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00.
The worst thing was that they were apart.
The second worst was that they were in love.
01.
Wednesday is twenty-three this year, a writer unchanged from her teenage days. She keeps reptiles, loathes mammals, ignores every conversation about wellness, and leaves her fingerprints on each small cruelty in town. Each morning requires four shots of espresso; each evening is for writing; once a month, without fail, she attends a funeral. That morning, as she stepped outside, her neighbor Ellie called her over. Ellie was a kindly woman in her sixties, smiling at everyone, well past the age of fragile nerves or brittle pride. Some women at sixty possess an unbreakable cheer—immune to cold shoulders or sour faces, too stubborn to notice when they’re unwelcome. Ellie seemed to think Wednesday’s aloofness was nothing but shyness. This month alone, Ellie had stopped her three times. Twice she pressed gifts into Wednesday’s hands—tomato juice, apple pie. The first time, Wednesday carried it home only to be disappointed there was no poison. The second, she discovered no needles hidden in the crust. After that, she abandoned hope of Ellie amounting to anything.
Today, however, Ellie offered no gifts. Instead she said, “Thank your husband for me. My fence broke the other day—just me at home, worrying with no one to help—and he kindly came over and fixed it.”
Wednesday did not reply, only answered with her gaze.
“I heard you’re taking over the café on the corner. You’ll be running it yourselves, won’t you? Your husband is such a promising young man. I’ll be sure to stop by.”
“You’d best stay away from him.”
Wednesday’s lips moved, deliberate, each word slow as lead.
“He’s no help to anyone’s longevity.”
Ellie blinked, then rallied with a smile. “Oh, heavens! You two are so sweet together. I’m far too old to have designs on your husband, don’t you worry.”
Wednesday gave no reply. Her face betrayed nothing, neither pleasure nor displeasure.
Ellie chuckled, unwilling to let her go just yet.
“And where are you off to? If it’s the bakery, I can walk with you…”
“The mountain.”
“The mountain?”
“To bury a body.”
Ellie took it for Gen Z humor and laughed. Wednesday did not.
“But really, you shouldn’t be going up there lately,” Ellie went on. “Two people have died already—mauled, they say. A bear. Outsiders, both of them. Strange, isn’t it? Their bodies torn apart, police and their dogs combing the woods. You haven’t heard?”
“In fact,” Wednesday said, “I have.”
“Frightful, isn’t it? You’ve only been here three months, and already such a thing happens. Our town was always peaceful. But I hear you’re a writer? Maybe it’ll serve as inspiration. Goodness, listen to me rambling—don’t take it amiss. Anyway, best steer clear of the mountain until they catch the bear. It would be dreadful if anything happened.”
“It won’t happen.”
“You’re not afraid of bears?”
“Bears ought to be afraid of me.” Her voice was cold.
“That bear won’t harm me.”
02.
The bear came home at nine o’clock that night.
The moment the door opened, his black-clad lover’s face emerged from the dark of the entryway, startling him half to death.
“Shit!”
Tyler nearly had a heart attack, clutching his chest.
“How long have you been standing there?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“…”
Wednesday studied him. Recently, he had been arranging his comings and goings so they missed each other entirely. Tonight he returned drenched in sweat. His hood sat crooked, his jacket zipped to the throat despite the heat, and he reeked of perfume, sprayed only moments ago. His breath was ragged, his eyes shifty, refusing to meet hers. To anyone else it might look like infidelity. But Tyler was not human. And Wednesday did not deal in human things. She stepped deliberately into his line of sight, forcing his gaze. Tyler managed a crooked, unnatural smile. Wednesday pressed her black lips together.
“Only children and lunatics simle for no reason. Which are you?”
“I’m…”
“You’re the bear.”
She closed the distance in a heartbeat, her knee driving into his ribs. As he bent in pain, she shoved him down, pinning him. He hit the floor hard.
“Ugh.”
A groan slipped from his throat. He tried to lift his head—only for her palm to crack across his face. Instinct flared. Tyler’s hand whipped out, striking her so hard she flew back, crashing into the entryway cabinet and shattering a vase.
By the time he came to his senses, Wednesday lay among shards, blood seeping from her nose and brow. He scrambled toward her, only to find her tracing her wound with a fingertip, then licking her own blood without expression.
