POV: Venom (original character)

I hate mutants. Humans won't be safe until every last one of them is exterminated.

Oh, I've heard all the arguments. Mutants shouldn't be registered. Locking them up would be wrong. They're no different than any normal human. I know better.

They're all killers, every last one of them. I've seen the records. Sure, they all look like innocent kids, but these teenagers have maimed or killed more innocent people than they'd care to remember or admit.

"It's not my fault. It was an accident," is a classic excuse from this group. Nothing is ever their fault, whether they blow up a building, freeze a person faster than liquid nitrogen, or set a city block afire. If they didn't mean to do it then they think that somehow makes them immune to the consequences of their actions. There are thousands of drunk drivers in prisons across the country who didn't mean to kill the pedestrians they hit. Despite their regrets, they are still punished. Shouldn't the same be true of mutants?

Even worse than those mutants who kill on a small scale, are those megalomaniacs that believe they alone can create and enforce world-wide laws. Their crimes against humanity, ranging from the destruction of priceless property to the wanton murder of countless innocents, make them one of the top threats to the survival of the human species.

Despite these reasons, the thing I hate most about mutants isn't their threat to others or their belief in their own superiority. The thing I hate the most is that I am one of them.

Cassandra Ryan lived a relatively happy life in Elko, Nevada with her loving parents and two, somewhat tolerable brothers until a Tuesday in the spring of her sixteenth year. She'd caught her palm on a bit of chain link fence while playing basketball and the wound bled freely.

Mrs. Spencer, the gym teacher, was first to examine the injury, and therefore, she was the first to die. Only minutes after Cassie had left class and reported to the school nurse, her classmates ran in yelling that Mrs. Spencer was dying. When Cassie returned to the basketball court with Nurse Jacobs, she saw Mrs. Spencer locked in the throes of a violent seizure. She wasn't jerking around spastically like Cassie'd seen on TV. Instead, her body was stiff, arching up and down with her head and heels the only parts touching the ground. Her every muscle was tensed from her feet to her face, her lips drawn into an almost smiling grimace and her eyes bulging wide.

Nurse Jacobs yelled at Cassie's classmates to call 9-1-1, but there wasn't much more that she could do. After minutes, the seizures stopped, and Mrs. Spencer's body completely relaxed. Her skin was coated with a fine sweat, and her lips started to turn blue. She'd stopped breathing.

The nurse tried to help her, but having been the one to clean Cassie's wound minutes before, she began to experience symptoms of her own. Every sound was sharper, every image clearer, and she felt the restless need to do something about it, despite her patient's needs. She reached for Mrs. Spencer's face to begin CPR, but her arms shot out abruptly, her movement exaggerated, and she couldn't obtain the finer motor coordination necessary to pinch her patient's nose and tip her head to the proper angle to begin rescue breathing. In fact, the more she tried, the harder it became until her body became rigid and began to seize.

Cassie, terrified by the gruesome deaths occurring right before her eyes and unaware that her blood was the cause, hugged her best friend tight, her exposed wound brushing against her friend's bare arm. Her friend, Melanie Walker, took longer to die than her unlucky teachers. The paramedics arrived minutes before her symptoms developed. They had been working on Nurse Jacobs when Mellie started to feel odd. They were able to intubate her after the first round of convulsions and kept her breathing. She made it to the hospital, although she wouldn't survive the night.

The police arrived shortly after the ambulance and immediately began questioning students. An older officer, graying at the temples, noticed Cassie's injury. The paramedics were busy, so he pulled out one of his handkerchiefs and wrapped the gash. Her blood soaked through the material when he pressed it onto the wound, but he took no notice at the time. He wouldn't live to remember the incident later.

As the body count rose, the basketball court was suspected. It was quickly ruled out, though, when everyone was moved back into the school and people started to die who hadn't been outside. It took a total of ten deaths before Cassie realized that it was her. Everyone she had touched, or more specifically, who had touched her blood, collapsed within ten to fifteen minutes and died hours later, even with medical attention. Ten people who otherwise would have lived for several decades longer died that day because of Cassie. It was her fault.

With the realization that she was a mutant and a murderer, Cassandra Ryan died and I was born. I am Venom, walking death.

I lived on the streets for years wrapped up in so many layers that no one would ever suffer at my hand again. It didn't make any difference. I picked the wrong places to sleep, the wrong people to meet, and the wrong streets to walk. I never attacked, but it didn't matter. I still killed.

It got to the point where I wanted to die, too. I thought about killing myself every day, but there were two reasons why I didn't. First, I'd killed thirty-one people. I didn't deserve death. I deserved a long life of suffering for what I'd done, far away from people. Second, death wouldn't stop my murdering blood. I'd be dead, but I'd take at least a dozen people with me as they came across and dealt with my bleeding corpse.

