasses. “Is this about the raven?”
“Yes,” says the older woman, delighted by the question. “May we come in?”
“Of course.” I lift Selena into my arms. “Please excuse my sister, she can smell you.”
The woman looks delighted at that, entering the tiny home. A constant shadow, the girl I presumed was her daughter followed behind her, shutting the metal doors with a resounding slam.
“Diana Calavera, I presume?” Says the daughter.
“Yes,” I say. “And this is Selena.”
“Is Heliodoro not here?” Asks the mother. “I was under the impression it was all three of you that would receive the invitation.”
“Helio would frankly rather die,” I say. “And also, he’s normal. Only me and my sister have... different dispositions. And mine is vastly different from hers.”
“And your sister is already displaying odd behavior?” The daughter asks, looking only marginally interested. I wonder if that meant she was bursting at the seams in excitement. “She’s a babe.”
I walk to the entertainment center that held up the television, pull open a drawer, and hand Selena a tiny, glass ball.
She giggles, always a bright spot in my dreary day, putting it in her mouth and beginning to chew—it caught fire between her teeth, melting around her tiny lips and tongue as she enthusiastically ate. Even if she didn’t inherit my whole thing, she had the unconventional diet down pat.
“She can do it with her hands too,” I say. A speck of bubbling red glass landing on my hand. I sigh as it burns, my skin catching fire, and lift it to my sister’s mouth for her to lick up. She giggles at the flame, but mercifully puts it out for me.
“Oh, how marvelous!” Says the woman. “And how rude of us, to put you on the spot! Lo siento, I am Morticia Addams, and this is my daughter—Wednesday.”
“Greetings,” says Wednesday shortly. “May I see the child?”
I look down at Selena.
She bounces eagerly.
“Alright,” I say. “No visible marks, please.”
Wednesday sighs as though I had just asked her to do the most difficult thing in the world. “Very well,” she bemoans, “there are other tests available to me.”
Furrowing my brows, I hand over my sister. If anything should happen, she should be fine—but I couldn’t help but worry. I didn’t know this girl, even if she and her mother felt more familiar to me than anyone I’d ever met before. My sister was apparently in agreement, her normally shy demeanor practically nonexistent in the face of Wednesday holding her.
Morticia’s smile widens at the sight of us, an upturn of lips that stretched far too widely on an otherwise lovely face. “Excellent, while Wednesday and Selena entertain each other, why don’t the two of us discuss the agreement?”
“You mean when I ate the raven?”
Wednesday’s head snaps up at that, but her mother cows her with a serious look.
“Yes,” says Morticia. “I was pleasantly surprised when you followed instructions. And to be devoured in such a way... well. You are special, aren’t you?”
Disgruntled, I look away from her. “There’s nothing like me.”
“Yet,” she corrects. “And, though it is rare, beings like you have existed before. Your great-grandmother, for one.”
I shift a little at that. “I don’t know much about her.”
“What do you know?”
“Her name was Carlota.”
“I see,” Morticia twitches.
Sensing that this is going to be a long conversation, I say, “Can I get you something to drink?”
“I don’t suppose you have any leeched wine?”
“Can’t say I do,” I reply. “There’s water. Orange juice. Instant coffee.”
“Instant?” Wednesday sounds disgusted, peeking up from the carpet where she was feeding my sister something metal. The red hot liquid dribbles from her mouth as she giggles, spitting it out into a metal canister. It seems she’s turned Selena into a mini-forge.
I shrug. There was no use arguing with rich people. “Water, then?”
Morticia and Wednesday nod, one perfectly polite and the other looking as though she’d rather hang myself from the rafters of my home.
There’s no privacy in the kitchen, connected right next to the living room—no dining room in sight. Instead, we make do with a table pushed tightly up against the white-bricked wall. It’s like an institution, a hospital, a dorm room, a jail cell. Tiny and cramped and devoid of color no matter how many paintings and family photos my mother hangs up. A government house, forced to live here because we are poor monsters. If my sister and I had never presented, maybe we’d be able to live in a regular apartment.
We used to, before I was six.
I bring them water bottles.
Wednesday uses hers to continue forging, pouring the water over the hot, dark metal, and Morticia politely sips it once—twice—before handing hers to her daughter. She sits on the couch, daintily crossing her long legs by the ankles, setting her pale, long hands over her lap.
“Now,” she begins, “why don’t we talk about Carlota Calavera?”
“She was like me,” I say, “so she can’t have been very good.”
“Oh she was quite horrible,” Morticia smiles at that. Her plum lips stretch over her sculpted face. “Just so fearsome. Grandmama enjoyed hunting her. It was too bad the corpse couldn’t be preserved.”
I don’t feel particularly bad for my great-grandmother. She abandoned my abuela to a ranch run by a distant aunt, and only ever returned to drop off an occasional sibling. If anything, I sympathize with the fact that Grandma Addams couldn’t keep the corpse. I was curious as to what it looked like—if it matched me in every way or if there were deviations. “That’s a shame,” I say quietly. “Are there pictures?”
“Of her face?”
“Of her form.” I tap my fingers on my knee. “Maybe of her victims.”
