Being born doesn't issue you the right to live to a righteous age. I know this because I always assumed I'd make it to the ripe old age of ninety-two years, thriving off the royalties of my sold writings and spending the end of my days playing ball with the great-grand kids on my private baseball field. But being born doesn't allow you to choose your own path in life, either. In fact, being born really offers you no promises at all.

So how was I supposed to know I'd die on a Thursday night just like any other? How was I to know that on the morning I awoke, I would be lying cold and dead on a cement floor by midnight? No one truly knows such things, after all. No one knows when their last breath will be let out.

The name is Paul Reynolds. Or, was. When you're dead names don't really matter too awfully much. Only the living feel the need to label everything; including themselves. I was a pretty smart guy during my time on earth. Nothing of Einstein proportion, mind you, but smart enough in my own regards. I wasn't even that old really-- twenty-four-- and my interests dealt mainly with the real world: fun and girls and cars and college; the living and the breathing. Still, like everyone else, I would end up in a dark box in the damp ground, not moving, not knowing. A forgotten form, kept alive only in painful memories. Sadly, but perhaps fittingly, the love of my life would put me in the grave.

I call her that only because at the time, in my premature youth, I looked at her as if she were a goddess come to life. I had only known her a for a few minutes, so perhaps it is silly of me to assume she was my one true love, but when you're dead-- most everything in your past life seems silly.

Her name was Pamela Ivy, though she could have lied about that. Truth be told, she really was quite the looker. A petite height of about 5'4 with a full figure, concealed wonderfully in a tight opaque blazer that accentuated her skinny figure and flaming red hair something fierce. She had piercing green eyes that sparkled, but, as I later learned, only on cue. A few years older than myself, and tanned just slightly enough to give her a glow. She had lips that, though thin and small, were turned upwards into a brilliant smile.

Unlike working at the mall or at the gym, working as a night guard for Wayne Laboratories was a sure bet that you wouldn't run into any gorgeous women during your shift. Not at a quarter 'til midnight. And especially since no one was allowed through the front desk without a pass and clearance check from Mr. Wayne himself-- something that rarely happened due to his mysterious private life.

As soon as she started walking my way I quickly wiped off the remaining residue of my late night energy food-- consisting of powered doughnuts and a large coffee; snack of champions for men in blue uniforms everywhere--- and stood up. I offered her a hand, which she clasped into her delicate one and shook lightly, and was just about to begin spewing out memorized questions when she opened her mouth first.

"Hello… Paul," She said after leaning across the counter some to get a better look at the identification tag clipped to my light blue shirt. Her new form of standing did wonders on my male anatomy when I received an eyeful of chest that I didn't give credit enough for during my first inspection. "I'm Pamela Ivy."

"Hi," I managed, unable to think of anything but the way her hands moved circles on the smooth marble countertop, and imagining them moving those same circles on something else completely. Someone else. Namely, myself. However, in the deepest crevices of my mind, I remembered that I had a job to do first.

"Ma'am, do you have a pass?"

"No," she hesitated a moment. "Why would I need one of those?"

"Security reasons and such. We don't want dangerous people getting behind these doors." Some of the smartest scientists in the world worked behind those doors, I thought to myself. Building and inventing only god knows what. It's not like I was given the inside scoop of what went on or anything. I was just there to offer protection.

She smiled then and echoed my words. "Dangerous?" She leaned in even closer, her nose almost touching mine as she spoke. I immediately noticed her breath, the smell of peppermint, and all the promise that just the smile of a pretty girl could bring to a lonely boy like me. I actually felt her breath on my cheek and wondered if she was interested in me. The thought, or something else, made me shiver. "Do I look dangerous to you, Paul?"

"I don't like to judge a book by its cover," I shrugged. "But it doesn't matter, really," I felt the fear of losing her with my next words but knew they had to be said nevertheless. "Without clearance you are not allowed in here. I'm afraid you'll have to leave." God, if she only knew how sincere I was in that last declaration. Perhaps she did.

