Chapter 1: Dead Roses and Desperate Lies
The parlor smelled of damp velvet and decades of neglect, which was exactly how Grandpa preferred it. Tonight, however, a new scent cut through the familiar musk: cheap gardenias from the perfume he’d spilled down his front. He shifted on the velvet settee, and the entire world shifted with him.
It was the jiggle. A soft, persistent physics experiment attached to his chest. Three weeks in, and he still couldn’t predict its movements.
He stared at the diary open on his lap, its pages blank. He’d intended to document the molecular instability of the transmogrification potion, but his hand, currently adorned with a tasteful pearl ring he’d found in a drawer, refused to cooperate. It wanted to write about how silk stockings felt against formerly hairy calves. It was a betrayal.
The front door slammed with the force of a minor earthquake. Herman’s booming, cheerful voice echoed down the hall. “I’m home! And I’ve brought a token for the lady of the house!”
Grandpa snapped the diary shut. “I am not the lady of the house,” he muttered, his voice the same dry, gravelly rasp it had always been. It sounded absurd coming from the full, painted lips he now possessed.
Herman filled the doorway, his green face alight with a simple joy. In his massive, bolt-necked hands was a bouquet. The flowers were roses, technically. They were also black, withered, and dripped a suspicious oily fluid onto the Persian rug.
“For you, Grandma Goldie!” Herman thrust them forward, his expression hopeful. “Picked ‘em myself from the compost heap out back. The ones with the most interesting fungal growth!”
Grandpa took the offering between two careful fingers. “Charming. They’re… decomposing with character.”
“Just like you!” Herman beamed. He leaned against the doorframe, which groaned in protest. “You’re the fairest maiden since Lily bloomed from her coffin. Got a real… glow about you today.”
Grandpa felt a muscle tick in his new, smoothly-shaven jaw. Maiden. The word was an affront. He was over three hundred years old. He’d seen plagues rise and empires fall. He currently had to fasten a complicated series of hooks and eyes just to achieve the silhouette this ridiculous burgundy dress demanded.
“It’s the rouge, Herman,” Grandpa deadpanned. “It’s applied with a trowel.”
Herman didn’t hear the sarcasm. He just sighed, a sound like a bellows emptying. “Lily’s been in a state all day. Said I tracked grave dirt on the new linoleum. Can’t seem to do anything right by way of romance.” He took a step closer, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “You being a woman of the world now, so to speak… got any advice? For the old spark?”
Grandpa stared. The sheer, staggering irony of the question threatened to short-circuit his brilliant mind. Here he was, a former bat-lord of the nocturne, trapped in a body that made innkeepers give him free drinks, being asked for courtship tips by his own son-in-law. A son-in-law who was currently gazing at him with puppy-dog admiration.
He had to play along. The alternative—revealing the truth—was unthinkable. The humiliation would be eternal.
He cleared his throat, which did nothing to soften its texture. “The key, Herman,” he began, shifting and feeling the corset dig into a rib he was certain hadn’t been there last month, “is subtlety. A restrained gesture. Perhaps… not presenting decomposing flora.”
Herman’s brow furrowed in deep thought. “Restrained. Right. Like… not shouting how lovely she is from the rooftop?”
“Exactly. A whisper can be more potent than a roar.” Grandpa saw an opportunity. “In fact, I require some… feminine solitude. For my contemplations. Perhaps you could practice your subtlety by fixing that loose step on the staircase? Quietly?”
It was a dismissal, but Herman’s face lit up. A mission. “Quiet as a grave-mouse!” he boomed, then winced, remembering to modulate his volume. “I mean… softly. I’ll do it softly.” He gave a clumsy, almost bow, and thudded out of the room.
Grandpa let out a breath he didn’t need. He stood, and the room tilted. The heels. They were instruments of torture designed by a sadist. He wobbled toward the grand mirror, its glass silvered with age.
The reflection was still a shock. The blonde hair, a chaotic mass of curls he could neither tame nor understand. The wide blue eyes, currently narrowed in familiar irritation. The swell of the burgundy dress over curves that felt borrowed and utterly alien. He poked his own cheek. The skin was disgustingly supple.
