Chapter 2: Guilt
The silence after the storm was a living thing, thick and suffocating. It was broken only by the ragged sound of their breathing and the distant drip of water from the eaves outside.
Wednesday didn’t move from her fetal position. Her back, a pale landscape of sharp vertebrae and taut muscle, remained turned to Enid, rigid with a tension that had nothing to do with pleasure.
Enid’s own body felt alien to her—the rough fabric of the harness still strapped to her hips, the cool air on her wet skin, the deep, aching throb between her legs that was a testament to what she’d done. Guilt, hot and corrosive, flooded her veins, washing away the last remnants of predatory thrill. She scrambled with clumsy fingers, unbuckling the strap-on, flinging it away into the shadowy corner by her bed as if it were a venomous snake.
“Wednesday,” she whispered, her voice gravelly. “I… oh my god.”
She reached out a trembling hand, hovering it over Wednesday’s shoulder. Before she could make contact, Wednesday flinched violently, a full-body spasm that echoed through the quiet room.
“Don’t.” The word was a shard of glass, sharp and final.
Enid pulled her hand back, curling it into a fist against her own mouth. She watched, heart hammering against her ribs, as Wednesday slowly, painfully, uncurled. The movement was stiff, mechanical. She kept her gaze fixed on the dark wood of the floorboards, avoiding the grotesque, now-dull artifact lying beside her hip. Her hands came up, crossing over her chest in a futile attempt to cover herself, but the gesture was hollow. The vulnerability was absolute.
A flush, deep and mortifying, bloomed across Wednesday’s neck and crept up her cheeks. It was a shocking splash of color on her usually bloodless complexion. Enid had seen her angry, had seen her focused, but she had never, in all their years of fraught coexistence, seen Wednesday Addams look ashamed.
“Your clothes,” Enid said, lurching into action. She stumbled to her feet, her legs unsteady, and snatched Wednesday’s black robe from the back of her desk chair. She held it out like a peace offering. “Here.”
Wednesday’s eyes flickered to the robe, then away. She took it without a word, her movements slow and pained. She didn’t stand. She merely sat up and pulled the robe around herself, fabric whispering as she tied the belt with precise, deliberate knots, cinching it tight as a straitjacket. She drew the collar up high, hiding the purpling bite mark Enid had left on her neck.
The silence stretched. Enid stood there, feeling massive and clumsy in the center of the room, dressed only in her unbuttoned jeans and a soaked tank top. She needed to fill the void.
“I’m so sorry, Wednesday. I shouldn’t have… I saw you and I just… I lost my mind.” The words tumbled out, pathetic and inadequate.
Wednesday’s head bowed, her dark braids falling like a curtain around her face. When she spoke, her voice was flat, stripped of all its usual dry inflection. It was just… empty. “The fault is not yours. It is mine. And it is that… object’s.” She didn’t look at the dildo. “The curse was a neural override. It excised executive function, suppressed personal identity, and amplified basal reward pathways related to sexual stimulation to a pathological degree. I was not present.”
“But you were!” Enid’s voice cracked. “You said my name. You looked at me.”
“The thing wearing my skin said your name.” Wednesday finally looked up. Her eyes were black pools, but not vacant like before. They were full of a stormy, self-directed fury. “It used data it scraped from my subconscious to achieve its goal. My body was a hijacked vehicle. You engaged with the hijacker.” She drew a slow, controlled breath. “Your actions, while morally questionable, were reacting to a hostile magical entity. My actions—my initial, stupid, arrogant action—unleashed it. The culpability is not equal.”
Enid blinked. Even in this, Wednesday was analyzing, assigning blame with forensic detachment. But the flush on her cheeks betrayed the turmoil beneath the clinical words.
“What were you even doing with it?” Enid asked, gesturing weakly to the cursed thing. “A ‘Ligurian concubine’s companion’? Since when do you collect cursed sex toys?”
Wednesday’s lips pressed into a thin, white line. She looked at the scattered notes on her desk. “The Nightshades recovered it from a smuggling ring in Jericho. It was part of a larger cache of enchanted artifacts meant for the black market. I was cataloging its properties. The documentation warned of skin contact. I was using calibrated forceps.” A muscle twitched in her jaw. “The forceps slipped. A moment of carelessness. A lifetime of humiliation.”
