Open your eyes, Brock, a voice said.

His eyes opened. Wow. He looked around and recognized his surroundings immediately. He was standing on top of the Empire State Building. To the right, a portion of Madison Square Garden, and New Jersey just past that. The Chrysler building to the left, and across the East River, Queens. Following the river south, he saw where it merged with the Hudson. Lady Liberty was a beautiful sight in the distance.

He had always loved the view from this height. His uncle Jimmy took him up every year as a boy. It was a tradition, one he always looked forward to. Afterwards, his uncle would always say, “All that looking around has made me hungry. ‘Bout you, Eddie?” The two would then feast on a great meal. Usually a big, juicy steak.

Even as an adult Brock would occasionally try and catch the view. Work and life didn’t always allow that to happen. Like a lot of New Yorkers, Brock sometimes went without actually experiencing some of the best that the Big Apple had to offer. When he did get to the Empire State Building, it always made him happy.

Brock was enjoying some of that happiness lying next to Jen. His moments of real happiness had been few since the creature had grafted itself and its desires to Brock. The symbiote forced Brock to experience elation occasionally through chemical and emotional manipulations when it was pleased or at peace. The creature didn’t give a hang about steak and views though. The nights’ events were wrought of Brock’s decisions. It was all him. Brock was quite happy.

It’s because of me, isn’t it, Brock?

Brock turned to his side. Jen stood before him.

“Yes, of course it’s because of you, Jen…but this isn’t real, is it?”

No, it isn’t.

“I’m dreaming, aren’t I?” Brock stared at Jen, transfixed by her beauty.

Yes, you are. The voice that came from her was changed. It was raspy, horrible, and familiar.

Jen fell away. Brock’s head snapped forward. He saw her body plummeting down from the roof of the skyscraper. Tears streamed down his face when he heard the frightening voice again. This time, he recognized the voice all too well.

Hello, Eddie.

Brock turned to where Jen had just been standing, now, there was only Venom.

“Why are you here?”

I’m always here, Eddie. I’m a part of you. I am you.

“No, no you aren’t. You are not me, you‘re a parasite. You‘re an animal, a monster.”

While that is true, it changes nothing. We are one, Eddie.

Brock advanced on the hulking, black and white form. He knew he was out of his league against such a creature but he would be damned if he was just going to let the thing run all over him without putting up a fight.

“No! We are two! There is no Venom, alien. There’s Brock Edwards and there’s the symbiote from planet where-ever. The leech of humans is on it’s own. I don’t want or need you anymore!”

What served the symbiote as eyes narrowed. The wicked grin frowned. Brock had forgotten how the alien couldn’t handle rejection.

“For the first time since the Sin Eater debacle I am happy again. Not force fed the chemical equivalent of pleasure. I have found happiness in my life. I am living my life. You aren’t part of the equation.”

But I’m not happy, Eddie. You’ve been ignoring me. I’ve had to make other arrangements to do what had to be done.

“I don’t care. Cut the sad-sack crap. You don’t even experience emotions. You feel what I feel and then try to simulate it. You mimic. You copied Parker’s powers after you bonded with him. You can no more talk than a chimp. Yer not sad and lonely, yer hungry, alien.”

Fortunately, I found a way to survive, but I’m tired of it. I’m tired of having to function while handicapped. It’s time for us to be one again. We need to re-connect, Eddie.

“We aren’t doing anythi--”

Before Brock could finish the sentence, he snapped awake. He was in his bedroom again, standing at the foot of the bed. Instead of having a conversation with Venom, he now faced the writhing red and black form of Carnage.

“What the hell? What are you doing here, Carnage? Where’s Venom?”

Carnage’s faux grin grew from ear to ear. “What do you mean, Eddie? Venom is here,” it said, and pointed at Brock.

Brock heard himself gasp as he looked down at his arms. Like prehensile veins the black symbiote interwove then bled across his hands. They wormed their way up his limbs to his chest and down his trunk.

“No...”

“Oh yes, Eddie.” Carnage laughed.

Brock looked to the bed. His face contorted. Though he suffered no physical malady he was in agony. He didn’t recall ever having been in such pain. Tears were welling up as the familiar second skin, the symbiote, sheathed his head.

I’m here, Eddie.

Jen hung feet above the bed. Elongated tendrils of black secured her arms and legs. Except for her nose her face was covered in black. Her nostrils opened and closed rapidly.

“No!” Brock felt that ethereal tendrils of the symbiote probing his mind for a handhold.

The bonding! You fight becoming us! Why Eddie?

