Venomous (20 page)

Tollevin runs up to my side. “Dude, that’s the cops. You need to get the fuck out of here, pronto.”

And even though it makes no sense, a word forms in my mouth, the only word I think I can say other than her name.

My lips curl, teeth press, tongue wavers, and:

“Venom.”

A
RE YOU
alive?”

He sputtered out another gurgling response. The monster that had nearly killed me was no more, leaving this charred little…man. A man, an engine of blood and ligament, nothing more. Weak, easy, shallow, murderous.

There was another spasm in the energies of my costume, and I crouched, preparing to do what I knew had to be done.

“I understand your intentions,” I whispered, “but you killed her. Terrible future or not, you killed her, my friend, and I…can’t let that be forgotten.”

“S’posed ta…kill you,” he spat. “Send me bacckkh to kkill you…”

“I can’t allow that, either. What I am, what I can do…It’s all too important, you see. Too important to let one little pissant put it in jeopardy.” I grabbed his collar and flipped him over, his face finally facing me. I raised my fist, begging for the impact of blood and bone. “I’m sorry. Understand, this is for your own good.”

He sputtered out a mouthful of blood, and then he smiled. A sly smirk up in one corner of his face. “I’m glad I got”—he managed to croak out—“got to meet you…helped me remember what…you were like…”

My hand froze, the energy still raging through it but the motivation lost. Again, the overwhelming feeling that something was not
right
with this man washed across me. “I don’t understand.”

“You were—” Another cough, another spray of gore. He caught his breath. “You were a better brother than you were a tyrant.”

Pow.

No.

My fist dropped. My face dropped. My entire body let out a collective heave of sorrow, and my hands clutched the broken man before me.

“Lon.”

“Hey, mmannuh…I’m schorry about Renée….

“My God, Lon. I’m…oh God, LON, WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK NO, NO, NO…”

“The venom remembered me and thought—” And then his body shook, bent in the middle, twisted up in weird, insectoid ways that no human should be able to move. “Found me, found the well inside of me when I killed herrrr—” More gurgling. Another twitch.

“LON!” I clutched his body to me, trying to shake some life back into it. I heard him cough, and then I grasped his face, staring straight into his eyes, blue and fading quick. “LON, HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW?” I screamed. “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME IT WAS YOU! YOU’RE OLDER, AND I COULDN’T RECOGNIZE…YOU CAN’T EXPECT ME…OH GOD, OHGODOHGODOHFUCKING
CHRIST,
I’M SORRY, I’M SORRY!”

Static hiss seemed to fill the air, and his body went rubbery, unreal in my hands. “Going back.” He moaned. “When you die, they bring you back…. Don’t forget what…what you are…” His eyes, floating Cheshire cat–like in the darkness, focused on mine. “It’s not you.”

And then my hands clapped together, because he was gone, sucked into time and away from me.

I stood on the rooftop, feeling the city’s sorrows whirling around and through me.

Somewhere, off in the distance of my mind, I heard an echoing laugh.

“Admit it,” said a voice that wasn’t mine, “I’m starting to get to you.”

I
T IS MY
firm belief that if I ever smoked crack, my mother would sniff the air, glare at me, and ask me why I was smoking crack. The Mom Sense gives all mothers an internal gauge that reads what kind of trouble their child has been up to, and how badly said child is gonna get it. So it’s no surprise to me that the minute I get home, even though I’ve been trying to be quiet and discreet, my mother calls out my name and walks into the living room to see me, bloodied and broken, slumped against the door frame.

“Oh my God! What happened to you?”

No talk. Face hurty. Maybe later. Her hands grab at my shirt, but I keep moving, brushing them off as I go.

“Honey, what happened? Are you all right? Let me see, let me see, oh my
God
, sweetie, tell me who did this to you and I—”

I put up my hand to signal that this conversation is not meant to happen yet. Once I make it to my room, I slam the door behind me and gimp over to my dresser so I can see my face in my mirror.

Well, holy fucking shit.

I’m all fucked-up. Like,
Rambo
fucked-up. Girl-who-survives-the-entire-horror-movie fucked-up. My lower lip is split in two different places. My left eye is a swollen mass of swirling blacks and blues, accentuated by a small scratch that had decided to bleed profusely down the side of my face. Small brownish bruises line my neck, each one a marking from where Casey’s fingertips had dug into my throat. There’s blood, snot, sweat, and tears all over every part of my face, some even clumping my hair together, turning its usual mangy blond to coppery and festering (man, I love using
those
two adjectives as a self-description). One lens in my glasses frames is slightly cracked but still usable, and has managed to stay in its frame, which counts for something, I’m sure, in some fucking ridiculous karmic way. It’s like a bus hit my face.