“A lifetime? Wednesday, it’s over. It’s not glowing anymore.”
“Is it?” Wednesday’s question was quiet. She didn’t elaborate. She shifted slightly, and a faint wince crossed her features. Her hand went to her lower abdomen, almost involuntarily, before she snatched it back, clenching it in her lap.
Enid’s gut twisted. “Are you hurt?”
“Physically? The entity was designed for prolonged use without causing tissue damage. A paradox of cursed engineering.” She stated it like a textbook fact. Then her gaze dropped to her own lap, to the dark robe covering her. The clinical mask slipped, just for an instant. “It was my first time.”
The words hung in the incense-heavy air.
“What?”
“Not the… culmination,” Wednesday clarified, her voice dipping even lower, each word dragged out as if by pliers. “I am familiar with the mechanics. Solo ventures. But I have never allowed another person to… interface with me in that manner. The curse chose the violation of that particular boundary. Poetic, in a brutishly obvious way.”
Enid felt the floor drop out from under her. The guilt magnified, a physical weight on her chest. She had taken that. In a frenzy of lust and possession, she had stolen Wednesday’s first real experience with someone else.
“Oh, Wends,” she breathed, the nickname slipping out.
“Don’t,” Wednesday said again, but this time it was less a command and more a plea. She closed her eyes. “Your pity is worse than your desire.”
That struck Enid silent. She just stood there, watching her friend, this fortress of control, seem to shrink inside her robe. The bite mark on Wednesday’s neck seemed to pulse in Enid’s vision. A brand.
“We have to get rid of it,” Enid said finally, her eyes darting to the inert silicone shape.
“We cannot.” Wednesday opened her eyes. “It is evidence. And its curse may be dormant, not broken. It requires proper containment and study so it cannot be triggered again. By anyone.”
The unspoken words lingered: By me.
Wednesday moved to stand, her movements still painfully careful. She braced a hand on the floor, and for a second, her arm trembled. Enid surged forward instinctively, grabbing her elbow to steady her.
The contact was electric. Wednesday froze, her skin cold under Enid’s fingers. They both looked at the point of connection. Enid could feel the fine tremor running through Wednesday’s frame.
“I’ve got you,” Enid murmured.
Wednesday didn’t pull away. She allowed the support, leaning into it just slightly as she gained her feet. She was taller like this, her dark eyes level with Enid’s. The shame was still there, but underneath it, Enid saw something else—a fractured exhaustion, and a flicker of something so vulnerable it made her throat tight.
“Your investigation notes mentioned a counter-curse,” Enid said softly, not letting go.
“Theorized. Not confirmed.” Wednesday’s gaze was locked on Enid’s. “It would require components. Rituals.”
“Then we’ll get them. We’ll fix this.”
A humorless, faint shadow of Wednesday’s usual smirk touched her lips. “We.” She said it like it was a foreign word. “My disgrace has now become a group project.”
She finally stepped back, breaking contact. She walked to her desk, every step measured, and picked up the cursed dildo with the very forceps that had failed her. She didn’t look at it. She dropped it into a lead-lined box on her shelf and closed the lid with a definitive click.
“I need to shower,” she stated, her back to Enid. “The scent of my own degradation is cloying.”
“Wednesday…” Enid didn’t know what to say. ‘I’m sorry’ was ash. ‘It’ll be okay’ was a lie.
Wednesday paused at the door to their small bathroom. She didn’t turn around. “The blame is mine, Enid. But the memory of it begging you…” She let the sentence hang, unfinished, a confession more terrifying than any detailed account. “That belongs to both of us now.”
She closed the bathroom door. A moment later, Enid heard the lock click softly into place, followed by the rush of water.
Enid stared at the closed door, then at the rumpled rug on the floor. She could still smell them both on the air. She sank onto the edge of her own bed, her head in her hands. Wednesday had forgiven her, in her own twisted way. She had taken the weight.
But as the steam from the shower began to seep under the bathroom door, carrying a faint, clean scent over the lingering musk, Enid knew with a cold certainty that the real curse wasn’t in the box on the shelf.
It was in the unbearable tension now stretched between them, thin as a wire. And in the part of her that, despite the guilt, despite the horror, still thrilled at the memory of Wednesday’s breathless voice saying I’m yours.