Chapter Text
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Enid’s pov
The first time Enid Sinclair noticed the thread, it was coiled around her ankle like a sleeping serpent, thin as spider silk and glowing with a light that had no business existing in the ordinary afternoon light of their dorm room.
She had been painting her nails a sun-bright shade of neon yellow, while Girl's Generation pumped through her pink headphones in a mix of synth beats and Korean lyrics she only half understood but felt in her bones nonetheless. She was humming along with the chorus, lost in her own little universe where nothing existed except the perfect curve of the brush against her thumbnail and the question of whether she should add tiny white flowers to match with her nails.
The thought never finished itself as something flickered at the edge of her vision: a glint of color that didn't belong among the carefully made colorful side of the room. Her eyes moved, the motion pulled her gaze downward, past her knees, past the fuzzy fabric of her favorite rainbow-stripped socks, until it landed on her ankle and simply...stopped.
Enid froze. The brush in her hand hovered mid-stroke, suspended above her thumbnail, as her other hand moved with the slow hesitation of someone approaching something they weren't sure they wanted to touch. Her fingers brushed against the soft wool of her sock and she could feel the faint warmth beneath it.
She pushed the fabric down, just enough to see. And there it was: a thin thread the color of arterial blood that was glowing with a luminescence that defied the physics she hardly understood. It curled around her ankle in a loose spiral and when she slowly blinked three times, it did not vanish.
Her eyes snapped toward Wednesday's side of the room with the reflexive urgency of a prey animal checking for predators, but her roommate was exactly where she always was: hunched over the typewriter as her fingers were flying across the keys in that rhythmic clack-clack clack that had become the background music of Enid's existence at Nevermore. Her braids hung forward, fraying at the ends, and she gave no indication that she had noticed anything amiss.
Enid shifted in her chair, angling her body to examine the thread with more precision. It glowed faintly, pulsing in a rhythm that she realized matched the exact tempo of the song currently flooding her headphones.
She shook her leg with a quick and sharp motion: the kind you'd use to dislodge a bug or shake off a cramp after sitting too long. The thread didn't move, didn't even shift. In fact, it seemed to shine brighter, like a living thing saying I'm here and I'm not going anywhere.
"Uh, Wednesday?" Enid swiveled in her desk chair, the motion sending her spinning slightly on its wheels before she caught herself against the edge of her desk with a thump that should have drawn attention.
Her voice came out higher than she intended with that particular pitch she defaulted to when she was trying to sound casual about something that was actively terrifying her. "You didn't happen to hex my ankle or something while I was asleep, right? Because there's this weird-"
Wednesday didn't look up. Her fingers continued their assault on the typewriter keys and when she spoke, her voice emerged in a tone that Enid had learned to interpret as ‘you are interrupting me and I am calculating how many seconds until I can justify violence’. "If I wanted to hex you, Sinclair, you would know how frogs spend their free time a long time ago."
Enid pressed her lips together in a thin line that did nothing to contain the frustration building in her chest. Of course. Of course she didn't even look. Of course she's not taking me seriously. When does she ever take me seriously? I could be actively on fire and she'd probably just ask me to take it outside so I-
Her internal monologue stuttered to a halt as her eyes, drawn by some force she couldn't name, followed the thread's path from her ankle across the worn wooden floor. It stretched between them, weaving between the legs of furniture and across the invisible boundary that divided their room into two warring kingdoms. It passed through the shadow of Wednesday's bed, curled around the leg of her desk, and then Enid's breath caught in her throat.
It was wrapped around Wednesday's left wrist. What the hell? She looked at Wednesday's face, searching for any indication that the other girl was aware of what was happening, but Wednesday remained lost in her own world.
The thread pulsed gently, matching the rhythm of her typing, and Enid felt something cold settle in her stomach. Curiosity, however, was warmer than fear. She pushed herself out of her chair, her fuzzy shocks muffling her footsteps against the floor as she padded across the divide between their worlds.
