Thank You For The Venom

“Sing to me.”
“I can’t,” I whimper, his fingers digging into my throat, yanking my head downward.
“I said sing!” I begin to choke as he pulls my head lower down onto him. I try sing, choking. I can’t breathe at all now, it’s all going dark. My signing turns to a scream.
I fly upwards, still screaming, rubbing my throat as the wondrous sensation of freely breathing overcoming me. It’s all over now.
It’s been five years since my mother died. It’s all over now I’d thought when her coffin was lowered. I had struggled for two months, paying for food for me once I checked her into the hospital. She died pain free so I didn’t mind going hungry. Asking anyone now maybe it was not eating at all for two months and taking up heavy smoking is what stunted my growth so much that now at nineteen I’m only three inches taller than I was age twelve. I, however, believe it probably had something to do with the exposure to raw drugs. I didn’t take any at all until I was seventeen but the mixing and living around them probably stopped me from becoming a normal sized man.
I didn’t go to live with my aunt when my mom died. She never came for me, I never reached out to her. She came to the funeral and left the next day, disgusted with the smell of cigarettes and alcohol that floated around my fourteen year old self.
It’s all over now. It’s hard to organise a funeral for a man that made his living by not being known. In all the time I worked for him, the boss only seemed to leave his apartment three times, on the third time he was shot.
I pull myself out of bed. Ryan is already awake. Or maybe he didn’t sleep here. His duvet on the bed a foot from mine, is tossed around and his shoes are missing. Affording to keep my mom in hospital was difficult enough but when she died the little government support we got went and a fourteen year old can’t live alone anyway. Ryan and I moved in with Ronnie and we all still live together though as was the nature of my old job I often didn’t get to sleep here. And when I did it was incredibly difficult to actually sleep.
Ronnie is in the kitchen/living room eating a bowl of cereal. I pour myself one. “Don’t forget to wear black,” he jokes dryly. As if I wore colour anywhere anyway.
Ryan appears from the bathroom, fully dressed but with damp hair. “Is this safe?” he asks nervously.
“The MG are murdering assholes but I doubt they’ll attack when we’re at a funeral,” Ronnie replies with a mouth full of cereal, “they might send someone around to get a good look though. See who is in the gang.”
Ryan makes a face, “Fuck that. What if they just take a look to kill us later?” It no longer strikes me as weird how we talk about murder so casually. In fact nothing illegal really seems illegal anymore.I believe we shouldn’t pick and choose our laws.
“We can’t have no one put him in the fucking ground,” Ronnie says throwing his bowl in the sink. “Someone needs to make sure that the fucking asshole is never seen again.”
“Do I have to go?” I murmur. Ryan and Ronnie throw me empathic looks. I hate the boss. I hate him for what he’s done to me and how he threatened to rid the world of Ronnie and Ryan if I didn’t comply.
“If the others see you’re not there it could go much worse,” Ryan says awkwardly.
Ronnie nods. “True,” I concede. My pay has really dropped now that we’re under Jed. Venom has grown to the biggest gang in Jersey and we went from employing ten when I started to employing twenty. My rank was high from the begging, Ryan’s status grew as more new people came in below him.
I’d say I’m around sixth most important after Ronnie. Ryan is about eighth but he doesn’t seem to mind me being above him. No one really rues me my position. No one begrudges my immediate rise. No one has anything to say against my importance because no one would have taken my place as the boss’s concubine. That part of my work is so degrading that no matter how much I was paid the damage that was done couldn’t be fixed.
I don’t think I even have a sexuality anymore.
We arrive at the cemetery outside of town to see the coffin be lowered. No one cried. In truth if you cried you didn’t know the boss and you’d probably get the shit beaten out of you. I got a flu once and feinted because I was so weak and tired. When I woke up, still lying in the middle of the floor my cigarettes were gone and my nose was badly bleeding from where someone kicked me in the face and wrote Baby on my forehead in my own blood. I feinted again on the way to the bathroom from lack of blood. Ryan helped me up, cleaned me off and put plasters where necessary. I was only fifteen and later found out the guy who wrote on my face, in my blood, was twenty eight at the time, a total asshole who got shot a few weeks later by MG.
No one says anything. We all just go home to our separate homes, taking unusual routes so we’re not followed. None of us talk in Ronnie’s car. In fact we just all smoke. When we pull up behind the apartment block Ronnie speaks, “I don’t know what I think of Stan as new leader.”
“What do you mean?” Ryan says undoing his seatbelt. I know what he means, he means Stan has anger issues and can be very irrational. Also Stan is very okay with murder and that’s why no one wants to tell him no.
“He’s fucking crazy,” Ronnie sighs and kills the engine.
“He is, isn’t he? At least he doesn’t hate us and leaves us with the same jobs,” Ryan says getting out of the car.
I follow them out, “I don’t thinks he wants me to keep my position.”
“Did he say something to you?” Ronnie asks, surprise filling his voice.
“No but y’know he always wanted to do that, he’s hardly going to do street work.”
“Yea but he could do customer service,” Ronnie grins. Customer service means dealing with people who owe money, people who want to borrow money, and working with the very powerful people. A lot of celebrities’ have us as suppliers of their drugs, including some of my favourite local bands. Of course I never get to see them. I never see anyone really, I’m always fucking hidden away mixing shit. When the boss was alive he rarely let me out of the mixing house and never let me leave. No one at all outside Venom knows who I am. That thought just feels weird. As far as the government is concerned my mother’s death should have put me somewhere but I left the charts. I have no educational, medical or tax history. I’m just a living ghost really.
Back in the flat we have nothing to do. “What do we even do… like in the afternoon?”
“Drink?”
“Drink.”
“Drink.”
I still can’t get served. I have an ID and I’m covered in tattoos. All I get is “nice try, get a real ID when you’re the right age.”
Ronnie pulls out all the vodka, illegal spirits and beer we store in the food cupboards.

“So I keep mixing?” I say when I turn up the next day at three pm.
“Well yea, who else will do it?” Stan says like it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. “I need to go take car of one of the boss- ex-boss’s debts,” he shoves a hand gun in his pants and a knife in his sleeve pocket. He leaves, now only me, cocaine, heroin and various pills are left. It would be very easy to be a druggie like a lot of the guys here, only I see what it can do to you. I see all the people who we have to “take care of” because they go insane from trying to get their next fix. One guy killed his wife to get her life assurance and buy more heroin. It’s so fucked up, he got arrested and then died in jail. Another guy overdosed right in front of me. He was on the couch that first night. When I was sixteen I saw him take twice as much pills as we would deem “so fucking stupidly dangerous” and minutes later he was lying dead in a his own puke in the bathroom. After that most of the guys really calmed it on the pill popping.
I stand at the kitchen counter and measure out the brand new cocaine. There’s still a board on the windows but there’s a crack just big enough that I can still see the world. I look out it for a while. Suddenly I see him in the reflection of the window, standing behind me. “Come Frank,” he smiles and then he’s shoving me against the wall and holding me in place as I scream. It goes completely black before I slap my head off the floor next to the counter. He’s not there. Of course he’s not there, he’s dead.

Notes

Here is another chapter. Each chapter, if you haven't assumed, is named after lyrics in the song which is also the title of the fic.
I've decided to continue writing it now as I have planned it out and really want to write it :3