My Life is Horrific Chapter 23 — Can I just relax please? (Patreon)

Home turned out to be exactly the place I needed after a day that had included a counseling session ambush, a girl's first period, and getting mauled to near-death by a forest monster before being buried alive as a bonus round. 

Beverly and I settled into something that almost resembled normal, sitting on the couch with a couple of old sitcom reruns playing while she worked through a bowl of ice cream and I nursed a beer, and around eight I ended up on the phone with Claire for the better part of an hour, the two of us trading conversation about nothing in particular, her recovery, my recovery, just boring stuff like that. 

I definitely needed that. 

A beer, bad television, and a phone call that didn't involve monsters or serial killers  was about as close to self-care as my life got these days.

The only wrinkle in an otherwise decent evening was Beverly's continued campaign of sitting a little closer than necessary, finding reasons to touch my arm during the funny parts of the show, angling herself toward me on the couch in ways that made her intentions about as subtle as a marching band. 

She was pretty, there was no denying that, but she was also deeply traumatized, and currently living under my roof because I was the only stable thing in her life right now. 

Doing anything even remotely romantic with her would have been the kind of catastrophically bad decision that even a version of me with zero self-control could recognize as catastrophically bad. Plus, if I was being honest with myself, my head had been somewhere else entirely since that morning. Somewhere involving honey-brown hair and warm eyes behind wire-framed glasses.

After a couple of beers I called it a night and went to bed.

_____________________________________

[Day 65 Survived]

[Achievements:]

[Achievement Unlocked: Scary Monsters]

You encountered a Hyde and got the shit kicked out of you, but you did bring it back and managed to scare it off. However its master certainly won't be happy about you getting involved. Good luck when it comes back.

[Achievement Unlocked: A Girl's New Pet]

You seem to have been interesting enough to catch the attention of Wednesday Addams. While not a villain by any means, it is by no means safe being involved with any member of the Addams family. Better hope your healing factor can handle her tastes in the bedroom.

[Rewards:]

[Item: Sonic Screwdriver]

[Trait: Sixth Sense — Sense danger and threats in the area, as well as being able to see that which normally can't be seen]

_____________________________________

I raised both eyebrows at the ceiling while the notification hung there in my vision. 

I lay in bed for a solid minute just processing the sheer range of what the system had decided to hand me. The Sixth Sense trait was genuinely useful, especially when there was a stand user in town from the sounds of it this would let him see killer queen. But the Sonic Screwdriver was the one that actually made me sit up in bed. 

As far as I could remember from watching the show in my old life, that thing could unlock doors, disable alarms, scan for radiation, reroute electrical systems, and occasionally solve entire plots through the power of pointing it at something and making a buzzing noise. 

How exactly I was supposed to use a piece of fictional technology that operated on writer convenience rather than actual physics was a problem for future James. 

Present James just wanted to hold it.

I got up, splashed some water on my face in the bathroom to knock the sleep off, and headed downstairs toward the smell of coffee and something frying, where I found Beverly once again at the stove looking considerably more at ease than she had the day before. Instead of launching into the usual protest about her doing too much, I just leaned against the counter and asked how she was doing.

"Better," she said, flipping something in the pan with a small smile that reached her eyes in a way it hadn't the first morning. "I actually slept the whole night through in a long time."

Made sense. 

With her father out of the picture she  was probably experiencing a kind of safety she hadn't known in years.

"Hey," she said while pouring coffee into a mug and sliding it across the counter to me. "Could I maybe hang out with Bill and the others today? After school, I mean."

I snorted into my coffee. "Beverly, I'm not your father. As long as you're not putting yourself in any obvious danger, you can do whatever you want. Go hang out, have fun, be a teenager for once." I took a sip and pointed a finger at her over the rim of the mug. "Just keep an eye out, though. We do still have a psycho killer clown living in this town."

She smiled at the first part and then nodded seriously at the second.

She then went to say something else but the phone rang, cutting through the moment, and Beverly set down the spatula and crossed the kitchen to grab it off the wall mount.

"Hello?" Her brow furrowed. "Um... who is this?"

