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Enid Sinclair woke to the scent of roses, overpoweringly so, pungent and thick within her shared room.
That in itself was strange, considering her roommate and long-time fascination smelled much more like petrichor, the sweet musk of rot, and concerningly, dead bodies. For so long as she had known the strange entity that was Wednesday Addams, she had not once smelt roses on her.
Rising from her bed, it is only then she sniffs out the source of the smell. Arranged in a strange artistry, two dozen bouquets of roses sat atop her desk. Each and every one did not possess an actual flower – instead, the black paper wrapping contained the thorn-ridden stems of roses. The image of them, if Enid were to squint and tilt her head, resembled an eerily life-like human heart.
It was unsettling. It was entirely like Wednesday, and entirely unlike her in the same breath. Romantic and demented, all in equal measure.
That was only the start.
There’s roadkill on her desk. It’s first period, and seemingly no one had noticed the rather pungent raccoon until Enid had swept in – notedly alone, without Wednesday on her heels or looming in her wake.
It’s quite clearly roadkill since she can identify the tire tracks over the rather flat body of the creature. There’s a tease of entrails snaking from where it burst under the car, like a sack of water. Overall, a fairly gruesome corpse.
Enid Sinclair has never been given roadkill before, and she is a werewolf first and foremost.
She blinks at it. Should she pick it up? Stow it away? Was this another game of the Addamses, akin to last month wherein Wednesday had a dead body resurrected to stalk her for a day – and one very ominous night?
There wasn’t much explanation for it. They hadn’t had any arguments between them in the past few days, as usually precluded these types of games. In fact, they had been almost obscenely cordial. Wednesday had been riding a high after stabbing a Scale through the hand in a third period class.
She’d even let Enid hug her, for near four entire seconds.
The scent was becoming rather pervasive. A student beside her coughs meaningfully.
Tentatively, she reaches out a single, clawed hand and picks it up. Curiously, there’s the faintest whiff of roses to the flat body. Was it connected to the roses in her room this morning? And where exactly was Wednesday anyway?
Their professor clears her throat. Enid gives her a winning smile, hiding the racoon from the woman’s increasingly perplexed face, and quickly slips out of the room.
The raccoon was flattering in the romantic sense, not quite the dead sense. Wednesday had… well, not hunted, but it ran similar lines to a mate gifting first hunt to their partner, laid within their den as proof of their skill and dedication.
Or, she hopes that’s the meaning. Otherwise, Enid Sinclair was soon to be stabbed to death by shining, silver knives, the Addams family crest adorned upon it.
Arriving at her locker, she opens it to place the little rodent in – a shame to waste a gift after all – and immediately leaps several feet back. What greets her is an anvil, hammered with nails, flung out of her locker as soon as the latch clicks open. It’s only her wolven senses that let her survive, unconsciously flinging herself back as the anvil lands with an almighty crash in front of her.
It would have killed her, was she a lesser woman, or wolf.
Carved into the anvil's head, now resting on the cracked floor below, is a heart, bleeding of course, and the words ‘Kill you next time?’ signed simple with an A.
Enid isn’t quite sure how Wednesday, for it could be no one else who would put an anvil in her locker in order to maim her, had managed to carry the blasted thing all the way down here. The hammered nails were a nice touch though, making it look more like a demented morning star mace than a hunk of metal, and it add a bit more thoughtfulness to the whole attempt.
It’s… well, it’s perfectly Addams. The notion has her heart racing, obscene as if it were to leap from within her chest and flee from her.
Slipping the roadkill into her bag instead, she returns to the classroom and attempts not to mourn the continued absence of Wednesday.
“Heard about the anvil. And the roadkill – which, ew. Think Addams is finally taking her pound of flesh?” Yoko says in lieu of greeting.
Enid looks to her as the vampire settles opposite her, sunglasses glinting and blood-bag steadily being drained. The gift was now safely within her room, alongside the two dozen beheaded flowers. It had started to rot in second period, and the smell was distracting, to say the least.
The anvil was still on the floor below her locker. As if she could move it, despite her lycan strength.
“No. She’s being… romantic, I think. That, or I’m just about to be murdered – which is just as romantic, now I think about it.”
Yoko snorts. “Romantic? In what fucked up world is roadkill romantic?”
She shrugs easily. It was a difficult thing to explain to anyone who hadn’t lived with an Addams. Their curiously genuine way of existing, their blood-driven fascination with all things dead, deadly or dying. The line of Addams was no more human than Enid was, despite the lie their physicality told. Addams-speak was an entire language in itself.
No one else would know how endearing it was, how attractive it could be, to be so dear to Wednesday that she would attempt to murder her. The girl who held no emotion for most everyone, to go to such lengths to end her life? Enid could faint simply from the thought.
Who knew there were so many morbid metaphors for love?
“You wouldn’t understand.” She smirks, “And, sidenote, this is coming from an undead someone who hasn’t had a girlfriend in, what, a year?”
“Coach don’t play,” Yoko grumbles, “And, sidenote, Addams courting is not courting. It’s the prelude before a fucking funeral.”
“Right! Isn’t it just so romantic?” Enid sighs. Resists the urge to twirl her hair like a lovesick puppy.
