The heavy clank of the metal gate rung from behind the glass window. It closed like judgement towards the accused man, wearing an ill-fitting orange jumper in front of her.
Wednesday squinted her eyes at her father. Orange does not look good on the man, she thought— that, and his embarrassed expression and downcast mustache reflecting his inner turmoil. She could read him like a book even now.
A lingering silence followed after Gomez sat down, looking at the metal table and glass pane, tinkering with the cuffs on his wrist unable to look at his daughter straight.
Wednesday stared, and then she hummed. "Mother would be distraught, she despises you in orange." At her words, Gomez looked up, a glint of gratefulness reflecting in his old doe eyes as he managed a light smile. "Don't let her know, mi hija."
"I won't," Wednesday replied, "dealing with her normally is excruciating enough."
Gomez chuckled. "You and her are the same, my little viper."
Wednesday raised an eyebrow, seemingly offended by his words. Gomez's smile dropped, coughing to mask the increasing awkwardness caused by his supposed joke. "I didn't want you to see me like this. Why did you come here, my little tormenta?"
The warmth in Wednesday's stature left, if there was ever any, and cold resolution showed in her eyes. "Earlier today, I saw mother laying a rose on a grave," Gomez gulped, and a frown began to form in his face. Wednesday continued, "upon closer look, the headstone read… 'Garret Gates.'"
She paused, letting her words reach the man in front of her. But time does not stop simply because she did. "Explain, father, what was mother doing at the grave of the very man you're accused of murdering?"
Thing, intrigued, slowly climbed up Wednesday's shoulder, slowly sliding on the metal table with sparks of curiosity practically lighting him up.
Gomez pressed his lips, his mind jumbling and tumbling over words. Wednesday could see, while her body was there, her mind regressed to a memory long done. "Garret was infatuated with your mother." And so he began his story.
Garret Gates, the son of a bigot, and the richest and most powerful man in Jericho, was obsessed with his mother, Morticia Frump. How ironic. Wednesday noted each word that left her father's mouth. An interest turned obsession, a 'love' turned dangerous.
Gomez closed his eyes, as if dreaming of the past. "It all came to a head the night of the Rave'N Dance." Wednesday's mind took her exactly where her father was. "I saw him. Wet and muddied by the storm, but his eyes, mi hija. His eyes were filled with malice. He had gone insane."
"Your mother pushed me away, told me to run so she could stop him." A quiet rage leaked through Gomez's words. "She and I knew he was there for me."
He continued, and Wednesday watched as the scenes in her head formed. Garret picked up a decorative sword idle beneath an old painting, her mother screamed stop, but his eyes only looked at her father.
"My life flashed before my eyes." Gomez said. They clashed on the 2nd floor of the Quad, metal pipe to sword. Survival and wrath congesting. But a man driven by wrath, as they say, was unstoppable.
"I disarmed him," Gomez iterated, "I tried to pin him but he pushed me back. Some mystical, unknown force made him strong."
Gomez's body flung back like a ragdoll thrown. His young eyes looked afraid, but his body moved faster than even his mind could think. "I saw the sword. And my survival instincts kicked in."
Finally, he opened his eyes. Dark and regretful, he sighed. "I'm sure you know already what happened next. It was… a tragic accident, mi hija."
The dim light of the visiting room patted Wednesday back. The eerie silence of the story's end, and the heavy breathing of her father behind the glass accentuated the gravity of the story.
Thing crawled towards the glass, fingers gripping the pane as if to hold Gomez's hand in comfort. After another second or so, Wednesday spoke. "I see." Her simple words were puzzling, but she was never a woman of many words.
Because the cogs in her mind had already begun to work, each mental note turning into puzzles to make an image of an accident that occurred decades ago.
The edge of Gomez's lips fell. "I'm sorry I wasn't a better father." He suddenly said. A glare was what he got in response. "Can we please do without the overt display of emotion?"
Gomez put his hands up apologetically. "I know they make you feel uncomfortable." Wednesday tilted her head. "How many fathers hand their daughter a fencing blade when she's five?"
"Your saber strokes were an essay in perfection!" Gomez replied proudly.
Wednesday continued, "or teach her how to swim with sharks?"
Gomez responded with a hum, "They found you as cold-blooded as I do."
"What about the right way to flay a rattlesnake?" She combatted. When did this turn into a back-and-forth debate?
"They really do taste like chicken when prepared properly."
Wednesday sighed, as if tired of this conversation itself. "The point that I'm trying to make is— you taught me how to be strong and independent. How to navigate myself in a world full of treachery and prejudice."
