#i forgot how to write guys holy shit i'm screwed

[crazy56u]

I woke up an hour and a half ago, and my stomach feels like its filled with honey. Let's go.

[Like last time, I'm writing the entire liveblog in Notepad before pasting it in; it worked better than I thought.]

Okay, so, then why did they skip the saga sell last week, if they're going to play it this time?

Mr. Sandman, the most tonally appropriate song to welcome us into One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Ragnarok.

Once again, I would like to ask how the fuck Ben wound up in the worse insane asylum.

"He has short term memory loss. Dump his ass in the Looney Bin."

So, he's pretending to be pretending to have mental problems, so he can save the wife's sister. This won't backfire.

"My promise to you is this: Welcome to Hell."

And right away, we are off to a swmming start.

Why does Nurse Rached here look like a tax accountant?

I see we're in the part of the building where electricity is banned.

Okay, this straight up was a jail originally.

"Yeah, in case you thought OG Quantum Leap whitewashed the 1950s, here's the reality check."

"You know, Ben's had a rough couple leaps. Dump him into the insane asylum so he can go beddie bye."

Is this on a fucking island?!

"So, yeah, remember how we wanted me to go to sleep. Didn't work."

Ben wound up in Prison Break.

"Hey. Why were you talking to ghosts?"

Coffee: History's Worst Invention

"1954 was a dark time for mental health." >Shock Theater would like to know your location…

Translation: Jenn's actor needed a break after carrying last week.

Glad to know they remembered Janis exists.

Okay, how much longer until Tax Accountant gets punched, I already hate him.

"Coffee's dishwater-" Yeah, so, what else is new? (ba dum tish)

Okay, so Ben legitimately is in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Plot Twist: They cut out Lou's tongue.

Why does Judith look like an extra from Riverdale?

Ben, maybe speak quieter?

"YOU SAID NO PROBLEMS! TALKING TO A WOMAN IS A PROBLEM!"

And we already have a riot.

"Okay, that guy got needled, now we can talk."

"Ian, why was there a picture of a brain?"

Plot Twist: Ben's there to get the asylum shut down two decades early.

ESCAPE ROUTE: In case you forgot we needed an escape route.

Glad to know Beth woke up from her coma.

…did Janis get recast, or am I just getting tripped up by the new hairdo?

"If he's in 1954, this is our last chance!" "There's two more episodes this season, what are you on?!"

"Look, I know you're here to bust me out, but newsflash, we got more people to save."

I technically called it.

What if the solution is just burning this place to the ground.

Ben, talk quieter?

Okay, I'm calling it: This was originally meant to be a prison leap, but they pivoted, and they forgot to change the setting fully.

Oh. Goody. Martinez leapt into Nurse Rached…

"Hey, what is Martinez doing there?" My guess? Torturing Ben.

HOLY SHIT. THEY FUCKING REMEMBERED THE EVIL LEAPER PROJECT EXISTED.

What if it turns out Martinez isn't evil? That the reason why he "wants to win" against Ben because he's just leaping around for fun, and Ben keeps screwing with him without knowing it?

"Ben, it's almost five o'clock." Meanwhile, in my world, it's 10:22pm.

MORAL OF THE STORY: If you try to express yourself with painting, you get sent to the bathroom.

Ben is now speedrunning the episode, so expect things to backfire horribly.

ANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNND they found the torture dungeon.

Ben's turning to an old timey safe cracker, this episode has fucking everything…

Why does an island-based insane asylum have a parking lot?

"I'm here to help you. Scout's honor."

And, in case you were hoping the doctor wasn't the antagonist…

And Ben got needled.

And now we enter the "Star Light, Star Bright" portion of the program.

And Ben's gonna get fucking electroshocked, good fucking job.

Also, he broke faster than Sam, just an aside.

It would be fucking funny, though, if this leap was taking place at the same time as Shock Theater.

Ben, congratulations, you fucked the leap.

Either the doctor doesn't believe him, or he has the best poker face in the land.

He's going fucking cut Ben's head open. Ben instantly outshown Sam in the "Shit Luck" department.

"Why is she here, I thought we had her locked in the broom closet."

"Martinez leaps to help people, like Ben!" "So is he, or is he not the fucking Bad guy?!"

"Ben has to sabotage the leap!" Meanwhile in the distance, Sam Beckett is fucking screaming in frustration.

Also, did you not see the previous scene? Ben already did that.

Janis, the show got renewed, Ben ain't sacrificing shit.

Addison, you already know he can see you. HE SPOKE TO YOU.

Janis is about to go back into the broom closet, Magic is super fucking pissed.

"Look, I'm here for Judith. Go away."

…don't kill the nurse?

…he's going to use that to stab the doctor, calling it.

