Jas was doubled over to vomit noisily onto the sidewalk when the car pulled into the glittering, noisy streets of Vegas.
Being ejected with the contents of his stomach, I waited until he slumped back to start moving away.
His friends laughed as they thought he was just passed out from the copious amount of weed he had in his system. They thought it was a riot that he was so out of it.
I knew better than to hang around for the aftermath. I had the casino in my sights and was slithering my way eagerly towards it.
The top portion of the roof was covered in plastic that was tied down. The last time I had been up there, the penthouse has been raided by the officials that separated Eddie and I. Mrs Chen tried to step in but was threatened by them. No-one could do a thing.
She wouldn't be staying up there. She'd still be somewhere in the casino. They wouldn't let their big winner walk away so easily.
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgLYlBYb9zz
Waiting around the corner of the guarded from door, I started to plan ways I would get inside.
Suddenly, the frantic yelling of Jas' friends echoed from the sidewalk. They were gaining attention quickly when they realized something was actually wrong with their limp friend.
The doorman leant out, concerned for the stranger. I took the opportunity to slide past him and around the rotating doors into the casino.
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIqcLyEk1Yb
They had the same potted plants inside that edged the doors outside. I glued myself to the side of one, spotting a passing waiter balancing a tray of drinks.
They wanted to keep the people at the bright, musical machines for longer. Waiters circled towards the ones who waved money in their direction.
One was summoned near me. Darting out, I crawled up the leg of their pants to merge with their body.
The man began to panic before I quickly got him under control.
Making sure the drinks didn't tip, I turned from the eager patrons to walk towards the machines on my hunt for Mrs Chen.
We had first found her here. Was she also a creature of habit?
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaeBNNVtfYf
Circling the machine that had spilled her winnings, I saw others were trying their luck as well. People slapped the buttons and fed note after note through the hungry slot to try one more time.
Eddie was so bad at the machines. Not only did he have horrible luck, but he was poor. We were doing so well before he ran out of money.
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqHIB7mhaUn
Scanning for the familiar red dress, I moved towards the bar.
Mrs Chen wasn't here either.
Where was she hiding?
This place was far too large to search so pointlessly. Maybe I could find which room they had moved her to?
Walking away, I was instantly summoned by another man over at a round table coloured red and black.
I did need to get rid of these drinks before I started roaming the halls on my hunt. They could go to the man who looked like an overinflated beach ball.
I wonder how easy he would pop?
"Drinks, server!" the man snatched one up to guzzle it, waving a hand around and tucking money into my breast pocket now he had eyes on him "keep them coming!"
Blankly staring ahead as he helped himself to the tray while the round table spun, my eyes danced along the bumpy tracks the white ball jumped over.
Lifting them, I saw Mrs Chen on the opposite side. She was peering my way, discouraged and disgusted by the greedy man. She kept walking in her dark green gown that rippled like water.
"Mrs Chen!" I called out, snatching up the last drink from the man to hurry away.
She paused when she saw me approach her. Confused, she took the drink I held out to her, smiling politely.
"Thank you."
"Anything for you, Mrs Chen" I beamed back "you look like a wonderful tree."
Her hair was done up into a twist at the back that was decorated with flowers. She clutched a sparkling purse that had a tiny bow on the front.
"Like Christmas" I marvelled the shiny accessory.
She smiled as she hid laughter. A brow raised.
"Is that you?"
I nodded, offering her my hand.
She smiled as she rested hers in mine, looking me up and down.
"You look smart in a suit, V."
Pushing forth to the man's face, I formed my eyes where his were, grinning with my pointed teeth so she could marvel more at my good looks.
"I'm smart outside of a suit too" I bragged.
There was a scream that had me hiding again. Turning towards the sound, I saw it wasn't from someone seeing me; it was from the whirling and pulsing machine that announced the excited persons winnings.
They screamed and jumped around. I turned back to Mrs Chen now that attention was diverted.
"I need to stay with you, Mrs Chen."
"Just you?" she frowned again, searching behind me "where's Eddie? Why are you talking like he isn't here?"
"I'll explain later" I brushed aside "please let me in."
She sighed with a smile. Reaching a hand up, it rested gently on my cheek.