I watched her expression shift from confused to genuinely unsettled, her eyes flicking toward me. She held the receiver out toward me without a word.

I set my coffee down and took it. "Hello?"

"The time of the hunt is upon us. I have called you to assist in the pursuit of the beast."

I raised an eyebrow as I recognised the voice. "Wednesday, is this you?"

Silence stretched out for a beat too long.

"Yes."

"What do you want?"

"I have located the human host of the Hyde," she said in a flate voice. "I require assistance in confirming the identity and confronting the individual before the transformation occurs again."

"Why don't you ask your family?"

"They do not love me. It is more likely they would allow the Hyde to tear me apart for the entertainment value than assist in preventing it."

I sighed and rubbed my eyes with my free hand. "I'm gonna have to pass, Wednesday. I need a day where nothing tries to kill me or anyone I know. I'm calling in that day right now."

"The Hyde has caught your scent," she said, without missing a single beat. "It retains an olfactory memory of prey that has wounded it. It will hunt you specifically now, and given the damage you inflicted on its shoulder, it will not approach you directly a second time. It will instead observe from a distance, learn your patterns, and select a moment when you are alone, unarmed, and unaware. It typically strikes from above, severs the Achilles tendon—"

"Okay, okay, stop, I got it, I got it." I pinched the bridge of my nose hard enough to leave a mark. "Where do you want me to meet you?"

"Come to my house, the lair I have identified is more accessible by car, and my family's automobiles are... unsuitable for this purpose."

I let out a long breath through my nose, feeling every ounce of the relaxing day I had been planning drain out of me in real time. "Fineeee. I'll be there soon."

I hung up the phone and turned around to find Beverly staring at me with an expression somewhere between amusement and disbelief.

"I didn't know you were friends with Wednesday Addams," she said. "I didn't even know she had friends."

"Yeah," I said dryly, grabbing my coffee again. "I sure am a lucky one." I drained the rest of the mug and set it in the sink. "I'm gonna go get ready. I was gonna drop you off early before running some errands, but—"

"You don't need to do that," Beverly said quickly. "I can just call Bill, he can swing by on his bike and give me a ride. It'll save you the trip."

"You sure?"

"Positive."

"Alright. Thanks, Bev."

I headed upstairs, showered fast, threw on jeans and a jacket, and grabbed the Sonic Screwdriver off my nightstand on the way out, turning it over in my hand as I walked to the car. I had absolutely no idea how to actually operate the thing beyond the vague understanding that in the show you pointed it at stuff and stuff generally worked out, but figured there was no time like the present to find out.

I climbed into the Mustang, fired up the engine, and pointed it toward the edge of town, already regretting every decision that had led me to this exact moment.

"I just wanted one day," I muttered to the empty car as I drove. "One single day of not dealing with any of this bullshit."

I sighed and glanced at the road ahead. "At least Carrie's getting help from Miss Honey now. Maybe she won't go full postal at prom."

Prom.

Damn...

Prom was only a few weeks out now. Where the hell had the time gone? Between vampire castles and sewer clowns and serial killer fathers, I had somehow lost track of the actual high school calendar I was supposedly still a part of.

I filed that thought away for later and kept driving, and as I approached the edge of town the whole atmosphere around me seemed to shift, the neat suburban houses giving way to older, more crooked buildings, the trees growing thicker and darker on either side of the road, until the sunlight itself seemed to darken by several degrees despite the fact that it was mid-morning.

"What the fuck," I muttered, watching through the windshield as the clouds overhead thickened and rolled in from nowhere, blotting out the sun entirely.

"This is some Scooby-Doo shit," I said as I pulled up to the only house on the street, a sprawling Gothic manor set behind a tall wrought-iron gate topped with an enormous ornamental letter A. The house itself looked like it had been assembled from spare parts of at least four different haunted houses.

I parked in front of the gate and had barely put the car in park before the iron gates swung inward on their own. 

"Okay," I said, taking a breath. "Okay, that's fine, that's totally normal, houses do that all the time."

I drove through and parked in the circular drive outside the front entrance, cutting the engine and sitting there for a second to gather myself.

