Thank You For The Venom

“What’s wrong!?” Gerard exclaims when he sees me limp into the flat at two am. I waited at Ryan’s body till Ronnie and the ambulance arrived. I texted Ronnie off Ryan’s phone and called the ambulance. Then I walked slowly home through the shadows. I took alleys all the way. I couldn’t face the light less it literally laminated the blood on my hands. The blood of my only real friend in the world. At one time I broke down, the tears blinding me and causing me to walk into a brick wall. I’d slid down the wall, scraping my face against the course brick and landing in a heap at the base. I must have sat crying for about an hour.
I stare at him for a minute before walking to my room, silent. “What happened?!” He demands again from behind me. “Why didn’t you come home with Guy and Mikey?” I pause at my door, leaning my head against the chipboard.
“I got lost,” I mumble.
“The fuck you did!” I open the door and walk in, “Jesus Christ answer me Frank! I’d thought you were dead!” The last word is muffled by the slamming of my bedroom door.
I sit on my bed in the dark. Maybe if I take all the pills that Gerard had brought in to my room, and still reside on my window sill, I’d die. I pick them up and examine them in the feint glow of the city coming through my window. I put them up to my mouth. No, I think, no point in dying now. I open my window and toss them at the roof of the neighbouring building. No temptation.
I own two phones. A good one I got from MG to contact everyone here, and an old nokia to contact Venom, well Stan. I take the Venom one out and consider throwing It out the window like the pills. It is a nokia though, so it will probably be fine if I did. Maybe I could set it on fire.
The screen lights up with a text from Stan. “It’s time”.
Venom is feeling the loss of Ryan so badly that apparently it’s time for me to kill Gerard. I sit on my bed, paralysed. I guess I’m just not that into murder.
I go to throw my nokia out the window after all when it lights up again. “There is a vile of venom in the wall where Ryan was shot. I know you know where. Forty Eight Hours.” I throw open the window and with a fierce growl I fling it at the wall.
I begin to cry for the third time today. I think at some point I pass out because when I open my eyes I’m on my bed, fully clothed and tears stained dry on my cheeks. I’m nearly brought to tears again when I see that my hands are stained in blood. I leap from the bed and run for the bathroom.
“Frank?” Gerard calls as soon as I appear in the main room, but I ignore him and go straight into the bathroom. I can hear his questioning protest to my “being a rude asshole” but I don’t reply. Instead I run the water and watch as the red swirls down, diluted but still so obviously blood. When I look up into the mirror my face is covered in blood and trails caused by tears interrupting some of the patches. This blood, I think, may be my own. My forehead and nose are skint raw. Some of the blood must be Ryan’s from when I leaned in to check his breath, or maybe when I clutched my face screamed.
The water stings the cuts and when I look back up it looks like my skin is melting off. I wash away as much as I can, letting the red water be caught up in the current that will bring it down below. I stain a yellow towel with the remainder. I can’t believe I slept in so much blood.
Gerard is pacing the main room shouting down the phone when I finally leave the bathroom. “Fuck it! He could have died! You DON’T just leave people Guy!! … No, you shut up, I’ll talk to my brother! ... You don’t know that! … Right, fuck off I need to talk to him. No, no shut the fuck up you didn’t even get the right one!” He jerks the phone down from his ear and flings it onto the couch. “Fuck!” he exclaims in a final exasperated bellow.
“Uh,” I begin, but what to say.
“You scared me shitless!” he shouts. “You can’t disappear after a gun fight like that! And then come home at like two am covered in blood and limping! What the fuck Frank!” He starts pacing again, “What kept you?!”
“I got lost,” I mumble looking at the ground.
“Bullshit, you know the city! And why were you so covered in blood, why was your face so covered in blood?! Did you fucking make out with the corpse? Is, what is it, necrophilia? On your list of problems? This another thing that you keep from me!”
I stare, speechless.
“Ew Frank please say it’s not that!”You fucking scared me half to death,” he puts his hands over his face and flung himself to the couch, “fuck it Frank, you could have been dead.”
I stand awkwardly beside him. “I’m need to get out of here,” I say after a while and run for the door, ignoring Gerard’s calls and noises of frustration I push my way down the hall and out into the soft rain.

