Venomous

CHAPTER SIX

AWEEK OR so later, when Casey calls me and tells-not asks, tells-me that we’re going shopping, I find myself saying yes before I have time to think about it. It’s like instinct. Shopping isn’t my thing, but a shopping trip with my first gay friend I’ve ever met? Too perfect. Hell, I might be able to get some leather pants out of the whole thing (note to self: keep the immature gay jokes at a minimum around new gay buddy).

When I emerge from the Union Square subway station, I see Casey, wearing a large, puffy North Face jacket and talking to a boy dressed to kill with stringy black hair and sunglasses. There’s an argument going on, but a jovial one, where no one’s worried about what might come of it. Casey throws up his arm a lot and yells out his answers between cackles, while the other kid uses his cigarette as a classroom ruler and growls out his parts of the argument with a clever little smile on his face, which lets me know that he’s very nice and not to be trusted.

As I approach, the stringy-haired boy points at me and says something, to which Casey turns around and waves.

“Locke! This is Brent. Brent, Locke.”

Brent puts his hand out and I shake it-warm, steely, a businessman’s grip. “Ah, Locke, you’ve been mentioned. Casey tells me you were molested by him.” Casey smacks him in the arm and swears laughingly under his breath. My face ignites with blood and timidity, and I pull out a cigarette of my own, which Brent willingly lights. “Nah, just fucking with you. You’re Randall’s friend, right? He calls you ‘Stockenbarrel.’”

“Right. You know Randall?”

“Met him here and there through this fag over here.” Another playful arm slap. “Does he call you that ’cause you’re named Locke?”

“Uh, yeah.”

Brent grimaces. “Randall and I shall have words.”

I bet he’s told them about me.

He wouldn’t dare.

Randall is proving himself surprising. Talk to him or I will.

Sadly, it’s got a point. There is something massively discomforting about finding out that there’s a body of people out there who you’ve never met, and that this body knows who you are and what you’re like.

“We’re heading out,” says Casey, giving Brent a pat on the back. “Tell Sam I’ll give him a call, okay?”

A knowing nod. “He’ll really appreciate that. Have fun, kids.”

“I bet. Later.” Casey and I start walking slowly toward Broadway, our hands in our pockets, the wind blowing our hair back. “Brent’s cool. He’s the devil in our tarot deck.”

“I’m not surprised.”

Casey nods, beaming. “No one is. You probably wouldn’t like him. He and his friends can be a bit intense. They party really hard. He’s going a little crazy now, though.”

“Why?”

“One of our friends just had a nasty breakup. Long story. C’mon.”

“Where are we going, anyway?”

“I wanted to go to Leather Man on St. Mark’s. They have an adorable pair of chaps that fit me like a goddamn dream. I was thinking about buying a cowboy hat, too.”

“Oh, wow. Really?”

“No, of course not. Man, do I seem gay enough to pull off leather chaps?”

Have I mentioned I’m a towering rube? I’m a towering rube. And now I seem like an ignorant fool of a towering rube. Splendid. “Sorry. I’m, uh, still a little…” What, you moron?

He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Worry not, young Jedi. We’ll teach you the ways of the pink lightsaber yet.”

Now that was pretty fucking gay.

I swallow the venom and walk.

Shopping is a nonstop blast. We rip through the Virgin Megastore like a swarm of critical locusts. I never knew I could get so invested in a conversation, but our argument about the Strokes proves me wrong-I posit they have drive and energy that sets them apart from most of the other bands in their genre, and Casey thinks they’re “utter hogwaste.” After that, it’s ripping on Emily the Strange clothing and flipping through horribly pornographic manga. It’s stuff like this that makes me happy, things that I spend most of my time being paranoid about getting laughed at for. Randall is too straight and cool to appreciate things like this: He has somewhere to be, someone to impress, something to uphold. Casey doesn’t seem to care in the least about wandering around for the sake of doing so, and instead points out horrific images in the comics we’re reading and cracks jokes like, “That girl is having her period of the black” and “Oooh! venom orgy with huge eyes!” And it’s nothing more than fun. My eyes don’t glance worriedly around at people near me. The room isn’t squeezing the air out of my lungs. The burden is, maybe momentarily, lifted. The venom works in mysterious ways.