“A scientific anomaly,” he told the reflection. His reflection mouthed the words back in a youthful, feminine face with an old, old soul glaring from behind the eyes.
The front door creaked open again. Lily’s voice, light and musical, floated in. “Herman? Are you practicing your quiet hammering again? It’s echoing through the crypt.”
Then, Eddie’s piping shout. “Hey! Who left the oozy flowers on the table? Wolfgang’s trying to bury them!”
Chaos. Beautiful, normal, Munster chaos. And he was adrift in the middle of it, an imposter in his own life. He couldn’t spend eternity like this, fending off Herman’s bumbling admiration and pretending an interest in stocking seams. He needed his laboratory. He needed his old, desiccated body back.
He turned from the mirror, his movement jerky in the unfamiliar heels. The first step was steady. The second, the heel caught on the fringe of the rug.
Physics took over. A gasp that was too high, too light, escaped him as he pinwheeled backward. The world became a whirl of velvet drapes and ceiling cobwebs. He landed with a soft, cushioned thump right in Herman’s recently-vacated armchair, a cloud of dust and perfume rising around him.
Silence. Then, the thunderous footsteps.
Herman reappeared in the doorway, his toolbelt askew, panic in his gentle eyes. “Goldie! You took a spill! Oh, you frail, delicate thing!” He surged forward, his massive hands outstretched to help.
Grandpa looked up at the green, concerned face looming over him. He saw the genuine care there, the utterly pure, stupid chivalry. He felt the constriction of the corset, the absurdity of his position, the terrifying softness of the body he inhabited. A cold, calculated realization cut through the frustration.
To get back to his lab, to his work, he needed access. He needed freedom from constant, clumsy supervision. And to get that, he needed to manage Herman. To steer this infatuation, not fight it.
He let a hand flutter to his brow, a gesture he’d seen in a black-and-white movie. He pitched his gravelly voice into something he hoped sounded faint. “Oh, Herman… I do feel a bit… swoony.”
Herman froze, utterly captivated. “Swoony? By glory!”
“I believe,” Grandpa continued, each word ash in his mouth, “I may need… a strong arm to lean on. Perhaps to my laboratory later? For some air.”
Herman’s chest swelled. He offered his arm, which was the size of a small tree limb. “Right this way, m’lady! I’ll be your shield from any and all perils! Even loose rugs!”
Grandpa placed his delicate, manicured hand on Herman’s sleeve. He rose, making a show of unsteady balance. He could feel the plan, ghastly and demeaning, clicking into place. He would have to flirt with his own son-in-law. He would have to be “Grandma Goldie.” For now.
The path to his old self, he realized with a sink of his new, perfectly shaped heart, was going to be paved with a lot more dead flowers and a lot more performative swooning.
The path to his old self was paved with dead flowers and performative swooning. It was a disgrace.
Herman’s arm was solid as an oak branch. Grandpa let himself be guided through the labyrinthine halls of the mansion, each step a careful negotiation between the treacherous heels and his own simmering fury. The scent of Herman’s pine-scented hair tonic was overwhelming.
“Just a bit further, my dear!” Herman chirped, his voice vibrating through Grandpa’s fingertips. “We’ll have you right as rain in your little… science nook.”
Little science nook. The laboratory where he had once distilled the essence of shadow and split the atom for fun. His temples throbbed. A new sensation—a tension headache. Probably psychosomatic. He hoped.
They reached the heavy oak door to the basement. Herman reached for the knob, but Grandpa’s hand—small, pale, and currently restraining an urge to claw—darted out. “I appreciate the assistance, Herman. But the restorative solitude… you understand.”
Herman’s face fell. The puppy-dog effect was magnified by his sunken eyes. “Oh. Right. Subtlety. Quiet contemplation.” He sighed, a gust of air that stirred the lace collar at Grandpa’s throat. “I’ll be… right out here. Guarding the perimeter. Against drafts.”
“Splendid.” Grandpa slipped inside, closed the door, and leaned against it. The familiar chill of the stone wall seeped through the thin silk of his blouse. He waited for the sound of Herman’s retreating footsteps. Instead, he heard a low, contented humming just outside the door. The oaf was standing sentry.
