Snuggles: Noir

Grandpa Patrick had left me his lucky crucifix. I wasn't religious, I couldn't much see the point of it, but Grandpa was one of four people I gave a damn about, the other three being Mom, Pa, and yours truly. So I'd worn it, ever since the funeral. Besides, it was a family heirloom, Grandpa had always said that it'd been given to one of our ancestors by Saint Patrick. I didn't quite believe it but I knew for sure was that it was really old and small enough to wear like a locket.

Of course, a family that was part Irish and part... Honestly, I don't know if we were Chinese or Japanese. Anyway, a family like ours tended to attract attention-especially since Pa looked the Irish a lot more than I do, and that's why I was hiding in the attic of our home. Some nasty fellows of some sort or another had busted down the door and said something about 'our kind' mixing our blood and polluting blood and a bunch of other stuff I didn't cath. I only heard them, I'd been in bed when it'd happened and while Pa had gone to confront them Ma had rushed me off and hid me. Ma didn't stay with me.

It was loud, a great commotion, finished with two gunshots. My heart clenched, I shed a tear... I heard one of them say something. "There's one more, some brat," and my tears dried... I had to get out of here, there'd be time to cry later.

As carefully and as quietly as I could, I pushed myself up... There was an old broom up here, not sure why, and I jammed it through the latches on the attack door. That way they'd have to work on it if they realized I was up here... That gave me time.

...There was no way out of here. The attic wasn't that big to begin with, since it wasn't that big a house, and it was full of boxes... Well, there was a tiny window... Maybe I was small enough to squeeze through. The boxes were stacked just right...

Carefully, very carefully, I inched my way up a wobbling stack of boxes with lots of old clothes and made my way a few feet up to the window... Yeah, it was just big enough... There was a small latch I could pull-I stopped when I heard footsteps just below the attic and someone swearing.

A few seconds later, I heard whoever it was walking away and undid the latch. I tried to push the window open. The boxes under me wobbled a bit more than It'd been when I was climbing. I'd had just enough time to say "damn it!" before I hit the floor and the boxes tumbled down around me with a crash.

Everything hurt now. I groaned and pushed myself back up just as I heard the commotion from downstairs. Seems like whoever it'd been that had taken issue with my family. A bit dazed, I saw that... Oh no.

Once, when I was about six, Mom had shown me this old box. Said it was a family heirloom that her parents had brought when they came to America from... Well, there wasn't any Irish on Mom's side of the family. The box was fancy, made of gold and jade, and Mom had said there was a story that went with the box that she'd tell me when I was older... That I'd never get to hear, I guess... Unless it turns out Heaven's real, in which I figure I'll get to hear it real soon.

Anyway, the box had fallen out of the other box and broke open. So... Mom and Pa were probably dead, the people who killed them were downstairs and planning to kill me, and I'd just broken a priceless heirloom in my attempt to escape, which was just a perfect topper to a terrible night-wait? What was that black stuff leaking out of it?

Just as someone downstairs started banging on the attic door, this oil took shape, a shadowy mass with eight-glowing red eyes. It looked at me and flowed around me and I could feel something forcing its way into my mouth and nose and ears and around my eyes...

Snuggles: Noir

I heard someone talking in a language that I didn't understand. It was like loud whispering, calm shouting, and sharp nails on glass all at once.

I had no idea where I was, just that it was dark, except for bits of light shining off of shards of glass. One was close enough for me to reach out and grab it, so I'd have a light to see with, and suddenly I was in like... a forest or something.

There was a man in what looked like a dress. I couldn't make out more than that, but he was facing a woman who was sticking out the top of a giant spider. The man said something I couldn't catch and the spider-woman screamed and was lifted off the ground and stretched and spiraled through the air before diving for the man and vanishing.

The man turned and I saw him closing the lid on Mom's box. Then the vision ended and I was back in the darkness. I reached for another shard.

This time it was like... Not sure how to describe it, a village in the Far East, maybe?. A woman with nine fluffy tails had her hand buried in the chest of a man, while the man in the dress cast his spell again and trapped her in Mom's box.

