#oh you know just wednesday being totally normal about somebody's backstory wound

[majorxmaggiexboy]

One of Us is a Ghost

Sixteenth Century: 

Goody Addams escapes from Joseph Crackstone. Across the sea, a Mr. Addams settles into matrimony. The union produces six children.

Early Nineteenth Century: 

Miss Adamms becomes engaged to Mr. Bramblestoke. Two days before the wedding, she elopes with Mr. Herring. Mr. Bramblestoke becomes a poet after serving the shortest military career in recent history. Mrs. Herring becomes a mother. The little Herrings grow up and begin families of their own. The surname is discarded by the daughters upon their own marriages, and so the pattern repeats.

Early-Nineteenth Century:

Miss Goodfellow and Mr. William Jopson are wed. The move into a modest but comfortable lodging on Gee Street. Mr. Jopson is a tailor. Sarah grows flowers in little boxes along the windowsills. She is happier than she’s ever been.

Early Twenty-First Century: Wednesday Addams begins having psychic visions.

Wednesday is fifteen, and she is surprised.

Of the half-dozen visions she’s experienced up to this point, one-hundred percent of them have been glimpses of the future. Unless something drastic is coming, this appears to be the past. 

Wednesday has always been a quick study. She’s getting used to the visions. She takes in her surroundings impassively.

Behind her, an alleyway that would make a gorgeous crimescene. She is situated directly inside its mouth. Were she to step backward, the shadows through there are so thick that her black attire would render her nearly invisible to a glance.

In front is less intriguing. A beaten cobbled street, sun glaring off it, lined with buildings like the ones to either side. Footsteps, accented voices at varying volumes. 

A little further down, a child is bawling.

He’s clinging like saran wrap around the waist of a taller boy, wailing into his side while having his hair petted like a fractious kitten. Pugsley would know better. 

The taller one is in earnest conversation with a woman even as he consoles the little geyser currently soaking his waistcoat. The woman’s right hand is tied in front of her with bandages. The woman’s face is pinched, but she smiles at something the boy says. There are affectionate gestures, soft as a forgotten tomato left to liquify in the back of a refrigerator. Wednesday shudders. 

Taller One turns, looks toward the alley.

A locker rattles shut beside her. Mykynzy Fletcher and her clique of assorted stereotypes are staring. Wednesday stares back until they disband.

***

Wednesday hears a string break as the vision snatches her away. Clearly, timing means nothing to the powers of psychic torment. 

It takes a moment to orient herself. The past again. The deck of a ship, crouched between crates and barrels. 

She recognizes The Taller Boy eventually. It’s been about three weeks since she saw the marshmallows-and-gummi-bears family and none of them were particularly memorable. 

Nodding vigorously along with instructions being relayed by an older sailor, Tall can’t be much older than Wednesday herself, she decides. He looks like a brand-new retail clerk, new enough to still greet every customer with a smile and try to make smalltalk. Not yet broken into the kind of employee maintaining soulless eye contact while single-bagging the loaf of bread with the gallon of milk. 

As the older man walks away, Taller’s smile follows. And then drops like a corpse over a wall. He keeps looking back toward the harbor. Already regretting his life choices, no doubt. 

Then his face goes impressively neutral and he’s scurrying past Wednesday’s vantage point. 

Even with the broken string, she finishes her concerto with only a few missed beats. 

***

Taller’s name is Jopson, and if an amputation is necessary, odds are he won’t live long enough to put the bread and milk in the same flimsy plastic bag. 

Technically, he’s already dead anyway. Unless he survives this ordeal and then discovers the secret of immortality. 

She’s crept as close as she can while staying out of sight. Unclear whether it’s necessary to do so, but watching from shadows is an instinct. Taller is up on the surgeon’s table, half-propped on his elbows and taking it all respectably. He’s shaking like an irate chihuahua and looks like he’ll pass out if he so much as glimpses the mess of his right leg, but surprisingly coherent. 

Why he won’t look at the wound is a mystery. It’s quite ravishing. The flashes of lightning from the storm still raging outside are a particularly nice touch. 

The surgeon declares that no amputation will be necessary.

Wednesday’s shoulders slump just as Taller goes practically limp. For a moment, she thinks he’s just died. But he’s back up in a minute, gazing up at an older man the same way cats look at Christmas trees. No one should look at their boss that way. 

The man mutters something chintzy about scars and stories to tell.

Whatever’s in the bottle Taller is handed will knock him out flat within the hour, but he’s only distractable during the cleaning and sewing, with very little mewling about it. Instead he’s chattering sluggishly- increasingly so -with the older man and the physician. He’s also beginning to goggle at things as though seeing them for the first time. 

The doctor has nearly finished. Wednesday could do better, even with the questionable lighting, but it’s decent work. 

Taller murmurs something that gets an incredulous chuckle and a “What did you say?” from the men. It’s a long moment before he answers, barely awake.

“Who is she?”

Ah. He can see her. The others exchange raised eyebrows and grins. They assume it’s the drug, and maybe it is. 

He’s looking directly at her, but he can’t keep his eyes open.

Wednesday blinks at the book she was reading before the vision, adjusts the lamp by her chair, and resumes reading.

Taller does not appear in her visions again.

***

Until the week after Joseph Crackstone’s defeat. 

#the terror amc #wednesday 2022 #*wearily* chapter 1/? #wednesday addams #thomas jopson #there's no reason for this to exist and yet #somehow....there is More #i have no excuse #except that i wrote this p much exclusively for Me #not really content with it but at least i did it #oh you know just wednesday being totally normal about somebody's backstory wound #look at me out here just bullshitting my way to literary freedom #i had tried to go to sleep last night #got up and down no less than four times like ''ACTUALLY LET ME WRITE THAT. NO NO IT'S RIDICULOUS. BUT ACTUALLY-''