She couldn't help but notice the comical contrast that defined their shared space: on her side were posters and fairy lights and a collection of plushies that had grown alarmingly since September. Wednesday's side was filled in monochrome objects, it looked less like a dorm and more like the set of a Victorian Gothic film (if that film had been directed by someone with an unhealthy obsession with torture devices).
She was standing directly behind her roommate now, close enough to smell the bergamot and ink that seemed to permeate everything Wednesday touched. Her eyes were fixed on that left wrist, and she was staring with an intensity that would have embarrassed her if she'd had the presence of mind to notice.
The typing went to a halt.
Wednesday lifted her hands from the keys in a sudden movement, placing them flat on the desk in front of her. Her spine straightened incrementally and that small adjustment somehow made her seem more dangerous than she already was. "What now?" The words emerged through a jaw that was clearly clenched. "Do you have anything else important, hex-related perhaps, that you wish to torment me with?"
Enid ignored the venom in Wednesday’s tone, though it still bothered her a bit. “You’ve got a…thing.” she said, her voice trembling slightly. She pointed at Wednesday’s wrist, her face morphing into an expression she hoped looked serious, though it was likely betraying the cold panic rising in her chest.
Wednesday didn’t look up from her typewriter immediately. “I am aware of Thing’s existence, Enid. Have you finally suffered a blunt-force trauma to the head, or is this your tedious idea of entertainment?”
“No, not-” Enid’s voice pitched higher, frustration and fear tangling together. “This is not about Thing. There’s a thread,Wednesday. A red thread. It’s tied to you and it’s tied to me and I don’t know what it is or why it’s here or-”
Wednesday’s finger froze mid-tap over the ‘R’ key. “A thread?” Wednesday’s voice dropped into a whisper that was far more intimidating than a shout. “Are we discussing crocheting now? You’ve decided to disrupt my writing hour to discuss haberdashery?”
Enid shook her head frantically. Desperate for Wednesday to understand, she took more steps towards Wednesday and sat on the edge of her roommate’s bed. She saw Wednesday’s eyes drop to where Enid’s hand touched the perfectly smoothed black silk sheets, but she didn’t move.
“I don’t think this is for crocheting, Wednesday.” Enid said, her eyebrows pinched in a look of pained desperation. She reached out, her thumb and forefinger closing around the vibrant crimson line that hovered in the air. Her fingers met only space. She tried to flick it, to brush it away, but her hand passed right through the glow.
She stubbornly tried again, practically clawing at the air between them like a madman. To any outside observer, she looked like she was trying to catch an invisible fly.
Wednesday watched the performance for several seconds with an expression of clinical detachment. Enid eventually gave up, her hands dropping to her lap in defeat. “Can’t you see it?” she asked with a cracked voice. “It’s right there! It’s literally glowing!”
For a long moment, neither of them moved. The only sound was the faint ticking of the clock. Then, slowly, a muscle twitched in Wednesday’s jaw.
“Your inclination toward hallucinations is becoming increasingly pronounced, Sinclair.” Wednesday remarked. “Perhaps you should start by reducing your sugar intake.”
Enid’s breath hitched, a sharp sound she couldn’t suppress. The dismissal stung. She felt the usual weight of a lifetime of being told she was too bright, too loud, too much to be taken seriously.
“Wednesday.” Her voice cracked, small and vulnerable. She looked toward her roommate, while clutching the hem of her uniform. “Just look at me. Just this once. I’m not making this up. I’m really not.”
Something in that raw note of desperation must have breached Wednesday’s defenses, because the typewriter remained silent. Seizing the moment before her courage could fail, Enid bolted upright from the bed and closed the distance to Wednesday’s side.
She hovered there, leaning over the dark oak of the desk. Her fingers trembled just millimeters above Wednesday’s left wrist, but she didn’t touch her. Didn’t dare. But she stayed close enough to feel the phantom warmth radiating from the light.
