𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐏𝐇𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐒, 𝐚 𝐓𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐟𝐚𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝑰𝑰𝑰- 𝑨 𝑾𝒉𝒐𝒍𝒆 𝑵𝒆𝒘 𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒍𝒅

As soon as Penelope's eyes closed, she was knocked out for the night. To her delight, she had no dreams and when she woke the next morning, she felt fully rested. Her sight was a little blurry but once she blinked a few times, she took a double take at her surroundings.

She was no longer in her room but in a darker, more lavish bedroom. Weak sunlight filtered through the big window on her right as she sat up in the bed.

"What... in the world?" She whispered weakly to herself. For a moment, she thought this might be another vivid dream and that she'd get pulled out of it soon.

"It's just a dream... it's just a dream..." She consoled herself with those words and sat up, waiting for the dream to morph into something else, or better yet, for her to wake up. Luckily, there was a clock on the nightstand next to her she could watch, but as the minutes ticked by, the dream wasn't changing like it usually did.

Her eyes wandered to the lavish decor of the bedroom while she waited to be whisked off to some other mind-boggling experience. Whoever lived here was from old money for sure. Dark wood furniture, a canopy bed, gothic windows... Next to the clock on the nightstand was a framed photo. She picked it up out of curiosity and her eyes shot wide open at the image before her.

It was Penelope. And Gomez and Morticia stood at either side of her.

She burst out laughing at that. As if the idea of her being in the same image as Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston in their Addams Family days was the most absurd thing she had ever conceived of. Her laughter slowly died out and her eyes focused back on the picture. It began to unsettle her a bit, but not because it was scary. It was the growing familiarity with the picture that spooked her.

Slowly, Penelope's mind filled with the memory of that day. She remembered going down to a dark beach on a stormy day with her... parents? Yeah... her parents. Morticia and Gomez were her parents. They had decided to go out on a nice family outing and despite (or rather because of) the fact that they were soaked through from the rain and there was lightning flashing in the background, the three looked very happy.

She frowned. "No..."

Her parents were back in her hometown, working their jobs, and living their relatively calm lives. But... Gomez and Morticia felt like her parents too. She began to recall more memories she didn't even know she had. The bedtime stories, seeing them in the audience at her performances, the fencing lessons, the poison-making lessons, the holidays, etc. These all felt so foreign, yet so familiar.

"No." She repeated in a firmer tone, her hands shaking a little as she held the framed picture.

Part of her wanted to fight back against these memories. Her real parents were hardworking people. They weren't rich, but they had a comfortable home in a small city. And while they couldn't give her music, dancing, or fencing lessons, she lived well and made the most of her life so far. But even as she fought back, these new memories and their growing sense of familiarity were winning. And though it did not feel like one was trying to replace the other, that left her mind to grapple with two sets of realities. Two families. Two lives.

Just then, a set of footsteps could be heard in the hallway and it sounded like they were headed towards her room. Penelope's eyes laser-focused on the door as her heart rate picked up and her breaths came out in small gasps.

"No, no, no..." she thought to herself in a growing panic. In her previous "dreams," she never interacted with living things. They simply weren't there. Now there were footsteps?! This was where the two parts of her battled between a sense of normalcy and fear. Part of her was freaking out while the other was calm, knowing it was most likely her aunt. It was a strange feeling for her to be both panicked and nonchalant at the same time.