"Remember when I won those tickets for that Packers game, for the stadium near our old lab?"
Finally - a smile comes to the sweet widow's lips and she almost trips into a slight chuckle.
"Of course!" she beams. "That was crazy!"
"Yes," I agree - "more than you know, for more reasons than you understand."
Maddie shakes her head.
"'You're looking sharp!'" she quotes herself from the day in question, giggling in slight self-deprecation. "I was such a dork back then!"
"No... you weren't," I reassure her. "You were beautiful then, and you're beautiful now.
"Vlad..." Maddie blushes. She tries to steer my mind towards the events of that fateful day. "You were so excited! You ran to tell me, as I was-"
"You were wearing your labcoat," I begin to effortlessly recall, finishing her thought, "hiding a blue halter top, a studded belt, and a purple skirt with flowing fabric, like ribbons. You were working on an experiment..."
"The Spectral Emotional Ecto Sludge," she correctly remembers. "I forgot all about that nasty, brown goop. It was so ugly... so sticky and slimy, so-"
"So like HIM!" I shout at her, startling even myself, a bit. Maddie is taken off her guard by my conviction, but that is okay.
I have my reasons for making an enemy of the Sludge I met on that day, and they are the same as my vendetta against her late, great Jack: it cost me yet another chance with her!"
- "Hey Vlad! You're looking sharp!" Maddie called from afar, deep within a memory forcing its way through my powerful brain. "Whatcha' so excited for?"
My eyes soon caught the aforementioned ribbon-like fabric of her unforgettable purple skirt. It flew through the air like angel wings. Those eyes very quickly went to hers, though, as I tried not to stare.
(I may be a villain, but I'm not a creeper.)
Mainly I remember this occurrence because it felt like a gust of wind had taken up toward me as I entered the lab through the creaky door, tickets outstretched in excitement with my flailing hands trying to reach for Maddie. It was as if I was having a premonition before I actually had the ability to have them (a prepremonition).
I was so happy. This was finally my chance to win her over - to ask her out on a date to one of the biggest games in history!
(Okay, it actually wasn't an important game, but free tickets are free tickets, and boy, did I need an excuse to work up the nerve.)
"Maddie!" I gleefully called out as a mere mortal man. Up until a certain point, I'd consider these the simpler days. "I have some amazing news!"
"I can tell!" she boasted with a surprised smile. "Your emotions are radiating throughout the Sludge - which, of course, means the experiment was a resounding success!"
Delighted with her own information first, she beamed.
"What is that?" I asked, puzzled and broken away, too, from my own cause of success.
Like a supermodel posing with a product, her hand held a meager tupperware container among the land of test tubes. In it was a sight that scars my eyes to this day.
"Well!" Maddie grinned, seemingly waiting for hours just to be asked - "This little baby is the magical - the fantastical - the - Spectral Emotional Ecto Sludge!"
I tilted my head slightly to the left, thinking to myself how deeply I was falling in love with her every graceful gesture. I had to keep these feelings to myself, so I resigned to looking rightfully puzzled by her experiment.
"Spectral... Emotional ... Sludge?"
"Sort of!" she laughed, and true to its name, there was an emotional reaction to match her own within the brown, toxic slime. It danced to the sound of her voice, highly reactive.
"What does it do?" I pondered to her, intrigued.
"Well," - and Maddie hesitated with a flush upon her face that made my heart skip, here - "I'm not exactly sure?"
Both Maddie and the slime coyly shrugged.
"It's supposed to read the emotions of the people it comes into contact with," she continued, "and what I was hoping for was that it could help communicate emotional resonance in the supernatural realms, too... but..."
"But it's dancing." I smiled. "Maddie, you're a genius!"
She took a quick bow, drinking in my admiration, before finally acknowledging what I was holding.
"What are those?" she asked, the slime still hypnotically clinging to her voice in a dance.
"Well!" - and I tried to use the same inflection as her, to make her laugh (and it worked; yes!). "Do you remember the call-in show from a week ago?"
"Yeah-?"
- "MADDIE!" -
- Just then, a second gust of wind generated - a huge one - the wind generated by a man wearing tights one-fourths his size, and incredible amount of hot air coming from his own bullshit. Imagine a gorrilla had mated with an ostrich at a superhero convention, and that would only cover his mother's genes - but I digress. The oafish, walking fencepost returned.
"Jack!"
And as if compelled by the hands of fate, as Maddie's voice rang out in confusion of the three of us all in a state of excitement at once, the slime hopped up from its container, hurling itself in the air like a sentient pile of flying vomit.
(About that premonition...)
"OH NO!" screamed Maddie.
"NO!" Jack screamed like a mentally stunted chimpanzee. "Maddie! Vlad is projectile vomiting - QUICK! - FIND SOMETHING ABSORBENT BEFORE IT STAINS THE LAB!"
"WHAT?!" I tried to scream out in confusion, but it was too late. Like an obliviously charging rhino, Jack began hurling towards me. "JACK, NO!"
"Jack!" Maddie cried out in sincere panic - "It's - NO! - IT'S - "
The tickets were ripped from my hand before I could say anything else, and I went hurling in the other direction of Jack, and the "puke" for about five feet, before landing on the ground, horrified.
"PAPER SHOULD DO THE JOB! WAY TO ALWAYS BE RESOURCEFUL, VLADDIE! - EVEN WHEN YOU'RE SICK!"
The sentient Ecto Sludge ate the tickets in the air in an instant, controlled by the will of its stupid and unrightful wielder. It then grew exponentially in size until it covered the walls of the lab... but in an instant, it was gone. In one twist of fate to add to the list of all the ways Jack had robbed me of Maddie - even in freak accidents no one could have foreseen - another notch was added in the belt.