The thread flared as it hummed with a soundless vibration that Enid felt deep in her marrow. It was a haunting resonance, like a violin string stretched to its breaking point. For a suspended heartbeat, the world narrowed to that single point of tension between Enid’s hovering fingertips and Wednesday’s captive wrist.
Then, Wednesday jerked back.
Her hands slammed against the desk with enough force to rattle the inkwell, and she surged out of her chair. The movement was so fluid and sudden it barely seemed human. She stood rigid, her braids swinging forward to shroud her face, masking whatever expression might have slipped past her control.
“Don’t touch me.” Wednesday hissed in a low voice.
Enid flinched, her entire body recoiling. The words shouldn’t have hurt this much. They shouldn’t have lodged themselves in her chest like shards of glass, making her eyes sting with the heat that was definitely not tears
Because Enid was done crying over people who treated her like a nuisance.
But the words did hurt. They felt like a physical blow to the sternum. Because hurt, for Enid, was a heavy thing to carry. She let it curdle into something sharper, something she could throw back. She rocked back on her heels, her colorful socks squeaking against the floor. She planted her hands on her hips, scrunching her face into a snarl she hoped looked formidable, even if she felt like a cornered kitten.
“Ugh, you’re impossible!”
She spun on her heel, as she retreated to her side of the room. She dropped into her desk chair with a heavy thud, the wheels rolling back an inch from the impact. She fixed Wednesday with a glare; one she knew would bounce right off the girl’s sharp armor. But she did it anyway.
Because that was the tragedy of Enid Sinclair; no matter how many times she was pushed away, she still showed up.
She sat there, chest heaving, watching the red thread pulse between them, still tying her to the girl who wouldn’t even look at her.
Wednesday finally lifted her head. “You want me to take you seriously?” She didn’t blink. “Then stop fabricating absurd fantasies out of thin air. Do not test the limits of my endurance, Sinclair.”
At that exact second the thread constricted.
An audible gasp escaped Enid’s throat as she looked down. The crimson line was no longer a loose coil; it was biting into the fuzzy fabric of her rainbow sock, glowing with a strobing light. There and gone. There and gone. There and-
Across the divide, Wednesday’s left wrist jerked violently toward the desk, a spasmodic motion that seemed entirely divorced from her will. Her arm swept outward, catching the heavy glass inkwell. It tumbled, hitting the wood and belching its contents. Black liquid bloomed across the manuscript like necrotic tissue, veins of ink racing to drown weeks of meticulous prose.
“Wednesday, wait-!”
She had barely cleared the invisible border of the room when Wednesday’s hand slammed down directly into the center of the black puddle. Crack. The sound of her palm hitting the desk was like a gavel.
“Don’t.”
The word was a door slamming in a cold hallway. Enid froze mid-stride, one foot hovering, her hand outstretched with the ruffled pink tissue. She watched, mesmerized by the macabre sight of the ink seeping between Wednesday’s pale fingers, staining her skin like dark bruises.
Enid’s gaze dropped to the thread. The ink didn’t touch it; the fluid seemed to curve around the light as if the thread was made of ghost-matter.
“Wednesday, your manuscript…the ending…” Enid whispered, her hand finally dropping to her side.
Wednesday’s fingers curled into a slow, trembling fist, the wet parchment pulping beneath her knuckles. She didn’t look up. Her breathing was too shallow, too controlled.
“Fine.” Enid muttered, the word tasting like lead. She retreated once again, until she reached her window. She stared out at the gray sky, her reflection in the glass looking small and washed out.
Not like I care. Not like any of this matters. It’s just a hallucination. A vivid but fake sight.
Behind her, the silence was oppressive. Then, the stillness broke. Wednesday’s chair screeched as she shoved it back.
“Where are you going?” Enid’s voice was a precarious bridge between casual and shattered.
Wednesday reached the door, her fingers catching the heavy iron handle. She paused. “The Nightshade Library.” She said, forced through a clenched jaw. “I require a sanctuary devoid of…distractions.”
