My Roommate Unleashed Her Inner Wolf To Save Me, So I Claimed Her As Mine With A Kiss

The first indication that my morning of uninterrupted solitude was to be irrevocably spoiled came not as a whisper, but as a whirlwind of pastel pink and panicked gasps. Enid burst through the door to our room, her usual chromatic assault on my senses amplified by a frantic energy that was grating even for her. Her face was pale beneath her expertly applied makeup, and her blue eyes were wide with genuine distress.

I did not look up from the viola score I was transcribing. The mournful notes of Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater were far more compelling than whatever triviality had sent my roommate into a tailspin.

“Wednesday, you have to come see,” she said, her voice trembling. “It’s Edgar. They found him in the Weathervane woods.”

The name was vaguely familiar. A moping, raven-haired boy from the poetry club who perpetually dressed as if attending a funeral. A poser. “And?” I asked, finally lifting my gaze. My disinterest was a solid, unbreachable wall.

“He’s… not right.” Enid wrung her hands, her painted claws clicking together nervously. “He’s just… there. Staring. He won’t move, he won’t talk. Bianca said he’s as stiff as a board. And there’s this… stuff all over him. Like frost, but it’s not cold. It’s like crystals, growing on his skin.”

My pen stopped moving. The Vivaldi was forgotten. A student, rendered catatonic. A body rigid, yet not deceased. And an unknown crystalline fungus propagating on living tissue. A flicker of something cold and exhilarating sparked in my chest. It was a far more fascinating puzzle than the predictable cadence of a dead composer.

“Poor Edgar,” Enid whispered, sinking onto her bed and pulling a fluffy pillow to her chest. “He was so sweet. He was going to read his new sonnet about the void at the next Dark Prom.”

I stood, my earlier irritation replaced with a focused, predatory curiosity. The maudlin sentimentality for the victim was irrelevant. The affliction, however, was sublime. “Tell me everything you heard. Every detail.”

“I don’t know,” she sniffled. “Sheriff Galpin is there, and Principal Weems has the whole area cordoned off. But people are saying it’s some kind of curse. Edgar checked out a book from the restricted section of the library a few days ago. One of those old, leather-bound grimoires on exotic botany.”

Botany. A parasitic, petrifying fungus. A rare grimoire. This was no curse. This was biology, weaponized. A grotesque and elegant mystery laid out like a feast. While Enid mourned the poet, I could already feel the pull of the puzzle, the dark, thrilling promise of an autopsy on the living. Her horror was a tedious distraction; my fascination was a calling. I would have answers.

"Get your coat," I commanded, pulling my own black pea coat from its hook. "We're going to the woods."

Enid looked up from her pillow, her expression a mixture of confusion and horror. "What? No! Weems will have us expelled. The whole area is off-limits."

"Rules are for the unimaginative and the obedient," I stated flatly, checking the contents of my satchel: forceps, glass vials, a scalpel. "I require access to the specimen before the local constabulary contaminates the scene with their incompetence." I paused, my eyes landing on her. "And you are coming with me."

"Why me?" she squeaked. "I don't want to see... that."

"Your lycanthropy affords you a heightened sense of smell," I explained, the lie tasting like a necessary, if bland, tool. "You may be able to detect an unnatural scent. Something inhuman that the normie sheriff would miss."

The appeal to her unique nature worked, as I knew it would. A flicker of pride cut through her fear. She hesitated, chewing on her lower lip, before nodding reluctantly and grabbing the most offensively vibrant jacket I had ever had the misfortune of viewing.

The woods were damp and smelled of decay, a scent I usually found comforting. Today it was tainted by the presence of Sheriff Galpin and his deputies, their garish yellow tape an insult to the natural gloom. We circled the perimeter, keeping to the shadows. As I expected, the deputies were lazy, their attention focused on the path. A less-traveled game trail provided an easy, unobserved route to the scene. I slipped through the underbrush, Enid following with a series of clumsy, rustling sounds that set my teeth on edge.

There he was. Edgar Allan Poe, the poser. He was propped against an ancient oak, his eyes wide and vacant, staring at nothing. His skin was pale and waxy, but it was the fungus that captivated me. It was a beautiful, lattice-like structure of crystalline filaments, shimmering faintly in the dappled light. It spread from his fingertips and up his arms, a delicate web of petrification.