He meant to speak but doubled over, clutching his stomach, breath failing him.
“You were shot, weren’t you,” Wednesday said coolly.
“And you still kicked…” Tyler groaned.
“All the more reason to kick.”
Blood bloomed beneath his palm, spreading slow and steady. She watched with idle interest, hoping the wound might spill something more—organs she could gather, arrange while still warm. But nothing fell. Only his eyes, shadowed and bleak, like a rat crawling out of a cave to feed.
“…more like a bear, actually. ”
“What bear nonsense are you talking about?” Tyler snapped, brushing shards from her body, lifting her carefully. He examined her swollen face, plucking ceramic splinters from her skin until only cuts on her brow and knee remained.
“How do I look?” she asked.
“Radiant,” he muttered.
He swept her up with ease, carried her to the bed, and fetched the first-aid kit. Lifting her skirt, he disinfected each wound. Wednesday never flinched, staring down at him as he knelt, grumbling that home was somehow more dangerous than the outside.
“Maybe it’s because you belong on the other side of the prison,” she said. “Want me to put you back there?”
He glared, tilting her chin so he could clean the blood on her face. His gaze lingered on her bruised cheekbone before carefully wiping her nosebleed away. His touch was gentle, cautious.
“Stopped bleeding?”
“Yep.”
“Wednesday, do you know what mistake you made?”
“Not killing you the day you proposed?”
“No. Don’t attack me right after I’ve shifted. I can’t control the strength.”
“Next time I’ll aim for your throat.”
Tyler shut his eyes, surrendering. “You refused me anyway,” he muttered.
He shoved the kit aside, stripped off his jacket, and lay on the far edge of the bed, clutching his wound. Wednesday didn’t ask about his night—whether he’d been tearing strangers apart. Instead, she let her gaze slide to his back. Maybe he was sulking.
“You’re not bandaging that wound?”
“…It’ll heal in a few days.”
“Of course. Bears heal that way.”
“Enough with the bear talk.”
“You and those cops, playing hide-and-seek—that’s your business. But you’ve been too lazy in the mornings. Where’s my four shots?”
“…Tomorrow, I’ll make them.”
She hummed. It wasn’t really the coffee she cared about. She shifted closer, brushing her hand over his wound. He flinched. Her black eyes glinted. Her cheek throbbed, stirring the urge to dig into his lungs.
“You’ll stain the bed,” she said.
He lifted his head, thinking she meant to drive him to the couch. But she pressed him back down, pulled the blanket over him.
“Sleep.”
Her command, like a master’s, allowed no refusal. He looked at her, confused, but exhaustion soon drowned him.
She studied him—clammy skin, yellowed face, curled like a rag left to rot. The coughs had started, his vitality waning. Hydes cut others’ lives short, but their own as well.
That didn’t trouble her. Wednesday loved every detail of death, every ritual. She relished the shortening of his life, the stench of blood, the muffled groans. It soothed her. She brushed a curl from his forehead, and at last understood what angered her.
She hated his coughing, his fever, the way he spent his life like loose change.
How he ran off to play the bear.
How he shredded other people’s peace.
He was hers.
Her possession.
Every move, every breath belonged to her.
It was hers to consume, hers to fill, hers to drain.
Wednesday thought Tyler unspeakably rude.
He should at least ask before using her things.
03.
They looked alike on the surface, but in truth were utterly incompatible, surviving only by enduring each other.
Beneath their feet, the corpses of past crimes piled higher and higher, and it was almost laughable how life insisted on pushing forward. Tomorrow’s sunlight would arrive all the same. And when no one was left to die in his place, he would one day have no choice but to kill himself—forced to stack his own bones into the tower.
Their clumsy flight had stretched into its sixth year. In that time, they made no vows, realized no dreams, built nothing worth remembering, never became better people than they were yesterday. Their incomplete world was held together only by the manuscripts on the desk and the smell of coffee steaming from the pot.