Danger

I felt a cold prickle at the base of my skull that I recognized immediately as the new Sixth Sense trait announcing itself for the first time.

"Yeah, no shit," I muttered, climbing out of the car.

I walked up to the massive front door, which was fitted with an iron knocker shaped like a skeletal hand, and as I reached out to grab it I could have sworn, for just a split second, that the knocker let out a small, indignant shriek at the contact.

I decided not to think about that.

I knocked three times and waited.

Danger

The warning hit again and I felt an itch crawl up the back of my neck that made me tilt my head skyward on instinct. A heavy stone flower pot was already halfway through its plummet toward my skull, close enough that dodging was not an option, so instead I snapped both hands up and caught it against my palms, the weight driving my arms down but stopping well short of my face.

"Shit," I breathed, staring at the pot in my hands.

I looked up in time to see a chubby, pale little boy peering down from a third-story window with an expression of mild disappointment before he ducked back inside without a word.

If I had been a normal human being, that pot would have caved my skull in on the doorstep of a house I had been 'invited' to.

I set the flower pot down on the step, knocked again, harder this time, and called out. "Wednesday! It's James! You called me, remember?"

No answer.

I knocked a third time, waited, and got nothing but silence and the distant rumble of thunder.

"Alright," I muttered, pulling the Sonic Screwdriver out of my jacket pocket and turning it over in my hand. "Let's see if you're worth the hype."

I pointed it at the lock, thumbed what felt like the activation switch, and the device let out a rising electronic whine that vibrated in my palm. The lock mechanism inside the door clicked, once, twice, and then released with a thunk, and the massive door swung inward on its own.

"Well, I'll be damned," I said, genuinely impressed, before stepping through the entrance into the house.

The interior opened up into a grand hall that could have swallowed my entire home twice over, a soaring space with a sweeping central staircase splitting into two curved arms near the top, dark wood paneling on every wall, portraits of stern, unsmiling photos staring down from ornate frames, and cobwebs strung so artfully across the chandeliers that they had to be intentional decoration rather than neglect.

"Hello?" I called, my voice echoing up into the rafters. "Wednesday? Anyone?"

Nothing answered but the echo of my own voice.

I took a few steps further in, looking around at the sheer strangeness of the place, and was seriously considering just turning around and driving home when a bright flash of lightning lit the tall windows and, silhouetted at the top of the staircase. 

There... stood a man in a pinstriped suit with a thin mustache and a rapier held loosely at his side.

"HA!" the man bellowed, his voice booming through the hall. "You have overcome my first obstacle, intruder, but do not for one moment believe that the rest shall come so easily!"

I blinked. "Obstacle?"

'Does mean the locked door?'

I squinted up at him and the recognition clicked into place. Gomez Addams. Wednesday's father, standing at the top of his own staircase. 

"Mr. Addams," I said, raising a hand in a placating gesture. "Hi. Sorry to just walk in, the door was locked and nobody answered, but Wednesday called and asked me to come pick her up. I'm James."

Gomez's eyes lit up and a sneer crossed his face. "I know precisely why you are here."

"You do?"

"You are here," he declared, descending the first few steps with the rapier point trailing dramatically behind him, "to lay your grubby, undeserving hands upon my daughter! To steal her from the bosom of her loving family! To whisk her away and, dare I say it, impregnate her, condemning her to a life of soccer practice sidelines and PTA bake sales and the occasional, joyless glass of chardonnay on a Tuesday evening!"

"WHAT?! That is not—I'm literally just here to give her a ride!"

"I WILL NOT HAVE IT!" Gomez roared, throwing one arm out. "Not while breath remains in my body! Not while my name is Gomez Addams!" He snapped his fingers, and the sound cracked through the hall like a gunshot. "LURCH!"

A door somewhere deeper in the house groaned open, and heavy footsteps began to approach, each one shaking a faint tremor through the floorboards.

The man who emerged from the shadows of the hallway was, and I say this with complete sincerity, the single largest human being I had ever laid eyes on in either of my lives, even bigger than Jason. He had to duck to clear the doorframe, his shoulders alone wider than most doorways, and he stood there in his dark butler's coat regarding me with a completely r blank expression.