Halfway through a collection called Ultra Gash Inferno, Casey’s head turns with a smile and he says, “Sssoooooo, how’d things go with Renéeeee?”

I glare at him. “Shouldn’t you know already? You people seem to have this little conspiracy routine going on.”

“Okay, point taken, but I want to hear about it from you.”

I bite and relay the entire meeting, give or take a juicy detail. When I get to my sudden revelation about Andrew, Casey nods knowingly.

“Oh, Andrew,” he says, sighing, “constant proof that caveman still exist. Honestly, don’t worry about him, he’s basically harmless.”

“You don’t have to go to school with him every day.”

“No,” says Casey in a harder voice, “I’ve just had to deal with that idiot’s bullshit every day I’m over there since I came out. Andrew always sort of liked me, but the minute I told Renée and she told him, he’s let me know what Middle America thinks of me. But in all honesty, it’s a lot of hot air. Just forget him and think of her.”

“Well, at least you don’t pose a threat. You’re her gay guy friend. There’s no problem.”

“That may be true,” he says, “but you’d think that getting tormented for who I am is a lot worse than for what I could do.”

Times like this remind me how utterly naive I am. Jesus Christ, Locke, wake up, the playing field has changed. Casey’s honesty, though, lets me know that he’s the person who I have to ask, who’ll answer the question that’s been eating away at the back of my head.

“How’d Renée’s parents die, Casey?”

Casey won’t look at me; he just nods and pulls his lips tight and looks up and down the comic-book shelf. “How’d you find that out?”

“Randall told me.”

“He shouldn’t have. It’s not his story to tell. It’s Renée’s.”

“He thought it would be important for me to know, but Andrew was there, and he couldn’t…Please, man. What happened?”

His mouth flaps open and closed again and again, but eventually he just shakes his head. “Not right now,” he grumbles, flipping through more graphic novels. “Now’s not the time. I don’t really want to dive into that yet.”

“Please, Casey.”

“Locke, this isn’t a joke,” he snaps. “Let me think about it. She should tell you, ’cause…” He trails off, waving his hands.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

There’s a flutter of venom. “How bad?”

“Worse than you think.”

In the New York Milkshake Company on St. Mark’s, I take my mind off this afternoon’s craziness by informing Casey that he has no friggin’ idea how to drink a root beer float.

“What’re you doing?”

He looks up. “What? What do you mean?”

“I mean, what are you doing?” I ask, jabbing at him with my still-dripping spoon.

He glances down at his cup and then back at me. “I’m eating my ice cream. What does it look like?”

I sigh dramatically. “Bad enough you get chocolate ice cream in your float-”

“I hate vanilla, I told you.”

“-but you’re eating it wrong.”

Casey puts up his hands in defense and leans back in his chair, saying, “Elaborate, sensei.”

“Well, it’s okay if you eat a bit of the ice cream and drink a bit of the root beer”-I take a sip to illustrate-“but then you have to let it sit awhile, y’know, stir it every few seconds, until some of the ice cream melts.”

He looks focused but perplexed. “But then you just get this ice cream-root beer mixture.”

“Now you’ve got it.”

He shrugs and starts stirring his float. I watch him and think about what he told me before in the comics section until I feel like my brain is going to burst, so I go for a new subject.

“So, any boys lined up?”

He sighs. “No, not yet. Still a little sore from the last one, y’know, Catholic boy.”

“Sorry about that.”

“No worries, it was as much my fault as it was his.” He stares into the swirling float, zoning out. “Honestly, I’m not going to worry about it too much. Love has never really treated me well.”

“How so?”

“I’ve got a thing for boys I can’t have,” he says quietly, never moving.

“Straight boys?”

“Yeah, but…Well, it doesn’t matter.” His eyes meet mine, and I realize this conversation is over. “Can I drink the damn thing already?”

“Sure,” I say, and we both chug.

Casey licks the last of his drink from the end of his straw and looks up at me with amazement in his eyes. “Damn, Locke,” he says in awe, “you’re the man.”

Even with the float, the thought won’t go away. The venom keeps scratching at it like a rash, until I have to ask again. “How’d they die?”