"I don't know," she said. "I kind of like it right here. Maybe I don't want to go." There was a flirty glint in her green eyes that would take a blind man not to see. And even then, one would still be able to hear it in her voice.

"I'm instructed to arrest all who disregard these commands," I said with my own little smile. An innocent entrance into tragedy. I wasn't so much trying to get away from her as I was trying to show her that I was somebody.

"Is that so? Hmm…" she lifted herself so that she was now lying atop the counter of my desk. Bringing her wrists together, she moved them toward my face with her bottom lip poking out in a sexy pout. "Then by all means, officer. Arrest away." A wink from her and I knew things were getting out of hand very fast.

"You don't have any clearance. You should leave, now." I gently pushed her hands away from my head.

For a moment I thought that the look on her face meant she was about to get unreasonably angry. In fact, I even flinched a bit as she slid her body fluidly off the counter. I waited for a blow that never came. As quickly as her face had contorted into anger it had just as suddenly melted back into innocence.

"Very well," she conceded. As I watched her walk away I tried to understand the pain I felt in my chest. I was happy, but it was as if a new portion of sorrow grew within my chest as well. I didn't mind though. I wanted to share many things with her. The good and the bad; in sickness and in health. She was only a few feet away when she stopped and craned her neck to face me.

"Actually," she began, then shifted the rest of her body to align towards mine. "There is one thing I would like to do before I leave."

Thinking back on it, I should have been more on guard than I was. The way her eyes shown coolly then should have set me off. But cool is not cold, after all. And here, I was still alone in a room with a girl who made me feel more than anyone else had ever done before, and in only the matter of a few short minutes.

She walked closer, and again, I could smell the scent of peppermints in the air. "What?" I asked. Thinking to myself, that if she only felt an iota of what I did at that moment in time then she would lean in the last hairs breath of an inch or so and kiss me. Or offer up her phone number, at least.

Green eyes sparkled once as she whispered in my ear. "This."

I can't recall every detail that happened after I felt the swift and unexpected kick to my jugular that let me coughing and gagging for air that wouldn't enter my lungs no matter how hard I tried. What I do remember seems rushed and surreal.

Through my final stages of consciousness, I managed to get a look at the security screens that displayed all of the rooms beyond my quarters. I watched as the lithe figure broke through one of the back labs. Smoke poured out from inside of the room, and a minute after that, she emerged triumphantly with a square object in her hands that she slipped into her pocket as she raced back to the front exit.

My lungs were burning now, still violently wheezing to inhale more of life's oxygen. Unaccustomed to the pain, I tried to access the situation at hand. There wasn't much that I could do in the state of mind that I was in, but I did use my last amount of energy to reach under the counter with a trembling hand and hit the red alarm button. Help. Help would come and then all would become alright again.

It wasn't long after that I noticed Pamela had returned to stand by my side. Bending down, she kissed the space of skin next to my ear. "Thanks for the going away present, love," before spreading on her pasty violet lip gloss and kissing my now bluing lips.

There was another odd sensation coursing through my body at this embrace. A warmth that spread through my abdomen and into my chest. It was as if hot, thick liquid were being poured into my blood stream by some mysterious source. My skin began to itch like crazy, but I had no time to react as I felt my life fade away. Slowly, very slowly, I formed the last thoughts that I would ever make again.

Her kiss was poison to me.

Just like her name implied.

She truly was Ivy.

Poison Ivy






~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~





He watched silently as the woman side stepped into a phone booth off the corner of Cambridge and Fourth. Tuning his miniature binoculars to focus in on her lips, he read the words that she mouthed out to the other end of the phone line.

“Mystique? This is Ivy. I’ve got what I came after… yeah… naturally. This isn’t my first time, you know…. Right….. Of course….then, I’ll meet you in Westchester in two days…. Exactly. Xavier won’t know what hit him until it’s too late. They never do.”

Satisfied with his information, he folded the binoculars back into a compartment on his belt. The dark figure then merged back into the shadows of the night, already calculating ideas of his own regarding his newly planned trip to Westchester, New York.