It was soft and warm. She smelled like powder and flowers. I leant into it to savour her kindness.
Not even Eddie held me like this.
"How could I say no to you?"
Closing my eyes, I promptly left the server to crawl to Mrs Chen's hand and sink into her skin.
With the server now wobbling on his feet, Mrs Chen quickly moved past so she could stealthily grab another drink from a passing server, sipping on it.
Her head ached. Her eyes were starting to burn from lack of sleep or the multitude of lights around us. Her eardrums were starting to clench at the high-pitched machines that were lined up in endless rows at full volume.
Mrs Chen needed rest.
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhahxuUEnJf
"Is Eddie ok?" she whispered to me as she kept walking "who were those men that took you?"
"People from the compound in the desert no-one was allowed to go in. They had rooms underground and people in white coats walking everywhere. They separated us until I found a temporary host to reunite with him."
The woman who had been my temporary host already felt it was morally wrong to trap living organisms for experimentation. She was already freeing me and letting me merge with her before I could try again uselessly to break free.
She had been one of the survivors. She harboured one of my siblings too, before they were minced up.
I could still feel how weak I had been without Eddie. I had been dying without my host to keep me alive. The woman had saved me.
"Hang on" Mrs Chen stopped in her tracks to think over her drink "are you talking about Area 51?"
"There's fifty-one of those places?" I questioned back "so many heads..."
And most of them were gone. I could eat my fill and then some.
My stomach growled.
"I can see why Eddie looks like a crazy person now" Mrs Chen quickly took a seat at the bar and placed down her empty glass and order another.
"We need food, not drinks" I warned her "we need sleep."
"I need to get rid of this headache first by hydrating" Mrs Chen whispered back, smiling at the bartender who caught her muttering to herself as he came back to retrieve his cups and start dancing with them to put on a show for the order.
"That doesn't look like water" I eyed the bright liquid skeptically.
"It's not" Mrs Chen muttered through her forced smile.
She politely clapped when the drink was poured and paid for. Sliding it towards herself, she eyed it eagerly. The man made himself scarce now he had been paid.
"Maybe it's the blunt I ate that is causing the headache?" I pondered.
Mrs Chen had the drink to her lips. She choked on it, setting it down quickly.
"The what?!" she gasped, hissing "where on earth....? I'm not into that sort of lifestyle, Venom!"
"I can purge it out of your system?"
Squeezing around our stomach, she lurched forward.
"No, let's not do that" Mrs Chen mumbled through her pursed lips, taking a deep breath to steady herself "let's just go back to my room and get away from all of this. We can order food and watch a movie."
"Chocolate?" I perked up at the chance to get more of the sweet food.
"The most overpriced there is" she grinned through her teeth.
Mrs Chen was such a sweet lady. So caring.
She sat there, fingers around the stem of her glass.
"Where is Eddie?" she whispered to me.
I felt her gut clench and her heart ache. She was worried about him. Coming here alone was making her stress.
"I don't know" I replied solemnly "I think he might be home, but I still have to get there."
Mrs Chen took a sip. It was sweet and fruity but burned our throat trying to swallow it.
"It's a long way to San Fran" she spoke.
"It is" I agreed "a cockroach, a bird, and a weak human were not going to get me there."
Mrs Chen snorted.
"Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke" she rolled her eyes.
"It all feels like one" I murmered, tasting the drink again "Mrs Chen....?"
"Yes, Venom?"
"I died today."
The drink left her lips. Slowly, she placed it down.
"Died? What do you mean?"
"I expired" I tried to find other words she would understand "kaput, kicked the bucket, went six foot u...."
"I know what it means!" she waved my words aside "I'm just shocked that you would.... die."
Tears prickled her eyes. They burned when they lingered.
"I'm really sorry, Big Guy" she whispered.
"Don't be" I wiped her eyes for her "you did not do it. The acid did."
"A-acid?" she blinked, utterly perplexed.
She didn't know what to do with her hands. She was almost done with her drink, hesitant to return to it now we were onto darker subjects.
"Why don't we see that movie?" I suggested "we can eat chocolate and laugh at the fools on the screen."