As I told you before, I have begun to better understand Jack in wake of his passing. This day, though I had no true way of knowing, up until tonight, sealed his fate.
But I'm getting ahead of myself again.
The food is eaten. The drinks are drank.
- "You didn't tell us that those were tickets for weeks!" Maddie recalls, laughing with a snort and reflecting back much differently than me on the memory. " - Even up until the day of the game, you just kept sulking and sulking! You didn't even show up for the next couple-"
"- It's his fault!" I scream, rageful. "It's always been! That should have been OUR game!"
"Vlad..."
"Maddie - you don't understand," I plead. "Can you not see that I've waited lifetimes just for a moment like this alone with you again?
"Alone... with me?"
"You're laughing again, Maddie," I remark. "Do you know how long I've waited to hear you laugh or smile and think of me?"
"You..."
Finally, I begin to read a shred sympathy in the voice of my beloved - one that she has denied for so long, just like Jack has. She has such an innocent coyness to her... behind the makeup, behind the tears. She has spent all of this time untamed. Her powers could have even rivaled mine, in terms of sheer intellect. But like the dulling of a blade, her thoughts and memories and dreams fade away into memories of Jack.
"You talk about him like he was just something in your way," she moans, saddened.
I want to blurt out, "he was" - to sink back into sheer hatred and revenge - but the game has changed, and I want to return her lowered guard with genuine affection. Both of us are grieving in very different ways.
"Maddie," I concede, "Perhaps I was misguided in seeking revenge in the ways I have before. Perhaps, if you were happy with him, I can be happy for you. The main thing that I wanted you to see tonight is that you would have been - and could still be - much happier with me."
"Vlad..." she sinks, almost recoiling into her seat. "Why have you always been so... interested in me? With all your power and money, you could have anyone in the world - or ANY world. Why ME?"
"You..." and my voice and heart both skip in tune.
"Think about it," she suggests, like the hushing of the words that I cannot yet follow with. "Get back to me... after you tell me how you killed my husband."
"I - I ... didn't kill him," I assure her - and to me, this is still the truth.
"Can you prove that to me tonight?" she sternly asks in the tone of an almost threat or warning.
"If I can..." I begin to bargain " ... will you stay with me tonight?"
"Vlad... I... " - she turns her head and fades in and out of racing thoughts and priorities, confused about her true feelings. I anticipated this moment. I have been waiting restless eternities - as I've rambled on about.
"Think about it," I smirk.
Maddie is not impressed... just still very lost.
My hands wish to touch her cheek.
My long, expensive overcoats long to keep her body warm.
"I love him, Vlad, living or dead, killed by you or ten thousand grisly ghosts - I love Jack."
"But you love me, too... don't you, Maddie?"
"I..."
"Isn't that why you came here, Maddie...? Do you not remember the good times with me - times where Jack would never cease to screw up, and yet you never stopped forgiving him? Why? Why, Maddie?"
She cannot reply, her breath and eyes stolen by an oncoming emotion. Her breath smells of Merlot, and her words are from the heart.
"It wasn't ... exactly a grisly," I begin, drawing her to stay on her guard. She takes the bait, and gives me an angered look.
"What was it, Vlad? What happened? What do you know?"
"Maddie," I begin to unravel a bit, again, with the truth. "All I have ever wanted to know in life was your love... not a world of grisly ghosts."
" What kind of ghost have you been hiding from me, Vlad?"
My brow lowers. My body stiffens. One more drink of wine... is drank.
"I know of a ghost more powerful and brutal than those you and your family have struggled to understand," I begin, - "one that feeds on anger, hate, and pain... and of that pain, I know a pit so deep and eternal that it could never contain said ghost. It longs forever, wishing to belong to something - to attach to someone - and it waits, and festers and and goes insane... like me. With that pain and insanity, festering under the surface of my power and your marriage, we have likewise birthed a rival to Jack much like me, as well."
"This is pointless." Maddie retorts, catching me off my guard. "You're still just rattling off nonsense. Do you still think you are the only one who is in pain, Vlad? Do you have any idea how you and your powers have hurt other people? If there is such a ghost - such a creature - such a MONSTER - how is it not you, yourself - your ego, your plans - YOUR cause?"
Now it is my turn to hesitate.
"There are far worse monsters than simply me, Maddie," I begin to my love, still overtaken with the weight of all my devious decisions visa vis her attempted guilt trip. "Likewise, there are many causes to fight for - 'the Ecno Acne Supercure Fundraising Agogo-plex,' for one - but I digress. With absolute power, corruption is absolutely essential, is it not? With all of this power, the temptation to rule the galaxy would be strong for anyone - even your son - and even you, Maddie."
"I'm not like you, Vlad," she dismisses. "I don't desire power. I want to make the world a better place - for me - for Danny, for everyone-"
"Young Danny has yet to fully grow into his powers," I remind her " - to realize the potential laid out before us, as demigods. I only wish now to guide him to understand the worlds beyond our own, and yet still - you - and he deny me - empowering a father that has no clue how to handle him, this power, or ... you."
"Yeah?" Maddie shrugs, seeming to tire of the conversation reaching a vague stalemate. "Well, it's too late for that, now," she laments. "Jack's dead... and you're going to tell me what happened to him, and... where's Danny?!"
Oh, great. Now even Jack Fenton's sperm has to interfere with my life in his absence.
"I'm sure he's fine - probably 'going ghost' or something uninteresting such as -"
A large amount of thudding and banging interrupts me - followed by a voice I wish would dissipate into the brick walls.
"MOM! GET OUT! GET OUT OF HERE! IT'S A-"
"DANNY!"