The door clicked shut with a finality that echoed.
Enid collapsed onto the edge of her bed, the mattress groaning under her weight as she caught her ankle in both hands, glaring at the coil with a manic intensity. She tugged at it experimentally, but it didn’t budge and it felt like trying to pull a shadow off a wall.
“Stupid.” she hissed, squeezing her eyes shut until she saw stars.
Okay. Okay. Breathe. Just a hallucination. A very, very clingy hallucination.
She scrambled toward her desk and in her haste her elbow swept a bottle of neon-green nail polish off the edge. It struck the floor with a sharp, sickening crack. Immediately, the chemical sting of acetone surged upward, filling the room with a bite that threatened to melt her nostrils.
Enid didn’t stop to clean it. Her hands moved with a frantic purpose, clawing through the chaos of her top drawer. Receipts, sticky lip glosses, and crinkled candy wrappers flew over her shoulder, fluttering the floor like colorful confetti.
After some search, she was clutching three objects against her chest like holy relics; a jar of dark acrylic paint (shamefully ‘borrowed’ from Wednesday’s side), her bedazzled craft scissors, and a rainbow-colored candle that smelled like a chemical explosion of a birthday cake.
It’s something. It has to be something.
She dropped back on her heels on the floor, glaring at her ankle through gritted teeth. “If you’re real…prove it.” she whispered. The words sounded pathetic in the silence of the dorm, and heat flooded her cheeks at the absurdity of talking to a piece of string.
She unscrewed the paint jar with a shaky hand, dipped her finger into the black sludge, and began to smear it along the length of the thread. But the crimson line simply glowed through the black, untouched and untouchable…as cold and defiant as the girl it was attached to.
“Of course.” Enid snapped. She bolted for the bathroom, her heels leaving a messy trail of black footprints across the floorboards. She shoved her leg into the sink, cranking the faucet to the point of splashing.
Ice-cold water roared over her skin. She scrubbed with raw intensity as her nails scrapped her own flesh until her ankle was a bruised pink.
“Why would you play fair?” Enid hissed. “Why would anything in this godforsaken room play fair?” Her hands wouldn’t stop trembling; the black paint clung to her cuticles like dried blood, mocking her.
She thought of Wednesday's immaculate organization, her dragon's hoard of art supplies, the way she would absolutely notice that one of her precious acrylic pots had been violated. She would look so cool as a dragon though. Badass. All black scales and burning eyes and ENID! Focus. Mission of utmost importance, remember? Priorities.
She dried her ankle with enough aggression to nearly take the skin off and marched back to her desk. The scissors were next. They were plastic-handled and better suited for construction paper, but she positioned the blades around the glowing line and snapped them shut with a definitive snip.
The blades passed clean through the air.
“Okay, so not scissors.”
She reached for her candle. The flame sputtered to life with a jagged flick of her lighter, casting dancing shadows across the walls. She lowered the thread directly into the heart of the flame.
For a heartbeat nothing. Then the thread thrived.
It turned a molten, blinding gold and a sudden warmth climbed up Enid’s arm. “Ow! Crap!” Enid yelped, her fingers jerking back in a reflex.
The candle slipped. It tumbled through the air in a slow-motion arc of melting wax and flame before striking the center of Wednesday’s rug. Her perfectly aligned, hand-woven, black and grey masterpiece.
Enid’s stomach plummeted through the floorboards. She watched a small, orange flame begin to lick at the wool.
“No, no, no- bad fire! Down!” she hissed in a breathy scramble.
She lunged for her desk, her hand blindly sweeping past a mountain of plushies until she gripped her glitter-bombed thermos. It was heavy, thankfully full of lukewarm lemon water. She ripped the lid off with a desperate, plastic snap and heaved the contents directly at the flame.
The water hit the rug with a dull splat, dousing the surrounding gray wool but doing nothing to the center of the singe. A hiss of white steam rose, smelling of burnt hair and citrus, but the stubborn orange glow remained.
