I bite my lip and dive back in.
ISAID STAY DOWN!”
BOOM. I let my fist hit its head like a sack of dumbbells. The sidewalk ruptured around the monster’s frame, giving it a nice little smoking crater to rest its head.
Silence. It twitched a bit, and then stopped moving all together.
“Okay,” I panted, “okay. This needs to stop right—”
A massive claw slammed over my face and pulled me off my feet by my head.
So now this was happening.
For a second, between its fingers, I could see those eyes, bulbous and lifeless, staring into me, and then there was wind with intermittent moments of incredible discomfort. The thing wheeled me around by the skull like a rag doll, slammed me into something hard and rough, and then flailed me around again. Swoosh, BOOM, swoosh, BOOM, swoosh, BOOM, until it flung my limp form across the street and through a shop window.
I dragged myself to my feet, brushed off the broken glass and mannequin anatomy, and surveyed the situation. We were in a narrow shopping street downtown, where I’d managed to chase the grotesque beast. This fight had happened every night for the past couple of days. Every night since the El Dorado, it had been the same: I would find it, question it, fight it, and then lose it among the back alleys of the city. We’d grappled along 121st Street, terrifying pedestrians and sending traffic to a screeching halt before the creature had lurched its way to the rooftops and taken off downtown with huge, agile leaps and bounds. I had lost him for a while around Times Square, but finally caught him again in the West Village and went straight to the task of beating the snot out of him—which was, I admit, proving hard than I’d imagined.
It was changing. This was the problem. With every fight it was leaner, stronger, a little more unpredictable. Every night I lost a little ground with it, and it got a little more eager to see me…. In fact, tonight it had gone right where I wanted it to. This thing’s human side had told me, screamed out to me, that this creature knew what I am. Whatever this beast was, it wasn’t right, wasn’t what I thought it was.
It hunched down across the street, bigger, more repulsive than ever. God, it was hideous. Trails of sweat and mucus trickled down its anemone-like tentacles. Jumping at it, tackling it again, would just prove even more useless. Face it, if you don’t reason with this thing, it’ll probably kill you. Take a moment and try again. Take a moment and try again.
“Whoever is inside this monster, please step out,” I barked, raising a hand in defense and praying that whoever was behind this mass of twisting fury could hear me. “You are more powerful than this, this thing that has a hold over you. I know you can break free of its hold. Please.”
The beast lumbered to its feet and tilted its head.
“Please. You have to fight it.”
There was a dry sound, like something slowly splitting apart, and then the monster began to disappear, drying up and rotting away. Bit by bit, the decay seemed to climb its way over the beast’s figure, every inch of skin drying, cracking, and falling to the ground as nothing more than ash. And when the beast was no longer a monster, just a silhouette in filth, a gust of wind blew away the last of the decayed body to reveal the bum from the park, naked, pale, and wide-eyed. He shook a little, made a soft noise in the back of his throat, and then tumbled to the concrete.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHEN I COME into school Monday, I’m glowing almost as much as I was Sunday. Randall notices immediately and starts trying to get all the “scrumptious details” out of me. Most of the questions just get a big smile and a chuckle as a response.
“Did you guys hook up? Is that it? Oh my God, you didn’t sleep together, did you?”
I smile and chuckle. “No.”
“Well, what then? You’re about as bright-eyed as Martha Stewart on speed, Stockenbarrel.”
Smiling, chuckling. “I saw her naked.”
Randall’s eyes become like those of Sissy Spacek in the prom scene in Carrie. “What? You what?”
“I saw her naked for the first time.”
“You guys had sex? You’ve only know each other for, like, what, a couple weeks! You’re the man! How did I miss what a pimp you were?”
“We didn’t have sex. I just saw her naked, y’know?” Wow, that actually sounds a lot more stupid than it seemed at the time.
“But what’s the context? Did she put on some sort of show for you? Was food involved? A pasta show, was that it?”