Gomez bit his lips, his chin crumbling to a wrinkled mess. "You are the reason I understand how imperative it is that I never lose sight of myself."
She straightened her back, eyes never leaving her father. "So as far as fatherhood goes, I would say you've been more than adequate."
Gomez reeled in his emotions with a deep breath. His daughter hates overt emotions, he will listen, because that is his daughter. "Gracias, Wednesday." But his throat could not lie, as each word left trembling in the air.
Wednesday nodded quietly in response. Peace did not last long, however. "Time's up, Addams." The grunting voice of the guard said. Gomez turned around before looking back at his daughter. Wednesday watched as her father stood up, offering his cuffs to be held.
He gave Wednesday one last look. "Take care of your mother and brother, mi hija." She did not, could not answer before he was taken away. The metal gate rung once again, this time with her father leaving.
—-
The grey sky of Jericho seemed to whisper of a coming cold. The sun could not glimpse at the world below while the wind enveloped all manner of creature that walked this cobbled and dirt land.
Adam's coat swung softly with the breeze, imitating the forest trees he could see a great distance away from the borders of the town.
He gripped his hands inside his pockets once or twice, perhaps to circulate the idle blood in his veins; or perhaps as a quiet response to the stares he's been getting for quite a while now.
When will Wednesday come out, he asked himself. But he shook his head before even coming up with an answer. The girl may have had a lot of questions for her accused father, just as she has for things with lesser relevance. A curious raven, Adam mused.
Somehow, in some ways, this situation reminded him of the first novel he's ever read—of the Count of Monte Cristo's story. With less drama, of course, and a lesser extraordinary cast.
Adam reimagined in his own head the story with Gomez Addams as Edmond Dantès. Except already rich, already a count, and accused of murder instead of treason. The Sheriff as Gérard de Villefort. Wednesday as… Haydée. All of a sudden, the story lost all its luster.
He hummed in resignation. Perhaps he is not as good an author as he thought he would've been. Too many unique characters, too peculiar of a story.
Adam erased the images in his head and pondered on his hypothetical instead. Which weighs heavier on the scale of justice, a crime of murder or treason?
Murder, by its mere definition, is the act of taking another's life maliciously or not. An act of taking. Thievery of the dignity, thievery of respect. There are moral questions that come with murder: a matter of intent, responsibility, and justification.
Was it caused intentionally? Was the accused morally responsible? Was it acceptable?
A solider who killed an enemy in war is not condemned for his actions, just as a man who acted in defense should not. But, a man who kills for his pleasure? The scale could only tip so much.
Murder is not always an act of injustice, nor an act of viciousness and cruelty— but often a reflection of all in the form of a virtue.
Alexander the Great's killings are overshadowed by his conquest's greatness. His enemies and their soldiers will say otherwise— murders reflected in the virtue of courage.
But was he morally wrong? Was he wrong to kill in a just war? No, he was not. He was right, as right as his enemies who killed his soldiers. How odd that something so aggrieving is justifiable by the situation it occurred in.
Life, however, is full of oddity and complex scenarios.
Adam's mind came to other topic, treason. Another heinous crime. Which of the two proposes a heavier gravity in the eyes of society?
He pondered, and then he decided— treason. The act of murder could happen in many manners. But the act of treason is a conscious decision made of weight to its proceeding consequences.
In Dante's Divine Comedy, Adam remembered the three souls whom Satan feeds on: Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Gaius Cassius. One man betrayed the world, two betrayed their nations. Even the divine decided that treachery is the worst crime.
As his thoughts began to end and reach a conclusion, Adam's gaze began to fall. To the old cobble path, counting the bricks laid tightly together like rows of old memories archived in stone.
It, however, did not last long as black leather boots hinder his view from the path. Adam looked up, meeting Wednesday's calm, blank face.
They stared at each other for a while, with only the wind whispering something in between. Wednesday tilted her head slightly. "Did your brain melt from waiting?"
Adam managed a light smile behind his porcelain mask. "How was it?"
Wednesday took a second to answer, silenced, or perhaps simply unsure of what's in her mind. "Tale as old as time," she replied sarcastically, "knight in shining armor saved the princess and killed the villain."
"Dare I guess your father is the knight and Gates is the villain?" Adam asked in confirmation.
Wednesday huffed. "Well, one is dead and the other is in jail. Wouldn't take anyone long to guess."
"That's true." Adam nodded, his gaze reading Wednesday's cold stare, "But I'm also guessing that's not all there is to it, yes?"