Dark eyes bore into the side of my head, but I don’t turn to look at Wednesday. I don’t know her. Why would I want to preserve any sense of personality? I suspect already that they are here to kill me, and that they are ensuring that my sister is not the same as me. In the letter, they promised my family would be taken care of. It’s all I can hope for, at this point.
Morticia says nothing for a moment. “Do you have victims?”
Leering, leaning, looming—
I don’t say anything. If she’s here then she already must know.
Morticia hums. “I am under the impression that you have found a... what is the word? Substitute.”
“Yes,” I say, hollowly. “Chocolate.”
“Well,” she says, “that explains the smell—quite lovely, isn’t it, Wednesday?”
Her daughter says nothing, consumed in the forging process. Selena giggles. Wednesday shushes her.
Morticia sighs, put upon and drawn out. Her voice is low and smokey, I vaguely realize, and it suits her well. “Children.” She shook her head in a ‘what can you do’ kind of way. “Have you settled your affairs?”
I had. I usually update everything at least once a month. The life I live outside this tiny white-bricked house was not one that was particularly lacking in all things dangerous. As it happened, I already had many, many back-up plans in the case that something like this (people coming to kill me) happened with my sister in the house. The main one was: get Selena to safety, then be murdered.
It wasn't a very attractive plan. But it was the safest for her, and so I would do it.
“Yes,” I nod. “I just need to drop my sister off at my abuela’s house.”
“Then let us depart,” she says. “Come along Wednesday—oh, and what a fetching dagger.”
“I managed three,” Wednesday replies. “I figured one should go to the child for being a good sport, another for Enid when we visit, and the last is mine.”
“My mom might protest at Selena having a knife,” I say. “She’d only melt it at this age.” I almost ask her to keep it until Selena gets older, but then stop myself. I don't want the people who killed me anywhere around my baby-sister, no matter how much she might enjoy the knife.
Wednesday’s brows furrow slightly. “Very well.”
Morticia’s dark eyes sparkle. “Come along, Diana. Much to do.”
She doesn’t kill me.
The drive to San Francisco took about half as long as it would have otherwise.
Lurch worked the hearse like a maniac, not that anyone seemed to notice. Gomez and Morticia were too wrapped up into each other to care about the way that other cars almost caused pile-ups in the effort to avoid driving near Lurch, Pugsley was busy bombarding me with questions, and Wednesday was too busy scribbling out all the experiments she wanted to conduct on me and my sister.
It was a... difficult experience. Nothing that I couldn’t handle, especially considering the fact that I was more comfortable than I’d been in years.
Regardless, the night was catching up to me, and I found myself swaying to and fro in exhaustion.
“Tired?” Asks Wednesday, not sounding as though she genuinely cared.
I hum in agreement, sliding my eyes from the window over to her.
“Enid’s wretched abode is two blocks away,” Wednesday says. “She will undoubtedly wake you right up.”
The dread I felt from that was palpable, and certainly pleasurable—if the tiny upturned tick of Wednesday’s mouth said anything. The girl really was a sadist.
Despite her words, I was curious about the kind of person her best friend would be. Mostly though, I just hoped that the other girl would reign back Wednesday’s continuous attempts to stab me—a knife at something soft of mine every time she became stuck on her scribbles. “Fascinating,” she would say—tugging at the teared part of my clothing to the unmarked skin underneath. “Simply fascinating.”
If the girl got along with Wednesday, she might actually encourage it, so... I might have two teenagers poking me with sharp bits every once in a while. At least Pugsley was polite enough to ask before attempting to make me swallow a grenade.
My stomach hurts. Partly hunger and partly gunpowder residue.
I reach into my bag, but find that my emergency chocolate has been spirited away. Pugsley innocently wipes his fingers on his shorts.
“Mrs. Addams,” I start—ignoring her insistence on Morticia. I thought she was going to kill me not four hours ago, I would like to remain a little distant in the event she actually decides to go through with it. “I’m sorry to bother you, but do you have any chocolate?”
She, with a look of utter delight on her face, nods. She pulls out a tin—tiny, black, decorated with little metal bat wings—from nowhere, and hands it to me. “Grandmama’s most famous fudge! Oh, isn’t it just lovely, Gomez?”
“Delicious,” he agrees. Though the look in his eye when his eyes meet his wife's imply a different thing altogether, gentle kisses pressed up from her wrist to arm. “I believe she put a little extra something in there for you, Miss Calavera.”
I smile placidly, taking the tin and thumbing at the top—skin pressed into the grooves of the little bats. It’s cute, in a supremely emo sort of way, and I found myself more than a little curious about the Addams family aesthetics. I pry open that lid, take a cursory sniff and—
The car pulls to a stop, the door flying open.
—recoil.
“Willa!”
A blur of atomic orange, pink, and green. The remains of the stained glass goop that dribbles constantly from my little sister's mouth, a colorful flame of heat that shocks the cold right out of my system. Wednesday accepts the hug (attempt on her life?) with grace, one hand threading into the blonde hair of the teenager and the other flying toward my tin of fudge—slapping the lid back on and locking it with brutal efficacy.
