I left that night. The withdrawal was agony. My hands shook. My heart stuttered. I called him twelve times and hung up each time before he answered. I threw the phone against the wall.
The venom had an expiration date.
I smiled back. And I kept walking.
“Fiction,” I said.
That was the second dose: the illusion of a shared sickness. darling venom pdf
The venom was the part of me that believed I could absorb his pain without dying myself.
We met in the basement stacks of the university library, the section labeled Toxicology – Obsolete Texts . Leo worked the late shift, reshelving books no one had touched since the 1970s. I was a grad student in my first year, studying the chemical architecture of neurotoxins. He was studying nothing, drifting through life on a trust fund and a death wish. I left that night
The venom hadn't been his words, or his sadness, or even the vial.