Venomous

by Christopher Krovatin

  “Okay!” chirps Randall, and puts his smoke out on my neck.

  My insides whirl. There’s a blur of coat and hair and collision, and the next thing I know I’m crouching on top of Randall, teeth gritted, one fist raised and the other behind his head clutching a handful of hair. Randall’s got a smug look on his face, and his breathing is ragged but calm. I make a little cry out of my throat when I try to talk. There’s none of the sweeping vengeance, none of the seeing red. This isn’t a war. I’m crouched on top of my best friend, ready to punch him in the face. And I’m fucking TERRIFIED and really don’t want to hit him.

  This is pathetic. I feel sick.

  “If you’re gonna hit me,” he coughs, “then fucking hit me.”

  “STOP IT,” I cry, more sob than bellow. “You ENJOYED that.”

  He smirks. “Yeah, I took a little pleasure from it, considering the shit you pulled this weekend. What of it, Stockenbarrel?”

  I sit back on my haunches, frozen, unable to move or scream. I keep waiting for the pounding heat, the raw power, but there’s nothing, only embarrassment. Christ, my neck hurts.

  Randall sighs and climbs to his feet. “Welcome to human emotions, Stockenbarrel. They’re not fun, they’re not cool, and you have a lot of fucking catching up to do.”

  He sits down next to me, and I’m grateful for it.

  When Casey answers the phone, he seems genuinely surprised that I want to see him. We make arrangements, and I walk over to his house.

  He answers the door, and I can’t help but wince. He looks bad, just as bad as me, if not worse. His lips are crazy swollen, and there are bruises lining his cheekbones. There’s a scab on his chin surrounded by a thick purple bruise, probably evidence of my boot. Every step and movement is deliberate and careful. It’s like we’re two old men, hobbling around the room, nursing our war wounds. Sooner or later, one of us is going to start reminiscing about a nurse.

  His apartment is much nicer than I would have guessed—stone countertops, white walls, simple-yet-elegant carpeting, a distinct change from my lived-in crunchy home life. His bedroom has a bit more character. The walls are a deep navy blue, and the furniture has sort of an art-deco feel to it. The only light is one that hangs from the ceiling, the type that you always see in cop dramas, hanging over the interrogation table. Casey takes a seat at his desk in one of those basic swivel chairs.

  We both look at our feet for a few minutes, and then I look up and try to smile.

  “How are you?” It sounds plastic and forced, I’m sure, but it’s the only thing I can think of.

  “Sore,” he says, and then looks at me. “I’m sorry about your eye.”

  “I’m sorry about your mouth.”

  “It’s fine. You didn’t knock any teeth out, though one of them’s loose.”

  “I know. I talked to Randall.”

  “My folks aren’t going to press charges,” he says. “What about yours?”

  “My mom figures this is my fault, and I should fix it myself. Besides, neither of us is in the hospital, it doesn’t seem that necessary.”

  “Right.”

  There’s a pregnant pause. Both of us want to speak, but neither of us know how to put it.

  “Look,” he finally says, “I’m sorry about how everything went down. Just…with my whole cover blown, it was like the black was the only thing that made sense, and I bet you know what that feels like. But you’re not getting out of this, Locke. I will not let you out of this. You fucked up badly, and being sorry for something like this doesn’t make it any better.”

  “Of course, but, Case—”

  “No. Shut up. Let me finish. You’ve gotta understand, I’ve known Randall for…forever. And it took me a long time before I realized how I felt about him. It was hopeless from the beginning, so, whatever, I convinced myself that it wasn’t anything big, that I was just lonely and horny. It wasn’t that, though, not hormones and confusion but LOVE, bottom of the heart. So I couldn’t tell him. Occasional attraction is one thing, but love…Tell him that, it would change everything. And no matter what you say now, there’s going to be that change in our friendship, the change that you started. Randall and I will NEVER be the same friends we were. I overreacted, yeah, and things will get better, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be perfect, or AS GOOD. That’s the last thing I wanted, was for Randall to have something else to, I don’t know, write a song about, right?”

