Venomous

by Christopher Krovatin

  “THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU!”

  “Please stop, I can’t—oh no. Oh God, no.”

  His pores turned deep black, and then begin growing into nubs; shapes; long, reaching appendages. The first of the tendrils began to form around his neck and arms, stretching hungrily out and twitching with anxiousness and rage.

  “Get away,” he gurgled in a voice only slightly his own. “Get away. It knows who you are, and it won’t stop….” And then his voice became garbled, because out of his mouth grew a mass of slippery, wriggling black tentacles, whipping fiercely. I watched as his legs formed huge, backward-facing spindles, like those of a dog or a goat. For a second there was still the silhouette of a man, hanging in the air, and then it was the creature, this horrible Blacklight from the future, my hideous reflection.

  It made a noise, sort of like metal being crushed in a scrapyard, and took its first careful step toward me.

  CHAPTER TEN

  IS THERE ANYTHING more satisfying than taking a shower in the bathroom of the girl who you just had a whole lot of noisy sex with? Unfamiliar showers are a pet peeve of mine, so this moment of bliss is less common. I never know how to operate the shower, what knobs to turn where, and what buttons to push this way or that. The water pressure always sucks, the floor feels strange and slippery, and, of course, there’s the pressing ethical question of whether or not you’re allowed to pee on the floor. The shower is one of those private, personal spaces that, through constant daily routine and observant familiarity, you know as your own. Cleaning yourself in someone else’s shower is like being the Jewish friend who was brought along to Sunday mass. This morning, however, was different. Walk in, turn on the water, and do my thing.

  Midway through washing my hair, the curtain gets pulled back and I jump. It’s probably Renée, right, but it could be Andrew or Aunt Marie—no glasses means constant paranoia (think Velma from Scooby-Doo). Fortunately it is Renée, naked and giving me a smile that I’m pretty sure is reserved just for my lanky ass. Without a word, our bodies mesh together, her breasts slippery against my chest, her lips hot and full and pillowy. As if on cue, everything besides Renée Tomas is gone. Nothing could make me happier than her and here and this.

  After we, ahem, wash up for a while, our arms curl around each other and just stand there in the steam, her head cradled under my chin.

  “Hey, you,” she says.

  “Mmm.”

  “So, last night…That was your first time, I take it.”

  “Mmm.”

  She giggles and runs her index finger back and forth along my skin. God in heaven, yes. “Is that an affirming or denying mumble?”

  “Affirming.”

  “Right.”

  After some silence, I have to ask Stupid Guy Question Number One. “How’d you know?”

  She makes a noise in her throat that means that she was expecting this. “There was just that little amount of…unfamiliarity with the procedure, I guess. Don’t worry. You’re a bit of a natural in the first place, and I had fun teaching you new things in the second.” She chuckles. “Corrupting you is kickass.”

  And Number Two, of course: “How was I?”

  “Good,” she says. “Really good. For your first time, stellar.”

  “Really?”

  “You just learned as you went along, y’know, placement and such. You were drunk, too…but man. You’re just on the ball when it comes to the little things.”

  “Hrm?”

  “You were good to my ears. Things like that.”

  “Just…reciprocating.”

  “You’ll be reciprocating a whole lot if I get my say from now on.”

  We take some more silence, occasionally rocking back and forth in each other’s arms. I feel her head twitch, and she stares straight up at me with a reluctant, miserable look.

  “Anyone told you about my folks yet?”

  The question catches me off guard, and I can’t be clever. “Yeah. I heard about it at school.”

  She nods. “I figured.” A pause, then: “It’s okay, you know. We can talk about it, or not, but I just want you to know it’s okay if we do. It’s not forbidden.”

  “Okay.”

  She keeps her eyes locked into mine. “I don’t sleep with a lot of boys.”

  I nod. “Okay.”

  “I mean, I have slept with some boys,” she says way too fast. “And some girls. And some of them were for fun, but most of them were only if I really, really cared about them.”

