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It’s warm, sweaty, and smelled like blood and fresh dirt. Much better than Wednesday imagined performing this gesture. Enid’s colorful nails dig into her back but she doesn’t mind.
She squeezed her left hand shut, finding that the pain remains despite her ancestor’s intervention. Enid wouldn’t want anything else on her coat anyway.
Wednesday’s lungs are like kindling and she sucks in a breath as the wind bites at her skin. Vision blurring, she shut her eyes and shoved her head down deeper as Enid’s tears soak her shoulder.
Something squirmed in her gut, hearing her roommate croak and cry. It wasn’t satisfaction. It was something she didn’t want to dig out with her pocket knife and put under a microscope. She let it be, let them be in this moment.
Soon however, Wednesday heard a chuckle. Heard the whispers. Her jaw audibly clicked shut, peeking up to find wide smiles and prying eyes directed at the two.
She gripped Enid’s arm, whispering, “That’s enough.”
Enid parted from her, a bit more slowly than she had wanted but does all the same. Her eyes were sad but accepting. Wednesday choked down the urge to respond.
The police were annoyingly incompetent at getting statements. She could’ve completed three successful killings and burials with the amount of time the officers fumbled to get the evidence together.
“I told you already. Now, use your brain and listen. I have the other murderer tied up in the courtyard. Go look for yourself,” She bluntly told the man writing down her story, feeling like her head was splitting apart.
Finally, he relented and Wednesday was left feeling empty and full all at once. Enid was hovering by her side, clutching at the sleeve of Wednesday’s blazer. She saw the torment on her roommate’s face, could feel the physical shivering of the girl next to her.
“Let’s return to our room,” Wednesday ushered her away from the police, their friends, and especially Ajax. Where was that head of his incapacitating snakes when Enid was fighting?
Speaking of, Enid’s werewolf form was a sight to behold...tall, multicolored, with fangs that Wednesday was sure were longer than her own hand. Fascinating really, she needed a closer look in the future.
Exhaustion ate at Wednesday’s every flexing muscle, ligament, and bone but she trudged on. She kept her mouth shut, not letting herself breathe. It was suffocating and she felt disoriented with each step. Her feet were surely developing calluses from her boots and the bruises on her forehead twinged when she scowled away the spots in her vision.
As they crossed the courtyard, Wednesday could only glance over at Enid’s wrecked hair and the grime that covered her. Enid was whimpering faintly, a slight limp as she walked barefoot. She felt the urge to send Tyler kicking in a bodybag, the nicest and tightest one they could acquire. Then she’d start with his fingers, each knuckle one by one.
Enid stumbled over herself in the charred grass, almost pulling her along. Wednesday gripped her back and stepped hard in the other direction, holding the girl upright.
“Thanks,” Enid croaked out. Wednesday nodded and pulled away. She let her hands drop back to her sides, feeling ridiculous and too sentimental.
Finally, they reached the staircase and up they went. Wednesday was about to remind Enid of their dorm key, she knew for a fact that she’d lost that somewhere in the woods and doubted the integrity of Enid’s pink monstrosity of a jacket holding the matching twin.
But the werewolf just ripped off the whole doorknob without a thought. The door easily gave away.
Wednesday slipped past Enid, tearing off her blazer as she went for her side of the room. Thing had crawled out of Enid’s pocket, scuttling for the bathroom like the primadona he was.
“Wednesday?”
“Hmm?” Her hands weren’t working right, fingers shaking. She pulled out a pack of blood from a cooled trunk under her bed, working the needle in her arm. “Do you need a transfusion too?”
“No I...I...”
Wednesday turned to the girl who was shrinking into her coat as she sat on her colorful bed. The once vibrant comforter soiled. Enid looked very un-Enid like, motionless and scared where she usually was at her most annoyingly cheerful.
Again? Was all she could think, having ditched own wellspring of thoughts like a thoroughly cleaned bird carcass picked over by predators, existing only by flaps of its skin, feathers, and remaining bones.
Enid couldn’t be left like that if Wednesday wanted to keep her sanity intact. She wracked her brain for something. Her vocabulary was thoroughly barren when it came to nicer words, kinder words. She felt no need to repeat her earlier display of...gratitude, lest she fall to pieces all over again.
...
“Do...do you want me to procure one of those explosive soap devices from Yoko?” She decided on, finding the option mildly entertaining.
She recalled Enid screeching over a “bathing bomb” looking just like a cute little kitty cat she could just eat right up. In response, Enid hadn’t found her knowledge about certain cultures having staple diets of cats to be that interesting.
But now Enid stared at her, disbelieving. Wednesday stared back, almost crushing the blood bag in her hand like a fool.
“Well? I don’t have all night,”
Seconds passed, then Enid nodded her head and Wednesday went for the door. Thing had chosen that moment to re-emerge and Wednesday called him to her side. He crawled up, tapping at her.
“Where is Yoko’s room?”
It was child’s play after that. Thing picked the lock and Wednesday walked right in. The room was filled with an assortment of posters, sunglasses of varying styles, and some truly divine blackout curtains. At least Yoko was correct in that respect, less light was better.
It took a bit of digging but Wednesday finally found the glittery and horrendously prismatic balls. She pulled one out of the pack, frowning deeply at the chalky purple substance coating her fingers.
Enid looked livelier when she returned, already working off the muddy bloody mess on her face. She crossed the room, placing the ball in Enid’s hand.
“Oh, lavender. This is nice...thanks Wednesday,” Enid smiled weakly at her, clutching the soap to her chest.
“Don’t mention it,” She wiped her hand on her skirt and went for her bed before Enid could do something crazy like jump her again. The parasite in her body squirmed and writhed. She swallowed it down and set her boots by her bedside.
Thing pulled back the covers, they were pleasantly cold. She laid on her back, arms crossed over her chest in the most efficient manner that Wednesday picked up from the mummies in Egypt. They certainly knew how to rest over there.
Sleep was sinking its unyielding grip into her eyelids. Enid said something, a change of clothes in her hands, but Wednesday failed to listen. She watched that gaudy pink coat swish out their door. Finally, her fight with her body died out.
She felt loose, free even.