"Oh, shit," I muttered.

Gomez laughed a delighted sound that echoed off the ceiling. "None who have challenged Lurch have ever emerged victorious! Ha ha ha!"

"This is a misunderstanding," I said quickly, backing up half a step as Lurch continued his slow advance. "I'm not here to fight anybody, I'm not here to do anything, Wednesday called me, she asked me to come get her, this whole thing is—"

"OH, I KNOW WHY YOU'RE HERE," Gomez cut in gleefully, spinning his rapier once in his hand for emphasis. "LURCH! Deal with the invader!"

Lurch let out a rumbling grunt that I felt more than heard, and then his enormous fist came around in a swing that could have taken my head clean off my shoulders.

I ducked under it, felt the wind of the blow ruffle my hair, and backpedaled fast while trying one more time. "Listen, big guy, I really don't want to do this, I'm just here for Wednesday, there's clearly some kind of miscommunic—"

Lurch swung again, and this time I felt the floorboards actually flex under the force of the miss when his fist connected with a support column instead of me, cracking the wood clean through. 

"Damn it!" There was clearly no reasoning with this man, that much was becoming very clear very fast.

"Okay," I said, exhaling sharply. "Fuck it."

I let his next punch come, watching the enormous fist telegraph its arc a fullsecond before it committed, and I slipped inside the swing rather than away from it, closing the distance so that his reach became a liability instead of a weapon. I drove a rapid combination into his exposed ribs, three strong strikes delivered with the kind of snapping power that came from rotating through the hips rather than the shoulders, each blow landing before the last one had finished registering, and I felt him grunt and shift his weight in response.

He grabbed for me with both hands, trying to close the fight into a grapple where his size would win outright, but I redirected his lead arm with an inward parry, using his own momentum to spin him half a step off balance, and drove an elbow into the side of his jaw that snapped his head sideways. I didn't let up, chaining directly into a rising knee to his exposed midsection followed by a downward elbow across the same rib line I had already softened, and Lurch staggered back a full step for the first time since the fight had started.

He recovered fast and swung a backhand that I ducked under, using the low position to drive a hard palm strike up into his solar plexus that emptied a wheezing grunt out of him, and I followed immediately with a chain of alternating hooks and short hammering forearm strikes to his ribs and kidneys, six, seven, eight in a row, each one landing with no opening for him to counter.

Lurch swayed. 

I hit him twice more, a jab to the throat followed by a spinning backfist across the temple that snapped his head to the side, and then I planted my lead foot, pivoted through my hips, and drove a rising front kick into his midsection that folded him forward at the waist.

While he was bent double I stepped in, jumped, and delivered a triple kick combination, the first strike catching him across the jaw to snap his head upright, the second driving into his temple from the opposite side, and the third a full spinning heel that connected with the side of his skull with a crack that echoed through the grand hall like a gunshot.

Man Bak Mei and CQC was a lethal combination, I felt like fucking Bruce Lee. 

Lurch's eyes rolled back and his enormous frame toppled sideways, crashing into a suit of armor that exploded into pieces on impact, and the whole house seemed to shudder with the force of his landing.

I stood there panting, my knuckles stinging, sweat beading on my forehead. "I'm not totally sure what's going on here," I said between breaths, glancing up at Gomez, "but this seems like a family matter. I'm just gonna go ahead and head out."

Gomez stared down at his fallen butler with an expression of genuine astonishment. "Never," he breathed, "in all my years, have I seen Lurch bested in single combat." He shook his head slowly, his mustache twitching. "It is as Grandmama warned me. My daughter is truly in grave danger."

"I really don't think—"

"But it matters not!" Gomez declared, snapping back into full bravado, "for I shall succeed where Lurch has failed!"

He proceeded to move down the staircase in a consecutive handstands, before flipping cleanly onto the floor and landing in a fencer's stance. He reached into his jacket and produced an identical rapiers, and tossed one across the hall toward me with a flick of his wrist.

