The Queen in Purple

Posted on Fri 13th Jul, 2018 @ 12:37am by

552 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Oblivion
Location: The Addams Place, Queen Anne Villas, Tivoli Gardens
Timeline: MD 1, 1900

"Addams' black humor," the Doctor instructed her replicator, "and make it a double." The machine hummed and delivered a crystal highball glass full of a muddy brown beverage. The basis was milk, originally derived from the giant golden-crowned flying fox, Earth's largest bat species. The milk had been condensed and sweetened with additional lactose, then re-bittered with heavy cocoa flavanols and theobromin. To the mix had been added carefully metered dosages of skeletal muscle relaxants and central nervous depressants. A two-centimeter cube of dry ice at the bottom of the glass made the drink appear to steam, and the carbonation thus induced sped the absorption of the chemistry in the intestines.

Chlamydia carried the glass into her study and sat heavily in her chair. "Here's mud in your eye," she said. Perhaps she was addressing Bonnie, her anatomical skeleton; perhaps she addressed herself, or no one. She took a drink from the glass, holding her breath against inhaling the carbon vapors, then rolling the milk around her tongue before swallowing. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against her chair, feeling her body begin to relax and her mind begin to slow its boil.

"Rough day?"

Chlamydia's eyes snapped open. No one should be able to sneak up on her; no one but... "arrière grand-mère?!"

"Hello, ma petite chérie," the old woman said with a crooked smile. "It had been too long, so I came to see you."

Chlamydia drained her glass, then set it on the desk blotter. "Yes," she said. "Yes, it has been a rough day; a rough week."

The crone sat in the chair between the desk and Bonnie. "Tell me about it?"

Chlamydia moved from her chair to the floor and placed her head in her great-grandmother's lap. "It's your fault, isn't it?It's your fault that I know when people are waiting outside my door, but can't say how I know; it's your fault I hear wings when a patient dies. Some selfish gene, perhaps in the mitochondia...."

"Yes," the old woman answered, laying her arthritis-gnarled hand on her descendant's head. "It's mine, passed down through the maternal line. And you, my dearest, you got a double dose."

Chlamydia nodded; sighed. "The Addams legacy. Psychopaths, fiends, mad-dog killers. Resurrection men and vivisectionists. Mad scientists ahead of their time; pioneers and taboo-breakers. And we never ask 'why,' do we?"

The hag stroked Chlamydia's dark hair. "Also my fault," she admitted. "You have always been the white sheep of your generation. But what has sent you down this trail of thoughts?"

"Perverto," Chlamydia answered. As she said it, the word sounded like a curse. "I read the articles he wrote. I followed his trail so far... but not to the end. Never to the end. Something stopped me. Something turned me back when I approached the darkness at the heart. But today, I did an autopsy. Today, I found his signature in a dead man's genes."

"Ah," the crone said, a world of understanding in the sound. "Sleep," she murmured, stroking Chlamydia's black, black hair. "Sleep and dream and forget again. Tomorrow will be a better day."

Chlamydia made no answer, but from under her closed eyelids, a single tear trickled. "My child," she sighed, her last thought before sleep.

 

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