  “Right. That wasn’t my intention.”

  “’Course not. None of us expected a kid like you to come into the picture, for better or for worse. I didn’t, and I doubt Renée did. But you showed up, and suddenly I had a comrade, and Renée had a lover, and none of us realized that we were sitting on top of a big tower of mystery and lies until you hopped up there with us and the whole thing collapsed.”

  “Sorry I ruined your romantic conspiracy.”

  “You didn’t ruin anything,” he says. “Everyone’s to blame, no one’s to blame, yadda yadda yadda. But no matter whose fault it was, you screwed up, whether you knew it or not. It was a mistake, but the intentions behind it weren’t noble. I don’t know how I feel about you anymore, Locke, but I will say that you have some apologies to make. Me, I’m flexible. I can bounce back from this. But Randall and Renée both love you, and you don’t currently deserve that love. Neither do I, for that matter. You do realize how much they care about you, right?”

  “Yeah, I have an idea.” I puff heavily on my cigarette and try to fill Casey’s room with smoke. His ceiling fan makes it quiver, then disappear in a flurry of thin wisps. “So what’re you going to do now?”

  He takes a minute and then smiles sadly. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m going to try and make a strategy about this. No more plans and hiding and conspiracy. Just take everything one step at a time and have a good time. Drink a little more. Meet some boys, get on with life. We’ll see where we end up after this, as friends. I like you, Locke, but after all of this, I don’t trust you. Even more, I don’t trust myself around you.”

  I keep my head down, trying to contact some of the venom, the dark bond that made us friends. It’s gone, though, tossed away by Casey in favor of common sense, and I can’t blame him. The venom and I are alone in this one, back where we started.

  One left to go.

  ITURNEDoff the faucet and rolled up my sleeves. The razor felt cold in my hand as I pushed my fists into the warm water filling the sink. My eyes went up to my reflection in the bathroom mirror: Locke Vinetti, superhero, protector, brother, friend. Take a good look, you miserable bastard.

  “I’m giving you to the count of three,” I said to my reflection. “Then I cut myself to ribbons and die, and something tells me that’ll piss you off.”

  No change. I pressed the blade’s edge to my wrist.

  “One.”

  Nothing.

  “Two.”

  The mirror seemed to vibrate. I closed my eyes.

  “Three.”

  I opened them and there it was. The song of the city personified, my dark power—the venom. It was horrible, spidery, like a mass of shadow trying to imitate a real person. About eight glossy eyes stared back at me, glinting with just the slightest hint of crimson, blinking in random sequence.

  “Leave.”

  “Who are you to give orders to me?”

  “I want you out, you hear me? Leave me and never come back.”

  “Did that thing from the future frighten you? You’re Blacklight. You don’t need to be afraid of anything.”

  “Just leave. I can be Blacklight without you.”

  Laughter boomed throughout the bathroom. “Idiot,” snarled the thing in the mirror. “Blind, sad little boy. The city’s song is always present, but the only way you harness it is through me. I am the doorway, the conduit. All you provide is a host, a being to make my power tangible.” Its eyes flared bright. “We can do such things together, Locke. Your brother? Renée? Forget them. Humans. They want a weak, usable version of you, but I lo
ve you just the way you are. We can do whatever we want. Steal and kill and rule. Sounds fun, huh?”

  I pressed the razor down harder. Ignore it. “Go now.”

  It stared at me for a second and muttered, “As you wish.” It slunk off my form, twisting and scuttling until it got to the bathroom door. It turned and stared back at me through the mirror. “Enjoy your decision. Have fun living and dying as nothing special.”

  It slipped under the reflection of the bathroom door, and it was gone. I’d gotten rid of it, finally, for good. I was no longer a monster, a superhero; I wasn’t outstanding or different.

  It took me far too long to take the razor off my wrist.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  BE CAREFUL,” SAYS Andrew as he ushers me into his apartment. “Like I said, kid gloves and all that, right?”