“I don’t even know what that is, and you’re a terrible person. It was only for a moment, anyway. We just had a really nice time. She’s incredible, you know?”
He nods with a look of honest agreement. “Yeah, she is. You lucky bastard.” The rest of the walk to class is silent and heartfelt. We’re happy, Andrew’s nowhere in sight, everything’s nice. Until I open my big mouth.
“Renée takes a lot of pills, doesn’t she?” I ask, trying not to sound too worried.
Randall nods and glances at the floor. “Yeah. A whole bunch. It’s always one cocktail or the next, so the results are…inconsistent. It’s hard to describe.”
Yowch. “Why doesn’t she tell me about these things? What’re they for?”
He shrugs. “Some are for basic things. Her ADD isn’t too bad, but it’s bad enough that the meds are a necessity. Most of the rest are for depression, anxiety disorders, the occasional psychotic episode, things surrounding her parents…Basically, they keep her from going bugfuck.”
The venom gnaws at the back of my head. It’s there every minute of every day now, endlessly laughing, growling, biding its time. There seems to be no hurry for it to break free and wreak havoc now; it’s content to wait in the background, to brood. The Renée issue isn’t helping.
“You ever seen her go ‘bugfuck’?”
Randall nods and looks away from me. “I have. You don’t want to deal with that, man. The meds might weird you out a bit, but Renée’s much better off with them. Trust me on that point at least.”
“I want to help her, Randall. I feel so helpless about all of this. The medications, and…her parents…I dunno.”
“Just look after her. Take good care of her.” His smile splits open. “Or I’ll fucking kill you.”
Just wait, hisses the venom, it’s coming. You think things are getting better, you’re in for a surprise. You’re a part of something now, a cog in the works, which means so am I. This shitstorm isn’t going to get any smaller, and I know just how to deal with it. Just you wait. It’s gonna be huge.
When I get home from school, I hear voices in the living room, at least one unfamiliar. I carefully lay down my backpack, hang up my coat, and eavesdrop.
“It’s not that he’s mean or threatening, Laura, he just gets really emotional when he gets angry.” My mom.
“Does he get violent?”
This would be about me then.
“Yes. Sometimes way too violent. I get scared for him, but also scared for his friends…and sometimes, I mean…he’d never hit his brother.”
“Are you sure of that?”
Bitch, screams the venom, bitch, you don’t know a single goddamn thing about me, so keep your fucking mouth shut. I’ll hit who I want to.
The silence that follows hangs in the air, like a suicide jumper about to splatter.
“No. No, I’m not. I wish I was, but when he’s around his brother and he begins to get agitated, I’m scared that he’s…I can’t even say it. That he’s going to take it out on the nearest person available. These outbursts—”
Angries.
“—they’re scary because they aren’t just him being upset. It’s someone else. When I look at him, I see this sweet, caring boy who loves his family and his friends, and then, suddenly, there’s this other person in my house where my son once stood. This screaming, seething person who scares the crap out of me and everyone else around him, and honestly is not welcome here.” She realizes what she just said and sighs, ashamed.
This again. More therapy, mo
re long talks, like I’m a disorder, like you can be cured. I’m not impotence or alcoholism, I’m rage in its worst form. They’ll never take me alive.
“Well, that’s unacceptable.”
“Laura, what else is there to do? He hated Jim Reiner so much…. Any time I bring therapy up, he gets this look on his face, like I’m stabbing him in the back….”
It’s a shrink. Must be. No one else is as good at making people spill their guts out. Fucking parasites.
“I’ll talk to him, Charlotte, but this is up to him.”
That’s all I need to hear. I walk out from the front hallway and march over to the fridge, doing everything in my power to keep the venom at bay. The energy of it, the power, is already coursing through my bloodstream. I can barely keep my hand steady as I reach for something to drink. I hear Mom’s voice say, “Hey, honey, how was your day?”
I turn around and face her, making sure my voice is good and hard. I am ready to be a bastard. “Fine. Who’s she?”
