“Swiping Right on Wednesday Addams (On Tinder),” by Christian McKay Heidicker

Dec 20th, 2014 | By | Category: Fiction, Prose

It was Wednesday when her name and face popped up on Tinder.

I thought, that’s a cute coincidence, and swiped right.

It’s a Match!

You and Wednesday Addams have liked each other.

Wednesday: Come to me.
Me: Um… okay! haha. Where ya wanna meet?
Wednesday: Green-Wood Cemetery.
Me: Ooh! Spooky. Know anyone buried there?
Wednesday: Not yet.
Me: Ha!

We met and strolled through glossy headstones and lichen-weeping angels. I dug her Goth schoolgirl look: glass black braids and velvet button down dress with a starched white collar.

Wednesday stared straight, arms folded.

“You from around here?” I asked.

“No.”

“Got any hobbies?”

“No.”

“Got any kids?”

She glared at me. “Unless they’ve escaped.”

I was sure the date was going abysmally. Then I spotted a single, white flower growing on a high branch and thought I’d romance things up a bit. I climbed on top of a mausoleum, balanced on the roof’s edge, and reached for the flower. My fingertips brushed its petals before I slipped, fell, and broke my head open on a gravestone.

When I woke up in the hospital, Wednesday asked if I wanted to meet her parents.

***

The Addams estate stood on an ashen hill. It had broken windows, a graveyard for a garden, and one dead tree. Buzzards circled the clouded sky. I had dressed up for Wednesday’s family, but I lost my tie to the wrought iron gate and my left shoe to the bearskin throw rug in the foyer. Even though I was sweaty and disheveled, the Addamses still greeted me like I was the Prince of Wales. Wednesday’s father resembled a gargoyle with a pencil mustache, her mother a somehow sexy melting candlestick. They both looked dressed for burial.

We dined in what seemed to be a dungeon flipped into kitchen. Twisted branches scraped frosted windows. A copy of Gray’s Anatomy sat on the cookbook shelf. Lurch, the Addamses’ Frankenstein’s monster of a butler, grumbled a yard above my head as he served green soup that squirmed like it had indigestion.

So, Robert,” Gomez said, enthusiastically puffing on a cigar. “What are your career prospects?”

“Journalist,” I said, pushing the soup aside.

“A writer!” Gomez said, eyes alighting. “The desperation! The starvation!”

“The hemorrhoids,” Morticia added.

“Of course it must end in suicide,” Gomez said. “How will you do it?”

“Ha,” I said. “Um… I just finished a piece on lethal injections. They can melt the condemned person’s veins, making them die painfully for forty-five minutes.”

“And you’re vying for longer!” Gomez said. “Good man. What’s next?”

“Uh… the atrocities of Abu Ghraib.”

“Abu Ghraib…” Gomez took his wife’s hand. “Tish.”

“Our third honeymoon,” Morticia said.

They made out on the table for five minutes.

***

That night Wednesday and I made out in the attic. The ceiling dripped cobwebs; the walls were hung with rusted tools. Things were getting pretty hot and heavy when I felt a… a finger in my… well, my prostate.

I was mildly surprised until I realized both of Wednesday’s hands were on my chest…

Wednesday saw my look of horror and rolled her eyes. “Out, Thing.”

The finger came uncorked and I saw what I swear to god was a disembodied hand scrabble out of the room like a fleshy spider. In shock, I looked at Wednesday. She held a noose.

“Ever heard of manual erotic asphyxiation?”

***

I returned home terrified.

I stayed up nights, tossing and turning, nervously flinching, a burning in my belly button where Wednesday stuck the ice pick.

I was in love.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her. The way she slept, arms crossed over her chest. Her complete disregard for humanity. The molar I still needed to get back. Being with Wednesday was like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute or playing catch with a bear trap.

I drove to the Addamses’ estate with no regard for speed or signs or spinning lights. Death could be right around the corner for any of us, but only Mr. and Mrs. Addams loved and made love like that was actually true. If I were more like Wednesday’s father, I’d have a passion that burned more brightly than fear, that teetered on the precipice of death, charged with the possibility of this being the final breath, heartbeat, wrenching kiss before oblivion.

I arrived at the decaying mansion and confessed my love to Wednesday.

And after I get out of traction, I’ll return again.

————

Defenestration-Christian McKay HeidickerChristian McKay Heidicker’s stories have appeared in Spinetinglers, Danse Macabre, and Defenestrationism.net (no relation). His first book MILES IN THE INFINITE SANDBOX will be published by Simon & Schuster in summer of 2016. It’s a young adult novel about a kid who’s committed to video game rehab, and it wouldn’t kill you to at least read the first sentence.

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