“Leave her alone! She’s got nothing to do with this! Damn you!”

“Daddy is hungry, Eddie. Let him feed. The slut isn’t worth your time and it isn’t like she has a reason to live anymore.”

Let me in, Eddie! Let Venom live!

“What the hell are you talking about, Carnage?”

Jen moaned and shook violently as the symbiote began pulling her in two different directions.

Listen to me! I am the voice you must heed. Let me in! Take me back! They took you from me! It wasn’t my fault!

Brock cursed. Too much was happening too fast. The alien was going to kill Jen, he had no doubt of that. She was just a meal to it. Carnage was doing his best to distract Brock. Making it easier for the symbiote to worm its way into his mind. Brock seized a hold of the alien’s presence so close to the inner circles of his mind and lowered his defenses, slightly. The alien loosened it’s grip on the woman and surged. Brock heard himself cry out.

“Nice try,” Brock said through clenched teeth.

“Well, I was referring to Jen’s sweet little daughter, Tracy,” Carnage said as he headed for the open window.

“What... about her?” Brock managed.

Jen screamed from beneath her black gag. The alien, frustrated by it’s denial exerted itself anew. This time it was twisting the woman’s upper body to the right, her legs eased to the left.

“No! No! God damn it!”

“Yes, yes, Eddie. I’m afraid so. The wee lass won’t be opening any more birthday presents... for the rest of her life.” Carnage's mouth turned into a frown all too briefly. “You should have seen the Nanny, though! What a screamer!”

Brock reached for Carnage. The symbiote, spread too thin, peeled away from his muscled limb. Carnage straddled the window-sill. He laced his fingers on his lap and tilted his head at Brock.

“Oh, I think you might want to focus on just one fight at a time, Eddie.”

Jen’s body continued to contort. She screamed as though she was on fire. Could she hear Carnage? Brock hoped not. He had no choice. The alien had to take precedence. He willed the symbiote to stop its attack.

Nothing. The only way to control the alien was to be one with it and dominate it’s faculties as it had when they were Venom. He would have to let the symbiote in all the way.

“Come on, Eddie. It’s time to do what must be done. You know what you have to do, don’t you, Brock? Don’t you…Venom?” Carnage winked and disappeared from the window into the night.

“Come on you son of a bitch!” Brock spat and opened his mind.

When the symbiote felt the resistance ebb away it froze for just a moment. The prehensile extensions locked up violently without a care for their captive. It dove into Brock’s mind for the prize, like a hawk for a field mouse, oblivious to all else.

Brock watched his happiness disappear in one violent jerk of the woman he had placed in harm’s way.

CRAKT!

“We got a T.O.D., Bobby?” Detective Stiletti asked.

“Not long, Joe.” The M.E. opened the elderly woman’s mouth and shone a pen light within. “The insects have just found the corpse. They may have been slowed because the vic had all her windows closed and seemed cleaner than most.”

“Rigor?” Detective Stiletti asked.

“Not yet. Purple-ish blood and skin color changes say longer than thirty minutes. It was hard to find a big enough piece of her skin to determine that, though.”

Stiletti looked around the family room. There were multiple splatter patterns on everything. Hunks and wads of skin were on the ceiling, the floor, the walls, the furniture. The woman’s face was found at the base of the TV. The splatter and blood tracks indicated her face had been slapped to the screen and slid off as gravity demanded.

“Without the inset of rigor mortis I’m gonna guess she’s only been dead a few hours. I’ll know better once I take her temperature.”

“Thanks, Bobby.” Stiletti headed for his partner.

Detective Dwayne Bennett exited the bed room starring at the floor. Everywhere his eyes fell he found blood. His face was pale. Bennett frowned. It was something Stiletti so rarely saw it angered him. The case was getting to Bennett. It was getting to Stiletti, too, but he hadn’t been in the bedroom yet.

“Yer not gonna want to see this, man,” Bennett said without making eye contact.

“It’s part of the job. I don’t expect it to ever get any easier. If I stopped feeling things I’d be one step closer to the bastard that did this. C’mon.”

The two detectives entered the bedroom shaking their heads. The furniture was in ruins except for an old dresser. It looked like someone had thrown a tantrum and the weight and size of the room’s contents had meant nothing. Centered in the carnage was the bed. The pillows were fluffed and the sole, tiny occupant lay on her back, her hands at her sides. The girl’s face was expressionless. There was no sign of strain or struggle. She simply lay there, as though she was just tucked in.