He let out a growl that, in his former body, would have sent rats fleeing. Now, it was a husky, almost sultry sound. He pushed away from the door, stumbling as his heel caught on a flagstone. He kicked both shoes off with violent force. They shot across the room, one knocking over a empty beaker.
Bliss. The cold stone on his bare feet was grounding. He padded to his workbench, a monolithic slab of scarred wood littered with normal, sane things: coiled copper, dusty tomes, a partially dissected clockwork bat. His sanctuary.
He sank onto the stool, and the entire framework of his upper body protested. The contraption Marilyn had insisted he wear—a “wonderbra” she’d called it, a term dripping with false promise—was a fiendish engine of wire and elastic. It compressed, it lifted, it separated. It felt like a structural support for a biologically unsound balcony. He couldn’t breathe down to his diaphragm, a necessity for the proper articulation of a good curse.
>Diary. Addendum.
>The female thoracic cage is a prison. The undergarments are the warden. The sheer engineering is perversely impressive; it takes a dedicated malice to create a garment that simultaneously restricts respiration, impedes arm movement, and creates the illusion of a gravitational defiance that physics abhors. I find myself leaning forward to write, as the center of balance is now… here. A constant, soft weight. It’s distracting. It’s like having two inconveniently placed, sentiment-filled water balloons glued to one’s front.
The door to the lab creaked open. Grandpa spun, instinctively crossing his arms over his chest. It was Marilyn, her Morticia-esque grace making his own clumsiness seem even more profound.
“There you are!” she sang, her eyes sweeping over him. “I’ve been looking all over. Herman said you were feeling faint. It’s the corseting, isn’t it? I told you, we moved on from those decades ago. It’s all about Lycra and lift now.”
“I feel nothing but a profound desire for my old bones,” he grumbled.
“Nonsense! You’re a vision.” She glided forward, holding a garment aloft. It was a swatch of plaid fabric that looked barely large enough to bandage a thumb. “I found it! My old cheerleading skirt from ‘65! It’s perfect for you. The legs you have now, darling, they’re meant to be seen! We’ll pair it with a cute little sweater.”
Grandpa stared. “Marilyn. I am attempting to reverse a catastrophic ontological transformation. I am not attending a pep rally.”
“But you could!” she insisted, her enthusiasm a fo rce of nature. “Imagine the school spirit! Now, try it on. The young ladies are wearing them even shorter this season, but this is a classic.”
She draped the skirt over his beaker-filled workbench. The juxtaposition was surreal. He looked from the pleated wool to his jar of pickled newt eyes.
“I will not.”
“You must! For the family morale. Herman is so much cheerier when you’re around. He’s finally taking an interest in decor! He asked me if we should get more doilies to please your feminine sensibilities.” She smiled, a sharp, loving thing. “It’s keeping him out of my hair, darling. And a happy Herman is a Herman who doesn’t accidentally sit on the chaise lounge and reduce it to kindling. Now, try.”
It was blackmail. Feminine, well-intentioned, pastel-colored blackmail. He looked at the door, behind which a lovesick Frankenstein’ monster hummed off-key. He looked at the skirt. The path to his lab, to his sanity, was clearly marked: it required wearing plaid.
An hour later, he stood before the full-length mirror in the parlor, a stranger in every conceivable way. The skirt was an affront. It ended a scandalous distance above knees that had, until recently, been knobby and obscured by bathrobe. The “cute little sweater” was a V-neck that plunged into territory the bra barely contained. His legs, pale and surprisingly long, were sheathed in something called “pantyhose” that felt like being slowly swallowed by a nervous ghost.
>Diary. Further notes.
>The skirt is a tyranny of brevity. I am acutely aware of air currents. The sweater mandates a posture that is neither defensive nor efficient—it is a posture of display. I feel like a rare insect, pinned and labeled. ‘Specimen: Frustrated Ancient Intelligence in Tartan Trap.’ The bra continues its silent war against my ribcage. Marilyn says it gives me a “silhouette.” I feel it gives me a second, harder skeleton on top of my own.