“Are you serious right now?” She growled.
Her eyes were wide, neon-pink highlights falling into her mouth. Abandoning the thermos, which clattered onto the floor and began to leak a slow puddle, she resorted to the only weapon she had left. She began to stomp.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
She hammered her heel into the rug with the rhythm of a vengeful drummer. “Stay…out…you…stupid…light!”
Finally, after one last heavy-duty grind of her heel against the wool, the glow died. “She’s going to feed me to the spiders.” She whispered to the empty room, her fingers twitching restlessly against her thighs. “I’m going to be a snack for a black widow.”
Well, it was nice being alive while it lasted.
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Wednesday’s pov
She found out. She could see it now. This changed everything.
Wednesday moved through the shadows of the hallway but didn’t head toward the main library. Her path was more circuitous, weaving through darkened corridors until she reached the heavy door of the Nightshade Library.
She slammed the door shut and began to pace in a tight, obsessive circle in the center of the room. She reached into the hidden pocket of her blazer and withdrew a small, black-clothed notebook. It was battered; its edges frayed from months of clandestine handling.
She had been living with this parasite for months. It had first crawled into her psyche during a feverish dream and by morning, it had materialized, coiled around her wrist like a garrote.
“Months.” she hissed to the empty room. “Months of silence.”
She had been meticulous. Every time Enid had turned her back to record on her phone, Wednesday had been studying the thread. Every time Enid slept, Wednesday was under the covers with a penlight, testing its tension, its temperature, its absolute refusal to be severed.
She flipped the pages of her notebook with enough force to nearly tear them. She had banked her entire strategy on Enid’s ignorance.
She had intended to sever this connection while Enid remained blissfully clueless. The plan had been surgical; identify the source, excise the anomaly, and return to her solitary life without Enid ever knowing about this.
But this ruined everything. In a matter of seconds, months of meticulous concealment had been incinerated.
Wednesday moved deeper into the lightless belly of the Nightshade Library as her fingers were trailing over the spines of rotting grimoires. Was the sensation identical to Enid? Or did Enid experience a different feeling with the thread?
Her roommate was the missing piece of the puzzle, the vital half of the equation she needed to solve this curse. But the price of that information was too high. Wednesday would rather bite off her own tongue and swallow it that ever admit she needed Enid’s perspective. To ask for help would mean admitting she, too, was haunted by the crimson line. It would mean admitting they were looking at the same ghost.
Not happening.
She suddenly felt a weird sensation on her wrist. Like the thread was on fire and it was rising its way to her entire hand. It glowed golden and Wednesday looked in marvel at the sight. The pain didn’t bother her, in fact she hoped it consumed her whole being, only to remember this feeling intensely enough so that she will document it later.
Wednesday’s breath hitched as a sudden sensation surged through her left wrist as if the thread had been dipped in liquid magma.
The thread shifted into a blinding, molten gold, bleeding upward to lick at her palm and creep toward her fingertips. The golden light was reflecting in her dilated pupils, turning her dark irises into twin eclipses.
The pain was exquisite and she leaned into it. She found herself whishing that the fire would consume her entire being. She wanted it to char her bones and brand her soul, if only she could carry the intensity of the sensation back to her desk. Every nerve ending screamed, providing her with the kind of data points no library book could offer.
Fascinating.
She needed to remember this so she could document it with the precision it deserved.
Then, as abruptly as it had ignited, the gold flickered. It stuttered like a dying star and Wednesday remained in the dark.
Wednesday reached for her notebook with such a force that the edge of the parchment sliced into her finger, but she didn’t so much as blink. She moved toward the massive oval desk at the center of the vault and slammed the notebook down as she began to write with the intensity of a mad scientist who had finally reached enlightenment.
Additional notes
Upon my arrival at the Nightshade library, an anomalous golden fire consumed the conduit. Subject of thought during the ignition; Enid. I was experiencing a surge of acute frustration due to her destruction of my plans. No one interferes with my designs.