Cruelty in beauty, nature's tease-- the rose that pricks, the thorn that caresses, the girl that can absorb a person's soul with a simple touch. Life's twisted sense of humor.

Not everyone laughs, though.

Studying her cloth covered hand for what must have been the hundredth time in the last hour, Rogue once again contemplated on how such a cursed mutation could ever be inflicted on a person. Yet again, she came up with no new answers. Sighing in defeat she looked at the quiet girl a few feet away from her to make sure that she was indeed asleep.

Kitty, like her outward soft-spoken ways, was a sound sleeper. She was clad in sky pajamas and clutching an old teddy bear to her chest. It was already eleven in the morning but the young girl who usually woke up at the break of dawn had come home late from a date with Bobby the night before. Bushed, she had fallen fast asleep the moment her head hit the pillow.

Giving her roommate one last parting glance, Rogue then moved to retrieve her journal. Owning a journal wasn't anything new to her. When she was younger, every year she would purchase a new book to write her thoughts in. it was almost a religious action the way she kept up with every detail in her life. But then the gods dealt her a few wild cards. Mutation hit, and she ran from home. Trying to survive for eight months on the road doesn't leave a person much time to write frilly thoughts down in parched paper.

Actually, it was the Professor who suggested the concept of keeping a journal again. He said it might help her to sort through the jumble of thoughts and people in her head. But for her part, Rogue wasn't nearly stupid enough to buy into that story. She knew it was really a way for him to keep tabs on the powerful psycho that warded in his home. She couldn't blame him, really. After all, two very susceptibly deranged mutants, among a handful of others, held an eternal residence in her psyche. A place where even the world's most gifted telepath could not penetrate into.

She picked up her ball point pen off the desk-- a pen, which like everything else in the mansion--- was adorned with a small "X" symbol. Not sure where exactly to begin, she decided that simple was best and went from there.

Free will is limited to the confines of fate.
I was thinking today: maybe I am existentialist. But I am not a brilliant writer, so I don't qualify. Most existentialists are also ex-patriots, so that also counts me out, because even as I think otherwise on most days (thanks to dearest Erik) I am not from a foreign country.
Although Mississippi should be.
So, yeah, I said something fucking brilliant in my English Lit course today, but no one noticed but me. I wonder if everything Einstein said, he thought was stupid, but some of the little things. Maybe.
Just a bunch of maybes and never minds.
So what is my fate? Damnation is coming soon and I'm looking over the brink and staring down at emptiness because something is rising towards me, something that's tired of me staring at it, something that wants to devour me, chew me up, and let me dissolve in its stomach acids and wondering---
Is this my destiny?

A knock at the door interrupted her writing. After shaking her head to get rid of her more depressing thoughts, she quickly closed her leather bound book and stuffed it in the bottom drawer of her desk.

"Yes?" She called, twisting sideways to face the door and her intruder.

"God, Roguey! You won't believe who just walked into the mansion!" Jubilee squealed in such an unnaturally high pitched tone that Rogue wondered bitterly if it were not another manifestation of her mutation.

"Oh, no," came a soft, sleepy mumble from the corner of the room. "Did someone get hurt?" A yawn escaped Kitty's lips as she rubbed the residue of sleep out of her eyes.

Ignoring her completely, Jubilee, in all of her obnoxiously yellow glory, tossed her weight on the edge of the bed, causing Kitty to bounce twice before settling back into the comforters. "Wayne," she smirked in the direction of Rogue, as if that one word would be the answer to all of life's most questionable mysteries.

"Come again?" Rogue asked.

"Bruce Wayne," she clarified with a loud pop of her bubblegum for effect. Rogue must have shown as much confusion on the outside as she did on the inside with her roommate's announcement because Jubilee waved her hands in the air with exasperation. "Hello! Bruce Wayne. The Bruce Wayne. Mr. I'm-a-billion-gagillionaire-that-was-voted-one-of-the-tope-five-most-sexiest-men-on-the-East-Coast-and-is-a-bachelor-to-boot-Bruce-Wayne? Ringing any bells for ya, chica?"