More shards, more visions, more monsters-A stiff, dancing man on a dirt road, a white-furred ape in the mountains, an ugly old woman in a snowy forest, a six-armed ogre with extra faces in the jungle, a devil in the desert, a shriveled body sucking the blood from a woman's neck in a cemetery, and other creatures I couldn't begin to describe all went in Mom's antique box.

Soon enough, I was back in the darkness with no more shards to light my way. The glowing red eyes were back.

"You.." said the scary voices. "His blood flows through your veins... The one who made us like this, this wretch... We will enjoy draining your life away and riding your corpse back to-" and here it broke out into dozens of voices, each saying a different place.

Suddenly, I could feel myself falling. I felt something grabbing at me, and all of the strength in my body began leaving me.

"Grandpa... Mom... Pa... I guess I'll be with you soon..." With the last of my strength, I reached up and clutched Grandpa Patrick's lucky crucifix.

Suddenly, the draining and falling feeling stopped. "What," the scary voice asked. "What did you do? How... The sorcerer's blood? The charm? How!? how...?"

The eyes vanished and the darkness around me started to clear up. Soon, I was back in the attic, surrounded by broken boxes and the shredded remains of my nightgown... I'd have been worried if I hadn't noticed that I was covered in a thick cloak of the shadowy stuff that I guess must have been a bunch of demons and crap like that that all got mashed together by however many greats Grandpa the sorcerer.

I reached for Grandpa's crucifix and gave Christ a kiss. I don't know if it'd been Grandpa's ghost, Mom and Pa's, Jesus or a Saint, some leftover magic from the far east, or just pure dumb that'd saved me, but I was gonna leave some coins in the church's collection box the next chance I get, just in case.

There was a banging, and I saw the attic door shift and the broom I'd jammed in it shatter. That's right, I still have this to deal with... To Hell with running, I'd just fought off a demonic possession. I let the man come up into the attic.

He was wearing a mask, goggles over a bandana, so I couldn't quite make out what he looked like. I wasn't sure how, exactly, I was going to deal with him, especially since he had his revolver aimed dead at me, but when he pulled the trigger... Well, I'd heard the bang but I was too busy clinging to the ceiling by my fingers and toes to get hit by the bullet.

I looked down at him just as he was looking up at me. All I could think about was that I'd wanted him gone, when suddenly a giant spider-leg, inky black and shiny, ripped from my back and ran the man through.

With a thought, the spider-leg pulled out and melted back into me. The man fell face forward and bled out. I let myself fall from the ceiling and landed on my feet. An octopus looking bit came out of the cloak of oily darkness and started sucking up the blood.

I'd killed this man... I knew it was wrong, to take another human beings life, but honestly, I couldn't bring myself to care. It was hard for me to care about other people-I knew right from wrong, but I could really only care about what happened to people who were close to me. This man had broken into my home and killed my parents. He could burn in Hell for all I cared. Once the tendril had finished drinking the man's lifeblood, I took the man's revolver and jumped down into the house proper.

There were two more men, waiting just under the attic. One had a piece of a cast iron fence, the other had another revolver. Neither of them had much time to do anything. As soon as I landed, two more long of blackness tore out of me and wrapped around their throats. I wasn't sure how I know, but something sharp had dug its way into their necks and was taking the blood straight from their bodies.

I dropped them once their bodies were dry and went to find...

Mom and Pa were dead. I'd known it, but The inky blackness had tried to take their blood, from where it leaked out of the gunshot wounds, but with a thought, I forced it back. I don't care how hungry the thing was, these were my parents.

Pa had died with his eyes open. I closed them. Then I went to the sitting room and took a chair.

...I had no idea what to do now. I was an orphan, and I'd read enough comic strips and seen enough talkies to know that orphans got treated like garbage unless they got adopted by a well to do type, and I'm not seeing a wealthy industrialist taking in a yellow girl.

I held up Grandpa's lucky crucifix again. I thought on it, and on what'd happened in the attic... What did all of that mean for me now?

As I thought about things, suddenly I could hear the voices again. The fiends, it seems, were still here. I focused on them, as much as could... Figuring this out would distract me from my problems.