There was a little smile. Mrs Chen quickly filled the last of the drink, her smile growing a little when I cheered at her success on finishing it.
"To the movie!" I declared as she moved onwards to where she was staying.
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJ6qF5vFfeZ
"This is no penthouse" I commented when she pulled up the front of a door in a long hallway of doors.
They all had different numbers. Other than that, it all looked the same.
"They don't take to kindly to property damage around here" Mrs Chen scoffed as she swiped the keypad and gained access, locking it from within "they even tried to charge me for it! Me!"
"You!"
"But, for some reason, it was all fine. One day they were threatening to take it out of my winnings, the next, things were ok. 'Someone had it sorted' they just said."
"A coverup for what they did to us?" I pondered with her, peeling my head outwards so I could look around the tiny room curiously.
"It was covering something" she agreed as she dragged me to a cupboard in the kitchen so a bag could be pulled out "do you like popcorn, V?"
She tossed it into the microwave above the kitchen bench. It rotated as the appliance hummed.
I watched it in fascination. Eddie usually watched his food cook this way too. Maybe it was a human thing to make sure the food was actually dead before they ate it?
It sure tasted dead when he scoffed it down. Sometimes, it even resembled cardboard.
"I'll put hot butter on it" she coaxed me.
"Now you are talking!" I grinned, turning to watch the bag pop and bobble as it inflated "reminds me of a stomach..."
"Do I even want to know?" Mrs Chen wrinkled her nose at me.
I thought, humming as I did.
She wouldn't be used to guts like Eddie was. He still brushed me off most times I bought up the juicy parts of a human body.
"Maybe not."
She looked relieved. We returned to the popping bag.
"So, how did you make it here if you died?" Mrs Chen started "did you merge into someone else other than Eddie?"
"I helped a man kill me so I could save Eddie from the Xenophage" I explained "and that piece of me I wrapped around him is all that was left. It was a bath of blood."
"Bloodbath?"
Was that what it was called? I agreed anyway.
"A Xenophage?" Mrs Chen was confused again "another alien?"
"From my home planet; sent to destroy the Codex inside me."
"The Codex?" she frowned, popping open the microwave to carefully pick the bag out and rip open the top to spill out steam "you are going too fast for me."
"I carry the key to keeping our father locked up."
"You have parents?" Mrs Chen wandered into her bedroom and slumped onto her bed so she could reach for the remote to turn on the TV on the wall opposite us.
"Knull" I growled out the name "he would kill every one of us to try and break free. We put him there and fled here so we could try and have better lives."
Mrs Chen picked up a piece of popcorn, realising she had forgotten the butter she had swayed me with.
We were up again to the kitchen.
"There are more of you? You keep saying 'us'."
Retreating slightly, I looked away.
"There were" I mumbled "a lot of them died fighting the Xenophage too."
They were minced up so easily. Others died to the humans who were too trigger-happy to realise we were the good aliens in the fight.
"I'm sorry, Venom" Mrs Chen's voice softly spoke back "it's a horrible thing to lose family."
"I barely knew them" I pulled my eyes up to hers "I'm upset I didn't get to know them more before they were killed."
Only a few minutes of reunion before everything came to an end.
There was no use crying over something I didn't know. It was wasted energy.
"It is ok to feel things" Mrs Chen pulled out the tub of butter to slice some into a glass container and slide it in the microwave "it makes us human."
"I am not human."
"Maybe not" she turned to me now "but you spend most of your life with one. You and Eddie are fused together. You work with him and he works with you. The Yin to your Yang."
"What is that?" I tilted my head at her as the microwave sounded.
Mrs Chen grabbed the container to carry with her. I bobbed along too.
"Two complete opposites that work perfectly together. One is light and the other is dark. They can't work without each other."
Mrs Chen rested on the bed again, pulling the bag towards herself so she could add the flavour.
"Like popcorn and butter?" I watched her shake it up.
She giggled, tossing me a piece that I chewed on happily.
"I guess so."
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR8KAxpZdq3
We ate the salty and creamy popcorn while searching for a movie.
Maybe we were like this? Eddie wasn't as bad now as he had been when we first met a year ago. We were understanding each other better now. He was letting me dote on him more easily now.