“Stunning!” Marilyn clapped her hands. “Just wait until Herman sees!”
As if summoned, the floorboards quaked. Herman appeared, holding a dusty bottle of what looked like motor oil. “I found it! The family’s finest… well, it’s liquid, anyway. For the lady—” His words died in his throat. The bottle nearly slipped from his grip.
His jaw went slack. His eyes, wide and yellow, traveled from the curls Marilyn had artfully arranged, down over the sweater, over the impossible skirt, to the stockinged legs. A low, awed sound escaped him, something between a groan and a steam valve releasing pressure. “Glory be.”
Grandpa stood rigid, caught in the crossfire of Marilyn’s pride and Herman’s stupefied adoration. He felt a flush creep up his neck—a useless, biological response to sheer social agony.
“You… you shine like a… a new penny in a fresh grave,” Herman breathed, his poetic instincts uniquely his own. He shuffled forward, the bottle forgotten on a side table. “Aren’t you cold? Your… limbs are so exposed to the elements.” His concern was genuine, tragically so.
“I am perfectly climatized,” Grandpa snapped, his old-man’s rasp slicing the air. The contrast between the voice and the image was, as ever, jarring. Herman just blinked, enchanted by the mismatch.
“Of course she’s not cold,” Marilyn said, winking. “She’s vibrant! Now, Herman, why don’t you take her for a turn around the yard? Show her the new… fungus growth on the old elm?”
Herman eagerly offered his arm again. Trapped. Grandpa was trapped in chiffon and plaid and goodwill. He placed his hand on Herman’s sleeve, his mind racing faster than his accelerated, unwanted metabolism. This couldn’t be the solution. Flirting, skirts, enduring these conversations. There had to be a formula, an antidote. It was here, in the house, in his blood, in the wrongness of this whole situation.
He needed to get back to the lab. Alone. Truly alone.
As Herman led him toward the back door, chattering about phosphorescent mushrooms, Grandpa’s eyes—sharp and old behind their new, long lashes—scanned the cluttered parlor. They landed on the grand piano, and the single, delicate handkerchief peeking from his own suit jacket pocket, abandoned on the bench. An idea, cold and clear and desperate, began to form. It would require precision. It would require exploiting Herman’s simple, brute-strength devotion. And it would, unfortunately, require him to stay in this skirt for just a little while longer.
The door to the garden opened. A damp, earthy breeze hit his bare legs, and he suppressed a shudder. The path forward was suddenly clear, and it led directly through the compost heap.
The path forward was suddenly clear, and it led directly through the compost heap.
The garden was a tribute to neglect, which was the Munster version of careful cultivation. Twisted oaks clawed at a bruised sky, and what might have been flowerbeds were lush with fungi and velvety moss. The compost heap sat in the corner, a steaming, fertile mound of decay that Herman regarded with the pride of a master sommelier.
“Now, just look at this activity,” he said, releasing Grandpa’s arm to gesture grandly. He bent to scoop up a handful of black, writhing soil. “The worms are particularly vigorous this week. It’s the eggshells, I think. Gives it body.”
Grandpa saw his chance. The plan was inelegant, but subtlety was wasted on Herman. It required a sacrifice, namely the plaid skirt. He eyed the soggy, leaf-strewn path beside the fertile mound.
“Such… robust decomposition,” Grandpa intoned, edging closer to the mud. “A fascinating ecosystem. One could almost lose one’s footing studying it.” He took a deliberate, clumsy step, positioning his heel on a slimy walnut shell.
“Careful now!” Herman cried, as Grandpa’s ankle turned with a theatrical twist. He let out a yelp—too high, he needed to work on that—and pitched sideways, not toward the supportive mulch, but toward the quagmire of older, wetter compost near the bottom.
He hit it with a soft, sinking splat. Cool, wet organic matter immediately soaked through the sweater and the hateful skirt. A rich, deeply earthy scent filled his nostrils. It was, admittedly, a better perfume than the gardenias.