I heave a sigh through my bloodied mouth, and the air rattles through my lungs and rasps out dry. A shell, a husk, a shed snake’s skin. I just feel sagging flesh on aching bone. An out-of-service machine.

In the bathroom, I dampen a washcloth and get to work. The minute it touches my face, stinging nettles stab my entire head. The pain registers in the back of my brain, but just barely, not enough to make me care. The cloth and my face trade colors: My skin is revealed as pale and sickly, while the cloth turns a dark, chunky brown. It reminds me of chum.

When I finish wiping down my mug, my wounds don’t look half as bad as they did before I cleaned myself up, but they’re still bad enough. The eye still looks hideously ballooned, but the cut above it isn’t visible in the least. One split in my lip seems gone already, but the other is ragged and swollen enough to present a problem. The bruises on my neck, though, stand out like a forest fire. I wouldn’t give me a quarter if I saw me on the street.

My mother, arms crossed and face tight, greets me as I crack the bathroom door. I try to force a smile to let her know that I’m okay, but my entire face screams in pain, so I just sort of grimace like a moron.

“I want to know what’s going on, dammit,” she says. “You don’t just come home looking like that, slam the fucking door in my face, and not explain to me what’s going on. JEsus-MaryandJOseph, Locke, look at you.”

My brain’s pilot light comes on, and I think of an appropriate response. “It’s nothing, really. I’m all right.” Good one.

“Get out here this instant and tell me exactly what happened to you. It’s like…”

“Do I have to?”

“Do you—” Her face softens suddenly, and my heart shatters. “Locke, honey, please. Look at you. I’m so scared. What
happened
? Who
did this
to you? You don’t have to be afraid, you can talk to me about this.”

“Got in a fight. Look, let me get a few hours of sleep. Please. And then I’ll tell you all about it. Every last detail. Just…I’m exhausted.”

Finally she shakes her head and turns back toward the living room. “Fine. Go to sleep. We’ll discuss this when you wake up.” Her voice lets me know that I’m in deep, deep trouble. Big surprise.

The sheets feel cool and soft on my body, compared to the roughness of everything else. I wrap and tuck until the whole bed is a cocoon, a comfort burrito with a scrumptious Locke core.

As my head sinks into my waiting pillow, I reach out for the venom, the constant presence that’s been my companion for too long now. The venom sighs and waves me away, as though exhausted.

Long day. Good work. Kudos, buddy.

Everything’s poisoned,
I think.
You ruined it all. My friends, my family, it’s all been tainted, turned to shit. This is your magnum opus, isn’t it?

I told you not to thank me. Not to get too comfortable. All I needed was an even playing ground, an amount of equality. And all that took was a little hope. Once you were lifted up, it was just a matter of waiting for the downfall.

Always poisonous,
I think, yawning.
Nothing changed, it just looked different. Fuck you.

You probably have a concussion, you know. If you go to sleep, you might not wake up.

Maybe that’s for the best.

I let my eyes, heavy and irritated, close softly.

Sadly, it’s not my time, and after a few hours of dreamless black sleep, my eyes click open again. My wounds, now rested, have been given time to be sore and uncomfortable. I roll over and feel everything from my scalp to my toes scream bloody murder. I lift my arm to scratch at the cut above my ear, and everything from my fingertips to my shoulder blade becomes a bag of rusty nails and shattered glass. Well, at least I can feel real pain again. Good to know. Christ, this SUCKS. Every movement is torture. I want to fucking die.

Lon sits at the kitchen table when I enter. He’s reading a comic book, and he does a double take when I come into the room: looks at Batman, looks up at me, looks back down to Batman, and then gapes at me like I’m a circus freak.

“Holy crap!”

“Language,” calls my mother from the other room.

“Hey,” I mumble as I sit down at the table with the speed of an octogenarian.

“What happened?”

“Got in a fight.”

He laughs like it’s not really that funny. “With what, a bear?” My mom snorts approving laughter toward my little brother. Being the subject of ridicule is, in this case, tolerable. “Are you okay? I can get you some ice….”

“I’m fine. Just a little sore.”

He tilts his head sideways, fascinated by my face. “Wow…I’ve never seen a real black eye before”

I lean forward. “Wanna touch it? Softly, though.”

Just as he reaches out to feel my swollen face, my mother enters the room and slaps his hand out of the air. “Leonardo, honey, will you excuse us for a second? I need to talk to your brother.”

Your brother
. Oh man…

Lon nods to us, and then in a blur he’s in his room. My mother goes about tidying some things up in the kitchen before she slowly takes Lon’s seat and lights a smoke. When she doesn’t offer me one, I take it upon myself to spark up. I haven’t had a cigarette in way too long, and my throat has finally stopped aching from being choked. A minor blessing.

“So,” she snaps, “want to explain yourself?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I have time,” she says, taking a deep drag from her smoke. “And so do you.”

