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Cletus Kasady closes his eyes in pleasure. There are few things in this world he loves, and even fewer things that he loves which are unrelated to bloodshed, but crowning that admittedly meager list is tacos al pastor. Juice drips down his chin as he chews, and as he makes eye contact with the taco truck owner, he gives her a wide grin and a thumbs up. Maybe he won't kill her after all. It's a long night and a big city. There's plenty else to do.But first he wants to enjoy his food. He saunters his way through the park till he finds a bench, eyes the homeless man sleeping on it, and solves the problem by dragging the man off, holding him by one ankle. The man yelps with annoyance when he hits the ground, and Kasady is just about to end the annoyance of the noise with one well-placed kick when his foot gets caught by something like a rope. He looks down, and realizes it's more like a snake, a green garter snake, except extraordinarily large and strong beyond all reason.The homeless man, seeing this foot stopped only inches away from his face, rolls out from under and runs away."Hm," says Kasady.Suddenly, he is yanked backwards by more of this ropelike snake, back and down, the tacos flying out of his hand. He finds himself slammed into the bench and bound to it by multiple coils of green garter snake. Only the snake is black now, not green, and when its head emerges, Kasady at first recoils, then grins."It's been a minute since I last saw anything uglier than me," he says.When the snake opens its mouth, it shows teeth. Rows and rows of sharp, tiny, white teeth. And then it darts forward and takes a bite out of Kasady's left ear.Kasady screams, or tries to. He only gets out half a howl before another coil of the snake whips around and slides between his open teeth like a gag. He bites down as hard as he can, but that doesn't help; he thinks he might've chipped a tooth on the thing.Behave, says the snakelike thing. And I won't bite.Kasady nods. Slowly, menacingly, the coil slips across his face and disappears."Well," he says, when he's got his breath back, "I'm not bored!" He gives the snakething his most ingratiating grin. In his extensive experience, wackjobs sometimes like their fellow wackjobs. Surely this goes for snakes as well as people?
Your name is Cletus, yes?
"People call me Kasady."You were going to kill Eddie Brock, it says. And not approvingly, either."I can be persuaded to change my mind. I'm a reasonable man."A coil winds its way around Kasady's throat in a way that Kasady doesn't much care for.
How would you do it?
Ah, this is something Kasady recognizes. There's information that the thing wants, and now they bargain. Good! Good.Kasady shrugs as best as he can underneath all those coils. "Now where would I be if I went around talking about things like that with complete strangers?"
You can call us Venom.
"You have a last name, Venom?"
Not yet.
"You wanna tell me how you learned to talk and all that?"
No.
"You think I'm gonna—"How, Venom snarls, coils tightening."Right!" Kasady flashes it an ingratiating, ineffective smile. "It was pretty simple, actually. I was gonna dress up as a pizza man who got the wrong door and shoot him. Silencer on, of course."Venom replies with a series of sounds that sound vaguely Asian."What was that?" You are full bullshit. It has a better flavor in Cantonese.Kasady sighs. "Look, I'm going to prison tomorrow anyway. This is my last free night. What makes you think I'm gonna go after Eddie?"
Everything we have ever heard about you, and everything we have heard you say, and your face, and your body, and this.
One black tendril helpfully slips the switchblade out of Kasady's back pocket and waves it back and forth in front of his face a couple times before bopping him in the nose."Oh, come on. Big city, everyone needs a little protection sometimes."Venom bops him on the nose again, only this time it's not at all cute. This time it's with enough force to make it sting. Give us a better answer."I'm like a jazz musician, okay? I work things out on the fly. I didn't have a specific plan. And I promise I won't do it now, knowing he's protected by some massive snake."Snake? The thing actually tilts its head slightly, then adds: Ah. No, this is temporary. Whatever the fuck that means."I won't do it now, regardless."
On the contrary, if we let you go now you will certainly attempt to kill him tonight.
"How d'you figure?"
You dislike being challenged. Cannot bear it, actually. So we will have to kill you.
Kasady makes a huffy sound of exasperation. He's used to being analyzed by shrinks, but usually ones with somewhat more delicate constitutions, ones that he knew he could kill with his bare hands, which usually helped proceedings enormously. And he's used to being threatened by brutes stronger than he is, but not ones that spent any time analyzing him. This snakething with its double combo is proving to be a little uncomfortable, and Kasady's not used to being uncomfortable. In pain, yes. Or perfectly happy. Not much in-between."Why do you care about Eddie Brock, anyway?" he says. "If I'm going to die, I at least deserve to know why."Venom considers this. You want to know the truth?Kasady bites back an obviously. "Yes."
We are going to get married.
"What?"Eddie Brock, Venom says, is going to be our husband.For a moment, they stare at each other, Kasady gaping and Venom stone dead serious. Then Kasady opens his mouth and laughs harder than he's laughed in months.Venom bites his other ear.Have you ever experienced love, Cletus? it says.It takes Kasady a good couple minutes to get over his ear, but if he has one strength, it's high pain tolerance.When he gets over it, he thinks, if he's going to die, why hold back? He resents the loss of his life, resents the loss of his tacos, and resents not being the weirdest one in the conversation. Also, very much, he resents the introduction of the concept of love. He had thought for a minute that at least it would be nice being killed by something entirely interesting, but now it turns out he's being killed by something rather pathetic. Yes, he resents this. A lot."I loved those tacos," he says resentfully.
