Clack, clack, clack.
Wednesday cast aside the chaotic thoughts in her head, her slender, pale fingers dancing across the brass keys of the antique typewriter, striking a steady and ruthless rhythm.
She needed to do something to suppress that unfamiliar emotion.
For instance, she was currently crafting the death scene in her latest novel, where the protagonist would be slowly crushed by a poetic contraption made of rusty gears.
This required focus, a precise grasp of the painful details.
Clack, clack, cla—
"Aaaargh—! Help! Wednesday! Save me! I'm dying! I'm really dying!"
A shrill, almost theatrical wail suddenly erupted from the direction of the bathroom, brutally interrupting her creative flow.
Wednesday's brow furrowed almost imperceptibly, her fingers hovering in mid-air.
Damn it. It seemed this guy couldn't survive a single day without creating a noise disaster and a black hole of attention.
"Wednesday! Goddess! Queen of Goth! Please! I can't shake this Thing off! It's fallen in love with my butt!"
The pleas for help grew even more desperate, mixed with a strange, squelchy slapping sound.
Wednesday took a deep breath, struggling to maintain the frozen state of her facial muscles, and decided to ignore this foolish farce. She placed her fingers back on the keys.
Clack. Cla—
Just then, the bathroom door was slammed open with a 'BANG'.
Victor shot out like a desperate, pale torpedo, his face etched with genuine—or perhaps brilliantly acted—terror.
The key point—he wasn't wearing pants.
Yes, his pajama bottoms, printed with distorted smiley faces and the words "Good Morning, Despair," were pooled around his ankles, tripping him up as he scrambled, making him look like a bound penguin.
And the more crucial point—his backside was bare.
Wednesday Addams, a girl who could face murder charges, death threats from malevolent spirits, or even her parents' excessive affection without batting an eye, found her mind completely emptied in that instant, as if all thought had been sucked out by a sudden vacuum.
It was a state of pure system crash, beyond anger or embarrassment.
A trace of panic, so minute she would never admit it to herself, flickered in the depths of her dark-pool eyes.
Her typewriter fell completely silent.
"Wednesday! Help me! It's got a grip! What the hell is it?!"
Victor cried out, trying to look back at his rear while clumsily stumbling towards her.
Just as Wednesday's rationality was about to reboot and would undoubtedly command her hands to grab the nearest sharp object for self-defense, her gaze moved past Victor's terrified, contorted face and focused on the uninvited guest on his buttock.
It was a severed hand.
At this moment, it was firmly "clinging" to Victor's left cheek, all five fingers digging in.
As if it were a long-lost comrade-in-arms, refusing to let go. It even patted the cheek smugly and rhythmically.
It was Thing.
The "little helper" her parents had sent. That watcher she had vaguely sensed, occasionally glimpsed in the corner of her vision. It had chosen to make its official debut in this manner—so abrupt, so absurd.
Wednesday understood instantly. That rare flicker of panic evaporated, replaced by an intensely speechless numbness.
However, the cast of this absurdist play wasn't complete yet.
From Victor's bare lower back, a mass of black, viscous symbiote substance surged out, rapidly coalescing into Venom's iconic, fang-filled face.
But it didn't look panicked at all. Instead, it was brimming with... enthusiastic entertainment value.
One of its tendrils was actually holding Victor's phone, the screen aimed directly at the assaulted buttock, while another smaller tendril tapped and swiped on the screen.
"Hold that angle, Victor! Yes! Struggle more realistically!" Venom commanded excitedly in its low, raspy voice.
Its tone was filled with the joy of discovering a viral formula, "Title it 'Mysterious Hand Haunts Butt at Nefermore! Exclusive Live Footage!' #CampusMystery #SocialDeath #WhatTheHell #ClickToSeeBareButtStudent'... Add a few more tags!"
It even mimicked the "click" sound and flash effect of a camera.
Victor yelled, "Venom! You traitor! Help me get this Thing off! Not film it!"
Venom: "Shut up! We're recording! This clip is gonna blow up! YouTube split, seventy-thirty, my seventy, your thirty!"
Wednesday watched this surreal scene: a pants-less lunatic boy running towards her, a severed hand persistently attached to his butt, and an alien symbiote gleefully conducting a live broadcast.
She could feel a throbbing in her temples.
The dark, elegant, terrifying Gothic aesthetic she had pursued all her life was utterly shattered at this moment, ground into the dust of lowbrow farce.
She took a deep breath, the inhaled air seemingly tainted with the idiot virus Victor brought and the social media stench of Venom.
Then, her venomous tongue attribute, like a precisely calculated assassination device, activated coldly and with deadly accuracy.
"Victor." Her voice was as flat as polished coffin wood, instantly freezing all the noise in the air. "If your stupid, pale, seemingly-sunlight-deprived backside dares to come within three feet of me—"
Her gaze slowly swept over his lower half. There was no shyness in her eyes, only the cold scrutiny of an anatomist examining a substandard specimen.
"—I will have Thing take up permanent residence there. And order it to report to me in Morse code every midnight about the temperature changes it perceives."
She paused, shifting her gaze to Venom, which was still diligently filming.
"As for you," she continued, her tone laced with a contempt that seemed capable of corroding metal.
"If that video dares to appear on any online platform, I will find all your chocolate stashes—including the one behind the toilet tank—and melt them, one by one, into disgusting brown liquid right in front of you, to fertilize the most mediocre sunflowers in the academy garden."
"And you," she finally turned her gaze to Thing, which had finally stopped patting and seemed somewhat abashed, standing up on its index and middle fingers to "look" at her.
"Get off my unfortunate roommate's... local area. Now. Then give me an explanation. About my parents, and your inexplicable taste preferences."
Instantly, the entire dorm room fell silent.
Victor's wail caught in his throat.
Venom's filming tendril froze mid-air.
Thing let go with a 'plop,' fell to the floor, then quickly 'walked' on its fingers to the foot of Wednesday's bed, curling up like a child who had done something wrong.
Victor stood frozen, finally becoming aware of his current state. His face flushed and paled alternately as he fumbled desperately to pull up his pants.
Venom slowly retracted into Victor's body, muttering softly, "Evil sunflower gardener..."
Wednesday watched all this expressionlessly, sitting back down in front of her typewriter as if what had just happened was merely a broadcast interruption with poor signal.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
The cold, steady tapping resumed, as if playing the finale for this absurd buttock crisis.
The room was now filled only with the rustling sounds of Victor putting on his pants, Venom's resentful chewing—probably on the shattered pieces of its internet fame dream—and the faint friction of Thing squirming uneasily on the floor.
At an angle no one could see, the corner of Wednesday's mouth twitched ever so slightly.
This place was a complete disaster.
An endless disaster composed of bare-butted idiots, social-media-obsessed symbiotes, and perverted severed hands.
And she was actually starting to get used to it.
That thought itself was the most terrifying Thing of all.