I licked guts from his face. We took a road-trip together. He walked the desert bare-foot to get us to safety while I hid from the Xenophage tracking us. He let me eat all the bad guys. We were The Lethal Protector together.
When we were separated in the rapids, I had never felt such dred or helplessness. It seemed that no matter how close I got, he was always just out of reach to us being whole again.
Now, he was wounded and without me. I had stitched him up with my own body to keep him from dying....
"Oh, shit!" I gasped as realization hit me at once.
"What is it?" Mrs Chen turned to me in panic.
"I put myself into Eddie" I flicked around as her panic fed through to me "oh, no. Oh, no!"
"Is that a bad thing?" she calmed slightly, now she knew things were fine "you, uh, 'put yourself' into him all the time."
She was trying to ease the tension. I didn't see what was so amusing in this horrible situation.
"We merge back if we break off little pieces of ourselves" I fretted "I didn't do that with him."
Mrs Chen's face dropped now.
"You mean, he's still got you with him?"
I groaned, shaking my head.
"Not me. It'll be a new one."
"A new symbiote?" she gasped.
The last time I had split like that, I became the parent to a red one. The deadly symbiote called himself 'Carnage.' He killed me the first time, causing the birth of the Codex inside me.
What if it was another one like that? Bloodthirsty?
Carnage belonged to a serial-killer host. This one would be inside Eddie, who was far from a natural killer.
If I wasn't there, it would grow. As long as his body wasn't occupied, any Symbiote could take it.
It would be both parts; him and I. It would be another child, only with the one i cared for most.
"I need to get back to Eddie."
Splitting from Mrs Chen completely, I marched for her bedroom door before she called out to stop me.
"It's night" she swept a hand towards the window to the right of her bed that overlooked the sparkling lights of the city "you won't survive out there in the desert alone."
That was true.
"You'll come with me" I spoke up, turning back to her.
"I will not!" Mrs Chen flared a little at the offer "it's nothing but sand out there. We can't just walk or hitchhike our way to San Francisco. You have to be patient. You will reunite with him eventually. You are safe here and Eddie is safe there."
"But he has the other one" I frowned.
Mrs Chen patted her bed, moving aside so I could sit on it. My body sank into the soft sheets and springy mattress.
"Is he going to be in danger from it?" she asked, with a hand on my back.
"No..."
"And will he know it is there?"
"Not until it grows bigger and splits from him" I huffed out a breath.
"Then, Eddie is safe" Mrs Chen smiled, faltering a little when she thought it over "and so is most of the street, for now."
"He is weak, Mrs Chen" I folded my hands together in my lap "Eddie is not like you."
"Eddie has been through a lot, but that doesn't make him weak" she replied as she sat beside me "it takes great strength to host a whole otherworldly creature that needs far too much chocolate to survive. Take this time to figure things out before you return to him. Make it easier on yourselves. You could be 'we' again."
"There is no 'we' without him" I glanced at her.
Mrs Chen smiled, resting a hand on top of mine.
"Tell him that when you see him again. For now, you and me should get through tonight without any mad trips into the desert. We can start fresh tomorrow."
I wasn't going to force her to do anything she didn't want to. As much as I wanted to rush back home, I had no way of getting there without a compatible host. All the others had died so far. Mrs Chen was my only chance at surviving out here.
"I've got the perfect movie for you" she moved back onto the bed and let me wedge in beside her "it's called 'Alien'."
"It's about aliens?" I blinked back in surprise.
"Humans are suckers for alien movies" she explained "this one is the first of six, with a whole other franchise branching off it. The main guy in those is called 'Predator.'
"They do sound tough" I perked up "like a warrior."
And they made movies about this fierce symbiote? Documentaries on their life here with their own host?
"Make yourself comfortable and we'll watch them" Mrs Chen gave me her hand so I could peel back into her body and nestle down "I'll get some chocolate sent up here."
She picked up the phone while pressing on the movie. I pulled my head from hers so I could watch while she talked to someone else.
Maybe I didn't need to rush back so soon after all? We were fine. Eddie was safe and I was alive.
I would watch this tale of aliens and tell him all about it when I saw him again.
ns 15.158.61.55da2