“What’s the cause of death?” Stiletti asked. He found it equally hard to look at and away from the youngest victim in his fifteen years on the force.

“Compared to the older woman, this was a clean kill. One puncture wound, right through the front of the chest and out the back. Skewered the heart. She bled to death in seconds.”

“Figure she was awake?”

“Hard to say. Have to wait for the M.E.’s report.”

“Christ, Joe, who could--”

“Detectives?” A patrolman whose name neither men remembered entered the room.

“Yeah?” both answered.

“We have somethin’ here. This isn’t her kid.”

“She’s way too old to be the mother, we know that,” Stiletti said.

“Well, detective, it doesn’t look like she’s even a relation. We’ve canvassed the entire floor. Mrs. Burtonsmith lives alone according to all accounts. She baby-sits for a little extra cash for a few couples in the building. She,” he pointed to the girl,” is the only girl the vic sits for. She’s also the only girl on the floor.”

“So who’s the mother?” Stiletti asked.

“A Jennifer Leery, single mother, thirty years old. The girl’s name is Tracy Leery.”

“The Leery’s names are on a phone number list on the refrigerator,” Bennett said.

“So where’s the mother?” Stiletti asked.

“Hold on,” Bennett said and raced out of the room.

Stiletti and the uniformed officer followed. Bennett came from the kitchen with a small notepad in his hand. He held it up for his partner to read.

“Any doubt we’re on the right trail?” Bennett asked.

Stiletti read the top page of the notepad. There were three phone numbers scribbled on it. The first was Leery’s cell phone number. The second followed the words Coal Train. A restaurant? A club? The third was written under a name that stopped Stiletti’s breathing.

“Brock Edwards? This is a joke.”

“We have got to find this guy. I’ll run the number. Maybe we’ll get lucky with an address for Mr. Edwards. Worst case, we find the mother before she comes home to this slice of hell.”

There was a sensation of a warm hand running its fingers up Brock’s neck. The hand didn’t stop at the folds of flesh beneath the skull or running fingers through his hair. The hand eased inside his head, under skin, around bone, as easily as greased meat sliding into meat. The fingers felt like they were rubbing Brock’s brain. It was a violation but not a terrible one. Brock had known it for years. He knew that the alien symbiote hadn’t actually penetrated his skin. This was far too intimate a feeling for that. The alien was home. Brock could almost hear it purring.

The alien thrummed his adrenal glands making Brock shiver. What the hell had been going on with him these past weeks? Walking around whining and settling for scraps, playing the role of Nice-Guy-Eddie for these ass-bag editors. Bending over for the government agents. No drive. No stones! Brock had allowed everyone around him to treat him like a chump.

“We don’t take handouts. We don’t bow to anyone. We do as we like, when we like,” Venom said.

Venom cracked his neck. Brock and the alien had achieved a state of ectosymbiosis. If humans were the top of the food chain, Venom now stood looking down on the chain. They were supreme, they were back in power and nothing---

Venom looked at the bed. It was Brock’s bed. The woman on it, he called her Jen. They had engaged in an act of intercourse. What was Brock trying to achieve by this, Venom wondered. There had been so much trauma in the life of Brock recently, entire swatches of memory had been obliterated during the merging.

Jen writhed on the bed and moaned. Something scratched from deep within the shared mind of Venom. An emotion? A longing? Something about this female. Brock had cared for her. Her injury had been accidental. Maybe even forced, Venom thought. The entire merging was forced on Brock though he accepted it now. The initial combining was of his choice years ago. This time, another was to blame.

Venom watched the woman lying, naked, broken and weeping on the bed. Had there been a future for them? The Brock in Venom whispered that there might have been. Had Carnage not introduced the alien...

Carnage.

Their offspring that was poisoned by the serial killer Kasady. He sought to control and manipulate Brock through this woman. She was an innocent. Carnage needed to see the error of his ways. Brock screamed for vengeance over the loss of his happiness. Venom agreed. The spawn must not be allowed to act of his own accord any longer.

A pounding rattled the apartment door.

Jen moaned. Brock surfaced in Venom’s mind and the tear ducks of their body activated.

Venom assumed control and shut them down.

Carnage...

“Hell is full and the damned are walking the earth,” Bennett said from behind the computer monitor at the precinct.

“Got somethin’?” Stiletti sat next to his partner with a fresh cup of black coffee.

“There are all kinds of web pages on Venom. He’s part urban myth and part horror-hero. One site says he’s going to be on tour with Marilyn Manson soon.”

“Christ.” Stiletti gulped his coffee.