“This is gonna be unpleasant, you realize.”

“I’d have
never guessed
.” She shoots a smoke ring in my face. “Talk.”

I spew, starting with Renée telling me about Casey’s love for Randall and ending with me chasing my girlfriend to a taxi, with all the drama and bloodshed in between. No emotion crosses her face the whole time; she just nods every so often to show me she’s listening. I leave out certain parts of the whole ordeal—the night spent at Renée’s place, the fight with Terry, things like that. By the time I wrap the story up, we’ve motored through three cigarettes each, with no finish line in sight.

“Okay,” she says, little ghosts of smoke escaping her mouth with every new syllable. “So you and your friend beat each other half to death because you revealed something about your friend. All this while your girlfriend was there. That nice girl I met
earlier today
.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

After a moment of contemplation, she looks at me with death-ray eyes. “Christ, Locke, I don’t even know what to think anymore.”

Thank God for my bout of apathetic emptiness, ’cause otherwise I’d be cursing out my mother right now. “Wow, no Mom sympathy? Can I at least get a bowl of Chicken and Stars out of this, maybe a glass of choco—”

“I mean, he’s your
friend
,” she says, shaking her head. “He’s someone you care about. I mean, Jesus, I don’t blame you for telling Randall about how Casey feels—he’s your friend too, I know, and he was upset—but even if your friend who…who has angries like yours is the first person to throw a punch, you hold back. You don’t beat up your friends. You turn the other cheek and forgive them for being stupid or selfish or
wrong
. Being in someone’s life means overlooking their faults sometimes and being the bigger man, not retaliating against them.”

“That’s very Christian of you.”

“It’s very HUMAN of me!” she bellows, and jabs the lit end of smoke at my face. She’s close to tears. “This isn’t about philosophy or faith, it’s about basic human treatment! You don’t
DO
this! To
anyone
. Have you seen yourself in the mirror?”

She’s got a point. “Okay, yeah. I look pretty…”

“Hideous? Gruesome?”

“Oh, thanks, Mom, you’re a
peach
.”

“LOOK at you! This is the face of what these spasms of anger are gonna lead to if they keep going on! You look in the mirror one day and you see this stranger with a busted-up lip and a dazed look in his eyes, and you want to know who he is and how he got there! Don’t, honey; Locke, you’re so much better than that. Come on.”

She pulls hard on her cigarette and then, with a flourish, jams it into the ashtray. Her mouth opens as if to say something, but then she just goes quiet and shakes her head again. Finally, with nothing else to say, she stands and starts getting dinner ready.

“So, that’s it?” I say. “What do I do, Mom? There’s no way to fix this. The venom’s ruined everything. I don’t know how to go back.”

“No, you know what, enough of this,” she says, waving me aside. “I officially divorce myself from this issue. Until you’re ready to get yourself together, I’m not listening to any of this venom bullshit. I love you to death, Locke, and I always will, no matter what, but enough is enough. You want to be a thug, go for it. You want to get better, work on it and then talk to me.”

“Mom, please,” I say. Now I’m the one close to tears. “I don’t know what to do.”

“That makes two of us,” she snaps, and turns to leave the room. “Start thinking.”

The next day is Sunday, thank God, so I hole up in my room and recuperate. It’s not as bad as it sounds. I get most of my homework done and manage to replace my Band-Aids every couple of hours without making my wounds reopen (lucky me). My mother doesn’t try to baby me either, just announces when food’s ready and reminds me that I have a meeting with Dr. Yeski the next day. The military vibe goes on all day, with my mother playing the general and Lon playing the spy who peers at me over chairs and couches to get a good look at someone who’s taken a decent beating. And all I can do is laugh and think,
Man, I wonder how Casey looks.

Somewhere in the evening, out of both loneliness and worry, I call Randall. When he hears my voice in response to his greeting, he sighs.

“How are you? How’s Casey?” I ask.

“Casey is, thankfully, not in the hospital,” he says, his voice heavy with the fatigue of having to tell this story over and over again. “Things were shaky for a little bit, ’cause he kept coughing up blood, but we think it’s just blood he swallowed over the course of the fight. I imagine you did the same thing. You knocked one of his teeth loose, though. I talked to his mom and dad, and they’ve decided not to press charges. You’re lucky for that.”

“You two have talked?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you…I mean, did you…was, uh…”

“Spit it out.”

“Are you
with
him?” I spit out.

“No, of course not. Don’t be stupid. Just because he’s in love with me and I’m taking care of him doesn’t mean that I’m going to fall for him. That’s hideously offensive to both me and Casey.”

“My mom called me hideous last night.”

“What can I tell you? Small world.”

I wait for him to answer my other question, but there’s only silence. “So, how are you?”

“Do you actually care?”