The vile of poison is in the wall where a brick has been broken, by a bullet. I slip it into my coat pocket and walk back to the flat. The rain is running the remaining blood down to the drain and I dodge precariously around it in attempt to get away.
I walk swiftly through the rain on my own. Just before I leave Venom territory into the short two blocks we call “no man’s land” because there are no dealers on the block, I get dragged backwards and turned around.
“Frank!” Ronnie squeaks uncharacteristically high pitched, “They say you were there when they shot Ryan.” It’s broad daylight and in the middle of the day, what’s he thinking.
Then I look at his eyes and I realise he’s not. “What are you on,” I murmur, jerking out of his grip, “and yes I was but I didn’t shoot. I’d never shoot Ryan. He was my best friend.” My voice catches a little.
“Yea, well now your only fucking friend is fucking dead,” he says and turns away, running into the crowd. I know he didn’t mean it, he’s high and sad but still his words cut deep. Ryan was my closest friend and now if I do my job and return to Venom I’ll have no one. Unless Ronnie comes around. I lightly touch the vile in my pocket and continue my walk back to the flat.
Every step sends me further into apprehension that by the time I open the door and see Gerard’s face from the couch, I’m totally unsure. Maybe I can poison another and say it’s Gerard or…
“Frank are you okay?” he looks really worried. “Seriously what’s going on with you, I’ve been worried sick!”
“Fuck it Gerard!” I shout. My vision is black at the edges, not this again fuck,I shove my hand in my pocket. “Fuck it I can’t!” I shout when I feel the little cool glass vile in my pocket. I’m not thinking at all. I pick it up and fling it at the wall, hitting the picture of Stan. Gerard jumps up and looks confused, switching his glance from me to the liquid that’s sizzling on the wall.
It’s some point after he says my name that I black out.

I don’t want to wake up. I don’t want to come to my senses and have to justify that moment of madness. I don’t want to have to open my eyes and tell Gerard I was almost going to close his forever.
Unfortunately I do wake, lying in the middle of the floor with Gerard standing at the window. “You were going to kill me,” he states when he sees my eyes open. “You were going to fucking kill me?!”
I sit up straight, I can see hurt in his eyes. It’s from the fact that we broke his precious fucking trust. I stare at him unsure what I could even say. “You’re part of fucking Venom. That’s how you knew everything. I can’t believe I didn’t realise,” he looks so angry, “I let you live in my own home! I let you sleep in my brother’s bed! Worse I let myself like you,” his voice is bordering hysteria now, “I let myself care for you and think “Well no matter how short and dangerous this life may be and least I don’t have to die alone” well now I think I’d like to die alone! Get the fuck out of here right now! I’ll have to tell the guys you were shot or poisoned or something. Fuck it. Fuck you. Get out.”
I stumble to the door and push my way down to stairs. I run all the way toward the apartment of my nightmares as my eyes well up with even more fucking tears.

“What do you mean it failed!” Stan is shouting. The back of my head stings from where he threw me against the wall.
“The vile broke and he saw,” I mumble.
“No, no this is not one you can fail at. You either succeed or you die trying!” He screams, his face tomato in shade as he lands me a blow to the ribs. I curl up immediately in pain. “You’re useless as anything but a fucking prostitute Frank! So that’s what you can be,” I freeze up, “go find yourself a nice brothel. You can live there and get the fuck out of my sight because I swear to god you have put is in more fucking danger than saved us from. So you can get the fuck out.”
I seize up in horror. “You heard me! Get out! The next time I hear from you better be your funeral notice because after this I never, ever want to see you again.”
And that folks is the story of how I became homeless.
I slowly stand up, wobbling in pain. Past the judgmental eyes of Chubs, Gavin and Jay, I stumble out of the apartment and into the October streets.

Notes

Hi. So, uh, yea.
I'm sorry if it had a weird flow to it guys. Writing hysteria (like Gerard's) and nervousness and grief (like Frank's) and the overall rage, is just really hard to write XD i mean, it's hard to writ them as themselves with such extreme emotions you never usually see. I can only assume that hysterical Gerard would act like that, y'know.
Anyway I'll update again soon.


(((((Also you have no idea how emotionally invested i get in my own stories. After killing Ryan I got SUPER angry and sad XD)))))