  All this is doing is making me think about my girlfriend with other guys, which is the most uncomfortable thing I can imagine, and girls, which is embarrassingly much less so. The venom stirs, mumbling low in its throat. She can feel the change in my body too and holds me out at arm’s length.

  “Look, this has a point.”

  “What’s that?”

  She puts her hand under my chin and guides my eyes to hers.

  “That I know last night was a little sudden,” she whispers, and then laughs. “And a little drunken, yeah. But I want you to know…that this isn’t just…I’m not…”

  The venom retreats like a wounded animal, and my heart feels like it’s going to burst. I lean forward and kiss her. It’s a Dawson’s Creek kiss, an interrupting kiss that lets the other person know that you understand what they’re going to say before you do. Her response is frantic; her hand finds the back of my head and presses. We kiss as if I’m going off to war.

  When we come up for air, she looks at me hard. “I’m going to be a bitch now.”

  “How so?”

  “Are you in love with me, Locke?”

  “Oh, you fucking bitch.”

  “I’m serious.”

  No matter what I answer, I’ll think it’s the wrong thing. Either I take the clingy, emotional path or the totally superficial path. So I go with what I feel. Which is something I rarely do, seeing as going with what I feel usually results in me standing over someone, cackling and sobbing in the same breath, while they rethink why they were fucking with me in the first place. This time, I feel something random and unprovoked and strange and utterly fantastic lying in the depths of my heart. The Great Truth, the Engine of Survival, the Fifth Element.

  “Yeah,” I whisper, “I’m pretty sure I am, Renée.”

  She looks at me for a bit more and then says, “Yeah, me too.”

  We grab each other tight, fearless.

  Renée has made it readily apparent that she’s not so adept in the cooking department, and I can make a mean batch of cream-cheese scrambled eggs (hey, you have a little brother, you learn to cook some fabulous platters that Mom wouldn’t tolerate if she was around). But as I come through the hallway into the glaring daylight of the kitchen, I realize that I’m in trouble.

  Because Andrew’s sitting there reading the funnies. The thin newspaper is bunched in his clenched-white hands. He looks like a big, mean, stupid, and thoroughly pissed-off gorilla who likes the Wu-Tang Clan. He looks like someone who’s just found the guy who fucks his sister in their kitchen.

  I freeze and let cold wash over me and come to rest in the pit of my stomach. A voice in the back of my mind reminds me of something I heard on the Discovery Channel: If a bear attacks, make yourself as big and loud as possible to chase it off. But before I can lift my arms and yell, “GO! AWAY!” Andrew takes a sip of his orange juice and mumbles, “Sid-down, Vinetti.”

  FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

  This is really, REALLY not the time.

  Say “make me”! That’d be awesome! Just try it. “Make me, Andrew.” It’d be like you’re in a Robert Rodriguez movie!

  I sit slowly, clasping my hands in front of me and regulating my breathing. The venom crouches calmly on its haunches, preparing to launch if necessary. There’s a good chance I’m going to bleed furiously at the end of the conversation, and I have to be ready for that. In the meantime, I can just pray that Renée stays in her room—or is wearing headphones.

  Andrew dramatically folds the p
aper in front of him and gives me a good, long exhale. “You spent the night here, I see.”

  I nod. Well, glad we got that out of the way.

  “You know about my parents, don’t you? Someone must’ve told you, if not Renée.”

  Change of direction much? I look up into his eyes, which are still hard, but now with prepared stoniness rather than anger or pride. There’s no right way to go about this, is there? How the fuck can I answer that? Why does this big fucking monkey have to bring that shit up to me? The venom spins inside me, like a top, frustrated, backed into a corner. After last night, after that shower just now, I can’t fight Andrew.

  “Yeah,” I croak through a mouthful of the venom. “I’m really sorry.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.” His eyes flitter like those of a trapped animal, like he can’t focus on anything for too long or else it becomes his parents. “I’m incredibly territorial about my sister, Locke. Don’t know what you heard, but my parents died ’cause of me, so I tend to think of myself as her protector.”

