Dark Venom: When I Knew Better but Still Stayed Close to the Fire

Behind the Shadows — Feature One

Dark Venom: When I Knew Better but Still Stayed Close to the Fire

A personal reflection by Nelly Vee

Dark Venom was never simply a story I imagined. It grew from something I lived around 2006—an experience I eventually chose to tell through metaphor, analogy, suspense, and shadow.

I did not write it as a report of what happened. I wrote it the way memory sometimes returns to us: in fragments, symbols, contradictions, questions, and images that say more than a plain explanation ever could.

Sometimes we recognize the warning signs and still move closer. Sometimes what we know and what we want do not arrive at the same conclusion. Looking back, that tension is one of the reasons Dark Venom became the story it did.

The Night the Story Really Began

Before any of this became Dark Venom, it began with a friendship across state lines. We had originally connected because I was trying to help her find work in my state. At first, that was all it was. We talked as friends.

Then, one night around midnight, I received a call that changed the direction of my life. She told me she was afraid and needed to get away from the relationship she was in. I got in my vehicle and drove across several states to pick her up.

I believed I was helping someone who needed help. But almost immediately, I began noticing things that unsettled me—anger, reckless behavior, and choices I could not easily explain away. Those were warning signs. I saw them. Yet seeing a warning and understanding what it may eventually cost you are two different things.

On the trip back, I was involved in an accident that totaled my vehicle. Looking back, that moment feels almost symbolic now—not because I believe one person somehow caused every misfortune that followed, but because so much of my life seemed to change direction from that night forward.

I had set out believing I was simply helping someone. I did not understand that choosing to step into another person’s crisis could eventually force me to examine my own boundaries, judgment, and the price of ignoring what I was already beginning to see.

I eventually lost far more than a vehicle. Some consequences were immediate; others took time for me to understand. I am deliberately leaving much of that history inside the story. Readers do not need every private detail of my life, or hers, to understand what Dark Venom is really carrying beneath its surface.

What I Could See—and What I Still Chose

There is a difference between seeing something and being ready to accept what it means.

I can look backward now and recognize things that were visible then. But when you are living inside a moment, emotion can change the weight you give to what you see. Hope can make one explanation feel stronger than another. Attraction can compete with judgment. The desire for a different outcome can keep a person negotiating with what is already in front of them.

Years later, I found language for something I had already lived: our choices are not shaped by reason alone. Feelings, attitudes, motivation, and the people around us can influence what we decide (American Psychological Association, 2024). We can also feel an uncomfortable pull when what we believe and what we do no longer line up (Harmon-Jones, 2019).

I did not have names for any of that while I was living my story. I only knew the conflict.

A Line From Dark Venom

“Heat. Lightening. Sweet. Poison.”

— Nelly Vee, ChronicleS — Where Shadows Breathe, “Dark Venom,” p. 136.

Those four words hold much of what I was trying to capture: something can feel warm and dangerous, illuminating and confusing, sweet and poisonous at the same time.

The story goes further, but I will not give away where it leads. I want the reader to encounter those turns in the book, because the unanswered questions are part of the experience.

Why I Told the Truth Through Fiction

Writing through metaphor gave me room to tell the truth without reducing my experience to a timeline of events.

Some truths are factual. Others are emotional. A metaphor can hold both.

That is why Dark Venom contains exaggeration, symbolism, contrast, and imagery. The story is rooted in something real from my life, but the creative language allowed me to examine what the experience felt like—not merely document what occurred.

Even the title carries that contradiction. Venom is dangerous, yet the word dark adds another layer: what was hidden, what I did not understand yet, and what I would only recognize clearly after time had passed.

When the Story Became Music

Years later, the story found another language.

Dark Venom became part of my WSB — ChronicleS musical project. The book lets me tell the experience through words, metaphor, and narrative. The music lets me approach that same creative world through sound.

They are not competing versions. They are two doors into the same room.

Experience the WSB — ChronicleS album and the music connected to the stories.

The Image Between the Words

The original nVeeism artwork created for this feature carries the same tension visually. It is not meant to illustrate a literal scene from my past. It translates conflict, memory, attraction, fracture, and consequence into an abstract visual language.

That is important to me because Dark Venom has never existed in only one form. It began as lived experience, became story, crossed into music, and now has a visual expression of its own.

Explore more original writing, music, and visual work from KVI Network.

If You Want to Go Beyond This Reflection

This reflection is only the doorway. I left the complete story where it belongs—in ChronicleS — Where Shadows Breathe—so readers can encounter Dark Venom in the form in which I originally chose to tell it.

If you want to continue beyond this reflection, the standalone digital ebook is available for $2.99. For those who want to experience how the stories and music speak to one another, the digital WSB — ChronicleS album package is $9.99 and includes the ChronicleS ebook. A print option is also available for readers who prefer a physical book.

Continue the experience with ChronicleS and WSB — ChronicleS.

One Question I Still Carry

When we already see the warning signs, what makes us believe the ending will be different?

I have my answer now.

But Dark Venom is where I let the story ask the question.

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About Behind the Shadows

Behind the Shadows is a KVI Network literary series by Nelly Vee connecting the lived experiences, metaphors, stories, music, and visual language within ChronicleS — Where Shadows Breathe.

References & Further Reading

American Psychological Association. (2024). Psychological influences on decision making. Read the American Psychological Association resource on influences on decision-making.

Harmon-Jones, E. (Ed.). (2019). Cognitive dissonance: Reexamining a pivotal theory in psychology (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association. View the American Psychological Association publication.