Who: Venom/Eddie What: An accident and a baby without her mother. When: Midnight, before this Where: Downtown, in a grocery store parking lot Rating: R for violence and death
Slow down, you crazy child, you're so ambitious for a juvenile. But then if you're so smart, tell me, why are you still so afraid?
She had the radio turned on, using the sound to cleverly soothe the stirring one year old in the back seat. Under the graying cover of night Clara Evans jumped out of her dark green Honda and stepped back, hands to her hips and brows knit together in confusion. It was warm, almost as warm as it had been during the lighter hours. Clara wiped at her forehead with the back of her hand and slid her jacket off down her arms. She caught it and swung the heap of fabric through the open window. She stared, at the tires, at the sides of the car, at everything all at once. Something was wrong but she didn’t know what it was. It was times like this that she wished her husband were here, standing where she stood now while she sat in the passenger seat, her body drawn back toward her daughter, her voice coming out in a jumble of babyish cooing.
Jake wasn’t here and she had to settle for trying to pinpoint the source of the problem herself. Billy Joel belting out Vienna through the speakers Jake had insisted on installing three months before he disappeared would have to keep Jessica company until she could crawl back into her seat and hopefully drive back onto the road.
This was the kind of luck that she didn’t want to be in possession of. A twenty three year old woman stuck in a parking lot with a stalled vehicle; now that was something that sucked. Clara impatiently clicked her tongue and sighed deeply. Who was she kidding? She didn’t know a damn thing about cars. She was an aspiring novelist for God’s sake, not a mechanic. Her husband was the one who knew how to take care of things like that, things like broken down cars and deflated tires.
Clara distantly thought that this was something that happened in horror movies. A young mother with a baby sleeping in her car seat, the car cruising along smoothly and then WHAM, the thing swerves and gurgles and you’re forced to park it in some dark lot that you’re not familiar with. Not having a clue as to where she was supposed to look first, she placed both of her hands on the side of the car and bowed her head. Thump, thump, thump. There was a steady beat in her head, behind her eyes. She needed a Tylenol, maybe two to chase the throbbing away. Clara pulled up her shoulders and leaned into the open passenger door, fingers groping for the glove compartment and the pills stashed neatly inside. A hair brush, pennies, a tube of sun block and yes, the bottle, the Tylenol that she needed to wash down with a lukewarm bottle of diet Pepsi.
Something cold and hard clasped her upper arm and Clara went still with shock, with terror. This isn’t happening. This isn’t real. I’m imagining it. Calm down and you’ll see. There’s nobody there. Nobody is touching you. Only somebody was touching her and they pulled her back, hard. The top of her head was whacked against the ceiling of the car and for the first time, she screamed, not entirely feeling the pain but instead, thinking of her little girl all alone and unprotected in the back seat. Her legs gave out from under her. Her assailant wasn’t moved and latched his hands under her arms, dragging her back as she kicked and yelled, trying to distract him from peering into the window and seeing Jessica, little Jessica, defenseless as a newborn lamb.
“You want money. I’ll give you money. I have money. You can have it.” He threw her onto the ground and she went down like he had intended. She was on her back and he was above her and then… Then the baby let out a hungry wail. The mother screamed, a sound that tore from her throat, scratching its way out, a fork against the flesh of her insides. She pitched herself forward, clawed at the man’s legs, stuck the heel of her foot into the ground only to be pushed back down.
Too bad but it's the life you lead. You're so ahead of yourself that you forgot what you need. Though you can see when you're wrong. You know you can't always see when you're right. You’re right
The song… Venom caught wind of the song playing over the speakers. He heard the music and after he stopped to listen closely, he heard the screams. They came from a woman. He could smell her perfume, wildflowers and a hint of something else. Vanilla. Wildflowers and vanilla. Venom followed the scent, went up the wall of an old warehouse and onto the deserted roof. Perching his bulk on the ledge, he scanned the surrounding area below. A stray dog scrounging for scraps, an empty stroller, an old washer, and bingo! A parked car and a woman on the ground, a masked man with a gleaming blade. That wasn’t so hard, now was it?
The man had taken the place of the woman on the ground. His neck was hanging limp and bloody, the muscle and sinew exposed, the bone peeking out from between torn pieces of skin. The woman was screaming, louder than before. Inching closer and closer to her car and the baby who was crying, frightening and wanting her mother, Clara gaped at her savior, if she could call it that. The car wasn’t going to start. Venom knew this. She wouldn’t be in this parking lot in the dead of night if not for a broken down car. He took a step and then another and another. She was backed up against the smooth green siding and when the stranger— the creature— reached for her, she thrashed and thrust her body into his. She was hoping to knock him over, but he was too strong for her weight and something hot and wet spilled down her stomach.
Blood. His claws had gone through her chest. He hadn’t wanted to do that. It was an accident. It was done and she went slack in his arms. Venom caught her, held her up and stared down into eyes that were open, dead but open with the last flickering of light. He’d pulled his claws out of her like he had been stung and gently, gently he laid her down. Venom kneeled beside her, ran his other hand along her face, a whisper of a caress that she could not feel. His face exposed to the air, he put his lips to her cheek and kissed her, a chaste farewell, a soft apology that didn’t need words.
Venon— Eddie now— opened the back door and slid into the leather seat. The car seat sat alongside him with the baby whose cries were weaker and wet with tears. Her little pink jumper was wrinkled from a day of play and she looked up at him with round glossy eyes, as if to say: “You’re not my mother. Where is my mother?” He could have simply said: “Sorry kid, but it looks like I just gutted your mother out there in the parking lot. Too bad for you.” But instead he tilted in, smoothed back her unruly blonde curls and from his mouth came a lullaby, an old lullaby that one of his many babysitters had sung to him as a child.
“Hush-a-bye, don't you cry. Go to sleep my little baby; when you wake, you shall have, all the pretty little horses.” All the pretty little horses could be hers, but no mother. No more mother… He was numb. He’d killed a baby’s mother. He’d left her an orphan and it had been an accident, a terrible accident that he could not take back.
“Way down yonder in the meadow, poor little baby cries Mama…” But she cried out in vain, for there was no mother to hear her. She would grow up without her mother, just as Eddie had grown up without his mother.