I caught it out of pure reflex, staring down at the blade in my hand with something approaching despair. "Mr. Addams, please, I really don't want to fight you—"

"Nonsense!" Gomez's whole face lit up with genuine, unrestrained joy, the kind of expression a man gets on Christmas morning. "I have not crossed blades with a worthy opponent in years, and what nobler cause could there possibly be than defending the sanctity and purity of one's own daughter?"

"Listen, I'm not here to have sex with—"

Gomez lunged.

The blade came in a fast thrust aimed at my shoulder that I barely deflected with an awkward parry, the impact rattling up my arm and nearly knocking the rapier from my grip entirely. I had never held a sword in my life, not in this body or my last one, but the Bak Mei and the close-quarters combat training in my head had some crossover into weapons work, enough muscle memory in footwork and timing and distance management to keep me from dying in the first four seconds, which was about the only positive I could find in the situation.

"Interesting," Gomez mused circling me while his blade weaved lazy figure-eights in the air. "Your style is unorthodox. Very unorthodox. Where did you train, may I ask? Some obscure eastern discipline, unless I miss my guess."

"This is all completely insane," I said, parrying another thrust that nearly took my ear off.

He came at me again, faster this time, a rapid one-two thrust combination aimed first at my ribs and then, when I dropped my guard to block it, redirected in a sudden upward arc toward my chin that I only avoided by throwing my head back and feeling the blade whisper past my throat close enough to part the air against my skin. I stumbled back a step, found my footing, and brought my own blade up into a guard that was designed to work with a dagger not a rapier.

"There," Gomez said, delighted, tapping his blade lightly against mine as if testing the quality of the steel. "You see, that stance, right there, that's not fencing at all. That's something else entirely... no it's some kind of striking art, adapted on the fly."

"Can we not do the fencing commentary while you're trying to run me through?"

"A duel without conversation is merely violence, my boy. Conversation is what elevates it to art."

He pressed forward with a flowing series of thrusts, each one flowing into the next without pause, and I found myself giving ground step by step across the polished floor of the study, deflecting what I could and dodging what I couldn't, my shoulders and forearms already aching from absorbing impacts they were never designed to take, thank god I had my healing otherwise I'd be a bit fucked. 

I caught one thrust at an angle that let me slide his blade off to the side, and in the half-second opening that created I stepped in and drove my knee up toward his midsection. 

Gomez laughed with genuine delight and twisted sideways at the last possible instant, my knee grazing past his ribs instead of connecting solidly, and he used the rotation to bring his blade around in a backhand slash that I barely ducked under, feeling it cut a thin line across the top of my hair.

"Oh, EXCELLENT!" he crowed. "You fight dirty! I adore fighting dirty!"

"That's not exactly a complim—"

He didn't let me finish as he darted in and aimed at my thigh, I caught it on a downward parry but before I could reset he had already disengaged and come back high, forcing me to snap my guard upward to protect my throat. 

The exchange was relentless, blade ringing against blade in a rapid metallic clatter that echoed off the bookshelves, and I realized with mounting alarm that I was not winning this exchange in any sense, i hadn't even managed to attack him yet that wasn't trying to kick him. 

So I tried something different. 

Instead of matching his fencing with more fencing, I used a beat parry to knock his blade wide and immediately closed the distance rather than retreating, getting inside the reach of his rapier where the length of the weapon became a liability rather than an advantage, and threw a rapid combination of punch's and forearm strikes that forced him to abandon the elegant footwork and actually backpedal for the first time since the fight had started.

"Ha! There it is!" Gomez shouted, genuinely thrilled, retreating three quick steps and resetting his stance. "Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! Most swordsmen never think to abandon the blade's advantage entirely!"

"I don't actually know how to use the blade's advantage, that's the problem!"

"A refreshing kind of honesty! I like you more by the second it is a shame I shall have to kill you for daring to invade my daughter's womb!"

He came back at me with renewed enthusiasm, and this time his attacks carried more weight behind them, less playful testing and more genuine intent, a rapid series of thrusts and slashes that drove me backward through the study and out through the doorway into the hall beyond. My back foot caught the edge of a rug and I stumbled, and Gomez's blade came down in an arc that would have opened my shoulder to the bone if I hadn't thrown myself sideways into a roll that carried me clear and back up onto my feet with my rapier still somehow clutched in my hand.

