What if the door to the heart is shut?
What if the door to the heart is shut?
What if the door to the heart is shut...
Then knock upon the liver!
A kind little song.
*********************************
Sean and his crew wandered through Harlem's dark alleys, hunting for another sucker with money so they could relieve him of it.
The evening had gone exceptionally well. The gang had just finished collecting tribute from small-time merchants, and the common fund held almost three thousand in green. After paying the neighborhood overseer's 'tax' and taking his share, Sean would have enough for a couple of doses and might even have something left for a visit to the girls. The only woman in their own company was as ugly as the hallucination of a veteran pothead and had long since grown tiresome to the entire gang.
At last Pimple returned—a small and worthless creature, but they did not keep him in the group for strength or courage. He possessed neither. What the little bastard did possess was a talent for squeezing into the most inaccessible places and an almost animal instinct for danger. More than once the gang had escaped police raids only because of him.
Now he ran up to Sean and began chattering.
Oh. Apparently, the runt had found a rich mark who, for some damned reason, had decided to stroll through Harlem at night. They ought to teach him a lesson and relieve him of his excess money and belongings. Sean closed his eyes contentedly, anticipating good loot. Today was definitely a lucky day.
The moment he saw the target, Sean understood what the rich boy had forgotten in this hole. Judging by the coat alone, the man had money to spare.
"Hey, he's drunk out of his skull. Look at him sway," Jake said with poorly concealed envy. He was another 'fighter' in their collective.
"Yeah, or high as a kite," Candy muttered—the aforementioned only 'lady' in the brigade.
"Why the fuck do you care what state he's in? Shut up already!"
Sean was in a bad mood. To be fair, Sean was always in a bad mood, except on the rare occasions when he counted money or beat someone half to death. Or not merely half. They followed their usual plan. Sean himself stepped into the rich man's path with the rest of the gang behind him, as though Sean alone would not have been enough for the weakling. Pimple moved farther away to 'keep watch.' Right. He had chickened out again, the piece of shit.
At first, everything proceeded normally. Sean flexed his muscles and frightened the civilian. The whore suggested taking him right there, once again demonstrating what an insatiable bitch she was. The gang never had the chance to progress from intimidation to extraction….
The young man, who had not looked dangerous, first twitched as if frightened beneath the gang's laughter. That was entirely normal under the circumstances. Then, still swaying, he moved toward Sean. Sean continued grinning and flexing. Then he decided he had to be hallucinating. In an instant, the future victim crossed the ten feet separating him from the nearest man and, without visible effort, punched straight through his chest—with his bare hand.
Then hell began. Sean perceived reality in fragments. The monster pulled its arm out of Bull, a trembling lump of meat clutched in its fist. 'A heart,' came a distant thought. Someone beside Sean doubled over, vomiting. The next image recorded in his memory was a head flying past him. It seemed to have belonged to Candy.
Fear filled Sean's entire being and flooded his body with a mad quantity of adrenaline. The gangster ran. He ran as he had never run before. Wind whistled in his ears and his heart tried to tear itself out of his chest, but it was useless. The last things Sean experienced in his life were terror beneath the gaze of completely black eyes without iris or pupil—and pain as fangs closed around his neck.
***
Pimple had sensed that something was wrong with the wealthy young man and had prudently stayed well away from the scene. When it began, the petty criminal wedged himself into the farthest corner he could find and prayed to every god and demon he knew to spare his life. In horror, he watched the creature that had recently pretended to be human snack on his colleagues.
Primal terror left the last surviving gang member unable to move or even close his eyes. He was forced to watch the monster growl with satisfaction, sink its teeth into Sean's throat, and greedily drink his blood.
That became the final straw. Unable to endure the events of the last few minutes, Pimple's consciousness finally shut down. Darkness swallowed the world.
When the gangster came to, the monster had disappeared, leaving behind several heaps of bloody meat that had recently been people. He felt himself all over, once again confirming he was intact, crossed himself, and offered a grateful prayer to heaven.