"No…" she replied skeptically before repositioning herself beside Adam. Wednesday leaned her back towards the wall, feeling its coldness through her wool coat. "I know my father as well as anyone knows theirs. I know when he'll faint his strikes, when he'd bluff during poker guillotine…"
"I know when he's lying," Wednesday finished quietly, her voice almost lost to the sighing wind. Her sharp eyes never wavered as they traced the walking paths, dark against the greying sky.
Adam stayed silent, sensing the heaviness in her tone. He merely followed her gaze to the skeletal branches swaying. "Do you think he lied to you?" he asked after a moment.
Wednesday hummed to herself, considering the question with the same precision she applied to dissection. "He told me the truth he could live with," she finally said. "That is not the truth I'm looking for."
"What truth is there to look for?" Adam said in an almost uncertain tone, "The Sheriff is sure— no, undeniably confident that your father is guilty. And your parents won't tell you the 'real' truth."
He paused for a moment, lining the details of the arrest in his mind. "It's been 30 years since this incident happened. Most, if not all evidences have already been cleared and gathered."
"Not everything…" Wednesday muttered to herself. Adam looked at her confused. "What?"
Wednesday looked back. "I said, not everything. A common denominator between every rich and powerful family involved in a crime is— they never tell the whole story. They only tell what benefits them, what fits their narrative better."
"Are you sayi—" "I'm saying that if there's anyone who knows this case better than the accused, it's the 'victim.'"
Adam stared dumbfounded as an imperceptible horror of a smirk slowly creeped onto Wednesday's pale face. "We're going to interrogate Garret Gates himself."
—-
The sky of Nevermore presents a whole different spectrum of colors from the grim grey of Jericho. Whereas the town is riddled only by the noise of its people's footsteps, Nevermore is filled with laughter and the chatter of students to their parents and friends.
Adam glanced at the picnic mattes laid down on the green grass of the yard, dotted in between by yellow leaves that fell because of autumn.
He could hear the crackling sound of several campfires circled by families roasting marshmallow on sticks. The sweet smell reached his senses softly like nature's own perfume.
He walked leisurely on his own, a book in his inner pocket to read should he manage to find a place he could. Why not in his room, one may ask?
Adam asked himself too, but the air inside was suffocating. Not in a manner that takes the air in your lungs, rather, in a way that magnifies the loneliness of his being when outside felt like… this.
It makes the mind jump. Like palpitations from thoughts to another thought. How Wednesday plans to 'interrogate' Garret Gates. If Gomez Addams is truly guilty as Larissa and the Sheriff says.
The irony of it that he's helping a friend's parent whom his guardian helped get arrested in the past. Adam sighed. He let the feeling of it all washed over him like water on fire.
He knew so much of the woman with gold hair yet so little of why disdain, envy, and pride swallowed her being when faced with Morticia Addams. Spreading like poison in her blood.
How could he speak of it to her? How could he pry to her thoughts, and feelings, and the past the two shared without being overwhelmed by her?
"I know my father as well as anyone knows theirs…"
Adam wishes he could say it as well as Wednesday. That he knows his mother as well as anyone knows theirs. Alas, the truth is otherwise, and he knows not the truth of anything at all.
In the blink of an eye, consumed by his thoughts, Adam did not realize that the noise of Nevermore has long faded from his ears. He threaded an unknown path, soon finding himself face-to-face with a wooden shed.
He eyed the structure curiously, walking closer and closer until he stood in front of the door itself. His hand reached for the handle, pushing it softly as it gave way.
The shadows of the inside ran when sunlight peeked from the door. Adam glanced around as he walked, laying eyes upon buckets of paint and cloth-covered… canvases.
It didn't take long for the pungent smell of chemical color assaulted his nose. Not nauseating, but simply existing like background noise to the unending curious place such as this.
Adam stood in the middle of the room, in front of him was the largest canvas. He gripped the end of the cloth with his leather hand. He shouldn't, he said to himself, this was not his. But as the seconds passed by, his arm got heavier, and his grip did not loosen— and the cloth fell while the dust jumped almost in freight.
Beneath it all, beyond the dust is a portrait of a familiar… creature. Adam whispered. "Tyler…" Its red eyes looked at him with malice and rage. He could almost… feel it.
Adam turned around and pulled the cover of another, seeing the same creature in the canvas. And another, then another, then another— before realizing that every single thing in this room is a reflection of that creature. A funhouse of its face.
The galore of canvases showed only one face, of Tyler's. How odd, how strange. Who drew this things? Who—
"Who the hell are you?!"
A voice from the door yelled in confusion. Adam slowly turned around startled, gaze landing on the silhouette of whoever it is standing on the doorway.
"You…" the voice said, "You're Wednesday's lackey."
A lackey?
—