Page 16 of Venom's Sting
“I’m a bit sore, but I think the main thing I need right now is rest.”
“You sleep for a while. I’m going to make some food for us.”
I finish my drink and snuggle down under the blanket. All the information we just talked about is swirling around in my brain, confusing and hypnotizing me into a trance-like state where my eyes are getting more tired by the second. I don’t know when they drift shut but the dreams that come are more like nightmares.
I jolt awake with a start and smell the scent of lemon chicken. It smells so good that my stomach is growling. Lying back on thesofa, I try to remember the last time I ate. I think it was lunch yesterday. I drink coffee like it’s going out of style and try to get down a couple of bottles of water each day, but food is that thing I always mean to get around to, but often fall short. My eyes take in his room, there’s a large glass case taking up a heap of wall space, I’m about to ask what it is when I see it and let out a scream.
Ven rushes over, “What’s happened?”
“S- snake,” I stutter, pointing to the five-foot-long python that’s, for want of a better word, snuggling on the rug in front of the TV.
“Oh, that’s Guivre,” he says, bending down and picking up the creature lovingly. Seeing my face, he adds, “Shit. Maybe I should have warned you, you’re not scared of snakes, are you?”
“No,” I say, my voice sounding much calmer. “I just got a shock. What’s wrong with it?” I’m no snake expert, but it looks like there’s something wrong with its skin.
“She’s shedding, I let her out of the vivarium when I’m home. They like things to rub against, and the rug is perfect. I’ll put her back in, if you want?”
I shake my head, “I’m the house guest here, let your roommate chillax by the TV,” I start to laugh at the mental image of a snake watching a movie, then I wince. I touch the side of my face where Big Joe slapped me.
Ven places the snake back on the rug and comes over, “How’s the cheek?”
“It’s more like a dull throbbing pain now.”
“I hate that those assholes keep putting their hands on you. Care to tell me more about our enemy?”
I give him a tired half-smile because I’ve never thought of them as enemies necessarily. Just gigantic pains in the butt. For all intents and purposes, I guess they are my enemy though.
“My grandfather has four full-time farmhands and a bunch of part-timers that I don’t know very well. They came along one by one when my step-grandmother got sick. I never liked them, and when she died, I had no more reasons to visit the farm. Big Joe is the one in charge. And the one that does my grandfather’s dirty work.”
“Is he the one who beat you up today?” Ven asks gently.
I nod. “Yeah, he slapped me across the face, I don’t think he meant for me to hurt my ribs, but he doesn’t know his own strength and I went flying into the edge of the counter.”
“Tell me about the other three,” he coaxes me.
“Hal is the next biggest. Their pecking order seems to go by size. He’s a little younger and has red hair and freckles. He doesn’t seem to enjoy hurting other people as much as Big Joe.”
“That’s two down, two to go,” he saying lightheartedly. I can tell he’s making a mental note of everything I say, so I just get on with it. “The third musketeer is Dan. He’s laid-back, easygoing, and I can tell the violence bothers him. He’s always telling them to dial it down a notch and not take things too far. I used to get on okay with him when I visited the farm.”
Stopping to take a breath I finish up with, “And then there’s Edmund. He doesn’t really interact with anyone other than mygrandfather. I’ve never known him to actually leave the farm. I don’t know why, he’s an odd one.”
“Well, I’m eventually going to run into them one day and they’re going to regret putting their hands on you,” he says with an element of dark promise in his tone. “The bit I don’t understand is why they have to knock you around just to deliver a message?”
“They want to be respected by my grandfather so much that they’ll do anything to curry favor with him. They know my grandfather doesn’t care about me, and they won’t get in trouble for knocking me around. To be honest, since my step-grandmother’s funeral I barely saw them. Sometimes I’d see Dan around town, but it’s only over the last month they’ve started visiting the coffee shop on the regular.”
“So around the time you went to the farm and got the local police to do a wellness check?” Ven says.
I nod.
“Sounds to me like they might be tryin’ to scare you off. Don’t worry, I’ll beat that out of them as well.”
Looking at his totally blank expression, I have to assume he’s just joking around, so I respond in kind. “Well, if the wind blew just right and you showed up, Dan would probably tell you everything he knows.”
“One way or another, I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”
Wanting to change the subject, I turn back to his pet, “What did you say her name was?”
“Guivre,” he says with a smile.