  “Right,” I whisper. Each step makes me feel a little colder, and a little older, in my flesh. I am not going to be able to make everything better in a couple of minutes, and I need to remember that. In the meantime, be ready for anything and everything.

  Her door is closed, but the halo of light around its borders tells me that she’s inside. Taped to the door is a piece of paper, reading, in scrawled handwriting, “I AM THE ROUGH BEAST. I SLOUCH TOWARD BETHLEHEM TO BE BORN.” Yeats. Not promising.

  I raise my fist, which weighs about six million tons, and rap it three times against her door.

  “Who is it?” comes a muffled voice.

  “Renée, it’s me,” I say softly.

  Silence.

  “I wanted to come by to see you. I know you’re not happy with me, but I miss you. I’m terrified that you’ll never talk to me again, and I don’t think I could live with that. I love you, and I’m so, so sorry.”

  More silence. The clink and shuffle of slight movement, not much else.

  “I can leave if you want—”

  The door flies open, and there she is. All the prepared speeches I had backlogged in my mind melt instantly. She’s a mess. All she wears is a black wife-beater and a pair of panties. Her eyes are tinged red and sunken into her face, surrounded by clumps of dried makeup. Her hair’s ragged, spiky, shooting in a million different directions at once; one look at it lets me know that there was no method—she just grabbed a pair of scissors and went for it. But it’s her lips, her perfect lips, that send me back—cracked in places, with a white film of semi-dead skin over them, like the way you imagine crackheads or people in the old folks’ home or all those other kinds of people who you find instinctually repulsive, no matter how nice they are.

  “Afternoon,” she says, looking into my eyes with the expression of a snake. She can see my feelings, as hard as I try to hide them. “Sorry I repulse you, didn’t know I had company. Can I offer you a drink?”

  “Can I come in?”

  She turns and walks into her room, leaving the door open as a sign that she doesn’t care what I do. I try to make as little noise as possible in some feeble attempt to keep this low-key. She makes a round of her dressers and cabinets and bedposts, lighting every candle in the room.

  “How have you been?”

  “Well!” she chimes, whipping toward me with a maniacal smile on her face. “I flushed all my medication down the toilet. I haven’t slept in two days, which is weird, ’cause I’ve been drinking like a fiend. How do you think I’ve been?” With the last sentence, she tosses a third-full bottle of gin at me. I just manage to catch it and set it down on her bed. I see. So this is bugfuck.

  “You know you shouldn’t be drinking.”

  “Oh, you’re right!” she snaps, her voice betraying her unwavering smile. “I should…I should go find one of my friends and beat the shit out of them! THAT will help! That’s the…the…the only way to do it, right? Well, guess what, sweetheart, not all of us have some expendable kinda supply of hate in us, y’know? We can’t all summon our inner demon to make everything better. Would you prefer it if I was cutting, maybe?”

  The words yank at my heart, and for a second I feel something familiar.

  “That’s unfair.”

  “So’s LIFE!” she bellows, and in a single movement throws a lit candle at me. I dodge, but a drop of wax hits me in the cheek, sending a jolt of pain through my face. “Things never go right. People never stop hurting one another. It’s all bullshit, and I was a moron to think you would be any different.”

  “Renée,” I say, measuring my sentence, “when I was dealing with the venom, I didn’t know—”

  “Why do you get it?” she yells, throwing her arms out behind her. “Why do you get the venom? Why can’t I call my dark side some superhero name and give it a personality? I just have to be plain old crazy, while you, you and fucking Casey get to be monsters and all of this shit? Christ, maybe I should just fucking design a fucking costume! Or maybe you should go on the fucking pills! Sure! For a week, I’d have the parasitic emotional entity, and you can have the Zoloft and the Dexedrine. And let me tell you, all your soul-searching bullshit can be performed with a single capsule.”

  “Stop it,” I say through gritted teeth. “This isn’t you.”