Where was Wednesday today, anyway? There weren't any prior engagements she had told her about. Perhaps more plotting had drawn her out of Nevermore for the day – the anvil a sweet apology for her absence. Or she’d been buried alive. Again.
“You’re both genuinely insane,” Yoko huffs, and that’s that.
Lunch passes by fairly uneventfully led by long, meandering conversations of little worth. Gossip, rumours, and the abysmal state of Yoko's love life. Enid eats through her usual four plates, mainly of meat, as having finally turned had cranked her metabolism to the absolute extreme.
Their table is approached just as she’s cleaning the blood of her final meal.
By a demon.
“Holy fucking shit–” Yoko chokes as it makes its way over, a near beeline toward Enid’s sat figure.
In its rotten, clawed hand was a letter. The parchment was clearly fine, and the black-wax seal of the Addams family was adorned on its lip.
As the demon comes to a stop at their table, the entire lunch hall quietens to deathly nothing. Enid almost swoons.
The letter is gently thrust toward her – the demon unable to speak considering its mouth was sewn shut. It also didn’t have a tongue to pronounce anything, as it was hung around the creature’s neck with twine, alongside eyes, three ears and a single finger.
Gingerly, she takes the letter from it. There’s a smudge of blood on the fine paper, though Enid isn’t sure if that’s purposeful or simply a side effect from the demon. There’s the scent of roses, again.
Once unburdened of its package, the demon uses the same hand to reach for a knife stabbed into its leg, raising it up and stabbing itself through the heart. With that, it crumbles into a pile of ash. The single finger remains, curiously enough.
“Oh,” Enid breathes. A gesticulating of love, to give one’s heart. She’s sure she’s blushing.
“Darkness take me,” Yoko hisses, grasping her by the wrist to yank Enid back into her seat, “you’re fucking crazy. Oh for– don’t blush that was a demon, Enid- a demon.”
The letter was written in code. An ancient language, and on top of that filled with metaphor upon metaphor. It was… clearly a love letter, as well an invitation.
It takes Enid two favours and three hours to decipher, half the day of classes missed and a rising, roaring sense of excitement. Thing had refused to help, which only heightened her suspicion over this new plot.
Wednesday was most certainly courting her, in all the traditional Addams fashion. It makes her want to howl at the waning moon, to run forests and hunt and live. The sensation is dizzying. Enid is thankful she’s sitting down.
The letter detailed meticulously, through the use of prose on the dead, of curses and born plagues and the darkness of the human soul, that Enid was to meet Wednesday at midnight, atop the roof of Nevermore. With a rapier.
Enid starts planning what to wear almost immediately.
The night is bitterly cold. It’s cloud-covered and pitch black, the stars unable to shine through the thickness of it. The moon, too, is mournfully absent behind the veil, though Enid can feel it still in its waning, nearly disappeared state within the night sky.
Even as far wandering as the Lady is, she still wants to howl, to roar and croon up at the Lady, if to release the frantic, near insane, anticipation within her chest.
The curse of an Addams clearly bleeds between two partners, if only to explain the fog of madness that’s spread over Enid.
She arrives just as midnight strikes, wearing her most flattering dress, pink of course and her neck purposefully exposed. Hauling herself upward onto the specific roof mentioned, it is then the sleek form of Wednesday Addams finally appears before her.
The first thing she notices is that her hair is undone from her braids. It flows elegantly down, pooling by her biceps in dark waves. The look is intimate, somehow, like the glances Enid takes when they both settle for sleep. The dizzying fuzz within her skull only heightens as she takes it in.
The second thing she notices? The ballroom gown – one fit for a tango, she thinks – and it's wonderfully complimenting cut.
Wednesday is radiant and haunting, standing in a silhouette of darkness. If not for the glint of her rapier, she may be entirely unseen, a raven within the night. Straight-backed and proud, her eyes cut to Enid’s as she settles across from her. Her breath mists the air. They stand just shy of a precipice.
A tremor builds in Enid's throat, beating like the dying pulse of a rabbit beneath her teeth. This may very well be the day she dies, Enid thinks, and feels not one lick of fear for it.
“Hello, puppy.”
“Addams. Nice– mmm,” Roses, again, and it makes her wolf preen, “nice outfit.”
“Yours is as nauseating as ever.” She cocks her head. Wednesday’s eyes are a physical caress, “Did you wear it just for me?”
“I wanted to see if your skin would peel off from proximity alone.”
“Oh, cara bella, the things you say to me…” Wednesday raises her rapier, a silver, glinting thing, and levels it evenly at Enid. There’s a glint, too, in her eye, a flash of the moon within otherwise void-like irises, “Dance with me, il mio cucciolo coraggioso. Let my blood stain your skin, let your last breath be upon my lips. May I mourn you, now and forever more.”
Enid raises her rapier. Her fangs are out, glinting and lit with the anticipation of flesh. The fingers curled around the handle are claws, too bright, aching with inaction.
“I’ll weep over your gravestone, mon seul amour.”
A shiver passes over Wednesday, and her lips, perpetually turned down, break into a feral smile. Atop her face it’s demented, as if her muscles are simply unable to comprehend their own use.
It’s quite possibly the most beautiful sight Enid Sinclair has ever seen.