“You ready?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“I’m serious, man. This is really bad, and I feel pretty fucked-up being the one to tell you. Are you ready for this?”

Obviously not. “Yeah.”

There’s a pause, and then he monotones, “Renée’s dad stabbed her mother to death, and then he cut his own wrists and died with her. Renée was thirteen.”

Oh Christ.

“Renée’s dad had all sorts of problems with drugs and started getting violent, seeing things, making up conspiracy theories, the whole nine yards. So one day her mom scooped her and Andrew up and left San Francisco, meth, and her husband behind. For a couple of years, everything was fine; Renée was eight when they left, so they’d had a chance to start a new life, until one day out of the blue, Andrew gets a phone call from his dad, who apparently sounded totally coherent and reformed. He doesn’t tell anyone, he just talks to his father, who he hasn’t seen in years. And a week later, Renée’s mom’s boyfriend comes home and finds them there, bled to death.”

Oh God, no.

The blood drains out of my face, and the room swirls purple and green. The air seems suffocating, full of dust or smoke to the point where I can’t see or breathe. Using every ounce of my willpower, I manage to climb out of my chair and stumble through the glass doors, spilling out into St. Mark’s Place. I hold myself up against a wall, trying to catch my breath, to regain my balance, to not throw up. A crew of punks jeers me, but I can barely hear them. It’s too big. Oh God, it’s way too big. It’s unbearable.

Misery magnet, hisses the venom, I told you. It’s not just bad, it’s beyond horrible. It’s the principle of evil. One girl, hurt beyond anything you can imagine, and you found her. Bravo.

Casey comes out and hands me a bottle of water, which I pound down my throat. Standing back up, wiping my face on my coat sleeve, I stare at him in horror. His eyes reflect back an understanding, a grasp of just how terrible the whole thing is. There’s no sense of patronization; neither of us is the bigger or little brother. This is just horrible in the worst possible way, and it happened to someone we both hold dear.

“You gonna be okay?” he says, his voice shaking with worry. “It’s a lot to take at once, I know. That’s why she doesn’t like to talk about it.”

“Got it… So Andrew…”

“Yeah. Andrew blames himself. Thinks if he’d only just dropped the phone…but yeah. Now you see how bad it is.”

“How do I…What can I do to make this better?”

He shrugs. “You can’t. You’re in no position to save anyone, Locke. Just be there when you can, do what needs to be done. It’s all she’s ever needed.”

We take a moment to stand and feel beaten before moving back down the street.

I come back home wearing a new shirt from a store called Search & Destroy. It depicts a black-and-white drawing of a man standing at the edge of a rooftop in an overcoat, exhaling a puff of smoke that drifts dramatically from his mouth and surrounds his head in a stringy cloud, as though his hair is on fire. Casey had brought it up to me and declared, which seems to be his way of doing things, that he was buying it for me. This was still taking some getting used to-not just being treated to random gifts and excursions, but the self-assured attitude all of these people have about, well, everything. Casey never asks or wonders-he declares or states. It’s both comforting and unnerving, like at the Milkshake Company today. The garment hanging from my torso felt like a bribe to make up for sometimes treating me like an insect, and I don’t like to be bought. The venom despises it. Everything wasn’t what it seemed, and that left me feeling caught in the crossfire.

Lon’s sitting on the couch watching TV as I walk in. He does a double take after glancing at me. “Wow! I like your shirt.”

“Thanks,” I say, running my hand over the plastic printing for the millionth time in the past hour.

“Renée called,” Lon says, going back to Samurai Jack, who is tearing art-deco robots to shreds. “She wants you to call her.”

I’m in my room with the door shut in five seconds, and I’m punching numbers shakily into the phone in eight. For some reason, hearing about her twisted past has only made me want to talk to her more. This girl may not be normal, she may not be “okay,” but she cares for me, and all I want to do is let her know how amazing I think she is.

The venom snorts. Always the superhero, Locke. Go ahead, try to face something this terrible. I can’t wait. Ignoring its voice is impossible, and I shudder. Blurting something out at the wrong time is not an option here. Don’t be toxic, Locke. Careful.