"No. To hell with Harlem and gangs. Enough. Demons, mutants, and other creatures walk the city. Soon... soon the world will end. A monastery. Only a monastery!"
A short man with completely white hair and mild madness in his eyes walked through the sleeping city toward the nearest church, muttering constantly under his breath.
***
When I heard the big man's voice, I thought, That's it. My running was over. In my present state, I would struggle to fight off a kitten, never mind a gang of thugs. Then anger came. What the hell? I had expended an enormous amount of energy rebuilding this body, and now, in the best-case scenario, I would have to begin from zero because of some street punks?
The host's anger triggered the release of an entire cocktail of hormones, primarily adrenaline. My Symbiote hunger receded somewhat, while the host-me became ready to consume any organic matter—raw meat, tree bark, anything.
My consciousness attained extraordinary clarity. The host's emotions and sensations slid smoothly into the background. On one side, the body still wanted food. On the other... I suddenly understood that right now I was, in fact, eating.
But what?
Meanwhile, the organism began acting almost autonomously, guided by the Symbiote's instincts—or whatever they were. I could have resumed full control of the body, but my emotionless mind saw no need. Venom ought to know what he required to live. A carrier of genetic material stands before me.
I leap and drive my hand through his sternum, barely sensing the resistance of flesh. While my arm remains inside the body, I release several threads of myself through it and collect samples of his DNA. Slag and waste. Nothing valuable. Next.
I free my arm and move to the next specimen. Again, nothing. Next.
Empty once more. I detect movement. A specimen is attempting to escape. A growl emerges from my throat. The material is trying to sabotage the collection process. Unacceptable. I move to it and catch a scent. Yes. It is saturated with the element I require, filled with the marker that signals fulfillment of my objective. The marker is contained in its nourishing fluid—in blood.
Blood is good. I require only the marker, but the host-body requires nourishment. The host and the material belong to the same species. Blood and flesh will be assimilated efficiently. I sink my fangs into the material's neck and consume the marker and blood. Satiety. Material resources require replenishment. High priority. I search the expended material. One of them carries a packet of green organic rectangles displaying a high degree of secondary processing.
Money. It will suffice for a certain period. Objective completed. Both bodies have received nourishment. Time is required to process the material. Find a suitable location...
I returned to normal on the roof of some building. Thoughts drifted lazily through my head, tangled with memories and echoes of recent sensations.
I looked at my hands. Killed. I tasted blood on my lips. Killed and ate them. Damn it... what had THAT been?
It felt as though I had become a machine. Yes—a killing machine. Maximum efficiency, combined with the ability to act and think at monstrous speed. And it had been me who acted and thought, not Venom. That was frightening. What if I had remained like that—an emotionless, soulless, perfect killer created by nature? Had it been nature?
No. To hell with legalization and money. I needed a biologist as soon as possible. And that hunger... what if it seized me in the middle of the city? The entire world would hunt me afterward. Their motives might differ, but that did not make me feel any better. I had to understand what the Symbiote ate.
Hm. It had to be something produced by the human body. But what? Blood? I remembered that I was still covered from head to toe in the red liquid. The instant I thought about it, all that moisture of life—as certain books romantically called it—was absorbed into my body.
No. I did not think blood itself was the answer. After all, I had bitten the throat of the fleeing man, who was farther away, rather than the giant standing nearest to me. Wait. I had received the first portion from my own carcass. When? When I became afraid. Fear was an emotion, and emotion was a matter of glands. Thank you for the lesson, Death. Hormones, then. I needed to investigate that at the first opportunity. I truly did not want to lose control like that again.
I lay on the roof and stared at the cloud-covered sky. How quickly I had changed. Yesterday, I had been an ordinary student fond of beer, women, and good company. Today, I was an alien killing machine. I sincerely tried to search myself for pangs of conscience or disgust at my new role, or at the massacre the Symb... that I had recently committed.
Nothing.
It felt as though everything had happened exactly as it should. Yet my attempt to understand my feelings produced a completely unexpected result. Somewhere at the edge of consciousness, I sensed... a part of myself? How was that possible? The list of tasks requiring immediate attention gained another entry.