We crossed blades again at the base of the staircase and Gomez drove a flurry of six rapid strikes at me in succession, I managed to block four of them cleanly before the fifth slipped past my guard and opened a thin, stinging line across my forearm that slowly began to knit itself shut even as blood welled along the cut.

Gomez's eyes widened with something between alarm and fascination as he watched the wound close in real time. "Now that," he said, momentarily pausing his offense, "is a party trick I have never seen before, are you a zombie or some kind of revenant?"

"No I'm not, I heal, it's a whole thing, can we maybe—"

He attacked again before I could finish the sentence, taking advantage of my brief distraction, and I barely got my blade up in time to deflect a thrust that would have gone straight through my chest.

The fight carried us up the staircase from there, trading blows on every landing while portraits of long-dead Addams ancestors watched impassively from their frames. Gomez used the terrain like an extension of his own body, hopping onto the banister at one point to gain height advantage and rain down a series of strikes from above that I could only backpedal from, my own footing far less certain on the narrow rail of wood he seemed perfectly balanced upon.

"You know," I panted, parrying a downward strike that jarred my whole arm, "most fathers just ask a guy about his intentions. Maybe over coffee. Maybe a firm handshake."

"Where is the passion in that?" Gomez replied, leaping down from the banister to press his attack from ground level again. "A handshake tells you nothing about a man's character. A blade tells you everything."

He came at me with a feint toward my head that I rose to block, only for the blade to drop at the last instant into a low thrust aimed at my hip, and I twisted my body just enough to let it skate past my side rather than into it, close enough that I felt the fabric of my shirt part slightly along my ribs. I answered with a sweeping parry that knocked his blade wide and followed immediately with a spinning kick that connected with his shoulder hard enough to stagger him half a step, the first clean hit I had managed to land in the entire exchange.

Gomez rolled with it, using the momentum of the stagger to spin himself into a fresh guard position rather than fighting against it, and came up grinning wider than ever. "Magnificent! Shall we take this somewhere with a bit more flair?" he asked, and before I could ask what that meant he kicked me in the chest and I fell down into a slide that seemed to be connected to the bottom floor. 

"HA! HA! HA!" Gomez shouted as he jumped on the bannister next to the slide and slide down slashing at me with his rapier as we both went down. 

"THIS IS CRAZY!!!" I shouted as I could only cover my head and get slashed by his sword covering the slide in blood. 

When we reached the bottom of the stairs we clashed again immediately, blade against blade in a rapid exchange that carried us through a set of double doors into what looked like a study, Gomez's rapier slicing clean through the spine of a leather-bound book on a nearby shelf as I ducked a wild horizontal slash, sending a shower of loose pages fluttering down around us like strange, papery snow. I answered with a rising strike of my own that forced him to disengage and reset. 

Taking opportunity of that I immediately turned around and started to run. This guy was insane, he had gone for a death blow more than once and there was no way I was gonna stick around and let him kill me. 

I ran back through the study though he was right behind me. 

"HAHAHA A CHASE WONDERFUL!" He shouted as he blocked off my attempt to get to the front door. 

I ran back up the main stairs blocking his attempts at slashing at my feet, I then turned and ran up some more stairs hoping I could find some place where I could lock myself away or escape.  But before I could Gomez swung in from a chandelier and crashed into me and send us out through a stained-glass window in an explosion of colored glass that Gomez seemed to find utterly delightful, the two of us tumbling out onto a narrow section of roof three stories above the ground.

"Mr. Addams, this is insane—"

"The best duels always end on rooftops!" Gomez shouted, pressing his attack with renewed vigor, his blade a blur of silver in the morning light. I managed to block three strikes in a row before the fourth caught my rapier at an angle that twisted it clean out of my grip, sending it clattering down the slope of the roof and off the edge entirely.

I stood there disarmed, breathing hard, staring down the point of Gomez's blade as he leveled it at my throat with a triumphant flourish.

"And so," Gomez declared, his voice ringing with theatrical finality, "for the crime of coveting my daughter's hand, I hereby sentence you to—"

"Gomez."

