I sip my chocolate milk and nod. “Yeah. Her boobs are gargantuan, aren’t they?”

He stares at the screen in deep thought, and then nods fiercely. “Do you like her?”

“Y’know, I don’t know yet,” I say. “Too soon to say. She’s analyzing me, and that’s weird and all, but she’s a lot nicer than the last one. This is about my life, my mind…not concepts or whatever.”

“Like…about the venom?”

The word settles into my blood like a block of ice. “What?”

“The venom…right?” he says with a waver. “The venom is the bad thing. Like, your angries.”

Either my brother is clairvoyant or someone has loose lips. How the fuck does he know? I’ve never told him its name, and I’ve told everyone, everyone, to keep it a secret for this one reason. Seeing a therapist is one level of weakness, but this is too much. “Yeah.” I sigh, keeping my eyes on Bart. “That’s what she’s interested in. We’re gonna see if we can work on it together.”

He nods, and we both return to TV land. I’m stuffing enchilada in my mouth, thinking this topic is thankfully over, when I notice Lon giving me little glances out of the corner of his eye. Finally I’m quick enough to make contact before he can turn away as though he has no idea what I’m looking at.

“What’s up?”

He’s quiet for a little bit, and then mumbles, “What’s it like, when you get…”

“The venom?”

“Yeah.”

He’s my brother. He has a right to ask, and I have a duty to be honest with him. “It’s like I’m…really powerful, at first. I feel driven, invincible, but afterward…Well, you’ve seen me, right?” I smile a bit, making him feel like he’s “on the inside” with my psychosis. “The shivering, sweating, not being able to talk for a long time, man…It’s real bad. And it never gets me anywhere, all it does is upset people and make me seem like a total nutcase.”

“Really?”

“What-yes, really. Why, what’s ‘really’ mean?”

“Promise you won’t get mad?”

There’s no phrase like it, and I feel like a fink for not being able to say no. “Sure, what’s up?”

He looks at his shoes and mutters, “The other day I was looking for that Spider-Man comic, so I went into your room and you weren’t around, but I looked for it anyway and I saw your school notebook, and in some of the margins you wrote about the venom and drew some cartoons of it, and it was really cool so I thought…”

Somehow I manage to understand Lon’s high-speed rant, and I have to take a deep breath to keep down the first pangs of the venom jabbing into the back of my skull. “Okay, well, first off, don’t snoop around my room without me there, okay? Next, there’s nothing cool about this. Like I said, it gets me nowhere. I just end up being an asshole.”

The swearing doesn’t delight him this time; he’s still really invested in the topic at hand. “But what about the bookstore?” he asks, eyes wide. “You got somewhere then. I wouldn’t have any of the books for my project if you hadn’t had an angry. That woman was being mean, and you showed her who was boss.”

The venom worms through my nerves, sending pure, black rage through me in the form of annoying little pulses. I clench and release my fists as I try to talk. “Right, right, but come on, she was just doing her job, and I didn’t need to…I mean, remember how you felt afterward? It was embarrassing. You were right, we probably can’t go back to that bookstore anymore-”

“I know I said that,” he fires out, growing enthused, “but I figured, you were right, she was being stupid, and I did end up getting my books, so who cares? You got really strong and really right all of a sudden, and you’re not always like that. The venom gives you the power to do special things and be really strong. It’s cool.”

I shut my eyes tight, take a deep breath, mentally count to ten, but it’s all bullshit-I’m flipping out. My blood, red-hot, corrosive, throbs in my brain. “Lon, okay, this is a situation where it must seem cool, acting like this, but it’s not. This isn’t a comic book, it’s life, okay? You can’t behave however you want. People get hurt.”

“But whatever, if these people are going to treat you like this, you shouldn’t have to-”

“LON!” I belt, unable to keep my mouth shut. There’s the flex, the rush, and the venom spills out, overflowing. “Christ, I get it, ’kay? It looks cool and I seem strong, but you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about, so just drop it. You’re wrong, I’m fucked-up, and that’s all you need to know. Got it?”

“Okay,” he whispers.

I put my eyes on the TV and let the venom seethe through me a bit more, then slowly pull back, leaving me with the cold, tired aftereffects. I measure my breath and wipe the beads of new sweat off my forehead before glancing over and seeing-

My brother. My brother, Lon, who’s brilliant and funny and tries so hard all the time to understand his brother. He sits there, burrowed into one corner of the couch, mouth twisted downward, eyes bulging wetly out of his sheet-white face. He’s doing everything in his power to keep from crying, digging his fingernails so hard into his knees that it must hurt. And the venom, sinking back into its hole, looks at him and gives a sharp cackle.

Well done.

Jesus.

“Lon, wait,” I rasp, all my rage and empowerment replaced with mortified embarrassment. When I say his name, he can’t keep holding it and explodes into quiet, scared sobs, mumbling that he’s sorry over and over again. And now I’m crying, as there doesn’t seem to be anything else to do. I grab him like a rag doll and clutch him to my chest, as if he’s going to vanish. I can feel his face, with that blubbering little-kid mouth.

Jesus Christ, I’m a monster. I’m the problem.

Soon we hold each other and make these horrible sobbing noises in the back of our throats. I love him more than anything, but the venom can still find a way into his life. And I just fucking let it.

Finally, when we manage to calm ourselves down, I pull him from my chest and look into his face, all puffy and smeared with snot. Before I can try to clean him up, he’s talking a mile a minute.

“I’m sorry, Locke, I didn’t mean to butt in, and I know you have Randall and Renée and this new lady, but if you ever need to talk to someone, I can listen, y’know, I can help, or I can try, I just want you to be happy, and-”

“Lon.” He wheezes and goes silent. “Don’t apologize. And if you ever want to talk, that’s what I’m here for, okay?” He nods slowly, his mouth still open. “Thank you for talking to me, and thank you for trying to help me. I’m gonna get us some tissues, okay?”

He nods slowly, and I make my way to the kitchen.

As I’m finishing up the dishes, I hear Lon in the next room, talking energetically on the phone. It just seems comical that my brother’s chatting it up with his buddies until I hear the phrase “that comic you gave Locke” thrown into the mix. I wipe my hands off, grab the kitchen extension, and eavesdrop.

“Okay,” asks Lon, “how about the Silver Surfer?”

“Ugh. No way. Can’t stand him.” Yup, my brother’s getting phone-cozy with my girlfriend. Too cute.

“Me neither! It’s all too much cosmic stuff!”

“Exactly! And the deep-seated religious implications! Gag!”

I can hear it taking Lon a bit to work out the religious implications. “Totally.”

“Okay, my turn. Ghost Rider?”

“Awesome. Totally awesome. His powers are just too cool.”

“Ah, you’re a kid after my own heart. Johnny Blaze, though?”

“I dunno… Blaze is cool, but they do that big-bad-biker thing way too much.”

“Did you see the miniseries where they fought Venom in the sewers, though?”

“Yeah, Spirits of Venom! He was incredible!”

“Hell, yeah! I just loved seeing Venom and Ghost Rider duke it out!”

“I liked Demogoblin.”

“He was okay. Hey, your brother back yet?”

“Hey, I’m here. Who’s Ghost Rider?”