When Shall we Three Meet Again?

Posted on Wed 5th Jul, 2017 @ 9:02am by Purulence Addams

1,257 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Unity Week
Location: The Addams House, Queen Anne Villas

Chlamydia had just finished pouring tea into the skull-shaped mug of her sister Ischemia, who sat on one of the couches in the front parlor, when the fog-horn of the doorbell sounded. "Dear me," Chlamydia said, setting down the teapot and straightening. "Another unexpected visitor? And at this hour? I am faced with an embarrassing wealth of company."

"Rude of us to all descend at once, isn't it?" mocked Ischemia. "If you weren't so polite, you wouldn't have these annoying friends."

Chlamydia smiled tightly at her sister and walked out into the foyer. She took a moment to straighten her dress and sweep her hair back, then opened the door. She found herself looking down, which, given her height, wasn't that unusual. What was unusual was recognizing the short, round, dark woman outside. "Purulence!" she exclaimed in surprise.

"You're home! Oh, thank goodness!" Purulence Addams said, sounding a bit breathless, as if she had run all the way from the tram tube. But if she really had run that far she would have begun wheezing ten minutes ago. In contrast to the black and red of her sisters, Purulence wore a spiral-dyed t-shirt dress in rainbow colors, with sunny yellow leggings and flat-soled shoes. Her skin was very dark, though her skull shape marked her as Caucasian from Earth.

"I couldn't remember if you would be at work or home at this hour. I should have stopped to check the station time, but I didn't think about that until I was at your gate, so I just came on to the door. Did you get my message? And--Hi! It's so good to see you! You look gorgeous!" Purulence flung chubby, rainbow-adorned arms enthusiastically around Chlamydia.

Coming up behind her sister, Ischemia couldn't believe that the one time she had decided to visit Vanguard, her younger sister came also. How had she managed to find the motivation to travel at all, let alone so far? She stared, with eyes narrowed, at the chubby Addams sister. "You're in trouble, aren't you?" she said.

Chlamydia frowned, looking over her shoulder at the middle sister. "Oh, Schemy, at least let her come in off the porch before you begin cross-examining her!" She looked back at her youngest sister. "Are you in trouble, dear?"

The smile vanished from Purulence's face and was replaced by a look of irritation and an eye roll. "Why does everyone always presume I'm in trouble, just because I come to see them? I'm not 18 anymore."

"Not answering the question doesn't assure us that you aren't in trouble," Ischemia said darkly.

"And me telling you that I'm not in trouble wouldn't assure you, either," Purulence said. "So perhaps I might come in and have a nice visit with my two sisters who I haven't seen in forever, and at some point, I'll tell you why I came?"

"Yes, yes, of course," answered Chlamydia, stepping aside. "Enter freely, and of your own will! The parlor is the first door on the left, there; I'll just go and fetch another teacup, shall I?"

Ischemia knew that wasn't actually a question, but her head nodded automatically as she followed the youngest Addams into the parlor, ready to interrogate her as soon as Chlamydia was busy elsewhere. "Be careful what you dump on her doorstep," she warned darkly. "Our elder sister is probably the most competent of the three of us, though I'll deny it if you tell her I said so. Still, she has enough to deal with right now, inside her own head, without you adding more. If you're in something you can't get out of on your own, I'll help you, though spiders only know why."

Purulence shot a sideways look at Chlamydia's departing back and then looked up at Ischemia with imploring eyes. "Do you really mean that? I don't need rescuing, the way I did last time. I need to make a decision, and I don't want to make the wrong one."

Then Purulence froze, looking chagrined, as if she had said too much.

Her sister flipped her hair over her right shoulder. "Oh, of course. Advice can be dispensed easily. It's taking it that's the hard part. Just remember what I said - don't unload a lot of useless information on the eldest Addams. Let's enjoy some sister time together instead," she said quietly, hearing Chlamydia's footsteps returning.

"It can be summed up in two brief sentences," Purulence said.

"Here you are," Chlamydia said, entering the parlor. She set a mug down on the tea tray. The mug showed a cuddly stuffed bear rendered in shades of grey, with a skull and crossed bones on its stomach. She picked up the pot, poured tea into the mug. "Are you still seeing that nice Beaudelaire fellow?" She looked at Ischemia and went on, "you remember, the one with the glasses that made him look smart?"

"Aw, you have my little pirate bear teacup!" Purulence grinned. "Thanks! I'm not really into forensic analysis of crania." She smiled fondly at the cup for a moment and then shook her head at Chlamydia's question. "Edmond? No, I'm afraid not. I haven't dated him for a couple of years, now. He went off to MIT and is dating a nanoengineer. That meant, of course, that I had to tease him about dating small women, which somehow set off a pun war between us. Anyway, we write to each other, but we're just friends."

"Just shows that the glasses really were just for looks," Ischemia drawled, sipping daintily from her cup. "Who's the man of the hour now?"

Chlamydia smiled at Purulence's enjoyment of the Scare Bear mug and took her seat in one of the wingback chairs. She picked up her own skull shaped teacup and took a sip, savoring the rich flavor of the Black Death blend. "Yes," she said. "Do tell. One of us is going to have to have offspring, you know, to carry on the line and inherit the house. I should not like to go to the lengths that Cousin Perverto did." Her mind went blank, and she looked down into the depths of her teacup.

"What did he do, clone himself? God, I hope not," Purulence said. She cocked her head to one side. "Is that even legal? I'll have to look that up sometime." She looked at Ischemia. "So what are you doing here? I was amazed to see you!"

"No more than I at seeing you," the middle sister said. With a shrug of her shoulders, she added, "I'm overdue for a vacation, and wasn't feeling like crowds. I thought I'd have a nice quiet few days on a distant starbase. Of course, I landed right in the middle of this big Unity Week thing, so the surprise visit was a two-edged sword."

Turning then to Chlamydia, and focusing attention away from herself, she asked, "And what did old Cousin Perverto do to procreate? Or do we even want to know?"

Chlamydia looked up from her tea. "What?" she asked, seeming surprised. "Sorry, my mind drifted. What were you saying about Cousin Perverto?"

Ischemia laughed and shook her head. "No doubt off in the middle of a medical procedure. It's good to know some things don't change." She wiggled the fingers of her right hand and changed the subject.

"I don't know about the two of you, but I'm getting a bit peckish. What have you to eat around this place?" she asked.

 

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