“None of this is fact though. It’s all rumors from supposed eye witnesses and people who claim to have had their brains eaten and survived to tell the tale. You get the clearance code for the unit?”

“Mm-hmm.” Stiletti held the half empty cup of coffee in his teeth and fished in his suit coat’s pockets. Finding the scrap of paper he handed it to Bennett.

Bennett typed the site’s address on the keyboard using his index fingers. The inter-precinct website slowly appeared. Bennett scrolled down the list of metahuman criminals until he found Venom, clicked and waited for the screen to load.

“Brock, Edward. Photo journalist. Big into weights. Wife’s a suicide?”

“That surprises you?”

“Brock ain’t the real issue here. We need info on his other.” Bennett hit the tab concerning information on the symbiote.

Both detectives scanned the information on the screen.

“Dr. Reed Richards wrote this?”

“Yeah, years ago. Apparently he’s the only one to have done any serious research on the thing,” Bennett said.

“It says the thing requires a living host to survive, the symbiote can and has fended for itself with its own set of unique powers. The symbiote’s telepathic, doesn’t need physical contact to influence the minds of others. What’s a psychic scream?”

Stiletti shrugged.

“The symbiote can blend with any background, using an optic-camouflage effect.
The symbiote requires certain chemicals found in living brain tissue in order to survive? It’s a freakin’ cannibal?”

“It says they have a commensalism type of symbiosis. One benefits, the other ain’t hurt. When starved of these chemicals, the symbiote develops a mutable exoskeleton, allowing it to form its own solid body which it uses to hunt and kill prey without the assistance of a host.

“Holy crap. This is way out of our league. I’m betting that black crud we found at the scenes of the murders was part of that symbiote thing.”

“Thing ain’t invulnerable though. Says here fire and ultra-sonics do what bullets and batons can’t.”

Stiletti’s cell phone rang.

“Yeah, Stiletti. What did you find?”

Bennett continued to read the files on the computer.

“No bad guy. That’s good. What about the vic- yer kidding! She’s alive?”

“The Leery woman was at Brock’s apartment?” Bennett asked.

“Keep everyone but crime scene the hell out of that place. Where did they take her? Yeah, I know where it is. No one goes in, get me?” Stiletti slapped his cell phone shut and pocketed it.

“They found Leery. She’s beat all to hell but she’s alive. The uniform that was first on scene thought he heard something from the bedroom before he kicked the door in but no luck.”

“Guy’s lucky. So barring any contradiction from the C.S.I. guys this is the real deal. We got Venom and he’s on the warpath.” Bennett retrieved his coat from the back of the chair.

“Right. You want the Brock place or the Leery woman?”

“I’ll take Brock’s but I got a phone call to make first,” Bennett said.

“I agree, call ‘em in. We’ll meet up at O’Malley’s to compare notes.” Stiletti charged out of the computer bay.

Bennett scanned the small laminated card of phone numbers he kept in his wallet. It wasn’t the first time he had used the card for this specific number. Living in New York, Manhattan especially, you were a prepared cop or a dead one.

Bennett picked up the desk phone and dialed.

“Code Blue? This is Detective Dwayne Bennett, hope you‘re in the mood for some action.”

ESSENCE OF VENOM

Sounds like something you might find on a warlock’s shelf.

Anyway, I am the new writer for Venom here at Marvel 2000. Where has Mr. Faynberg gone? Why isn’t he writing this? These issues do not concern us. The title that was left dangling like a piece of flesh over the tiger pit has been snatched away into the darkness.

I’m C. William Russette and I’ll be your writer for the duration of this run. My job, given by the trusting D. Golightly, is to tie off and cauterize this limb, left bleeding for so long. I’m wrapping it up, okay?

Do I like Venom? No, not really. Have I read the work that I’m taking over? Yes, I did. I’ve gone a bit deeper than that, too. Off the deep end? Perhaps. The reason I took this gig wasn’t just to get a foot in the old M2K door. It was because of what Mr. Faynberg did with this tired, misused Spider-man villain. He is a villain. He is also insane. Anyone so filled with hate that he thinks wearing what is essentially an alien leech is off his rocker in the worst way. The very idea of wearing another life form all over my body creeps me out somethin’ fierce. That’s why I’m writing it.

Mr. Faynberg took a boring commodity and slung it in an entirely new direction. I am going to write this in what I feel is a logical conclusion. I gotta admit, I’m havin’ fun doing it.

Did I meet the mission? You, reader, will have to decide that for yourself.

C. William Russette
June ‘07