I rolled into locale 816 on a taxi that smelled of piss and bad decisions, the city’s neon veins glitching like a fever dream. The warehouse loomed its brick skin tattooed in half-faded tags, the gaps between boards whispering secrets I didn’t want to know. Inside, the air was thick with stale smoke and acrylic fumes, so potent that it felt like breathing liquid metal. I didn’t come for art criticism; I came for Carnage and Vex.
Carnage was a cyclone in leather, her hair dyed the color of dried blood, eyes buzzing with wicked delight. She moved like a blade sliding from its sheath: sudden, precise, dangerous. Vex was all muscle and jagged edges, a walking exclamation point in combat boots. His skin glistened under the flicker of broken fluorescents as if someone had rubbed him down with oil and threat. Together, they were a petri dish of obsession, hungry to devour each other.
I followed the slap of spray-can lids to the dead center of the cavernous hall. Carnage was crouched on a scaffold, painting a gargantuan anatomical heart tangled in barbed wire, each pulse line a neon scar. Every hiss of her aerosol could peel flesh off bone; every swipe of her brush dredged up some feral corner of the soul. Vex stood below, wiping sweat and maybe tears from his jaw, his throat bobbing like a startled toad. Their eyes locked when they saw me, and the air jolted as if an on-off switch flipped somewhere deep in the walls.
I dropped my pack, the plastic corners cracking on the concrete. “You two playing house?” I asked, and the words tasted like spit and whiskey on my tongue.
Carnage glanced at Vex, a smirk blooming. “You’re late,” she said, voice folded around razor-sharp humor. “We thought you’d chickened out.”
“I’d rather watch you two carve love notes into your own veins,” I replied, but they both grinned that grin ike witnessing the calm before a storm detonates.
Vex’s hand closed on my shoulder, warm and too firm. “Stay,” he rumbled. “Watch how we do worship.” His breath reeked of cheap bourbon, and I realized my pulse had gone haywire.
They dropped to the floor and stripped off layers of leather and denim until Carnage stood in nothing but art-splattered panties, Vex in boxer briefs that hugged his “assets” like a vice. I felt the air drop three degrees and an electric buzz against bare flesh. Carnage beckoned me closer, fingertips trailing across a dripping stencil on her thigh. The paint was still tacky, clinging like sin.
“First communion,” she whispered, pressing her mouth to Vex’s throat. The sound she made, some half-animal gargle, shook the entire room. I tasted copper, like wire rubbed against teeth. Vex arched, and for a moment, the mural behind them blurred: heart, barbs, and then carnage incarnate.
I shouldn’t have watched. But I did.
Their hands became talons and claws, tracing ribcages, tearing at collars, ripping buttons in a symphony of fabric and flesh parting. The scaffolding sagged under Carnage’s weight as she crawled onto Vex’s back, hair flopping like a live thing across his shoulders. He growled into her ear, a low engine rumble that shook my boots. I could almost hear her blood pounding—drums in a warzone.
When they finally collapsed onto a tarp the color of bruised plums, everything seemed to move in slow motion. The paint cans clattered, their innards pooling in violent puddles around us. I felt salt on my lips as Vex spat out a curse, and Carnage’s laughter made the floor tremble, a stench of sweat and latex, metallic and intoxicating, wrapping me in a dense, pulsing cloak.
The distant rumble of traffic overhead, like God snoring after a night of sins. The cold bite of concrete through thin soles as I backed away, mesmerized. The neon smear of their bodies under failing lights, more vivid than any Van Gogh nightmare.
They moved together in a dance so raw it felt sacrilegiousan orgy of skin and need masquerading as artistry. Carnage’s nails scored new highways across Vex’s back; he answered with grunts that shook the rafters. I licked at my own fingers, still streaked with blue-black pigment, tasting the night’s delirium.
Then it snapped. Vex rolled, bringing Carnage down in a crushing embrace that echoed with whispered names, promises, and threats. And her shirtless torso was a fresco of bruises and paint swirls; his chest was a canvas for her madness. They found release in a gut-punch crescendo: a raw, half-suffocated roar that rattled the overhead pipes.
They lay intertwined, chests heaving, paint mixing with sweat into a living mosaic. Carnage turned her head, and her grin was feral, triumphant. Vex’s chest heaved with exhaustion and euphoria. They were the same organism, beauty and monstrosity fused.
I turned to go, shaking the taste of smoke and lust out of my mouth, but Carnage’s hand found mine. The paint under her nails scraped me an invitation, a warning. She said, “816 never forgets.” And I knew that wasn’t a boast. It was a prophecy.
Outside, the sky was already pale with dawn, washing the graffiti-scarred walls in a soft, apology-like light. I stumbled into the cold that bit my bones, carrying the smell of that cathedral of chaos on my skin. My heart hammered—unsteady, alive, infected.
