Wednesday's eyes open without hesitation or glimmer of fatigue. She stares at the ceiling above her bed, the antique metal tile the shade of a fresh bruise. Wednesday has no use for an alarm clock. The comfort of an alarm is too assuring. One either wakes, or they don't -- the latter is preferable. Everyday at 5:43 am her eyes open.
Wednesday sits up slowly, as a corpse rising from its ancient grave. Her room had changed very little since her early twenties. The bed was still wrought iron and unforgiving. The shelves were lined with preserved beetles, taxidermied birds, and a single skull wearing bridal veil. The room is lit only by the filtered gray light through the black lace curtains. Her wardrobe hung like a row of coffins: high-collared black dresses, tailored coats, gloves arranged in pairs and trilogies.
Her feet touch the bare, cold hardwood floor. Just the way she prefers. Rugs are a mask. A lazy luxury for those who do not want to face the chilly breath of death embodied by the ebony wood.
Charlotte, the tarantula, scratches softly at the glass dome. She's hungry. Wednesday retrieves a cricket from the container, it's wing broken. She holds it up to her face, the cricket sits quietly, as if aware of it's impending death. "At least you face death as one should." Wednesday says quietly.
Charlotte pounces the instant Wednesday withdraws her hand. She watches Charlotte feed with clinical calm. There is no savagery in the act -- only nature fulfilling itself. She admires the honest purity of it.
She stands and wraps herself in a black silk robe, the hem embroidered with a delicate pattern of thorned vines. It was a gift from someone who thought it would make her smile at the gesture. She didn't. But she kept it.
In the bathroom, she runs cold water until it burns. She washed her face with only the cold water and rose extract. No soap. Soap, like sentiment, was far too abrasive. She braided her hair with scalpel precisions, each strand coiled tightly, smoothly. Not two plaits -- those belonged to a version of her that once believed defiance was loud and extreme. Now, she weaves it into a single, tight braid, pulled low and draped precisely over her left shoulder. It is not a statement. It is a boundary.
The gray remained unbothered, its presence noted but unchallenged. She does not hide her age. Age, after all, is simply evidence of survival -- something few people deserve, and fewer carry well.
She ties the braid with a thin length of black ribbon taken from Morticia's gown. No bow. No adornment. Just closure.
In the mirror, she studied her face. Sharp as ever, but with new architecture -- lines beneath her eyes, a soft hollow where tension lived. She had not softened. But she had calcified in beautiful ways.
A wrinkle at her mouth's corner bent upward, barely. A ghost of humor. Or cruelty.
At precisely, 6:04 am, she enters the kitchen. She does not eat. She prepares tea -- not because she enjoys it, but because the process forces stillness. The kettle screams. She doesn't flinch.
Black tea. No sweetener. No cream. Warmth, she tolerates. Comfort, she distrusts. Coffee and all of it's grossly overstated flavors and combinations, screams optimism.
At 6:18, she sits at her desk in her study -- a former embalming room converted into her private archive. One wall is covered in shelves of case files. Another in framed botanical prints of poisonous plants. Between them, a single photograph turned facedown.
She opens her leather-bound journal. Its pages are filled with Latin, anatomical sketches, and quotes from books no one reads twice.
Today's entry:
"The difference between solitude and loneliness is intention. I remain intentional."
She closes the book and places it gently beside the black envelope she has not opened in six years. The wax seal remains intact. She does not touch it.
Instead, she reaches into a drawer beneath her desk. Not the top drawer -- too obvious -- but the one with the lock she only opens when she's bored.
She turns the key. It clicks like a bone popping back into place. Inside were several cold case files. Most were labeled in her own hand -- precise, ceremonial. She thumbed past a few:
-Devon, Eloise: Missing, 1992
-The Vireo Murders: Unsolved, 2001. Artistic merit noted.
-Marron, L: Unsolved murder, 2016. Poetic. Precise.
-G: Correspondence/Supressed.
- Thornhart, Delia: Cousin. Estranged. Deceased.
She stares at the last file for a moment, this shouldn't be with the cold cases. "Someone is playing a game." She thinks to herself. "Intriguing." She pulls her aunt's file from the drawer and silently locks it again with intention to preserve what needs to be hidden from the rest of the world.
As her eyes fall softly on the file of her deceased kin, she opens it with solemn curiosity.
At 7:00, she leaves the house, locking the door with a key shaped like a dagger. Her heels click on the stone steps like metronome beats. The morning is cold, the sky the color of unpolished pewter. Exactly the way she prefers it.
People nod as she passes, some respectfully, some warily. No one speaks unless spoken to. Perfect.
Still, something stirs beneath her ribs -- not longing. She does not allow longing. But perhaps...friction. A sense of something shifting just beyond her field of control.
The scent of winter lingers in the air like a premonition.
Wednesday Addams does not believe in signs.
She only believes in consequences.