“Goldie!” Herman bellowed, thunderstruck. He lunged, his big hands plunging into the muck beside her. “Don’t you worry! I’ve got you!”
“Unhand me, you oaf! I mean—” Grandpa shifted, making a show of trying to rise and sinking deeper. “Oh, the shame! Ruined! I am utterly ruined!” He let a handful of potato peels drape dramatically over his knee.
“Nonsense! You’re… compost-kissed!” Herman said, heaving him upward in one powerful motion. Grandpa emerged from the heap, dripping with tea leaves and vague, unidentifiable vegetable matter. The skirt was a lost cause. The sweater clung with alarming transparency. Herman’s eyes bugged out, then quickly fixed on a point over Grandpa’s shoulder, a violent flush turning his green cheeks a curious olive hue.
“See? The garment is destroyed,” Grandpa said, picking a mushroom fragment from his hair. “A tragedy. I must go and… cleanse. Immediately. Alone. The laboratory faucet has the strongest water pressure.”
“But you’re shivering!” Herman protested, stripping off his own oversized suit jacket to wrap around Grandpa’s shoulders. It smelled of ozone and attic. “You need a hot bath! I’ll fetch Lily! She’ll know what to do!”
“No!” Grandpa barked, panic cutting through the performance. The last thing he needed was Lily’s fussing. He clutched Herman’s woolly sleeve, leaving a muddy handprint. “Your silence, Herman. My dignity depends on it. Please. Just let me slip inside and attend to this… misfortune myself. A gentleman would grant a lady that discretion.”
The words ‘lady’ and ‘discretion’ hit Herman like a spell. He drew himself up, his expression shifting from panic to solemn responsibility. “Your secret is safe with me,” he whispered. “The very soul of chivalry. I’ll… I’ll guard the back door. No one shall pass.”
Perfect. Grandpa gave a curt, muddy nod and squelched past him, towards the basement entrance. The plan was in motion. He would get to the lab, lock the door, and finally work in peace. He could already feel the cool, clean glass of a beaker in his hand. He’d burn this skirt in the incinerator.
He was fumbling with the muddy basement doorknob when the voice, light as a spider descending on its thread, floated from the patio.
“Herman? What on earth are doing lurking by the petunias? And what is that… remarkable smell?”
Grandpa froze, a clump of compost loosening from his hem and plopping onto the step.
Lily Munster glided into view from the side porch, a vision of elegant Gothicism in a flowing black gown. Her pale features were a masterpiece of composed serenity, until her dark eyes took in the scene: Her father, dripping like a bog creature, shamelessly wearing her husband’s jacket and what appeared to be the remnants of a cheerleading skirt. Her husband, standing sentry by the dustbin, looking guiltier than a vampire caught in a sunbeam.
Her perfect eyebrows arched slowly, a silent monument to bemused judgment.
Herman broke first. “It was an accident! A scientific inquiry into soil vitality! She… she sacrificed her finery for knowledge!”
“Did she,” Lily said, her tone drier than a tomb. She walked a slow circle around Grandpa, taking in every detail of the muck and the ruined clothing. “That does look… investigative. And your solution was to offer her your jacket and stand guard, was it? How very medieval of you, darling.” Her gaze settled on Grandpa’s face, seeing through the mud and the mascara that had begun to run in inky trails. “Father. You seem to have… blossomed.”
The way she said ‘Father’—a delicate, pointed dart—told him the game was up. She knew. Of course, she knew. She’d probably known from the first moment he’d stumbled in those heels. Lily missed nothing.
Grandpa drew the soaking, compost-flecked jacket tighter around him. The cool night air bit through the wet silk. He met her gaze, his old defiance glittering in his new, blues eyes. He opened his mouth, his gravelly voice ready to unleash a torrent of explanation and existential fury.
Lily’s lips quirked. She plucked a single, stringy piece of decayed spinach from his curl and held it up before letting it drop.
“The bath,” she said with finality. “Now. Herman, darling, put the kettle on. I think we all need a very strong cup of tea.” Her eyes never left her father’s. “And then, we are going to have a little talk about boundaries, compost, and the fact that my old pom-poms are strictly off-limits.”