The event persisted for approximately two minutes. Current data is insufficient to reveal the reason behind its retreat.
Hypothesis; The thread reacts to mutual distress.
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Enid’s pov
The scent of strawberry-scented melted wax and acrylic hung in the air, when the door groaned open with that agonizing sound it always did.
Enid froze. Her heart did a frantic somersault against her ribs. A draft of cold air rushed into the room, finding the candle’s dying flame and snuffing it out.
The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush lungs. Wednesday didn’t speak. Instead her eyes (those endless, obsidian voids) began a methodical sweep of the room. She moved her head, cataloging the scene like a seasoned crime scene investigator.
Item one: The stolen acrylic pot. Black paint was smeared across Enid’s desk and the floor in messy swirls.
Item two: The wax splatter. Rainbow-colored wax had bloomed across the center of Wednesday’s rug.
A muscle twitched in Wednesday’s jaw and Enid’s mouth went bone-dry. She swallowed hard, forcing the words past the terror constricting her vocal cords.
“Uh, hypothetically…” Her voice emerged as a pathetic squeak. She cleared her throat, backing away until her calves hit the edge of her own bed. “Hypothetically speaking…if I said this was a science experiment? To, you know, test…stuff?”
“Hypothetically,” Wednesday interrupted as she stepped fully into the room. “I would remind you that arson is a federal offense, and I have very low tolerance for amateur pyrotechnics.”
Enid scoffed before she could stop herself, turning her head away to hide the wobble in her lip. You’re the one to talk about federal offenses, she thought bitterly.
Enid’s pulse rabbited in her throat as Wednesday drew closer, invading her personal space until the air felt thin. Enid squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she could blink and find Wednesday back at her typewriter, the thread gone, and the room being as it was.
She opened her eyes. Wednesday was mere inches away as her gaze dropped to Enid’s paint-stained cuticles.
“You stole my acrylic.” A step closer.
“Borrowed!” Enid replied, her back pressing into the cold stone of the wall. “With every intention of-”
“And you ruined my rug.” Another step.
Wednesday moved again, closing the final gap until their shoulders almost brushed. She looked at Enid dead in the eye with such confidence that made her knees feel like jelly. The thread hummed between them, vibrating so intensely that Enid’s ankle felt numb.
Wednesday crouched suddenly as her hand hovered over the ruined wool of the rug. She looked up at Enid from her position on the floor, her expression a mask of cold iron.
“Clean this.”
“Or what?” Enid’s spine stiffened, defiance finally rising through the sediment of her fear.
“I will relocate your bed to the courtyard. Permanently. I’ve already a spot in mind near the gargoyles where the dampness is particularly unbearable.”
Enid’s breath caught. “You wouldn’t,” she whispered.
Wednesday’s eyes flickered. “Try me.”
Enid took a step forward, closing the distance her roommate had just created. She wanted to see if the mask would crack. “You felt that, didn’t you?” she asked, her voice dropping.
A second passed. Then another. Wednesday’s jaw tightened further as the thread blazed bright, casting a crimson glow across the tips of Wednesday’s black shoes.
Without a word, Wednesday turned on her heel and walked out. The door clicked shut with a terrifying softness. Enid stared at the empty doorway. What a liar.
And yet, despite the coldness and the threats, Enid felt a familiar, stubborn warmth. Wednesday Addams was magnificent. She was a nightmare wrapped in a deadpan delivery, but she was real. In a world of filtered photos and careful curation, Wednesday was a raw truth.
Enid looked down and sighed. She was stubborn enough to believe that beneath all those layers of ice, there was something worth digging for. If the thread made Wednesday tick, then Enid was going to keep winding the gears.
“I’ll show you.” She murmured to the empty room. “Now seriously, how do you even get birthday cake wax out of a rug?”
Enid looked down at the splattered mess as if the rug had personally insulted her entire ancestry. Her hands still trembled as she snatched her phone from the desk. She swiped frantically, her thumb smearing a dark smudge across the screen as she pulled up Yoko’s contact.