A droplet of sweat forms in the center of my forehead and begins to trickle annoyingly down the bridge of my nose. After two rings, it’s hanging on the tip of my nose, and I’m about to wipe it off when someone picks up the phone, at which point the droplet sails down and spatters onto my pants.

“There’s no excuse for you calling me so late, you know.”

Caller ID. I hope. “Well…actually, there is.”

“Oh, really? And that is?”

“How’ve you been?”

“Ha, yeah, that’s gonna work. Answer my fucking question, Locke, why didn’t you call me?”

As my mouth opens, the venom screeches in the back of my head, louder and louder until it’s all I can hear. Even considering her parents up has sent it into a psychotic tantrum. My throat feels closed up, and I have to clench my eyes as hard as I can just to concentrate. No, no, no, not now. Think of something, Locke, something good and reasonable, something that isn’t the truth.

“Look…Renée, you being Andrew’s sister, that’s a delicate issue for me. You know?”

“Nope. Keep going. How so?”

Fantastic. “Look, Renée, why didn’t you mention that your brother was Andrew Tomas?”

“Hmm, what about him?”

Oh boy. This isn’t easy. “Well, I mean, I don’t want to sound like a wuss or a jerk, but the kid threatened me with physical violence because I wanted to date you! And I-”

“Waitwaitwait. Stop. You want to date me? You never mentioned this.”

“Y’know, my mom actually brought this same thing up-”

“Oh, wow, you discussed me with your mom?” She chuckles. “This is some serious shit. I guess you really do want to date me.”

“Well, I only curled up with you in my lap and made out with you for about an hour.”

“I’ve done similar with boys who I’ve had no intention of dating.”

Suddenly my head is filled with a picture of me force-feeding these faceless boys glass. Glass mixed with wasps. I tell it to shut up. Venom talking. “So the idea never crossed your mind?”

There’s a pause before she says, “The thought did cross my mind, yes.”

“Well, yes. I really want to date you.”

“There it is, out in the open.”

“So.”

“Go on.”

“There’s…not much to go on about. I’d like to date you.”

“Well,” she says, sounding somewhere between annoyed and giddy, “if that’s the case, maybe you ought to ask me out?”

I remember my mom’s words and cringe. “Would it be okay if I dated you?”

“Wow. I don’t know.”

“WHAT?!”

“Well, that had so little confidence behind it. ‘Would it be okay’-I’m not sure I can date someone who-”

My mouth shakes, falters-

And then something new happens.

Renée’s comment acts as a challenge, a shove, and I can’t help but shove back. The venom fills me, screaming in my ears and blazing through my blood, and takes hold of the words in my mouth. There’s no poison, though, just the confidence and grandiosity the venom gives me, the godlike part of the change, as though I’m…tapping into the dark reservoir in me, taking what is needed, leaving the muck and the pain behind. It’s the venom and I speaking as one, communicating as a full being.

“Okay then, fine,” I say, fueled by this new sensation. “Renée, I want you to be my girlfriend. I want to be your boyfriend, and I want to be your boyfriend right fucking now. That cool?”

“You see?” she squeals into the phone. “That was perfect! A little harsh, but perfect! So, yes, okay.”

“Okay?”

I can almost hear her smile. “Okay. You’re my boyfriend now. Perfect.”

The words hang on to the strings between my heart and stomach. You’re my boyfriend. Perfect. I’ve never been anyone’s boyfriend. Amazing.

“Hey. You really like me?”

She titters. “Of course I really like you, you buttface. I’d be in a bad place if I didn’t like my own boyfriend.”

“Call me that again.”

“You’re my boyfriend,” she purrs. “My wonderful, wonderful boyfriend.”

Wow.

“And your first action as my boyfriend is to wash my feet!”

Huh?

The door’s open when I get to Renée’s, and the lights are out in the front room of her apartment, but I can see a faint yellow glow coming from a room off to the side. A jab of cold hits me right in the chest as the venom spits horrid images of her father, straight razor in hand, leaning over her mangled corpse with a terrifying smile on his face. Sweat begins to prickle behind my brow as I stomp in, eyes frantic, hands clenching. I call out her name, scared, desperate. Please, oh please, oh please-

“In here!” she yells. “Lock the door behind you.”

