Page 5 of Rawest Venom

Will’s deep-set eyes search my body up and down. Heart beating faster, I wonder if I overplayed my hand. “Oh. Okay. Huh. It was the piggy thing, wasn’t it?”

“Wh-what? No, I’m just tired and have to worktomorrow.” My toes edge closer to the door, attempting to ease out of this conversation.

“Was it my cum? Like, coming on you?” Scruffy locks of his hair fall forward as he lets his head drop. “It was. I knew it.Fuck. Why can’t I be normal?”

A fraction of me feels the need to take the three steps and place an arm over his shoulders to comfort him. But mostly? I just don’t care. “No, it wasn’t the cum. I’ll call you!” Edging turns to hurrying to the door and darting out in a flash. We both know I’m not going to call.

Feeling airy and light as I step into the freezing winter air, I suck in a deep breath, my lungs cleansing themselves with the mist of the frozen flakes falling on the sidewalk. Since the streets seem empty, I do a little happy wiggle, my ass thrilled it didn’t have to get stabbed by Will,the programmer,tonight.

Once I reach my apartment, I slide off each boot and put them on the tray. With the keys hung on the hook, my back presses to the door. I listen, scanning. Silence is the only sound that returns.

I’m satisfied and perform my nightly routine and door lock checks. Scrubbing my skin in the shower, I change into my pajamas and brush my teeth. Plopping onto the bed, my legs slide under the 100% cotton sheets like every night. Fingers stretch to turn off the light…

And I see it.

My breath catches even as my hand reaches for the pistol in the nightstand drawer. And though my mindcommands it to stop, my pulse races in my arteries. The vision laid before my eyes magnifies as terror overtakes me.

The tissue box next to my lamp is turned at an angle.

Two

CALUM

It’s not madness.

The follies in the symbols won’t lie to me. They are fact. As real as the numbers on the screen. And truth will set everyone free if they would only believe.

It’s not madness. It’s math.

Math.

Truth.

Real.

Of course, the irony of saying it’s real while looking through a screen at distorted images of people going about their fake lives is not lost on me.

Me

I need to meet. Spot at 0042.

Alpha

Roger

Focusing back on the pictures in front of me, my hand tingles, but a stretch of my fingerskeeps my discipline in check. Not now. There’s just enough light from a digital clock to observe all I need to see on the blacked-out monitor.

If I pull out my dick now, I’m no better than my father.Was.

Instead of watching the present, the past clouds my vision, images of Franklin jerking off in a corner room of Strauss’s palace. At first, he enjoyed the regular paid workers. Those gals were good enough when I was eight. By the time I turned nine, he needed to chase teenage girls through the catacombs of the cathedral. Max and Ace thought I was terrified of their jump scares, but I had seen what had happened to the kids down there. When I was ten, he had moved on to children my age or younger and masturbation was no longer enough to scratch his itch.

My palm hits my crotch, the cool metal zipper resting just over my erection. Do I carry the same venom? Am I the poison? Not lowering the fly, I squeeze the tip of my cock to ease some tension there, returning to the present.

Glancing around the desktop, two more shards ofPsilocybesing to me, and I let my mouth make love to them. A swig of blackberry tea washes away the bitter taste.

Some time passes and the blue haze of the clock hums through the glass of the monitor, so loud that its color changes to yellow, the fingers of its shadow crawling toward the figure before me. My eyes have adjusted and no longer need light to operate, the rodsand cones magnifying to black holes able to soak up wavelengths no human knew were possible.

And because I can see, memories play directly in front of me.

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