Enid: SOS how do u get wax out of a rug?!??!
Yoko girl tf did u do now
Enid not important. JUST HELP
Yoko you sure it’s wax and you’re not soft launching a dead body or smth?
Enid ughhh jsut come to my room!!!!!
She saw the typo but she shoved the phone into her pocket without correcting it. Who cares right now?
I just need to wait. Simple. Waiting is simple.
It was in fact, not simple at all. Waiting, Enid discovered, was a slow-motion form of torture. How Wednesday reveled in silence was beyond her comprehension. Every floorboard creak in the hallway made her jump, her eyes darting to the door with the panicked gaze of a caged bird.
Ten minutes passed, or ten years, Enid wasn’t sure, when the door finally creaked. Yoko Tanaka didn’t walk in so much as she materialized, leaning casually against the frame. She was dressed in her signature layers, sipping a blood-orange smoothie through a straw.
“So,” Yoko let the word hang in the air. “Where’s the body?”
“Ugh, I told you it’s a wax stain! Why are you so insistent on there being a corpse?!” Enid recoiled, her hands flying to her hair in a fit of agitation. She shook her head to repress the shivers crawling up her neck due to the image of a corpse in her mind.
“Well,” Yoko drawled, taking a leisurely, loud sip of her smoothie, “considering you’re rooming with Miss ‘I Collect Dead Things In My Closet…” She paused meaningfully, “Lucky you, by the way.”
Enid’s eye twitched. How dare she talk about Wednesday like that! Her roommate would never…well, actually on second thought, she absolutely might. But Wednesday was a perfectionist! If there were a body, there wouldn’t be a mess; it would be neatly filed away or dissolved in a vat of something corrosive. Yoko’s implication was making no sense.
Instead of defending a potential homicide, Enid simply pointed a shaky finger toward the ruined rug. Yoko straightened up as she paced toward the center of the room. She leaned over, tilting her sunglasses down just enough to reveal one dark, assessing eye. She sniffed once, then twice, before letting out a low and impressed whistle.
“You were not kidding, girl.” Yoko crouched beside the fibers, her combat boots creaking. “Is that…strawberry-scented wax? On Wednesday’s Addams’ rug?”
“Shut. Up.” Enid’s voice was a strained whisper.
Yoko’s lips twitched, but she mercifully stifled her laugh. She settled into a deep crouch, poking at the hardened wax with a manicured fingernail. “Okay. First rule of crime scene cleanup? Stop hyperventilating. You think I didn’t notice you’re about to pass out? Over a stupid piece of wool, of all things?”
Enid glared, saw that the red thread was glowing against her skin and she risked a glace at Yoko’s face, searching for any sign that her friend saw the impossible line.
Nothing. No flicker of recognition, no questioning squint. Only Yoko being Yoko.
“Just…help me before she comes back and turns me into a rug, okay?”
“Oh right, almost forgot you’re living with Jack the Ripper’s favorite cousin.” Yoko rolled her eyes theatrically. She reached into her leather jacket and produced a sleek lighter, flicking it open with a metallic clink.
“Arson? Are you insane?” Enid lunged forward, nearly knocking the smoothie out of Yoko’s hand. “If I wanted to commit arson, I would have waited for Wednesday! She’d actually be thrilled to help me burn the place down!"
Yoko scoffed at Enid’s lack of imagination as the flame danced in the reflection of her glasses. “Chill, Sinclair. You have to melt the wax to scrape it off. It’s basic pyro-chemistry. Now grab a paper towel and get down here.”
Enid blinked. "Why didn't I think of that?"
She sank onto the damp wool, her knees narrowly missing a lemon-scented puddle. She clutched a roll of paper towels as Yoko lowered the flame toward the first neon-pink droplet.
“Steady,” Yoko murmured in a focused tone. The wax began to lose its shape, turning into a shimmering, oily liquid. “Now, blot. Don’t scrub, or you’ll make an even bigger mess.”