When I get to her room, there’s no one there, only the window-lit silhouettes of a Goth kid’s paradise. I call out her name again, softer this time, and nearly jump out of my skin when the outline of a door right next to me says, “No, in here.”

I open the door slowly, and I’m hit with a wall of steam. Once it clears, I’m greeted with basic white tile walls, a white sink, a toilet with a fuzzy purple seat cover, and Renée in a bathtub overflowing with suds. She glances up at me and smiles a little at the corners of her mouth. “I’ve been waiting,” she says, and then flicks her lip ring with her tongue.

Mother of God.

Hormones and romance both flood my brain, like the venom’s good twin who’s charming and horny all at once. My hand copies another part of my body and immediately goes up, shielding my eyes from the one thing I want to keep looking at. “Whoa, hey, Renée, I’ve only been your boyfriend for about twenty minutes here!”

“Oh, be quiet, you.” She laughs. “I’ve got enough suds on top of my body that Superman couldn’t see it right now. Your virgin eyes are protected.”

Sadly, she’s right: There’s a mountain of white fluff over her, everything under her armpits completely opaque out of my line of vision. I walk over to the far wall and sit where I can see her face. As I lower myself onto my haunches, a foot with black toenail polish and a loofah dangling from the big toe rises out of the suds like a very cute shark.

“Scrub,” she commands.

Foot fetishes are an absolutely foreign concept to me, maybe because up until now I associate feet with stepping in dog shit or wearing tennis shoes, neither of which are the pinnacle of sexiness. Feet are about utility, not hotness. And yet I’m absolutely, positively enamored of Renée’s foot. Each tiny toe seems alien in its shape and size, a sculpted variation on the normal model of the human digit. I can’t help but go over every inch and crease and line with the loofah in the greatest detail. The arch of her foot reflects the curves of her body; her toenails, painted black of course, seem too delicate to belong to a human being. There’s a little callus on her heel, which I run my finger along and get rewarded with a small sigh in the back of her throat. I can’t help it-I take off my glasses, lean forward, and press my lips against the ball of her big toe, soft and cushiony beneath my kiss. Renée lets out a soft “Oh” and then lets her left foot drop slowly back into the water.

I slip my glasses back on and figure out a way to talk again. “Left done. Right, please.”

“Just the one will be fine for now, thank you,” she says with sincere contentedness. “That was extremely pleasant, Mr. Vinetti.”

“Just doing my job as your”-breathe in-“boyfriend, Ms. Tomas.”

She chuckles. “I didn’t actually think you were going to wash my foot.”

“Neither did I.” I sigh. “Guess you just bring out the gentleman in me.”

Her eyes flutter open, and it hits me like a two-ton sack of wonderful. Makeup or no, she’s beautiful. I lean slowly forward on my hands and knees and plant a kiss on her lips as carefully as I can; this boyfriend thing is new, and I want to enjoy it as much as possible. She responds slowly, her breath shaky and hot, the whole kiss a little too tentative for either of us. Our tongues touch, just a little, and I’m stuck, frozen, enraptured by this person I’m somehow allowed to be dating.

We pull back and stare, astounded. “Damn.”

“Damn indeed,” she murmurs.

Slowly, so as not to faint from sheer head rush, I get to my feet and take a moment to throw my coat into her room. If I didn’t walk away right then, I might’ve jumped into the tub with her.

“So, what’s going on with you? You sounded freaked out when you came in. And don’t give me any nonsense about Andrew.”

I laugh and try to play it off. “Yeah, fearing for my life is nonsense. Besides, your door was open, I don’t know…something could’ve happened.” There. See? Didn’t blow it. Kudos.

“No worries about that,” she says, accompanied by splashing. “I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

“Well, hey, y’know, big city and all, you’re never sure who’s going to try and break in-”

But my words flee from me, because in my fervor I’ve marched right back into the bathroom and discovered what the splashing was all about, ’cause Renée’s standing up.