After about ten minutes, I'd learned it all-the fiends, the parasite, their power and spite made a liquid and shadowy flesh, were trapped, helpless within me. They were hungry, so very, very hungry, for blood, for life... But as long as I kept them sated, their powers were mine to use as I wished.

I gave it a test, first making my cloak of shadow vanish within my body. Once I'd known I could do that, I called it up again and made it more... Solid. Instead of a shroud, I made proper clothing-shirt and pants, boots, gloves, and a black trench coat. On a whim, I'd made a hat-a fedora, I think they were called, and a black mask to cover the top of my face.

I had no clue what I was going to do about food, shelter or the like, but New York City was full of crime and corruption and I wasn't quite sure that The Spider-Man or The Punisher could deal with it all. There were plenty of men like the ones that attacked my family, people I wouldn't feel bad about feeding to the mass of darkness, rage, and toxic bile... The Venom, that's what I'd call it. I might be young, but I could make the best of a bad situation, and do my part to help clean up this town.

One of the fiends had had a magic spell that let it keep things elsewhere and call them back as needed. I'd used it to pack up my room, the men's revolvers, and some possessions of mine and my parents that I just couldn't go without, and then I set out into the night.

Snuggles: Noir

I was coughing up a lung. I crushed out the butt of the cigar I'd gotten my hands on. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why in Hell people liked those things, but The Spider-Man was my go-to for how this vigilante thing worked, and he seemed to be going by the example of the dicks in the Talkies. Those investigators tended to favor their cigars and their drink.

The Venom was rather upset with me, saying that they had to purge some toxins or something with every drag of smoke or sip of hooch I took in, but they were man-eating monsters so I didn't give a damn about their opinions.

I'd been keeping my eyes on an elderly fellow by the surname Prast. From what I'd heard while dropping the eaves on the gossipy hens of the neighborhood. The story, as I'd put it together, was that he'd come here from Switzerland with a child bride to make his fortune three or four decades ago, only to force his bride to work in a factory while he sat on his ass all day, drinking away her salary and beating her when the whiskey and beer stopped flowing. The girl had apparently gotten involved in a labor strike in oh-seven, then vanished. Prast senior was suspected of murder but never convicted, and he'd had a few relationships, all with women much younger than himself, and in each case, it ended with bruised women and children fleeing the cruel drunk.

At his age, after a lifetime of drink, he'd make a meager meal for The Venom, but he was just a parasite, an evil man who took from good people and only gave back hurt. Nobody would miss him, and we were hungry.

And there he was, walking out of his favorite liquor shop. I dropped down from my perch on a building into a dark, secluded alley that Prast always stumbled past on his way home, and I waited, waited, waited... I pulled on The Venom, forming a tentacle from one of the fiends and grabbing the drunk by the throat and pulling him to me.

As he struggled against the strangling force and the fangs piercing his flesh to take his blood and life, he dropped the bottle he'd purchased, which I'd caught in my own hands... Huh, this stuff was from Kentucky. I wondered if it tasted better than that scotch-whiskey I'd gotten my hands on. I worked my spell and sealed it away just as the drunkard breathed his last, and then went through his pockets. It'd seemed that his drink of choice had cleaned him out, he only had a few pennies to his name.

I left the corpse in the alley with the rest of the trash, and with an illusion to make myself look older I made my way to a cathedral where I deposited Prast's pittance in a box collecting alms for the poor.

Snuggles: Noir

I'd hit paydirt. Some gang or another that'd been kidnapping people aged between twelve and twenty-one and selling them to folks out of state for slave labor and the like. Even worse, a couple of cops in this cesspit of a city knew about the operation but didn't do a damn thing about it, because they were on the take.

Officer O'Malley had been particularly satisfying to The Venom.

A bit of tracking, a few... interrogations, and I'd managed to find my way to their base of operations.

Right now, it seemed that they were between shipments... It meant I couldn't save the people who were already gone, but I could at least make sure that nobody else would suffer... Except for the criminals that were about to get eaten.

I kicked down the door with the strength of giants and rushed in. Only a couple of gangsters were in the main building. One man had gone for his firearm, but he was too slow and a bullet from one of the revolves that had killed my parents had pierced his heart.