Enid pressed the paper towel down. She watched with bated breath as the rainbow stain bled into the white tissue. “It’s working,” she whispered, “Yoko, you’re a literal lifesaver. I was already picking out which gargoyle I was going to live under. Preferably one with minimal pigeon traffic.”
“Why pick a gargoyle to sleep?” Yoko drawled, her voice muffled by the straw of her smoothie. “I feel like I’ve been left out of some big inside joke.”
Enid’s fingers reached out, absentmindedly poking at a half-melted glob of oily wax, only to receive a sharp glare from Yoko.
“Don’t touch that.” Yoko snapped, though her tone was more bored than angry.
Enid pulled her hand back as if she’d been burned, wiping on her jeans and shrugging one shoulder. “A joke? Yoko, if it were anyone else in this school, literally anyone…then yes, a ‘joke’ would be the appropriate term to describe the situation.”
Yoko flickered the lighter again. “Oh, I know exactly who that might be.”
They continued their work after that. Yoko’s voice was steady, guiding Enid through the delicate physics of heat and suction until the last of the hardened wax had been coaxed out of the rug.
“Well,” Yoko said, her palms slapping against her knees as she pushed herself up from the floor. “This is as good as it’s going to get without a professional help. I would say we did a pretty good job.”
The rug was, in fact, transformed. Only a few stubborn smudges remained, but they were invisible unless one was intentionally haunting for a reason to be miserable.
Her face split into a radiant, toothy beam. She surged up from the floor and threw her arms around Yoko’s neck, squeezing with enough force to make the vampire’s jewelry jingle.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you! You are a literal goddess, Yoko! You saved my life!”
Yoko rolled her eyes, but she didn’t pull away. She patted Enid’s back with two taps before gently disentangling herself.
“Easy, Enid. Don’t get glitter on the jacket.” Yoko, drawled, adjusting her collar. “I’m heading out. Ajax is waiting by the gates. We’re hitting that cafeteria at the edge of town for a late-night run. You in? You look like you could use a change of scenery.”
The offer was physically painful to decline. The thought of a ‘full of life’ cafeteria was tempting, but Enid felt exhausted. She has had a long day and she felt as if her battery was in the red.
“No, no, it’s okay.” Enid said, her shoulders slumping as she backed toward her bed. “I’d probably just fall asleep into my fries. It’s been…a really long-ass day. Have fun you both!”
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“Come on, Wednesday, you don’t have to throw it away.” Enid whined, as she hovered at her roommates shoulder, her hands darting in and out of the air as if she wanted to grab the wool but didn’t know where to start.
Wednesday began to roll the rug with precision and Enid followed the path of the roll like a frantic moth. She dropped into a half-crouch, her palms pressing against the bulging cylinder of the rug in a desperate attempt to shove it back down. “You don’t have to go this far! It’s a microscopic stain, Wednesday. I’ve had bigger spills on my favorite sweaters and I still lived!’
Wednesday ignored the plea, digging her heels into the floor and shoving the massive roll toward the dark gap beside the wardrobe.
“It’s barely visible. Yoko and I were so careful, if you just let me-”
“The rug is ruined. I will secure a replacement as soon as possible.”
Enid looked down at her hands in defeat. She had spent the last hour on her knees, scrubbing until her joints ached and her skin was raw, and for a fleeting moment, she had been actually proud of her and Yoko’s work. But as she watched her roommate stand there, she was reminded that she viewed the world in absolute perfections and total failures. There was no middle ground in Wednesday Addams’ world.
She let out a sigh and retreated toward the edge of her own bed. She sat down and gripped the hem of her oversized sweater. “Okay then…” she murmured, “just know that it was an accident. I wasn’t trying to ruin your things.”
Wednesday’s eyes narrowed into two dark slits as she locked onto Enid’s face. “I am not fond of excuses, Sinclair.” She said in an intimidating whisper.
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