Disclaimer: I don't own Carnage or Spider-man, but you guys knew that…
Author's notes: Ok, so I'm a silly fan girl. You've been warned. I've tried to keep Carnage in character as much as possible…. Might need to add a few more smart-mouthed remarks… Now, without further delay:
Chapter 1: Patient #5660I don't sleep. Not anymore. I can't. That voice is always buzzing in my head, that urge to see the blood, the red, liquid life-source for all things alive enough to make a cry. I want to hear that cry. I can't rest until I do. It drives me insane…
That's why I'm here, you see… heavily adorned with the latest fashions in straight jackets… staring at the blank, white wall in front of me… loathing the little shit who put me here…
I was once the one looking into these cells, a doctor at The Vault, a maximum-security prison for all super-human menaces to society. My name was Georgia Anne Wright.
I was always a good girl. I was born in a small town in North Carolina in a family of my mother my father, a younger sister, Elizabeth, and me. Lizzie and I were inseparable until I moved off to college. It nearly broke her heart. Unfortunately, while I was away, a burglar had broken in to our home and made off with most of our stuff before lighting the house on fire. Everyone was asleep before the smoke alarm went off. The neighbors said they could hear the screams, the blood-curdling screams of helpless people trapped in their home. They died very painfully…
I devoted my life to my work, having nothing but my work to keep me sane. I excelled in everything, slowly climbing the ranks until, by the simple age of twenty-six, I had become one of many psychologists at The Vault.
Things were well for me. I lived on The Vault's base. Food was good and I had plenty of money because I never knew what to do with the spare change I got after paying off a car, bills, and my rent. I led a simple life. My work was my lover. I never had time for romance or relationships. I had become numb to loneliness a long time ago. I appreciated my solitude…
Yes, everything was fine. Life was simple and good, all the way it should have been… Until I was assigned a patient. Patient #5660, a mass-murderer who had terrorized New York City and had claimed thousands of lives… with blazing red hair and piercing green eyes which sank into his face, rimmed with dark circles. A man who could just as easily be considered as monstrous as the devil himself, with pale skin stretched over bones and muscle, a man whose mere name is even tabboo among the guards and inmates. A man named Cletus Kasady.
I was to try and help this man. I was to dive into this psycho's mind and figure it out. The previous doctor had quit his job because of this man, a respected psychologist who had spent his life for over forty years studying the human mind. He just up and quit because of Kasady. Now I was supposed to do something…
I stepped into the containment room. It was the size of a small gym: guns, flame-throwers, and sonic blasters all pointed to the center where a cell of four flaming, electric walls held the skinny red-headed man. Such a scrawny man hardly looked the part to have so much ammunition trained on him. We all knew who he was, though. We all understood very well.
"Mr. Kasady, my name is Dr. Georgia Wright. I'll be speaking with you now instead of Dr. Malone," I stared at him through the transparent wall. The color of the flames casted a rosy hue across the killer's lanky figure as he sat slumped in a chair beside a bed.
There was something immediately different about him. It didn't show, but I was scared, horrified that this person who was no more than ten feet away from me had killed thousands of people.
"My new shrink…" his voice crashed the silence of the room, echoing off the walls. I felt assaulted, "…in other words…" He was staring at the floor.
I cleared my voice, "In other words… Yes."
He moved. It was like a nightmare. In the red hues of the firewall, Kasady's head lifted and very slowly began to turn. I had expected it not to stop like the scene from The Exorcist. He was staring straight at me. I could feel my palms begin to sweat.
"Ms. Wright. Ha! No pun intended right, Baby-cakes…?" he slowly stood from his chair and stepped around it, bracing himself with his hands grasped along the back of the seat.
"I prefer if you called my Dr. Wright, Mr. Kasady. It's "
"Don't gimmie that patient/doctor respect bull-honkey!" I was interrupted and his voice boomed, a bazooka penetrating the usually quiet room.
"Quiet down, Kasady!" and he, in turn, was interrupted with a shock of electricity sent down from one of the many guns lining the room. Kasady gave a yelp of pain and collapsed onto his knees. I watched…
I wasn't scared anymore once I saw this. I was still watching Kasady. He had completely fallen now and lay in a huddled heap on the floor. I suddenly began to ask myself if I was ever really afraid of that skinny man in the fetal position at my feet.
I crouched down on one knee to meet his height. He looked on me with eyes full of rage, "You know this wall and those fucking guns are the only things that are stopping me from killing you…"
I nodded, "I know."
"Or else you'd be dead and decapitated on the floor behind me…"
I nodded again, "I know. So it's good for me that there are such barriers to keep you from doing that."
The muscles of his back contorted, popping his spine, and he recollected himself, bringing the chair towards me to sit down right in front. He motioned to the cold, steel chair adjacent to me, "Have a seat."
I did, "Mr. Kasady, I—" I was interrupted again.
"It's like this every time, you know… I screw with one doc, they send another. That one gets all used up, they send in another… Do they keep you people in a storage unit in Mexico or something?" He crossed his arms over his chest, the blue fabric of The Vault's convict uniform wrinkling under the pressure.
I held back a smile, "No. Psychology is actually an interesting and popular study. There's an abundant supply of us."
"'An abundant supply of you'? As in personally? 'Cause I wouldn't mind if all the docs were as cute as you, Ms. Wright," the pun, this time, was obviously intended…
My brow raised, "One minute you're threatening to kill me, the next you're sweet-talking me?" What the hell was he doing?
He shrugged helplessly, "Aw, don't be so sore about that, Baby-cakes. I threaten the closest one to me if I can't kill 'em first."
It was funny. We never really got around to talking about what I had prepared. Instead, we had touched on the subjects of what made certain people attractive, the mating rituals of hornets, and then finally about a guy in Brooklyn Kasady knew who wore a beard of bees for a freak show. Time flew, and before I knew it, it had been more than two hours.
"Come back and see me real soon, Doc. M kay?" he grinned. That malicious grin he gave offered me very little comfort.
"Seeing as how we have a scheduled appointment Monday through Friday, I suspect I will see you soon whether I want to or not," standing, I gathered my clipboard and started for the door. Behind me, Kasady moved to lie down on his bed. I could hear him sigh restlessly as I left.
So it began… My life would change forever. Little did I know what I would unleash upon the world… well… what Clete made me unleash…