There were four other men, each standing and rushing me. Four spider-legs erupted from my back and then twisted into tendrils which slew the men and feasted upon their vital fluids.

Once they were drained, I set The Venom to clean up what was left of the man I shot while I looted the corpses. A few more pistols and a whole lot of cash later and I went in deeper into the building.

It was a few more thugs until I'd made my way to the man I assumed to be in charge. He was a pale man, with dark hair and serious eyes. He was sitting in a large office, in front of an expensive looking desk, drinking a dark red wine from a stemmed glass. He didn't stop drinking when I burst in.

"You the trafficker?" I asked.

He set his glass down and chuckled. "I am engaged in the business of selling human beings for profit, yes," he said in a smooth British accent.

I aimed one of my trophy revolvers for his chest and pulled back the hammer. This made him laugh again.

"Child," he said, "you're awfully young to be killing in cold blood. You've clearly got the talent for it, based on the sound of struggle I've heard and the fact that you've made it this far, but murder for personal or ideological purposes should be saved for men and women who are old enough to enjoy the company of other men and women."

I blinked. I wasn't quite sure what that meant, but I ignored it and pulled the trigger.

The powder exploded, the bullet whizzed out of the barrel, and the man barely flinched as the bullet impacted his chest.

And then he, without a word, reclaimed his glass and finished his wine. "Are you done?"

"What?" I asked? The voices of the Venom were likewise confused.

"Child," the pale man said, "you don't get as far as I have in this line of work without investing in armor with which to protect oneself from bullets." He undid he jacket, showing that he'd had an iron plate on over his shirt. "It's surprisingly simple and quite easy to wear once you have built up the strength. I'm surprised that more criminals don't likewise protect themselves."

Someone had come into the room beyond me and some... Strange green smoke was starting to fill the room.

"At this point, child," the trafficker said, "our business is concluded. I leave you to my newest hire."

I turned around and saw a man, dressed up in a tattered suit and... "Hey, I know you... You're that magician fellow that picked a fight with The Spider-Man, Mister Eeoh or something."

"Don't speak that name to me!" He shouted. He seemed to be drunk. "I, Mysterio, spent years studying the mystic arts only for the powers that should rightfully be mine to end in the hands of another, and now, because the Spider hoards the blood of Anansi for himself, my career is ruined and I've no power to show for it..." The walls were now melting. "And now I'm forced to squander my talents serving..." I couldn't hear the last bit of the magician's drunken rant because everything had melted away and been replaced by a foggy field in the middle of nowhere.

I started walking, trying to figure how in Hell I'd gotten here, with one of the voices of The Venom mumbling something or other. Then something reached from the fog and grabbed me by the arm. I struck at the withered arm and hit it hard enough to break its grip, but something else had grabbed me by the ankles and made me fall over.

More shriveled limbs reached from the fog and grabbed at me, my arms and legs held in a tight grip, holding me pined, and then a gnarled hand appeared and closed around my throat.

I called upon all of the powers of The Venom and lashed out but I couldn't shake the phantom arms off. Everything started going dark as my bosom burned and screamed for air.

Just as I began to pass out, I heard an explosion. The fog cleared and I was back in the office. I could see a figure, armored in gold and red and perched upon what seemed to be a bat out of Hell, the office a total mess, and then I knew no more.

Snuggles: Noir

I woke up in a bed. A bed more comfortable than I could possibly have imagined. Reluctantly, and slowly, I opened my eyes. The first thing I noticed was that the bed-quite a large one, in fact, was in the middle of a large room, with one wall that formed a circle. I wanted to say it was a bedroom, but everything was glass and metal and... A curtain of some kind covering up a good twenty feet of wall.

I wasn't in the outfit I'd forced The Venom to form into, but a proper nightgown, not unlike what I'd been wearing two weeks ago when this had all started. I sat up, trying to figure out how I'd gotten here when my attention was drawn to a sort of whoosh-zoom sound.

A door I hadn't noticed, because it'd been two panels seamless in a wall, had spread open and another girl, a young woman who looked injun-Swamy, not cowboys and injuns-walked in holding a platter or something.