I was starving on the streets when Charles Xavier found me. His voice whispered to my mind, promising a safe place where I could live with my fellow mutants in peace. It sounded like everything I needed. If I'd known what would happen, though, I wouldn't have gone.

"Venom! Join us in our recreation," Hank called to me.

Hank and Warren were playing one-on-one basketball, but Scott wanted to join in and they needed a fourth.

"No way!" I called from the patio.

Hank's a doctor, so he more than most people should realize how deadly I am. How he could possibly suggest that I play basketball of all things? That's what had started all my problems in the first place.

Scott found Remy and I did eventually wander over to the sidelines to watch. Can you blame me? It was teachers against students, shirts versus skins, and Scott's and Remy's perfect chests glistened temptingly in the sunlight.

As I stood there, having sinful fantasies that I would never be able to make reality, I discovered how much I'd changed over the seven months I'd been at the mansion. That first month, I didn't even leave my room. I sealed myself off from everyone for their own protection. It was only after the meals stopped arriving on my doorstep that I was forced to emerge from my self-imposed prison. At first, I scavenged from the refrigerator when everyone was asleep, but the professor put a stop to that. One night, I discovered that the kitchen was locked. After days, hunger forced me out of my exile, and I ate my first meal with the mansion's small population.

I got to know the other students, all eight of them, and eventually joined their ranks. None of us was younger than eighteen, but we still needed our GEDs. Hank and Warren weren't the best teachers (I still don't understand half of what Hank was trying to teach me about biology), but they were nice and they really understood what we were going through. That more than made up for any of their short-comings.

Looking back now, I can see that Hank's death was all my fault. I'd let my guard down and he paid the price. I had no business being that close to their game. I should have been on the patio, or better yet, locked in my room. I wasn't, though. When he came hurtling towards the sidelines after an errant ball, his body met mine, a claw grazed my flesh, and I knew.

"You're dead," I whispered as he pulled himself off of me. He looked confused for a moment, then he saw the scratch on my arm and the corresponding smear of blood on his fur and he understood.

I ran.

I could hear the commotion below my room as they entered the mansion minutes after me, Hank still five or ten minutes away from symptoms. He was going to try, but unlike the famous saying, a physician can't always heal himself and when the seizures took over, none of them knew what to do.

I watched the funeral procession from my window, but I didn't leave my room. I didn't leave for days. No food showed up and I didn't go hunting for it. I didn't deserve to live, but I didn't deserve the freedom of death. I deserved suffering, I emerged from my room in the depth of the night after almost a week, drained from hunger, but only looking for enough food to extend my pain, not sate my body's needs. The kitchen wasn't locked. In fact, it was never locked again. No one wanted to see the person who had brought death where before there was always hope.

Eight years passed. I existed, but I didn't live. I watched, but I never participated. I was the living ghost of the mansion, a twisted tale used to scare new students. I never emerged during the daylight hours. That is, until I heard a conversation that was the key to my redemption.

It was the new student and the man who'd brought her. They were sitting on a bench three stories below my open window, and the wind carried their voices up to me.

"Logan, I am death," a high-pitched voice lamented.

That got my attention. I more than anyone else could understand the sentiment.

"No yer not, darlin'. You've been careful and nothing's happened. This won't change nothing," a gruff voice soothed.

"It changes everything. My skin doesn't just borrow powers, it steals them. If you touch me again, it could kill you."

"Darlin', I ain't worried. I've already touched ya twice," the confident voice answered.

"Yes, and you're already weakened by it," the young woman countered. "If you touch me again you might not wake up, or if you do, you might not be able to heal again. Can you really sit there and tell me you'd want to give up your healing power?"

"Darlin', if you were dying, I'd give up everything to save ya."

"That's easy to say now, but think about it. You wouldn't be able to use your claws because your hands wouldn't heal. You couldn't fight anymore and expect to walk away unscathed. If you ran into Sabretooth again, he'd kill you with one twist of his claws. My life isn't worth your death."

"It is to me," he answered, his voice certain and steady.

They continued to argue below me, but I was caught up by one of their comments. The girl's skin absorbed other mutant's powers, permanently. She could create perfection from mutation. She was doomed to a life separate from others, like I was, but with her gift, one of us might find life.

My penance was at an end. I had been forgiven and a way had been created for me to return to humanity, free of the guilt of mutation. I lay on my bed, rubbing the scar on my palm and experiencing an emotion I hadn't felt since the day I'd first killed: Hope.