"Look, I don't know if you're actually on our side or not, but brass tacks time: You can't stab nurses to save the day, and Ben fucked himself over and is about to get lobotomized. You willing to play ball?"

At least Ben finally got to sleep.

"Look, O'Connor, you think I'm not above beating the shit out of a man in a straightjacket?"

"Addison said I couldn't stab a nurse. Knocking out orderlies wasn't against the rules."

Glad to see the straightjacket was a problem for all of one scene.

Martinez: Sucks at poker.

"Wait… I got a syringe… And there's a stool… … … (smashes a window)"

Ice Pick Lobotomies: The Safest Way to Murder

"STOP! I have an actual hostage! Put the ice pick down!"

Tossing the "hostage" to take down someone. A+ Gambit

"Look, believe it or not, he's helping, I'm just as surprised."

Okay, why are they now in a tunnel from Aliens?

"Oh shit. A ladder."

Okay, sewer's open. Time for a last minute conflict!

Seriously, there's 14 minutes left, something's gonna happen.

"Not bad for a pacifist." And three… two… one…

And Ben has cracked his skull. He got fucking stabbed in the jugular and fell onto concrete from a couple feet on high, Ben has cracked his fucking skull.

[Wait, since when the fuck does Tumblr have a character limit?]

[regrettablewritings]

Genre Blindness, aka The Brocky Horror Picture Show (Slight Eddie Brock x Reader)

A/N: Well, this is all I’m contributing to Halloween. Have at a “scary”(ly-written) fic. Have at it, kiddies. Also, kudos to K for making a punny name for this even though she knows it and everything about it (including myself) is trash!

Everyone likes to imagine themselves as the hero of their own story, a figure in the movie that was their life. The problem for you was that at this point, you had no idea to which genre your own life belonged. The easy route would’ve been to claim it was an indie, but where was the fun in that? But considering how you’d decided to start life a new in San Francisco, it was leaning somewhere along the inspirational biopic spectrum. Your apartment sure as hell supported that theory: Small, your own personal and lease-friendly touches attempting to cover up its slipshod glory, located in a part of town that, ahem, didn’t have a Whole Foods so to speak.

Clearly, you told yourself often, I am in the rough beginnings phase. You weren’t entirely sure how much of this you actually believed, but it was better to believe that something amazing was waiting just around the corner than to completely digest your life’s current situation.

The irony here being that your life, for just a moment, was about to look less like an inspirational biopic and more like a movie about being careful or at least more specific about what one wishes for.

When you hoped for something big to be around the corner, you’d meant like winning the lottery or acquiring your dream job or catching the eye of a dazzling celebrity. Or at least find the perfect pair of jeans that were both comfy and made your ass look great. What you hadn’t hoped for (or even really been in the same realm of even considering) was that something big would literally drop right by your apartment window – coincidentally in a back corner of your building.

You hadn’t noticed that anything had fallen passed your window. Not at first. You were far too busy blowing your store-bought microwavable cupcake cool, after all. But what you couldn’t ignore were the sounds that soon followed the thing’s fast descent: The loud thud of something hitting the pavement below; the bang of disturbed trashcans; the cacophony of garbage being crushed or toppled over. To be honest, you were so used to that sort of racket coming from that alleyway (never mind that it still caused you to jolt up with a vibrant, “Whatthefuck?!”) that you would’ve been more than happy to just leave it be and carry on with your lackluster night. After all, if you stopped yourself every time you heard crackheads getting into screaming matches or cats hissing at one another or party girls puking into that alley, you’d never have enough life left over to enjoy what little you had.

You glanced at the clock: a quarter to three in the morning. Most nearby clubs were probably beginning to close up shop at around this time, it was probably just somebody drunk on overpriced drinks stumbling about.

However, it was the groan that caused you to reconsider. Of all the disputes you’d overheard coming from the backway below, you’d never heard such a miserable sound of pain come rippling up the walls the way this particular one did. Normally you would’ve kept the window shut but with your busted A/C unit, you had to regrettably resort to using the rank but free air of the outside. It was bad enough you could smell suspicious things; it was no intention of yours to also hear suspicious things. But . . . Then again, maybe you didn’t hear it. Suppose you imagined it?

As if on cue, you heard a small avalanche of glass bottles and hefty garbage bags collapse. Its end was accompanied by a small whimper. It wasn’t as loud as the groan you thought maybe hadn’t happened, but it was definitely real. And still definitely human. Crap.

Against the best of your nerves, the guilt of possibly letting a genuinely injured person suffer any more than what was necessary overruled you. You crept towards your window, nudging the sill open just enough for you to humor poking your head out of it.

