Family is Everything (Addams Family fanfic)

[Elheru Aran]

Hey all. It's been some time since I've written again. I've got a bit of an enforced break on my hands thanks to a covid test that's taking a LONG DAMN time to return results, so here's something I've been noodling with for a while. Enjoy.

(Legal disclaimer: Addams Family etc. are not my creations, there are a number of homages within the story but they're not mine, and so forth and so on)

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The hair was the first thing anybody noticed about her. Pulled into two tight braids hanging down her back, it was dyed somewhat boldly a stark blonde colour, visible lines of slightly different tones expanding outward from the center part battling the ever-growing solid black roots.

The second thing was her posture. Sitting, standing, walking, she always stood ramrod stiff. There was a hint of sway to her hips, but her feet were planted solidly. Her hands were always perfectly still unless she was working at something. She had an air of solidness to her, though her frame was slight for her height.

And then there was her face. You could tell that she was somewhat round-faced as a child, but she had grown into her prominent cheekbones above a pointed chin and a small mouth that was precisely painted with a lipstick of a startling cobalt tone, stark against her extremely pale skin. Her eyes though—nobody wanted to meet Wendy Adams’ eyes.

They were startlingly dark and deep, ever present circles underneath them making them look sunken. She had, when she was younger, attempted to hide those circles with makeup, but somehow no matter how much foundation and powder she tried to pile on, they came through. So she compromised with thick horn-rimmed glasses—she didn’t need them, but she found that somehow they made her more approachable. Less threatening.

Not that she wanted to be threatening. Quite the contrary. She worked as a low-level minion in a massive office building, shuttling files about, answering emails, filling out forms, and conducting interminable phone calls. She dressed plainly in dark colors and spoke softly. Every day at precisely twelve-thirty p.m. she got up from her cubicle and went to the breakroom to eat a lunch that never varied from a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich with an apple and a bag of raisins. If anybody noticed that she never went to the ladies’ room, they didn’t say anything. In fact, people didn’t say much of anything about her, and that was how she liked it.

She had a simple life. A long way away from where it had begun, but that was how she wanted it. There was too much pain otherwise. She was reflecting upon this one day, staring at her monitor, when the annoying nasal tones of her manager Bill wandered across her shoulder, “Wendy! How’s it hanging?”

Revolving slowly in her chair, she stretched her face into the socially approved extent of smile required for this interaction. Unblinkingly, she murmured, “It’s going—”

“Right, wonderful, I just have one little wee thing I gotta ask you about. Your TPS reports,” he prattled on while waving around a half-full coffee mug, “they were due a couple days ago, mind getting on to that before you head out today?”

She stared at him, her face slackening to its ordinary flat expression. He hooked the thumb of the hand not holding the mug behind his suspender strap and arched his eyebrows at her before continuing, “wonderful! I’ll check my email in the morning for it. You have a great day, keep up the great work Wendy…”

As he walked off, she continued watching him unblinkingly. She tried to be patient with most people—their only fault for the most part was in being exceedingly normal, a quality she strived to emulate—but her manager was… Difficult for her to keep her composure with. Taking a deep breath through her nostrils and releasing it slowly through her mouth, she turned around and pulled up the reports. She’d completed them weeks ago—her job was truly trivial to her—but for some reason unknown to even herself she hadn’t bothered submitting them, nor almost every report and form and invoice and transcription and anything else she had been assigned for the past few weeks.

And nobody had said anything to her until now. She truly was a drone, revolving aimlessly in the office, burning energy to create a spark in front of the giant machinery of the corporation she worked for. A spark that she realized meant nothing.

For the first time since she had started working there eight years ago, she got up from her chair, looked around the office across the vista of cubicles, grabbed her purse and jacket from the hooks on the wall of her cubicle and started walking. She went past the breakroom and ignored it; she didn’t care about her lunchbox anymore. A quick elevator ride down, she walked the short distance to a subway station and boarded the next train to her neighborhood.

The whole time, she stared at nothing. Anybody who had the misfortune to cross her path suddenly felt a chill and walked faster, getting out of her way. Though the subway train was full, two large men suddenly jumped up from their seat and backed away as she sat down in their place primly. The train jerked and bumped as it rolled towards its destination, but she didn’t move one bit as though the inertia didn’t affect her at all.

One lengthy train ride later, she calmly walked down a rough neighborhood towards her apartment, ignoring both the gang sign graffiti scrawled profusely across the walls around her and the loitering crews on the street corners. Nobody cat-called; anybody from that street knew better. She walked, stiff and alone, her jacket neatly tucked into the crook of her arm.

A few turns and staircases later, the multiple latches of her door clicked open at a touch and she stepped in with her mail in her hand. Her jacket was hung up on a hook on the wall, her purse on the hook beside it, and she frowned at her mail as she flipped through the envelopes. Stepping out of her shoes she muttered, “Bills, spam and more bills…” as she threw them on the entry table. A picture frame fell over and she frowned.

Reaching out to pick up the picture, she stopped cold. A black and white photo of a man, dark hair slicked back with copious quantities of pomade, cigar jutting out from underneath a pencil moustache, lively dark eyes echoing those behind Wendy’s glasses, and a double-breasted suit in a fabric obnoxious even in grey tones stretching around his torso as he grinned outward from the frame. She sighed and sat the picture up straight.

From the kitchen came a racket. She frowned and looked. There was a package on the countertop, wrapped in brown paper and bound tightly with twine, antiquated stamps slapped across the top. Her eyes fixed upon the package, her hand reached out and wrapped itself around her largest chef’s knife—she had a full selection of kitchen knives, the right tool for the job always as her parents had taught her, every one kept deadly sharp—and she advanced purposefully upon the package.

It twitched. She narrowed her eyes at it and jabbed the knife at the package experimentally. The keen edge parted the paper and the cardboard underneath like nothing, and a bit of twine snapped. She cocked her head to the side, extracted the knife, carefully circled the package and again without looking found a drawer with her off hand. A menacing serrated meat-tenderizing mallet was plucked from the drawer instantly. As she meticulously dissected the package with the tip of her knife, the mallet was hefted ready to smash anything that might be within.

The last layers of paper fell off, and the flaps of the box slowly opened. She stared at its contents. Above the edge of the box, a finger twitched. Then, reminiscent of a giant spider, a disembodied hand leapt out of the box and balanced upon its edge. Somehow, it *looked* at Wendy, flipped onto the neat stump of its wrist and cheerfully waved. For the first time in a very long time indeed, she could not do anything but stare in disbelief. “Thing? How…? I thought you were gone…”

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More later. C&C welcome, as always. Thanks for reading!

[LadyTevar]

Ok... I'm interested.
Nice Callback to Office Space.

[madd0ct0r]

There's a thesis in the appropriation of adult!Wendy as a vehicle for millennial dispair and intellectual clarity.

Pugsley was always the little boy traits of sadism, gadgeteering and brute violence. He'll have grown up now, but I wonder how he avoids being sucked into the American military industrial complex.