  “You’re right!” she says, waving her hands in the air. “It’s my evil twin! My dark side! It’s the black, or the venom, or whatever the fuck I’d like it to be! How dare you talk to me like this is a fucking therapy session? Guess what, Locke, I’m not some big-titted shrink chick, I’m someone who hurts too!” Her face is inches away from mine now. “Answer me! You haven’t answered me! Why do I have to be crazy?” She screams, somewhere between weeping and laughing. “Why do I have to be medicated? Why do I have to look after you?”

  I feel it flex. I can almost hear it crack its knuckles.

  “That’s not fair, Renée.”

  “You said that already. Fuck you. Fuck fair. It’s the truth. I’m just as fucked-up and miserable and ready to die at any fucking second as you are, and it’s not because of the goddamn venom, it’s because there’s something fucking wrong with me. THAT’S the truth. How does it feel?”

  “It feels like something you don’t mean to say,” I whisper, trying to be the bigger man despite the blood pounding through my face. “It feels like air. Like nothing.”

  Her mouth bunches up in a grimace and her right shoulder goes back and her hand goes flat, which means, no, hell no, she wouldn’t dare—

  CRACK!

  “Feel that?”

  Whoosh. Venom.

  I have her wrists gripped in my hands just a little too tight, considering the cry she gives when I grab them. I let out a noise of rage and confusion and thrust my face right at hers. Her eyes turn from malevolent to terrified in a matter of seconds, and we’re standing there, frozen, her breath ragged with fear and sorrow and mine heavy with pure hatred.

  “Well, go ahead,” she snarls. “Just fuckin’ hit me.”

  “I don’t want to hit you,” I yell back. “I love you so fucking much. I came here to tell you that, and instead—”

  “THEN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT,” she screams, wrenching against my grip. “If you love me so fucking much, LET ME IN! PUT ME BEFORE THE BULLSHIT, AND LET ME IN!”

  She gives me one final shove and I stumble to the floor, my war wounds crying out in agony. She’s on top of me, clawing at my clothes, screaming bloody murder into my face. I try to pull her off, but she bears down hard, pushing, screaming, her face all black tears and open mouth. Finally I let go and let her empty her anger out on me, pushing her face into mine until her mouth clamps onto mine, and suddenly we’re kissing, gripping each other in both anger and love, pushing our faces together like blind people trying to find each other. My mouth breaks off and latches onto the side of her neck, and she moans softly under her breath. We start tearing clothes off until we’re a mass of sweating flesh, snot, tears. We make love like animals, screeching and groaning. Our noises rise and rise and peak at the exact same moment, and we stay there, together, with nothing in the world to care about but each other.

  Hours later I hear a
rattle and look up to see Renée, curled in a fetal position at the end of her bed, smoking one of my cigarettes.

  “Renée?”

  She doesn’t look up, just stares at her smoke.

  I crawl over to her and put a hand on her knee. She flinches at first, but then settles under my touch. “Renée, what’re we gonna do?” I ask.

  She finally looks me in the eye and shrugs. “I don’t know, Locke. I love you, but if you can’t…” She gathers her words. “I can’t take the venom anymore, hon. And I don’t know if you can give it up. It’s a part of you, like you said.”

  “The venom doesn’t matter. I’m in control.”

  “Are you?” she says, motioning to the room around her. “Someone hits you—are you going to kill them? Is the venom going to whisper evil thoughts into your ear?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, running my other hand through her hair. “That’s the thing, Renée. There’s no simple answer in this situation, I just have to work on it.”

  Renée’s eyes close, and she smiles, and it’s beautiful. “Taking you back would be a risk, and it might not be worth it, all things considered. At one point, maybe. Risky used to be sexy. Now, after this…”

  “I know.”

  She stares at me a bit longer and then we kiss, long and soft. Pulling back, she speaks into my mouth, her breath smelling of smoke and sweat. “It was a strange day when you wandered into my life, Locke Vinetti.”

  “Likewise, Renée Tomas.”

  “I should probably call my doctor and get my prescriptions refilled.” She sighs, putting out her smoke in an empty bottle. “He’s gonna be pissed when he hears I ruined another order, but I think I’d rather be embarrassed and medicated than otherwise.”