“I actually wanted to talk to you about this….”
My vision starts blurring with anger. It’s half me, half venom at this point. “Well, you didn’t. So who’s she?”
The woman sitting with my mother looks like Ann Coulter. She’s blond, not that annoying bleached blond but that warm, natural blond, her hair reaching down past her shoulders. She’s wearing a blue turtleneck sweater and wire-rimmed glasses, and she has the biggest breasts I have ever seen in my entire life. The muscles in her back must be insane to carry those things around. Given different circumstances, they’d almost be comical, but now they only serve to make her grotesquely irritating. She’s holding a mug of coffee and staring at me with utter neutrality. Yeah, that’s right, bitch, keep looking at me like I’m a specimen. I’m real fucking scared. You have NO IDEA who you’re dealing with.
“Locke, this is Laura Yeski. She’s an old friend of mine from college.”
I sneer. “Ahhh. Psych major?”
“Locke,” my mom says in a voice that lets me know I’m going too far, “Laura’s a psychologist. I wanted you to talk to her.”
I shrug and glance at my boots. “Why not? Let’s rap.”
My mom stands up and walks over to me, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Look, honey, I have to go pick Lon up from school. All I ask is that you talk to her until I get back, and see how you feel. Afterward we’ll talk about it, okay?”
I calculate the time in my head. It’ll take my mom about a half hour, forty-five minutes to pick up my brother. I can go that long without putting my boot through this woman’s skull.
A few minutes later, after my mom’s thrown her coat on and said her too-cheery good-byes, I sit down across the table from Laura—sorry, Dr. Yeski—and slowly sip my soda. She hasn’t stopped staring at me, and it’s making me a little uncomfortable and a lot pissed, because I can tell that behind her eyes it’s all zeroes on the checks my mom will have to write her.
“So, you seem not to like me very much, Locke,” she says, bringing her coffee to her lips.
“Nope,” I say.
“What’s that about? You don’t know me, after all.”
“Well, doctor,” I say, emphasizing her purpose, “the last psychologist I dealt with was one of the bigger assholes I’ve ever met. I’m not sure you’ll be any different.”
“So you’re calling me an asshole?”
“Maybe not calling you one…I’m expecting you to be an asshole.”
“And all you know is that I’m a psychologist.”
“That’s all I need.”
“Well, first off,” she says, looking up into my eyes, “Jim Reiner was a psychiatrist, while I’m a psychologist. They’re different things.”
“How so?”
“One is crazy, the other isn’t.”
“Which one’s the crazy one?”
“I guess you’ll decide that for yourself.”
Touché. I can’t help but laugh a little, a tiny snort of amusement at the comment.
“Second, your mother invited me to talk to you because you yourself seem a little uncomfortable with these problems you’re having. These…what does she call them?”
“Angries.”
“Right. What do you call them? She said you had a name for them.”
“I call it the venom.”
“Interesting. Anyway, I just want to be someone who you can talk to. You’d come to my office once a week and we’d talk about whatever is on your mind. I’d scribble in a notebook about certain things I notice in your ideas or beliefs, and I’d try to help you work out some of your problems. Pretty painless, and wholly your prerogative.”
I sip my soda to show her I’m considering this thing carefully. “And if I refuse?”
“Then I go back to my office and get back to work.”
“That’s it? I say no, and you leave?”
“Yup,” she says. “Locke, I’m not here to be your friend or your confidante. I came here because your mother’s a dear friend of mine, and from what she told me, this ‘venom’ thing of yours is becoming a problem for you and your family.”
It’s about to become a problem for you in a couple of seconds, you hideous slag.
“You think I need curing, that it?”
“I didn’t say that—”
“But you implied it,” I snap, rising to my feet. My face flushes white-hot. My hands tighten on the table. The dark parts of my brain twitch. “There’s nothing to fix here, okay, doc? I’m my own fucking boss, and I don’t give a shit how you know my mother. I’ve had enough of this psychobabble bullshit.”