That is not true love.
"Truer love than anything between you and him."For a moment, Kasady thinks he's gonna get bitten again, but then Venom simply says, Is that because of who we are or because of who he is?"Both! Love is a useless fucking concept, and even if it weren't, who could fall in love with somebody so fucking weak?"Weak? Venom says. Almost gently. That should scare Kasady, but he's too far gone to notice."That idiot wouldn't stop trying to be friends with me for five days straight! You would've thought the penitentiary was a fucking four-year college, for all the icebreakers he tried to put me through. Wouldn't shut up."
That was not weakness; that was being human. Humans are pack animals, Eddie more than anyone else.
"That's weakness exactly, my shiny little friend. Weakness is other people: wanting them, needing them, fearing them. And he was doing it so blatantly, it was almost insulting."Venom says nothing."You must be wondering what my weaknesses are. Look around all you want," Kasady says proudly. "There's nobody."You, Venom says with great deliberation, are boring.Now it is Kasady's turn to say nothing. Those three little words are breathtaking."Me?" he finally says.
Yes, boring. Boring and cowardly. Eddie gave you much more credit than you ever deserved.
"You ugly little—"As Kasady goes on and on, Venom simply raises its voice, cutting through, undeniable and extremely annoyed. Eddie thought that perhaps you had some complex psychological problem, an Oedipus complex and worse, but we should have known better. We should have told him. We know men like you, creatures like you, far more than he ever could. We have been inside them. We have known things like you very intimately. And you! You are BORING!The last word comes in a shout that shakes the entire bench and shuts Kasady right up.
You yell about how unpatterned bloodshed is the ultimate freedom, and then you do not even cause unpatterned bloodshed! There is a pattern and is it BORING! You are afraid of other people and you are afraid of not being liked and you are afraid of being small and you are so, so obvious. Men like you. You are wasting my time. Your grandmother could not take care of you and sent you to an orphanage and you killed her for it. A girl said no to you and you killed her for it—that was not freedom, that was cowardice. You cannot bear to have anyone living in this world that can say no to you and make it mean something.
Of course you would laugh at our marriage. You could never hope to understand it. Of course you would hate Eddie; you could never understand him either. This is a man who reaches out to everyone, seeks to understand everyone, a man who seeks connection, a man who makes friends with everyone he's met more than three times. He is not afraid of who he is or what he needs. That is not weakness. You, constantly scared, masking every terrible decision you make by splashing gallons of blood around it and then thinking it will make you special— you are weak. Transparent and boring and WEAK."Fuck you," Kasady manages to say, shaken.
Offer declined.
"You—"
Yes?
Kasady gathers himself up and glares. Venom likes a monologue? Kasady can oblige."I could have killed so many more people if I were like you, and you're just—you're wasting it on Eddie Brock. All your strengths become his strengths, but all his weaknesses become your weaknesses, and he has so many. You could hurt him by fiddling with his computer and making him out to be a criminal or worse. Or not even fiddling with his computer, just releasing lies on the internet; even without evidence, you could get that job he loves taken away if you did it right. People are sheep. You could hurt him so fucking easy. You could hurt him just by killing a doorman, for crying out loud. So easy, he's practically crying out for the world to hurt him. It's gonna happen, sooner or later. And this is the man you're gonna marry?"So that was your plan. His reputation and his friends. The coil around Kasady's neck tightens. You could have told us that from the start and saved both of us a lot of time. Well. Saved us a lot of time.It pauses, then says: Any last words? We know that is a fairly important custom with some of you humans.Kasady stares with helpless rage, and reaches for the worst thing he can think of."This world is never gonna accept you, like it never accepted me. You'll get hunted down and it is shit. Being on the run from the law is fucking shit. You are gonna be miserable."
We will have two ladies of honor at our wedding, actually. One of them is a lawyer. One of them is a small business owner. And he will have a man of honor, a doctor who will bake the cake for us. We are very upstanding citizens, murder aside. This world suits us.
Kasady just can't get over it: this thing with all the power anyone could ever want squandering it on something as stupid as marrying Eddie fucking Brock."You could have become something great without him."
But we are happy now.
Before Kasady can answer, the coil tightens abruptly, cutting off the flow of air through his throat.Breaking news, says Venom, over the sounds of Kasady choking. Murderer Pervert Found Dead After Attempting Self-Asphyxiation With His Dick Buried Deep In A Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme.For a couple minutes, there's just the sound of Venom laughing at its own joke. And then there's dead silence as its massive jaw opens wide.It eats quickly. It has neither the time nor the money to arrange the tabloid-worthy tableau it just described; it has only about four hours left before Dan and Anne drop Eddie off at home after his bachelor party, so Venom's own one-alien bachelor party has to be executed in swift order. Eddie has a lot of enemies, and Venom has a threat assessment to conduct.Besides, Venom also has to eat. It needs the energy for the honeymoon.