  “They…It wasn’t your fault, Andrew.”

  “You SHUT UP!” he screams. There’s no drama or facade to this statement; it’s a primal scream, an uncontrolled blast. I’ve never seen someone get angry and go pale at the same time. The screaming stops as abruptly as it began. “Shut up. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Vinetti, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try to have an opinion on the matter. I made a mistake and they died because of it, simple as that. Have you ever lost a parent, Locke?”

  “My dad left us, and I…think it’s ’cause I’m such a spaz.” Jesus. I’ve never said that out loud before. “But it’s not the same thing.”

  “Damn right it isn’t,” he snaps. “You don’t know shit. You don’t have any fucking idea. My dad left a long time ago, and it wasn’t because of a choice, it was because he was addicted to crystal, and we couldn’t get him to stop pawning off about seventy percent of everything we owned. You can’t—you can’t comprehend what the fuck this family has been through just ’cause your dad left…. It’s not even the same species.”

  I shut my eyes tight as the venom brays for blood. Before I can stop myself, the heat behind my eyes gets too high and I blurt out, “Well, what I went through was pretty fucking bad, so how about you watch your mouth, okay?”

  He sneers for a second and then says, “Fair enough. My apologies.”

  The venom is shifting like an eel in a coffee can. Andrew’s still being an asshole, and the urge to smash his face in is incredible, but something’s off here. He’s articulate. He’s giving me an inch, for once. What’s the fucking deal?

  “I am very territorial of my sister,” he repeats, “no matter what kind of psycho shit she’s into. She’s my family. And she…” I can see the words arranging themselves in his head. “Renée hasn’t done too good since it happened. She’s not happy a lot. She’s full of fucking pills most of the time, but they keep her pretty cohesive and carefree, so I don’t say nothing about it, but I’ll tell you that I don’t like it, and I hate these freaks she surrounds herself with. I hate that mincing queer buddy of yours, I hate the tall Mohawked black kid, but most of all, I’m beside myself that she’s ended up with you.”

  “Tough shit, she’s my girlfriend.” Again, the venom seems to speak for me, standing up when I don’t have the spine to.

  “Watch yourself, Vinetti.”

  “Thanks for the advice, Andrew. There a fucking point to this?”

  His eyes harden on me, and I can feel his anger in the air between us. “The pills keep her okay,” he seethes, ignoring my statement. “And so do you. Apparently.”

  Something catches in my throat. The venom stops in its tracks, somewhere between infuriated and confused. ”Go on.”

  “She talks about you quite a bit. She’s had little pep talks about you with me, which is why I don’t destroy your ass regularly for touching her, though I will say, the desire to kill you has been somewhat overwhelming.” He sneers, disgusted. “And it pisses me off that you get your spastic little hands on her whenever you feel like it. It…incenses me. Fancy word, you like that? I didn’t get into our school ’cause of Mommy and Daddy or basketball or any corner-cutting bullshit—I studied my ass off and got the grades I deserve. You think you’re King Shit because you’re all fucking tragic, but you’re no smarter or classier than me.” I feel his eyes skim me up and down. Planning on where he could break me. “But you keep her okay. She’s happy a lot. She sings fucking Joy Division in the shower again and can get out of bed on her own. And if that’s the case, maybe she’ll be okay…y’know, finally. So I want to make a deal with you. Set some things straight.”

  He stares, waiting for me to reply, but all I’m doing is focusing on not going on a rampage. Think of Renée. He’s doing this for her, and so are you.

  “Keep her happy,” he rasps out. “Don’t hurt her, don’t treat her like a piece of meat, and we’ll be okay. I don’t like you, Vinetti, but if you make her happy enough to forget what happened, then I can stand you. And I think that’s all we both want.”

  “So basically, you’re telling me that if I act like an asshole, you’re going to kill me.”

  “Yeah. But if you keep yourself in check, I’ll leave you alone. And…” He sighs, resigned. “She asked me to do this part a week or two ago—I’ll start calling you Locke now.” He stares for a bit longer, and then says, “You have a little brother, right? So you get where I’m at.”