“Fair enough, but think about this,” she says unwaveringly. “You may be content with the person you are, but you’re scaring the living hell out of your mother, who seems to care a great deal for you. And while you may not like me, or therapy in general, it might be worth a try if it’ll stop you from hurting the people you love.”
“The people I love can tell me what they fucking think.”
She snorts. “Can they? Then why’d your mother call me?”
The words blow out the rage like a candle, and I feel the burning darkness replaced with the emotional muck. She’s right, as frustrating as that is. If my mother had been able to tell me she was scared, if I wasn’t such a horrible mess, I wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. Slowly, ashamedly, I sit back into my chair and lower my head, defeated. “Point taken.”
She smiles finally, a cool little smile that could be a smirk if it wanted to. “So let’s talk. Venom, huh?”
“Yeah. The venom.”
“Like the comic-book villain or the band?”
I didn’t know there was a band named Venom. I hate that. How dare she get the upper hand on me? “Neither. Is that supposed to impress me in some hip kind of way?”
“No. I don’t think impressing you is really in the cards. Just a question.”
“That’s clever. You’re clever.”
“If we’re going to do this, you have to be willing. I can’t fight you on this, but compromise is always an option. Let’s make a deal.”
I feel like Faust, but I nod, and we talk.
A couple of nights later, Lon and I are having dinner together alone. It’s Mexican takeout, which means we eat it on the couch in front of The Simpsons. It’s the closest thing to male bonding that we have. I don’t do catch, but I’m fine with nachos and Apu.
Lon glances at me midway through his burrito and says softly, “So, was that lady with the huge boobs your new shrink?”
I have no idea how Lon knows any of this. I didn’t hide the fact that I’d gone to see Dr. Reiner, but I never really discussed it with Lon, and I didn’t think my mom had either. The idea always scared me a little bit: Big brothers are supposed to be protectors, people to look up to. They should be able to beat up bullies for you and make sure you know what terms like “popping her cherry” mean later in your life. The fact that I’m so screwed up, screwed up enough to need therapy anyway, is not okay. I wi
sh Lon didn’t have to even consider this shit. Having him ask me about it is almost painful.
I sip my chocolate milk and nod. “Yeah. Her boobs are gargantuan, aren’t they?”
He stares at the screen in deep thought, and then nods fiercely. “Do you like her?”
“Y’know, I don’t know yet,” I say. “Too soon to say. She’s analyzing me, and that’s weird and all, but she’s a lot nicer than the last one. This is about my life, my mind…not concepts or whatever.”
“Like…about the venom?”
The word settles into my blood like a block of ice. “What?”
“The venom…right?” he says with a waver. “The venom is the bad thing. Like, your angries.”
Either my brother is clairvoyant or someone has loose lips. How the fuck does he know? I’ve never told him its name, and I’ve told everyone, everyone, to keep it a secret for this one reason. Seeing a therapist is one level of weakness, but this is too much. “Yeah.” I sigh, keeping my eyes on Bart. “That’s what she’s interested in. We’re gonna see if we can work on it together.”
He nods, and we both return to TV land. I’m stuffing enchilada in my mouth, thinking this topic is thankfully over, when I notice Lon giving me little glances out of the corner of his eye. Finally I’m quick enough to make contact before he can turn away as though he has no idea what I’m looking at.
“What’s up?”
He’s quiet for a little bit, and then mumbles, “What’s it like, when you get…”
“The venom?”
“Yeah.”
He’s my brother. He has a right to ask, and I have a duty to be honest with him. “It’s like I’m…really powerful, at first. I feel driven, invincible, but afterward…Well, you’ve seen me, right?” I smile a bit, making him feel like he’s “on the inside” with my psychosis. “The shivering, sweating, not being able to talk for a long time, man…It’s real bad. And it never gets me anywhere, all it does is upset people and make me seem like a total nutcase.”
“Really?”
“What—yes, really. Why, what’s ‘really’ mean?”
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