I’ve never seen a woman completely naked before. I mean, on the Internet and magazines and all that (I’m a teenage male, after all), but a warm, breathing, nude woman is a new sight for me. I always thought that airbrushed beauty was the height of perfection, but I’m wrong, dead wrong. She’s wearing only bubbles, water and suds sliding slowly down her curves, her hips. Her nipples stand out pink on her pale skin, and there’s a tattoo of two snakes intertwined, like those on the Red Cross logo, right below her navel. She has her legs placed together to form a reverse teardrop shape, and the dark patch of hair where they meet is smaller than I expected, yet still unspeakably inviting. She’s leaning against the wall; her body slants slowly downward into a mountain of soapy white. I feel my breath begin to labor in my chest, and I’m pretty sure my glasses are starting to fog up. The look on her face is somewhere between surprise and shy pride; oh God, she’s biting her lower lip. The venom twitches giddily, bearing an ear-to-ear grin. Well, now, it sneers excitedly, you want to take this, or should I go ahead?

“So,” she says softly, “are you going to hand me a towel or what?”

“I don’t really want to,” I manage.

There’s a moment, an acknowledgment of the tension in the air, and then we’re done. Splash, splash, she’s out of the tub and grabbing a towel. She turns away from me, and for a second I stare at the curves of her body from the back before everything between her mid-thighs and armpits is wrapped in fluffy white cotton. I cough as I wipe off my glasses.

She gives me an over-the shoulder glance and says, “Man, let’s hope the teacher doesn’t call you up to the board.”

I look down at my pants and swiftly get the point. She struts back into her room, a David Bowie song on her lips. And I’m about to follow her like a slave when, out of the corner of my eye, I catch something that stops me dead in my tracks.

The sink is lined with containers of pills, orange with the chunky white childproof tops. Prozac, Lexapro, Ritalin, Dexedrine, and a myriad of others. Study aids. Antidepressants. Antipsychotics. A laundry list of dosages, intended effects, alcohol warnings.

“Locke? You coming?”

I shove it to the back of my mind, getting it out of my thoughts for now. This girl is hurt, but she’s wonderful, she’s your girlfriend. Be careful, man, for your own sake.

I’m lying on the bed as instructed when she comes back into the room, wearing a H.I.M. T-shirt and her underwear. She bounds onto the bed and snuggles up against me, all warmth and curves. I’ve never snuggled with a girl before, and so far it’s proving pretty great.

“Hey, you,” she says, putting a hand over my heart.

“Hey.”

“You’re my boyfriend.” A shot of energy goes through both of us. Our grips on each other tighten.

“So. About Andrew.”

“Do we really need to keep talking about Andrew? I, for one, am interested in the boyfriend aspect of this conversation. Here: Andrew is my brother. He is also a bully at your school who regularly torments you and wants you to keep your grubby hands off me.” To emphasize the rule I’m breaking, Renée grabs one of my hands and slaps it, firmly, on her ass. My mouth goes dry, and I focus on breathing steadily. “Since this is not going to be the case, he will have to learn to deal with it. You will treat each other with the restrained dislike of in-laws, and all will turn out happily.” She looks up into my eyes and smiles. “Though if you cheat on me, he’ll break your kneecaps.”

“If Randall and Casey don’t do that first.”

“I’ll let them know your kneecaps are on reserve. Just the knees, though.”

And with that, the issue is closed. We stay still, listening to each other breathing until our chests rise and fall together, synchronized.

“What’s the deal with Casey? Is there some sort of epic heartbreak in his past?”

Renée chuckles. “You could call it that. More love-in-vain than anything else.”

“Anyone I know?” Renée doesn’t say anything, just laughs, louder and louder. I’m baffled until the answer hits me smack-dab in the face. “Oh my God. Not Randall.”

“Shhh,” she says, “it’s the big secret. Don’t even say it out loud.”

“Randall, though? The straightest dude in the world? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“He’s clueless about it. Honestly, Casey’s kept it hidden for so long at this point, it’s almost a joke. He’s terrified that it would ruin their friendship, that Randall would just start treating him like a queen.”

“I can sort of see that, honestly. Randall’s very much a guy.”

She pecks me on the temple. “Mmm-hmm. It’s why I’m glad to have you. You’re just enough of a woman for me.”

“Oh, thanks.”

She giggles and burrows deeper into me.

Wonder what cocktail of meds makes her treat you like this.

I focus on her breathing, her warmth. The weight of her in the bed. Anything else.