She was dressed in strange clothing that I'd never seen ever before, pants and boots like the cowboys wore, except both black, and strange blue jacket that looked like colored leather, with small spikes starting from the shoulders and trailing down her arms. As she got closer I noticed that the lines and shadows of her eyes looked like they'd been tattooed a vibrant green. Her hair was all off in stiff angles and one sharp bang over her eye left eye was the same green as her eyes instead of the black of the rest of her hair.

"Morning," she said as though none of this was at all strange. "You're lucky that the Doc sent me there in time. Ya almost lost your shocking life doing the vigilante thing before you were ready."

"I'm sorry, Ma'am-"

"Don't call me Ma'am," the girl said quickly. "I'm not even Nineteen yet, don't be calling me a grandma title."

"...Sorry," I said, "look, who are you?" I asked. "Where am I?"

"To start," she said, taking a seat on the bed and leaving the tray somehow floating in the air "I'm Andrea X, X being my actual surname, believe it or not, Dad changed back in 2080 when 1990s nostalgia was all the rage. I'm the Cuddlebug of the 22nd Century," she said with a grin. "Of course, back home my Mister Snuggles and I go by Gold Goblin."

I blinked. "Cuddlebug? Mister Snuggles? Are you kidding me?"

She laughed. "Anyway," she said, "you're in what Doctor Cuddle calls Cuddle Castle, on Earth 69782341. Home of the Interdimensional Council of the Cuddle, which is a really fancy name for what amounts to a support group for superpowered orphans who are mostly just alternate timeline versions of Ashley O'Leary and/or Mister Snuggles."

"Okay," I said, "You lost me at Doctor Cuddle."

"Well," she said, "think of it like this: The world is a big place, far bigger than anyone can ever imagine. There's a lot of people just like you, most of them are even Irish-Asian-American girls named Ashley, and some cosmic being out there in the Aether has decreed that most of them are to have really shocking bad childhoods involving being violently orphaned and two of them met by freak chance and decided that no, that was a load of shocking trash."

"Why do you keep saying shocking like it's a curse?"

"Because I'm from about a hundred and seventy or so years in your future and language changes over time," she said. "Just... The Cuddle Cosmic and Doc keep an eye out on people like them and reach out to help the ones who don't get help, or, well, enough help," She admitted, "Cuddlekitten's here every weekend even though she's a scholarship student at the James Howlett Academy for Badass Freaking Mutants and I'm mostly here because there's not enough action to go around back home."

She cracked her knuckles. "Anyway, the gist of it is that we're here to offer you a place to stay and a support network." She pulled a lid off the tray. "Also food."

I wasn't sure what that sandwich was, but it smelled delicious and I was starting to realize that I was hungrier than I'd ever been.

She handed me a vial of something blue. "Drink this first," she said. "It should keep your friends from acting up for a bit... Uh, it's best to do it in one gulp."

I drank it down. It was bitter and tasted a bit like metal, but after trying that Kentucky bourbon it went down pretty smoothly. "Now, what's that?" I said, pointing to the odd loaf of bread with a filling I couldn't place.

"A heart attack waiting to happen," she said in complete seriousness. "It's called The Count of Monte Fatso and The Cuddle Cosmic swears by it."

I picked up the sandwich and, slowly, hesitantly... I took a bite.

Five minutes later, I was laying back down and regretting the fact that I'd eaten the entire thing. Andrea laughed again. "Yeah, I haven't met an Ashley who can pass one up yet. I don't see the appeal, but I haven't eaten meat in six years so that skews things a bit... So you thinking about staying?"

"Yes," I said. "It's not like I've got anywhere to go, and I'm clearly not cut out for the whole vigilante thing." Which left me not knowing what to do with myself... I sat back up and... I had a place to sleep now, at least, but what was there for me here?

Andrea wrapped her arms around me and held me close, a warm, safe grasp. Almost automatically I pressed myself closer into the hug. "Incidentally," she said, "this is why most of us go by Cuddlebug." I decided that this was enough, for now.

"So," she said, "How'd you like to hear my story?"