The next morning Tyler looked somewhat improved, though his gait was still stiff. True to his word, he stayed home, served her four shots of espresso, and laid out pancakes and fried eggs beside it. None of it was what she liked, but he had kneaded 95% cocoa powder into the batter, making the pancakes a deep, dusky brown—dark enough to fall within Wednesday’s tolerance. They looked better than Tyler’s face, at least. For comparison: Enid’s scent often evoked the tropics and night air; Tyler smelled like a spent matchstick doused in water. His body heat was like failed sourdough—hot, but not moist enough—something you should throw out during the process, yet neither Sheriff Galpin nor Wednesday herself had discarded him. And so here she sat at the dining table, facing the consequence.
The cup emptied.
Tyler, who’d been watching the pace of her eating, hurriedly finished his own breakfast. “Another cup?”
She nodded. Tyler took her cup and went to the espresso machine.
Most of the household chores fell to him: changing sheets, washing clothes, sweeping, scrubbing windows, tending the garden, cooking, brewing coffee. They never decided on the division of labor—Tyler simply did it all. Wednesday concerned herself only with decoration and real estate (he never asked where the money came from). Though they had moved many times, the style of each house was entirely her choice. No flowers in the yard, no cheerful paint on the walls, no heating—the winters always cold enough to suggest the dead lived there instead. This latest house pleased her. From the upstairs window she could see a corner of the cemetery. Less than two hundred meters away lay a heap of bones that would never climb free. The sight warmed her icy heart. When Tyler saw her expression, he numbly told the agent: “We’ll take it.”
He brought her another cup, lifting her chin in passing, fingers brushing the marks he’d once left—as though to check whether her injuries had worsened. Then he turned away, ignoring her. The picture of a murderer in an apron, quietly cleaning a kitchen, would’ve made Enid furious if she’d been there—crying scandal, shaking Wednesday’s shoulders, trying to persuade her old roommate that she deserved better. But Wednesday wasn’t the sort to throw a dog on the street just because she didn’t want it. Besides, Tyler wasn’t her home, and she wasn’t his. She had always built a vessel out of plain, brutal rhetoric, meant to contain the things destroyed by reality.
Though they clung to each other, neither once mistook the other as their sole future. They both understood they were each other’s second-worst choice. They lived, breathed, survived this way—not to solve problems, but because they were the problem. Wednesday kept her eyes on her book, too indifferent to look up. What could she say? Wasn’t this already the most ideal life imaginable? Most Hydes coughed blood before thirty, and by her calculation, she had three or four more years to wait.
This routine was good enough. She turned another page.
04.
When they left the house, there were no kisses goodbye. When they came home, there were no embraces.
But if they ever chose to kiss, nothing in heaven or hell could stop them.
Wednesday’s life did not revolve around Tyler. She had her own amusements: the detective novel she was writing, the murders she investigated. She would break into criminal organizations, dig up graves she shouldn’t. Most of the time she worked alone, but sometimes she dragged Tyler along. One day he realized he had dug more graves for Wednesday than he had bodies for his own murders, and sighed at the decay of civilization. When things went well, the matter ended with the Hyde’s claws; when not, they were hunted together. After a while, they couldn’t even tell which of them caused each move—sixty percent Tyler, forty percent Wednesday, and today was fifty-fifty.
An intruder entered their home.
Not only trampling the carpet, breaking furniture, but with the nerve to pull a combat knife and a taser.
For one brief instant, facing death in her own house, Wednesday was almost enchanted—unable to tear her eyes away. She’d been restless for three months, even fooled once by Ellie’s apple pie. But the thrill was short-lived, interrupted by a fool who lacked all sense.
“…Who are you playing with now?”
She blinked. Tyler already had her pinned against him, one arm locked around her waist, nails digging into flesh. He enclosed her in his body, the smell of wet paper clinging to her nose. Bored, he looked past her at the scene—his left arm holding Wednesday, his right hand locked without mercy around the intruder’s throat.
Outdoors, he could still pass as the polite young man, kindly repairing fences. Indoors, under the lamp’s flicker, his face was harder to read. The line of his cheek and nose carved a shadow, a faint omen born of someone’s desperate wish. Tyler had realized this long ago: people lived on illusions. They believed the road taken every day must lead home; believed every goodbye in the morning guaranteed a safe return by night; believed the last kiss before bed wouldn’t be the last. Such illusions fell apart the moment they met him on a dark road.