A single dark eye meets mine, it’s wild with something—a desperation that didn’t previously exist in any universe on her face. Don’t let her see.
Understanding, I tuck the tin into my backpack.
The blonde girl—Enid—leans back from Wednesday, grinning from ear to ear. Three silvery scars slipped down her cheekbone, like claws had carefully pressed their imprints on her face. She has a pretty face, fresh like a dewdrop and lovely as a rose. She smells like sugar cookie perfume and bubblegum toothpaste. She reminds me of joyous paintings, round cheeks and pretty features forever frozen in happiness, moving the people who see them.
And she was clutching onto Wednesday fervently.
Wednesday—
Has she always been so handsome?
I remember thinking of it, a handsome face with a sour disposition, but it hadn’t stuck with me as much as it did now. High cheekbones, a sharp jaw, intense eyes—a degree of softness to her face when in the arms of Enid. It was like she was transformed, a beast in the way of beauty, and I couldn’t help but wonder why it had struck me so, why it had lodged in my throat—reaching down past my collarbones to grip sharply at my heart.
“Hungry.”
Shut up. Shut up.
“Is it time to feed?”
No.
I look away—and find Morticia staring.
She raises a brow, smiles—knowingly. Satisfaction radiates from her very being. A hunter moments before it kneels down and brings a knife to the neck of an injured animal.
“Oh.” Rumbles the thing inside of me. “Oh I see.”
I want to tell him no he doesn’t—he couldn’t possibly. I want to tell him that he stays inside of me, a constant reminder.
Death licks at the inside of me, tongue wrapping around a rib, teeth pressing into the muscles of my chest. He laughs, deep and gravely, closes his eyes and goes back to sleep. “Feed me soon.”
The moment passes. What felt like an eternity—only a single second.
“Enid,” starts Wednesday. “Your clothing is giving me hives.” She raises her hand, a burning mess of an allergic reaction, and Enid flies backward. Almost immediately, the injury closes up—the skin back to a perfect pale brown.
“Oh, sorry!” An embarrassed flush circles the apples of her cheeks, round and striking. “I just got so excited,” she squeals, “I can’t believe my parents agreed to let me go with you! This is the best.”
I feel, suddenly, as though I am intruding. Looking away from the two of them, I wish suddenly I can pull out the fudge tin and sneak a bite—but I know Wednesday would be very upset if I did.
As though sensing my melancholy, Pugsley reaches into his pocket and pulls out a chocolate bar (one of my own) and hands it to me. He smiles sheepishly.
“Thank you,” I say. It’s oddly warm and half-melted, but it should satisfy me nonetheless. The thing inside me preens, curls up, and falls blessedly asleep.
“Third wheels ought to stick together.” He winks (badly) and tries for a smile.
I return it enthusiastically. He reminds me of Helio before he started to hate me. I bow my head, my sunglasses sliding down my nose. A bite into the chocolate.
Pugsley gasps sharply, fascination lining his face. “Your eyes!”
I wink at him and then adjust the shades.
“Calavera, stop conspiring with my brother and introduce yourself,” Wednesday’s voice cuts in sharply.
I look over at the two of them while chewing on my chocolate. I wave.
“How plebeian,” she says.
“Hi!” Enid grins. “I’m Enid Sinclair—Wednesday’s bestie—who are you?”
“Diana.” I smile, and it’s mostly genuine. “Wednesday can’t shut up about you.”
A knife through my chocolate bar—and if I had been human, up into the roof of my mouth.
Rolling my eyes, I pull it out and lick the chocolate off of it. “Oh! Poison.”
“You insult me by thinking I wouldn’t poison my knives, Calavera.”
Enid grins wider, looking absurdly pleased. “How long have you two known each other?”
Wednesday pulls a pocket watch from the inside of her blazer. “Three hours, thirty-five minutes, and seven seconds.”
Enid’s brows shoot upward—and she examines me with a much more critical eye. “Huh,” she says. “I guess she’s your type.”
Wednesday’s brow furrows.
What a ridiculous notion—as though Wednesday had not just stabbed me for being ‘rude’ (I’d like to think I was perfectly polite, but whatever) to her. I exchange a bewildered look with Pugsley, who just sort of sighs.
“Or not,” says Enid.
“Mother picked up the stray on our way to you,” explains Wednesday. “I would have rather had her sister—”
“I’m not letting you use Selena as a personal forge,” I interject.
“—but considering she is only two, the mother would have protested.” She turns to me. “Calavera.”
I quirk a brow. “Yeah?”
“Enid will be sitting between us.”
“Is it her turn to stab me now?”
“Stab?” Asks Enid nervously.
“If she wants to,” says Wednesday imperiously.
I roll my eyes, but scoot over.
Enid’s apologetic smile is a sweet-tasting balm on the chaffing of my soul.
Wednesday’s promise of murder, surprisingly enough, makes me feel the same.
To examine that too closely makes my stomach itch with more than gunpowder, so instead I smile back. “It really is nice to meet you,” I say. “I don’t mind if it’s you who stabs me—Wednesday didn’t even bother to ask, you know.”
Enid blinks, turns to her friend with an expression chalked full of absolute disapproval. “Wednesday!”
Revenge is easy.