The single word cut through the wind and the thunder like a blade of its own even making Gomez's rapier freeze mid-air.

Standing at the shattered window we had come through was a woman whose presence alone seemed to still the very air around her. She was tall and pale, dressed in a form-fitting black gown that pooled slightly at her feet, her dark hair falling straight past her shoulders. She was also terrifyingly beautiful, she'd probably make an amazing dominatrix. 

"Are you quite finished greeting our guest?" she asked.

Gomez's entire demeanor transformed in the space of a single heartbeat. He whipped the rapier behind his back and smiled. "Tish, my darling, my love, my light," he said quickly, "I was merely showing our young guest the view from the roof. Spectacular, isn't it? On a clear day you can see all the way to the cemetery."

Morticia's dark eyes drifted toward me, taking in my disheveled state and then returned to her husband with an expression that suggested she was neither surprised nor particularly convinced. "You weren't engaging in a sword duel again, were you, Gomez? You know precisely what happens when I catch you doing that."

Gomez laughed nervously. "Of course not, my love, of course not, whatever gave you that idea?" He turned to me and clapped a hand on my shoulder as though we were old buddies rather than two men who had just tried to kill each other. "Come, come, let's get you inside, you must be parched after your journey."

He guided me back through the broken window and down through the house with an arm around my shoulder, chattering pleasantly about the architecture as though nothing whatsoever had happened, while I trailed along in silence.

Morticia fell into step beside us. "You must be James," she said in a very smooth and slightly sultry voice. "My dear little Wednesday mentioned that you saved her from the clutches of death." A faint, almost wistful smile touched her lips. "How very unfortunate."

"Uh," I said. "Thanks?"

"There's a particular aura about you," Morticia continued, studying me with ipen interest as we walked, "an aura of death that follows close behind wherever you go. It's quite striking. Most people who visit this house carry nothing but the ordinary scent of the living, you smell quite ravishing."

I genuinely had no response to that, so I said nothing at all, which seemed to be the correct choice because Morticia simply hummed and kept walking.

We soon arrived in a wide atrium filled with dead flowers arranged in elegant vases and furniture upholstered in funereal black, and Morticia gestured toward a long dining table set for what looked like breakfast.

"You simply must join us," she said. "We so rarely have guests who survive the front hall."

"I could offer him a hand at knife gammon after," Gomez chimed in eagerly, gesturing toward a card table set with a deck of cards and, disturbingly, an assortment of small ornamental knives. "Pugsley and I have been looking for a third player."

Before I could formulate any kind of response to either invitation, a set of double doors at the far end of the atrium burst open, and Wednesday emerged, wriggling the last loops of thick rope off one wrist while dragging the remainder behind her like a discarded snakeskin. Her expression carried its usual flatness, but there was a distinct look of irritation that suggested her morning had involved considerably more inconvenience than mine.

Gomez and Morticia both lit up at the sight of her, their faces softening into genuine affection.

"Wednesday, darling!" Gomez called out. "There you are! Come, come, join us, we have a guest—"

Wednesday ignored both of them entirely. She crossed the atrium in a straight line, grabbed my wrist and turned toward the front door without so much as a glance at her parents.

"We're leaving," she said.

"Oh, but James simply must stay for breakfast," Morticia protested, a note of genuine disappointment coloring her voice. "We have so much more to discuss."

"He can join Pugsley and me for knife gammon another time, then," Gomez added hopefully. "The offer stands indefinitely."

"No," Wednesday said flatly, to both of them, without breaking stride, and hauled me straight through the front door and out into the grey, thunder-rumbled morning.

We reached the Mustang and she released my wrist just long enough to circle around to the passenger side and climb in, slamming the door with more force than strictly necessary, and I got in behind the wheel and sat there for a second, keys in hand, staring through the windshield at the gate. 

"Drive," Wednesday said.

"Don't need to tell me twice..."

(AN: So James meets the Addams family for the first time. Just so you guys know I'm mainly basing them off the Adam's family movies in the 90's which are great films btw. Apart from Wednesday I'm basing her off the series. Anyway hope you enjoyed.)