"Oh." She was still thoroughly confused, but it seemed that confusion was a state of being she was constantly in when it involved Jubilee and her crazy antics. "Why'd he come here? This is just a school for a bunch of mu--gifted kids," she corrected. "What's his deal?"

"Dunno." She smacked her gum again, smoothing back her gelled black hair. "I think it's something to do with a donation towards the school's funding, though. But no matter the case, the point is, he's here. And he's going to be staying here for an entire week. Couldn't you just die?" she gushed as she pulled a string of gum out of her mouth and twirled it around a finger with perfectly manicured nails. Which were, with no surprise, painted yellow.

It was true that the school needed funding all the time. It took tons of money just to keep up with all of the material mishaps that occur when you're boarding over forty-five mutants, over half of which with little or no control over their destructive powers. So the fact that someone was here to offer a donation was nothing new. What was new, however, was the oddity of him spending a week at the school. Most people just stayed long enough to shake hands with Xavier and hand him a check before hurrying out to attend to another meeting or function.

Another thought occurred to her. "Is he a mutant?"

"Don't think so." Both Kitty and Rogue seemed to consider this answer.

"Is he okay with other mutants, then?" Kitty asked, finally making it out of the bed and pausing on her way to the bathroom.

"Dunno that either." Jubilee shifted but couldn't quite seem to get comfortable where she sat. She tossed all of the pillows unceremoniously to the floor, including Kitty's cherished teddy bear, before letting out a sigh of content.

"So what do you know, then?" The question came out a little more bitter than intended. All of the voices in Rogue's head became very alert when the possibility of a non-mutant outsider stepping into the thresholds of mutant --X-Men-- territory became clear. Too many things were wrong with this development. Too many possibilities that, after being filtered through her internal and eternally paranoid Logan and Magneto personalities, came across as completely insane and dangerous.

"Just that I overheard the Professor welcome Mr. Bruce aboard. Told him that he hoped the dude would have a nice stay here, find everything comfortable, start a couple forest fires, sacrifice a few chickens to Satan, yadda yadda yadda…" noticing the raised eyebrow from Rogue's direction, Jubilee smiled broadly and slapped her friend's leg. "Geeze, chica! You know the Prof will probably call a meeting and debrief us on the details later. Just chill, alright? We've got a gorgeous hunka-hunk of a man sitting on the couch downstairs. What more do you need to know?"

"But isn't he… you know… old?" Kitty scrunched up her nose in mild disgust. She still preferred her men no more than a couple of years older than herself. Anything more was just plain 'icky'.

"Nah. Some magazine I read said that he was supposed to turn thirty-three last week. Plus, he works out and stuff all the time. Which means he's still high drool-worthy material," Jubilee announced, then added matter-of-factly, "Also, he's rich. So who cares? Besides," another pointed look at Rogue. "I think Streaks here has a thing for older men, don't you think, Kit-Kat?"

"Definitely," Kitty giggled behind her hands before disappearing behind the bathroom door.

Choosing to ignore the teasing of her friends, "You're probably right." Rogue admitted. "About the me not worrying thing," she amended quickly. "I'm sure the Professor knows what he's doing."

She then let just enough of Marie out that she actually began to enjoy the prospect of new male meat. It's not like I'm tied down to a boyfriend or anything, she thought in acrid regards to Logan. I'm twenty three years old. He's been home for nearly three months now, and yet he still hasn't said more than a handful of words to me. To say the least, it was very disheartening. And she knew that it wasn't doing her any good to pine away for the Canadian like a lovelorn child.

Blowing a strand of platinum hair out of her face Rogue looked to Jubilee, who was still playing with her gum and now kicking her feet in an unrecognizable rhythm as she hummed an annoying boy band tune to herself to block out the sound of running water from the shower.

A smile edge its way up Rogue's lips. "Hunka-hunk of a man, you say?"