  I want to be angry. I want to go on a rampage of pure hatred. But the last words kill me, and all the hot, rebellious anger behind the venom deflates, leaving me with just the horrible black depression. He’s right. I think of Lon and I know exactly where he’s at. As much as I want to hate, empathy wins this round.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, okay.”

  Before I can sputter out more brilliant insight, Renée walks into the room singing, “I don’t hear eggs cooking!” and then halts at the doorway with her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open. Andrew looks up at her with a mixture of pride and fear and whispers, “Hey.”

  “Hey,” she says back, her eyes darting to my downturned face and back to Andrew’s. “Should I leave?”

  “No, but I should,” he grunts as he rises. “I’m meeting George to smoke out in about half an hour. I gotta get dressed.” As he walks past, he takes the time to stop and put his hand on her shoulder and squeeze. Her hand shoots up to his and squeezes it back, and her eyes and mouth go tight.

  “Wanna go see Mom this weekend? I got some time free.”

  She nods. “I’d like that,” she says.

  “All right, well…just let me know when. I’ll get someone to give us a ride.”

  “Okay.”

  And then he’s gone, his door slamming shut and his music blasting.

  Renée runs a hand through my hair. “You okay, hon?”

  I sigh, trying to breathe out my anger. “Got any chocolate milk?”

  As I’m sliding my key into the lock of my apartment, it dawns on me that I forgot to call my mom. Between consummating my relationship and breaking bread with a heartbroken behemoth, I totally forgot to call home.

  I open the door just enough that I can slip through it by turning sideways. Every board in the house creaks and moans as I tiptoe my way to my bedroom. The plan is simple: get undressed, get under the covers, and pretend like she just didn’t hear me get in.

  As I’m reaching the door to my room, I take one last momentary glance around the house. No sign of Mom. Maybe she’s out. Booyah. I slide the door open and slither into my room without so much as a click.

  “You’re in deep shit,” says my mom as she folds my under-pants.

  “Hi!” God hates me. At least, more than usual.

  “First off, I don’t pay a cell phone bill for you to turn the thing off.” Her folding grows more and more frantic. Socks are being balled at sound-barrier speeds. “And second, with how you’ve been acting the last couple of
months, I would hope you understand that I’m a little concerned about you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, putting my hands up in defense. “That was totally my bad.”

  She finally stops folding and looks at me. “I know you have new friends, and I’m really happy for you, but you can’t leave me in the dark like this, okay? I spent most of the night thinking you were dead in a ditch. I almost called the cops.”

  The venom shivers, but I ignore it. She’s right. “Again, sorry. I’ll call next time.”

  “Okay,” she says, even though it’s obviously not. “So how was the party?”

  “It was great. We danced and partied, and I got a tarot card from the group, which, like, makes me one of them now.”

  “Sounds sort of like Lord of the Flies.”

  The venom flickers out into my speech. “Yeah, we chased some fat kid around and chanted for his blood. It was killer.”

  “Well, I’m glad you had a good time. So whose house did you sleep at?”

  I’ve had this answer primed on my lips from the moment I walked into this apartment. “Randall’s.”

  “Oh, did he meet up with you? He called here pretty late, looking for you.”

  GodDAMMIT. Come on, Locke, recovery. “Yeah, we found each other.”

  “Good. Don’t forget you have Dr. Yeski later today.”

  “I had sex last night.”

  FUCK. How’d that come out? All during my way here, I’d told myself that I wouldn’t bring this up in my session, that this was for Renée and me, no one else. And then it’s the first thing I say after I sit down. It’s been hard—I’ve wanted to scream it from the rooftops and sing it into the breeze.

  Dr. Yeski nods thoughtfully, as if analyzing the concept of the idea of the notion of me getting busy. It’s like talking carnal pleasures with Professor X. “With whom?”

  “With my girlfriend. Who else?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t have to be your girlfriend who you slept with.”