While I knelt, pulling on a pair of leather gloves, Enid stood frozen a few feet away, her hand covering her mouth. I ignored her, using the forceps to gently pry a small, perfect shard of the crystal from Edgar's jacket cuff, dropping it into a vial. I scraped a few more spores from his sleeve with my scalpel, my focus absolute. The structure was magnificent, ruthlessly efficient.

"Oh, Wednesday," Enid whispered, her voice thick. My gaze flicked to her. She wasn't looking at Edgar's afflicted body, but at a small, leather-bound book that had fallen from his lap, lying open on the damp leaves. A book of poetry. Her focus was not on the elegant lethality of the fungus, but on the sentimental remnants of the boy's life. A wave of scorn washed through me. It was such a useless, emotional response. And yet, I could not deny the authenticity of her sorrow. Her empathy was a garish, vibrant thing, as loud and unwelcome as her wardrobe, but it was undeniably real. I filed the observation away, another irritating and incomprehensible variable in the equation that was Enid Sinclair.

"His personal effects are irrelevant," I said, my voice sharp enough to cut through her reverie. I sealed the last vial and stood, tucking my collection into my satchel. "The cause is botanical, not sentimental. We're done here."

I turned and left without waiting for her, the image of her stricken face by the poetry book a fleeting, unwelcome annoyance.

Getting into Edgar’s dorm room was insultingly simple. The lock on his door was a standard issue tumbler, a two-pick job that took less than ten seconds. The room inside was a caricature of teenage angst: black walls, morbid posters of skeletons, and shelves overflowing with gothic literature. It was almost respectable.

"At least he had taste in decor," I commented, my eyes scanning the room for anomalies. "Though he could have done without the potpourri. It smells like a dying garden."

Enid, who had followed me with a renewed sense of purpose, wrinkled her nose. "It's black rose and clove. I think it's kind of nice."

I ignored her and began my search. True investigation was a physical, tactile process. I ran my gloved fingers along the spines of his books, checking for hollowed-out compartments. I tapped the floorboards, listening for a change in pitch that would indicate a loose board or a hidden space beneath. Every surface was a potential secret.

Enid, predictably, took a different approach. She drifted toward Edgar’s desk, her fingers ghosting over a framed picture of him with another student, Yoko Tanaka. She picked up a silver pen, turning it over in her hands as if its weight could tell her something. It was a pointless, sentimental exercise.

"I'm going to find Yoko," Enid announced suddenly. "She was his best friend. If anyone knows if Edgar was in trouble or acting strange, it's her."

I paused in my examination of a suspiciously thick-bottomed drawer. "Gossip is an inefficient method for data collection. I will find concrete evidence here."

"Maybe," she said, her tone surprisingly firm. "But people aren't puzzles, Wednesday. Sometimes you just have to ask them what's wrong."

She left, leaving a void of cloying optimism in the somber room. I was almost grateful for the silence. I returned to my work, and my diligence was soon rewarded. Tucked inside a copy of Fleurs du Mal was not a cipher, but several detailed sketches of fungi. The drawings were precise, almost clinical, and I recognized the crystalline structure I had just observed on Edgar's skin. Beneath them were handwritten notes on parasitic propagation and cellular petrification. He wasn't just a poser poet; he was a fellow student of the grotesque. He had been researching the very thing that afflicted him.

I was cataloging the notes when Enid returned, her face flushed with a mix of excitement and anxiety. "Okay, so I was right," she began, pacing back and forth on the black shag rug. "Yoko said Edgar was totally freaked out about something. He was in a huge academic rivalry with Xavier Thorpe."

I looked up, my interest piqued despite myself. "The tortured artist."

"They were both finalists for the Belladonna Scholarship for advanced botany," Enid explained, talking with her hands. "It's a huge deal—a full ride and a mentorship with Dr. Blackwood. Yoko said the competition had gotten really nasty. Xavier accused Edgar of stealing his research notes a few weeks ago. They had a massive fight right outside the greenhouse."

I stood, holding the fungal sketches in my hand. Enid’s vapid social networking had produced a name. A motive. A suspect. It was an irritatingly effective result. My evidence showed what had happened to Edgar, but Enid’s gossip had provided a potential who. The two disparate threads of information hung in the air between us, creating a single, tangled cord of possibility.