I had the Midas touch, if old King Midas had a penchant for decay rather than gold (stupid analogy, I know, but you know what I’m talking about). Everything I became a part of turned to shit before my eyes. My growing depression and antisocial tendencies were definitely a few of the things that caused my dad to leave us around then. (The question has always bothered me: Was Dad always a dirtbag, and did the venom just reveal him; or was Dad fine until the venom drove him out?) I remember hearing the fights he and my mom had right before they split; her side was always sympathetic and nurturing while his was always authoritative and dismissive-I was “nothing more than a punk.” (He’s the kind of guy who likes that word, “punk,” when talking about people he considers insolent.) The fights centered around the venom a lot of the time: He kept saying that it must be her fault, that she kept letting me get away with it, and she kept insisting that I needed a sense of unconditional love and sympathy. He was honest-to-God scared of the venom, too, which was…interesting. One time, in fifth grade, a kid named Alan Raskowitz pulled out a chunk of my hair during art class, because he thought it was funny, so I beat him to a pulp. Just got on top of him and started pounding him with the fuchsia plastic handle of the scissors I was holding. My mom couldn’t be reached, so my dad had to pick me up from school, and the entire car ride, he just kept glancing over at me and shaking his head with this terrified look in his eyes (although it might have been ’cause I looked sickly and miserable and had blood on my shirt, but I was still his son). In any event, point is, Dad left right before I turned thirteen, and I definitely had a hand in it. He said goodnight to Lon and me one night, and the next morning he and his stuff weren’t there, and Mom couldn’t stop crying. He lives in Westchester now with a very nice woman named Millie, who smiles constantly. They have two well-adjusted little blonde kids; a daughter and a new baby boy. I met them at a Christmas party when I was fifteen. Lon seemed to think Millie was really sweet.

I hope they all die in a fucking fire.

My romantic life? Right, okay. I’m like an owl: From a distance, I seem graceful and deadly in a stylish way, but up close it’s all claws and fleas and coughed-up pellets of hair and bones. Either the girl gets scared away from me or the venom works its magic and her life begins to slowly spin down the toilet. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not too ugly a guy-I get “handsome” a lot, and sometimes “cute in a certain way,” which makes me think I look like Nick Cave, so I’ve had experience with getting to know and spend time with girls. But every time I enter anything resembling a relationship, the venom makes an appearance-an obscene comment, a violent opinion, a depressed sigh, you name it-at just the right time to leave me embarrassed and my date terrified. One girl, Clarice, even casually mentioned that nights out with me and her other friends always seemed to be a lot less fun than the nights with just her and her friends; she told me she’d been observing this, like a science experiment, for a couple of weeks, and all the evidence pointed to me being a social bad-luck charm. I got the point, paid for my half of dinner, and went home to drink about a gallon of chocolate milk. So after a while, I just stopped giving a shit. My reasoning: better to be terribly lonely than screw up someone else’s life. Girls sometimes shoot me a smile or a glance, and I can’t even look at them, because there’s no fucking hope. That’s it in a nutshell. Hopeless.

My friends? Make it friend. Randall Elliot seems to be the one person who isn’t affected by the poison that is me. One day in eighth grade, Randall watched a kid tormenting me until I slammed him in the ear with a lunch tray. When the teachers began screaming at me, Randall intervened on my behalf (I believe his actual opening comment was, “Oh, this is some BULLSHIT right HERE!”). Since then, we’ve been inseparable. He’s one of those popular misfits, the quirky kid who still has a lot of friends and a decent social standing. Like…he LOVES Weezer. Which sort of tells you everything you need to know. He still considers me his best friend, which makes no fucking sense considering that I weigh him down more often than not. People always ask him, “Why do you hang out with that kid?”

He always has the same response: “’Cause he’s awesome.”

I don’t get Randall a lot of the time. But then again, he doesn’t always get me. The one time I tried to explain the venom to him, he shook his head at the right places and nodded when he needed to, and finally whistled and said, “Heavy stuff, Stockenbarrel.” (That’s his idea of a joke, by the way.) Just like everyone else, he doesn’t understand the venom, because that’d be like understanding God. Unlike everyone else, though, he accepts the venom as a part of his best friend. “The way I see it,” he told me, “I won’t encourage it, but I guess I’ll just learn how to deal with it, y’know? Now can we eat?” And he has. Dealt with it, that is. He knows the tricks to calming me down, can see an “episode” long before it hits. To him it’s a strategy, a way of working around things. Which I thank God for. Every day. Because if he reacted logically, if he eventually just threw up his hands and walked off, I’d be alone. It’s one of my big fears: the day Randall doesn’t understand. But until that moment arrives, I owe him everything.

When all’s said and done, my problem is simple: The venom is my own. They get the concept but can’t grasp the curse. Because no one else could be me, no one could have any idea what it meant to be poisonous.

O H GOD, STAY AWAY FROM ME!” screamed the kid, skittering nervously across the filthy concrete.

Fear. Music to my ears.

Thugs and criminals had some strange theory that since they’re morally reprehensible, they’re the prime specimen of humanity this side of the planet. They assume that they live in a state of invincibility, because they’re twisted enough to be horrible. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Being tough is one thing-anyone can be tough, so long as they have enough time to go to the gym and enough gall to act like they’re God. But being invincible is an entirely different beast altogether. And when a person proves himself unworthy of their humanity, they assume it’s a triumph and revel in their so-called victory, right until the power of true justice wraps its steely blue fingers around their scrawny necks.

“Nowhere to go,” I said to him, walking calmly down the alleyway toward him. His victim, some poor girl with a swollen wallet and a little red dress, huddled crying next to a Dumpster by my side, her wide eyes focused on my wraithlike form. “Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Just admit it, scum. This is a long time coming. Take it like a man.” My footsteps echoed through the alley like the ticking of Satan’s clock. I loved my job.

“BACK OFF!” he shrieked. He waved his knife at my face, a little silver thing that glittered like tinsel. “YOU HEAR ME?! I’LL CUT YOU! I’M NOT AFRAID OF YOU! DO YOU HEAR ME?! I’VE HEARD ABOUT YOU, AND I’M NOT AFRAID OF-”

I flickered out my claw, and in a crackle of black lightning, the switch flew from his fingers into mine. I clenched my hand together, and the knife was scrap. The kid made a noise, like a kitten, in the back of his throat.

“You could have fooled me.”

“Oh Jesus.” He shuffled backward on his ass, clawing his way behind him until his back pressed against the brick wall at the alley’s dead end, newspapers and food wrappers bunching up behind him. “Oh Jesus. Please, no. I didn’t mean it. I really didn’t want to hurt anybody, man, please, you gotta understand-”

“I understand you’re a liar,” I said. “I can feel your lies. They give me power, they make my soul burn darkly with your weakness and pain. So don’t tell me you didn’t mean to harm anyone tonight. Because that pain is my strength, and your dishonesty…Well, that just adds flavor.” I reached out my hand again, letting the dark energies I controlled whirl in my palm, blazing diabolically in the alley’s shadows. “Your time has come. Take it like a man. It’ll all be over shortly.”