Clack. Clack. Clack.
Wednesday purged the cluttered thoughts from her mind. Her slender, pale fingers danced across the brass keys of the antique typewriter, striking out a steady, cold rhythm.
She needed to do something to suppress that unfamiliar emotion.
For instance, she was currently conceptualizing a death scene for her latest novel, where the protagonist would be slowly crushed flat by a poetic contraption made of rusted gears.
This required focus. It required a precise grasp of agonizing detail.
Clack. Clack. Cla—
"AAAAAAHHH! HELP! WEDNESDAY! SAVE ME! I'M DYING! I'M SERIOUSLY DYING!"
A scream, shrill to the point of theatricality, erupted violently from the direction of the bathroom, brutally severing her train of thought.
Wednesday's brow furrowed almost imperceptibly. Her fingers hovered in mid-air.
Damn it. It seemed this person couldn't survive a single day without manufacturing a noise disaster or a black hole for attention.
"WEDNESDAY! GODDESS! GOTH QUEEN! PLEASE! I CAN'T SHAKE IT OFF! IT'S FALLEN IN LOVE WITH MY ASS!"
The cries for help became more desperate, punctuated by a strange, wet slapping sound.
Wednesday took a deep breath, fighting to keep her facial muscles frozen. She decided to ignore this idiotic farce. She placed her fingers back on the keys.
Clack. Cla—
BANG!
The bathroom door was smashed open.
Victor shot out like a desperate, pale torpedo. His face was written with genuine—or perhaps Oscar-worthy—terror.
The critical issue was—he wasn't wearing pants.
Well, his pajama pants, printed with twisted smiley faces and the text "GOOD MORNING, DESPAIR," were around his ankles. Tripping over them as he ran, he looked like a penguin in bondage.
And the even more critical issue was—his butt was bare.
Wednesday Addams—a girl who could face murder charges, death threats from evil spirits, and even her parents' excessive affection without blinking—found her mind going blank in that instant. It was as if a sudden vacuum had sucked every thought out of her brain.
It wasn't anger or embarrassment. It was a pure system crash.
A trace of panic, so microscopic she would never admit it existed, flickered in the depths of her dark eyes.
Her typewriter went completely silent.
"WEDNESDAY! HELP ME! IT'S GOT ME! WHAT THE HELL IS IT?!"
Victor screamed, trying to twist his head to see his own rear while awkwardly waddling toward her.
Just as Wednesday's reason was about to reboot—and command her hands to grab the nearest sharp object for self-defense—her gaze moved past Victor's terrified, contorted face and focused on his uninvited guest.
It was a severed hand.
At this very moment, it was tightly "clinging" to Victor's left butt cheek, all five fingers digging in firmly.
It held on as if he were a long-lost comrade in arms, refusing to let go. It even gave a triumphant, rhythmic pat-pat.
It was Thing.
The "little helper" sent by her parents. The watcher she had vaguely sensed flashing in the corner of her vision. And now, it had chosen to make its formal debut in this abrupt, absurd manner.
Wednesday understood instantly. That rare sliver of panic evaporated, replaced by a numbness born of extreme speechlessness.
However, the cast list for this theater of the absurd wasn't complete yet.
From Victor's bare lower back, a mass of black, viscous symbiotic matter surged out, rapidly forming Venom's signature toothy face.
But Venom didn't look panicked at all. He looked... incredibly entertained.
One of his tendrils was holding Victor's phone. The screen was pointed directly at the site of Victor's assault, while another small tendril tapped away on the screen.
"Hold that angle, Vic! Yes! Make the struggle look more real!" Venom directed excitedly in his low, gravelly voice.
His tone was filled with the joy of discovering viral content. "Title: 'MYSTERY HAND AT NEVERMORE! EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE!' #SchoolGhostStory #SocialDeath #WhatTheHellIsThis #ClickToSeeButtCheeks... let's add a few more tags!"
He even simulated a camera shutter sound—Click! Flash!
Victor yelled, "VENOM! YOU TRAITOR! HELP ME GET THIS THING OFF! DON'T FILM IT!"
Venom: "Shut up! We're rolling! This is gonna go viral! YouTube revenue split is 70-30, I get 70!"
Wednesday watched this surreal scene: A boy running toward her with his bare butt exposed, a severed hand clinging relentlessly to said butt, and an alien symbiote happily livestreaming the whole thing.
She felt a vein throbbing in her temple.
The dark, elegant, horrific Gothic aesthetic she had pursued all her life was being shattered, ground into the dust of a vulgar slapstick comedy. She took a deep breath, and the air felt tainted with Victor's idiot-virus and the stench of Venom's social media greed.
Then, her tongue—sharper than any assassin's blade—struck with cold precision.
"Victor." Her voice was as flat as a polished coffin lid, instantly freezing the chaos in the room. "If your foolish, pale posterior, which looks as though it has never seen the sun, dares to come within three feet of me—"
Her gaze slowly swept over his lower half. There was no shyness in her eyes, only the detached scrutiny of an anatomist viewing a substandard specimen.
"—I will ensure Thing takes up permanent residence there. And I will order him to report the temperature fluctuations he feels via Morse code every midnight."
She paused, shifting her gaze to Venom, who was still trying to film.
"As for you," she continued, her tone laced with a disdain capable of corroding metal.
"If that video appears on any online platform, I will locate every single one of your chocolate stashes—including the one behind the toilet tank—and I will melt them, one by one, into a disgusting brown liquid right in front of your eyes. Then I will use it to water the most mediocre sunflowers in the academy garden."
"And you," she finally looked at Thing, who had stopped patting and was now standing on its index and middle fingers, looking at her somewhat sheepishly.
"Get off my pitiful roommate's... region. Immediately. And then give me an explanation. Regarding my parents, and your baffling taste in texture."
Instantly, the dorm fell silent.
Victor's scream died in his throat.
Venom's camera-holding tendril froze in mid-air.
Thing let go with a plop, dropped to the floor, and scurried on his fingers over to the foot of Wednesday's bed, curling up like a child who had been scolded.
Victor stood there, finally realizing his current state. His face flashed red and white as he frantically tried to pull up his pants.
Venom slowly retracted into Victor, muttering softly, "Evil sunflower gardener..."
Wednesday watched it all expressionlessly, then sat back down at her typewriter as if the whole thing had just been a bad signal interruption.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
The cold, steady typing resumed, sounding the finale to this absurd crisis.
The only other sounds in the room were the rustling of Victor putting his pants on, the chewing sound of Venom swallowing his shattered dreams of becoming an influencer, and the faint scratching of Thing shifting uneasily on the floor.
At an angle no one could see, the corner of Wednesday's mouth twitched. Just a fraction.
This place is a disaster.
A never-ending disaster composed of bare-assed idiots, social media-obsessed symbiotes, and perverted severed hands.
And she was actually starting to get used to it.
That thought alone is the most terrifying thing of all.