No, really, you should get that recipe down, it chuckles. She gets in a bad mood, you’ll know what to give her to make her love you again. Maybe even buy some of those tiny plastic cups.

A twitch of anger jolts my body. Her hand slides across my chest. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” I mumble, “little venom moment. No worries.”

“Hey now,” she whispers, snuggling even closer to me. Her kisses move from temple to ear. “None of that today. Let’s keep this venomless for now.”

“It’s not that simple, Renée.”

“Sure it is. Just forget about it. Stay here with me instead of inside your mind.”

This from Miss Psychopharmacology! From what I saw, your whole personality is a series of chemicals swimming inside your head.

I pull her tighter to me, trying to drown it out. “I know, I know, it’s just…Sometimes it’s out of my hands, you know? I don’t get to choose.”

“The Hierophant disagrees. The choice is always yours at all times. Be who you want to be.”

Oh, yeah, is that how it is? Were you dressing like Morticia before your dad went slasher movie on your mom?

“Look, in this situation, there’s no puzzle or game to be played, okay? You really don’t know what you’re fucking talking about, so just…leave it alone.”

The words leave my mouth too harsh, too riled up by the venom. There’s a pause, and then she sighs and gets up. Shit. My hand is desperately aware that it’s no longer resting on ass cheek. I can almost hear the venom laughing; its work is done. GodDAMMIT, Locke.

“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “That came out totally wrong.”

“I’ll say.” She folds her arms across her delicious breasts, standing at the side of the bed with a Rosie-the-Riveter jaw. “No one talks to me like that. No one orders me to do anything.”

“It wasn’t an order-”

“Bullshit, you just told me to do something, Locke. Incredibly uncool.”

“It’s…” My mouth goes dry, slack, but I force it into movement. “It’s hard to talk about. Even Randall only knows so much about it. Casey’s the only person who has any sort of idea what I’m talking about, so…I’m sorry. This is new, and I’m doing my best not to fuck it up.”

She stares at me for a second, and finally lowers her arms. “Here’s the thing,” she says. “I won’t pry too hard. Sorry if I did. I like you a ton, even though I’ve only met you, what, twice, so I want to get to know you, understand what I’m dealing with. But from what I’ve heard, the venom’s not my type, so he can go fuck himself. From now on, I will not let some destructive force play a walk-on part in a relationship that I think has a metric buttload of potential.”

This piques my interest. News to me. “What kind of potential?”

She shrugs, and that sexy half smile creeps onto her face. “Well, I’m not sure. I guess we’ll have to find out, huh?”

I think about every word before I say it. “I’ll try to keep the venom out of this relationship entirely. At the same time, I just need you to know that I’m not totally put-together, and you’re the first girl to want to know why. It’ll take some time to get used to.”

“Time, I can do,” she says warmly. “Time is manageable. But I am serious about this.”

“Likewise.”

A pause. Neither of us know how to respond; there’s no answer that either of us can give the other, and it feels too deep too quickly. I open my mouth again, to try and explain what I meant by the whole thing, and finally choose to go with what I feel right then and there rather than fucking myself over with any more venom talk. It’s a big risk-might make me sound really creepy-but right now it’s all I’ve got.

“I want you to meet my mom,” I say. “She’s a total character, and I think she’ll really like you.”

“That’s the most romantic thing anyone’s said to me in ages. Kiss me.”

I do. For a long time. We run our hands up and down each other’s bodies, savoring every touch. She pulls up my new shirt and lets her hand sneak across my stomach, her nails scratching me lightly around my belly button. It’s never been like this with a girl. I’m used to light pecking or sloppy, overzealous kissing, but this-it’s soft yet slightly aggressive. Subtle yet undeniably explicit. I can’t believe I’m allowed this. If there’s another shoe around, it better drop soon, ’cause I’m getting real comfortable here.

We both come up for air, our noses centimeters apart and our breath mixing hotly. She lets a finger stray across my cheek, circling up to my ear.

“Dark boy,” she whispers, “with your long black coat and downturned eyes…I don’t buy it.”

“No?”

She shakes her head, smiling. “Nothing poisonous can make me this happy. No way.”

I bite my lip and dive back in.

I SAID 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.