UNDEAD BECOMES HER, wednesday addams

xviii. fertilizing daffodils

Dear Wednesday, I've decided to name my future children Gardener and Brynsleigh because I hate them, and I am going to make them experience so much color they'll go blind.

What a strong start.

I have been subject to a visit to my aunt's house over the break, and if you visited this place you would be grateful for Enid's color chaos. She's a beige mom and there are NO COLORS in her house except for beige, khaki, and white. So much white. 

Ollie considered herself lucky that she only had to spend a single day there.

I am chewing through my own ligaments right now. I am going to make Gardener see so many shades they'll experience shrimp heaven now. I want Brynsleigh to feel Pinkest Pink in her heart, I swear to God. These kids will see so many shades they'll lose the ability to see color altogether. If my wife doesn't like it, she can go sit outside and watch the swamp. 

She was sitting in her hospital bed shirtless, a writing desk on her lap, and HKAFO braces on her legs. That acronym stood for Hip-Knee-Ankle-Foot-Orthotics, which meant the braces went all the way up to her pelvis on both legs. Her mom had given her skirts to wear over them, and she had grudgingly agreed that they were comfortable.

These kids of mine will be so full of joyous colors they will transcend humanity and become shrimps. I keep saying things like "shrimp colors" as if that's the next logical spectrum humanity will reach. It's a Tumblr thing, to use the word "shrimp" to mean "beyond the human range." As if they are living some kind of transcendent existence we will never comprehend. 

Shrimp colors, sounds, emotions, morality. LIving in the ocean. Blissful, peaceful, living in their lane. Eaten at sixteen days old. Sounded like the perfect existence to her. 

Fun date idea: Windex the Bean. There are a bunch of petitions online to paint the Bean Blackest Black or Vantablack or whatever color Anish Kapoor can't use, to cover the Bean in paint thinner to get rid of the black paint so we can Windex the Bean, to critique its resume, to dress the Bean up as a ghost for Halloween, free punch and pie as Bill Murray transcends reality at the Bean, etcetera. It's a whole thing.

After a moment, she Googled that actual name of the structure, and was pleased to find it took a few minutes to get the answer.

It's actually called Cloud Gate, and Anish Kapoor hates that we call it the Bean, but the people have spoken. And it looks like a bean.

Francis lay in two pieces beside her, head and body, waiting to be brought back to life. She stroked his feathers for a moment before continuing to write.

I got new leg braces. I say "new" like I've had them before, but I haven't. They're going to help me walk. By the way, I've kinda sorta lost the ability to walk. Once I get back to Nevermore, I'm going to see just how far I can push the dress code before I get a letter home.

Did I mention that my parents were thinking of pulling me from Nevermore? It doesn't matter now, since I guilt-tripped them into dropping the whole idea. They aren't doing that anymore. As for the dress code, I think I will wear my fancy tie and jacket and no blouse so that my plant friends can breathe.

She hesitated before writing the next part, but figured Wednesday was a good enough sport to talk about it, and if she wasn't, then that wasn't Ollie's fault. 

I got my first gender-related question while I was at my aunt's, too. My cousin, who is like nineteen, asked me if I was a boy or a girl. I said yes, but only on prime numbered days. This guy looks like he works at Staples, so it wasn't exactly surprising. He also has a girlfriend, which is surprising, mostly because he has so many red flags you'd think he was about to secede and start his own country.

Her other cousin had asked if she had a plan for the future, because she would need to grow up and buy a house and raise a family like all good women should. She said, "Gee, thanks, I hadn't thought of that. I was going to smoke crack."

I'm in the hospital right now, mostly because one of my legs detached from my pelvis because my parents checked me out too early so we could go visit my aforementioned aunt. I was supposed to stay until the leg braces were fitted, but my dad was too impatient, and now I'm back here again. I get discharged tomorrow, so that's great.

There was also the matter of Dr. Mallory Practice being the bad news bearer yet again, leaving a folder full of medical information for her to cry over. She would save that for the next letter. 

Back to my hypothetical future children. I forgot to mention that these hypothetical future children will either be cats, marine iguanas, or hacklemesh weaver spiders, because my organs have rotted. Let me know which kind of children you would rather spend time with.

I better cap the letter here, because otherwise I'm going to start getting poetic and talk about dendrogasters or whatever. 

Love, Ollie

Sometime after the letter was mailed, Ollie was finishing up another crying session over her physical state when her phone buzzed. She checked the caller ID, only to discover that it was an unknown number.

She picked up anyway. "Tony's Roadkill Cafe, where you kill it and we grill it, Ollie speaking. How may I help you?"

"You'll have to forgive my lack of decorum," the staticky and wonderfully familiar voice of Wednesday Addams said. "I've yet to become used to speaking over a phone instead of a crystal ball."

"Nerd," she said without thinking. 

"That's rich, coming from you."

"When I lose my vocabulary you're going to have to tone down the smart-ass."

"You're going to lose your vocabulary?" Wednesday repeated, sounding only slightly confused. 

"Well, yeah. My brain's gonna die, remember? Hopefully I'll experience enough brain damage before then that I won't even notice."

"That is one of the most chilling statements I've ever heard," the Addams girl said pleasantly. 

"Thank you, I'm here all night. And it's going to get worse."

"How so?"

"I just learned that my left arm, the one I wanted to remove, is melting and its poisoning my whole body."

There was silence on the other end for a solid thirty seconds. "And what does that entail?" Wednesday asked, her voice slightly unsteady.

"Amputation, probably. The flora in my body is rebelling against whatever's going on in there, and it's fighting itself. If we remove the problem, it should go away. I could get a prosthetic if I wanted."

"Are you scared?"

"I've accepted my fate."

"What's a dendrogaster?"

"A parasite inside a starfish. It kills off the sea star's digestive system and replaces it with itself, building itself into a cruel replica. God entered my body in a body the same size. I am not myself, I am a body controlled by other things. And unfortunately, I must be awake through all of it."

"Conscious decomposition," Wednesday said, the exact conclusion Ollie hoped she would reach. "As for your fun date idea, I think it would be rather entertaining to Windex a famous art piece."

"With me?" Ollie asked hopefully.

"Yes, with you."

"Excellent. I'm particularly fond of spiders, so Gardener and-" she audibly gagged- "Brynsleigh would be preferable as hacklemesh weavers."

"Good to know."

"And your kids' names suck."

"Good to know."