In his youth, he had once drowned the entire town in fear.
He taught them why stepping outside felt like crossing into the land of the dead.
By the time he released his grip, the man’s neck was broken.
Wednesday sighed, barely audible.
“Utterly disappointing.”
“Me, or him?”
“Both. You should know I can handle everything myself.”
“He’d been following you for two days.”
“I knew. Since the last town. He was with the two you killed, wasn’t he? I hadn’t finished my questions.”
“If you’d kept asking, you’d be dead. He had a gun hidden too.” Tyler’s voice was flat. “Be glad we finished before the Hyde came out.”
“Glad of what? That no bear showed up?”
She pushed his arm away. Tyler grunted, kicked the corpse, lazily flipped it over to make sure it stayed down. Wednesday had just finished decorating the house, Tyler had bought a new coffee machine and oven—neither wanted to move again. Their eyes met. Decision made. Drag him to the backyard. Burn his clothes and papers. Dig a hole. Bury him.
“You’re too hasty,” she said. “I wasn’t done asking.”
“People with too many questions usually die fast.”
“Sounds like you’re saying I should die.”
“You should,” Tyler replied, dropping another shovelful of dirt.
The night wind dried the soil quickly. They placed no marker. No one wanted to carry such things to the next house. Wednesday thought of her parents, who had fallen in love as students, so much that every school year they buried someone or pushed them from a tower. She hated to admit it, but she was walking the same road. She glared at Tyler, finding solace only in one thing—her man would never live to see her father’s age.
05.
That night, she finally demanded Tyler lift his shirt.
As the antiseptic seeped into his torn flesh, his body tightened involuntarily. She drew in a breath—the smell of rust and meat washing over her chest. His breathing rose and fell, ragged with pain, his chest trembling. Wednesday pressed down on the wound, her gaze fixed on his ashen face. Sweat glistened on his brow as he swallowed the urge to groan.
Her inspection revealed he had taken two bullets. The one she’d kicked open, and another poorly treated by his own hand. He had dug the rounds out himself, crude and careless, leaving the wounds jagged and filthy. It looked terrible. She wiped around the injuries with a damp cloth, cotton soaked in medicine dragging slowly across his skin.
The bandages wound tight over red and purple flesh. Her hands did not tremble, her strength exact. At the final pull she half-expected him to cry out, but the pallid Tyler only flinched once, his shoulders twitching—no more.
“Don’t move for the next few days. The wound will split.”
He answered blandly, “If you don’t mess around, I won’t.”
She packed away the bloodied cloths without so much as a blink.
“You’re in a bad mood?”
“Hearing you breathe puts me in a bad mood.”
This time he didn’t answer back. Slumped against the headboard, he looked like a sponge collapsed in on itself.
“Not for long,” he murmured, as if to reassure her.
“…”
“Just endure it a little longer.”
For a moment she thought of that day at the police station—the first time his presence rattled her to the bone. She had stood at the door, listening as he spoke, smiling while showing her his endless malice, stacking fear like trophies, then walking away. The absurdity and contempt had enveloped her like a cavern. Slowly, she had felt something tilt colder and colder. Some people spend their whole lives crossing the desert; others are born deserts themselves. She hadn’t felt that cold in a long time.
“By the way—the towel.” His voice broke her reverie.
“What towel?”
He pointed at the blood-soaked rag. “Don’t throw it out. It’ll wash clean. Leave it—I’ll wash it tomorrow.”
She humored him, tossing it in the basket.
“Towels need to be sorted by color,” she reminded.
“What color is blood?”
“It’s ours.”
That made him cough. That one night, the year he first met Wednesday, he had been lying in the bathtub, screaming. The sound bounced off the tiled walls, returning to him with warmth and flesh. He felt the temperature cascade over his forehead. In the water, he saw Wednesday’s face. In that small town, Tyler had never seen anyone—or anything—so beautiful. He wanted to destroy her, to push her out the window, throw her into a bottomless dark pit, and never see her again in his life. In his imagination at that moment, Wednesday was undeniably red. The color of the towel. The only color he could claim.
Tyler touched the fading bruise on her cheek. A wave of nausea hit him. He wanted to pull his hand back; the surrounding clamor vanished. Yet instead, he drew her toward him. Wednesday straddled his thigh without blinking, gazing straight at him. He should bury her in the backyard. The thought came suddenly. He knew her body, the softness of her curves, the feel of her skin. He touched her throat, relishing the sensation of being a monster disguised as human. He liked tearing diaphragms apart, liked the calm and stability of birth collapsing at dusk, liked the streets’ peace obliterated.
He knew how the wind-swept grass felt—soft, damp. He knew the grit of the wastelands, the misty forest paths. He knew the town’s unchanging bell chimes and orderly produce shops. He wished he had been born a hurricane, born a disaster. He wished he were a beast devouring forests, drinking animal blood and flesh. He could strip the skin, dismantle limbs, crush skulls.
When he was a child, the shops he passed often closed, replaced over time. Taking down their signs felt like posting obituaries, awaiting the next tenants. No one mourned, no one lamented. The smell of cleaning chemicals and varnish made his head spin. Looking at the empty shops, he realized he could fill these abandoned spaces with his own presence. He didn’t need to raise his voice or measure casually, but he had to bury her—bury her in the backyard, where no one could dig her up.
Wednesday looked down at him with a completely bored expression, her exhaled breath curling into smoke, as if fully understanding what he was thinking.
How dare you, her eyes seemed to say.
But aloud, she only asked, “That café you took over—it’s opening, isn’t it?”
“I thought you didn’t care. Should be ready next week.”
“So you chose barista over bear?”
“Not second-rate,” he muttered. “You can come. Sit there when you write. I’ll keep a seat for you.”
“Forget it. I see your ugly face at home. Why ruin my day with it too?”
He looked away, sulking. “…Not that ugly.”
She almost laughed. Almost.
Their words were nets trying to catch the unsayable. They never spoke plainly. Yet somehow, they always conveyed what they felt.
“I heard you fixed someone’s fence,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“I have a broken music box. I never fix it.”
“…Do you want it fixed?”
“No.”
She pulled his head to her chest, his forehead on her collarbone. They looked like lovers, as if they truly loved each other—enough to drag the other into their own grave.
“I don’t want it fixed at all,” she said.
In their rotting minds, they had thought countless times of tearing each other’s throats apart, but never once of parting. They’d had countless chances to end the other, and let them all slip. Each for a reason.
Wednesday, obsessive and cruel, held him, savoring his warmth and the bitter tang of medicine. She hoped that one day he would understand, and regret—not begging her, back in Jericho, to kill him. That he’d realize he should have begged her to slit his throat early, to spare him this fate. She hoped one day, when his organs spilled into the dirt, he would finally see there was no permanence. That all their years of running meant nothing. Then she would let him curse her as he bled out slow.
He coughed again. She patted his back without expression. He hesitated, then carefully wrapped his arms around her in return.
She had lied—she would show up at the café next week. Like a teenager again, she’d sit by the window with a book, waiting for him in his apron to bring her four shots of espresso.
Wednesday had always said: nothing is more unfortunate than a man and woman in love.
She didn’t want to part, to say goodbye, to watch him shackled in a cage beyond her reach.
She would drink his coffee, read the news about bears in the hills, come home to watch the romance films she hated most. Tyler only slept well with her nearby; on nights she stayed out, his face turned deathly pale.
She had loved him. He longed for her. They’d been strangers, then friends, then lovers, then enemies, and back to lovers again. All long past. She never imagined an ending. Never truly wanted him to die in the next breath. She’d once told her mother she would never love; once wished Tyler would live nameless in a cell until death. Neither had come true.
This was just right. Precious, nightmarish. Things couldn’t possibly get worse.
They no longer dreamed. They lived as others’ nightmares. Both knew there could never be a better ending, and believed that as long as they were together, they would never die in peace.
Wednesday knew the worst had already happened.
The worst was their separation.
The second worst was their love.
She savored this second-worst life.
Keeping a monster that loved her.
Drinking coffee that just passed muster.
Loving him, hating him.
Not wishing things worse, nor better.
Each week Tyler brought her a dead flower.
She collected them slowly, until they made a sky of stars.
But when she thought about it—she had never liked stars.
Every time she kissed him, she thought the same thing.
Let the stars all fall and die.
Fin.