“Hello?” you called down in a loud whisper. You squinted at the shadows. Aside from the familiar forms of garbage cans and the dumpster and the litter you could just imagine was already there, nothing. That is, until one of those garbage bags appeared to move. Your breath stilled in your throat, eyes widening for a brief moment before narrowing once more with double intensity. The lack of proper lighting made it difficult to officially determine it, but there was little doubt about it: There was a person down there.

“Hellooo? Is anybody down there?” you called out a bit louder. Nothing. Your heart began to thud with worry. You inhaled (both with worry and with the intention of shouting) before releasing a far louder, “HELL –”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!!” bellowed some bastard elsewhere. The sudden yelling caused you to tense up and button up. Curiously (and concerningly), still no response from below. There were two possibilities to this: Either this person, like you, was not from the area and therefore lacked the devil-may-care attitude required for snapping back at the aggressor; or they had just proved your growing dread that they might’ve been unconscious.

Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit. You wobbled from foot to foot, eyes flickering about as your thoughts rushed. What should you do? Should you call 911? That would be the most sensible thing, honestly.

But . . . given that there wasn’t a Starbucks for an approximate twenty blocks from here – any help you called for likely wasn’t going to come immediately. Maybe you should just hope that they recover quickly and go about your business? You hated to admit to it, but the temptation was there.

After all, you shakily tried to reason, I’ve never really rushed in with all the other things that happened in that alley. This was true. But then again, the others never really had the double whammy of a person being in so much pain that they possibly blacked out. Or were on the brink of death. The shudder that thought caused forced you to shake your head. You were overthinking this. You had to have been; nobody else was making a fuss about this, were they? Probably because they’d already called the cops –

Oh, wait, you remembered bitterly, no Starbucks or Whole Foods or some shit. Plus, the screaming you’d received for calling out your own window did little to convince you of others’ sense of empathy. An expression of worry twisted your features as you forced yourself to go to the kitchen and retrieve a fork for your awaiting snack. Maybe if you took the actual steps to carry on with your previously planned night, you’d calm down some and things would take care themselves?

But could the person that you swore was in the alleyway do the same you wondered.

Clearly the cynicism of this corner of San Fran had not strangled you enough. You wished that it had.

You were currently seeing your life as veering more towards the horror genre. You concluded this with immense dread based on the following: You were creeping outside in the dark to investigate a strange noise on your own; you wanted to believe that you were perhaps defying it to some extent by arming yourself but alas: A skillet did not carry the same amount of threat as, say, a good cutting knife did. Which you didn’t have anyway. So yeah: You were being that bitch™.

You slowly waved your phone’s flashlight about the ground. So far, all you had been picking up were the usual suspects of grime and garbage and for that you were somewhat grateful. Maybe, if you hoped hard enough, the person would have retroactively recovered and buggered off before you’d gotten down. That would sure alleviate a whole lot of pressure weighing down on your nerves. But as the light encased the unmistakable figure of a shoe – still attached to a leg, no less – you knew no amount of hoping was going to relieve you. And as you traveled the light further along the body, taking in its current state, you were losing hope by the gallon.

You gasped shrilly as your eyes began to compute exactly what was wrong with the man: He was dead. He had to have been. From what little skin you could see (he was dressed in a rather blood-stained hoodie and even more unfortunate jeans), most of him appeared to be battered purple and blue. Some of his fingers had definitely been broken as evidenced by the unnatural angles they bended at. But, most horrifying of all, was the bone sticking out of him: Shins were not supposed to fucking do that. In fact, even the near absolute coverage of his clothing couldn’t hide from you just how mangled his body appeared to be in some places.

“Oh, God,” you gagged, jerking your head away from the scene. This was worse than a horror movie; this was real life. This shit was getting too out of hand, you’d finally decided. It didn’t matter if it would take them a while to get out here: You were calling the police right fucking now. This was a mob hit. This was a mob hit, and you fucking contaminated the crime scene with your mere presence. It was best to just make the call, give as much information as you could, and hole yourself up in your apartment until the memory of this faded from your mind – which would probably be never at this point.

You tried to make quick work of getting to the dialer of your phone (a difficult thing to do with sweaty, shaking fingers) but it was in the process of that that you heard something unlike the distant sirens and dogs barking of the late night hour: A sort of . . . whistling? No, no, a hissing. You forced yourself to glance back at the body. There was your answer: A nostril, struggling to inhale in spite of the nose’s battered state.

A wave of relief washed through you as you concluded that the figure before you, in spite of the odds, was alive. That made the situation somewhat better, but frankly only by the smallest of increments. You hovered the flashlight of your phone over the stranger’s face. It was frankly not too much better than the rest of his body with blood streaking across the flesh and purple beginning to set into it. But in spite of the cuts and bruises marring his face, he looked vaguely familiar to you. You weren’t entirely sure if those lips of his were naturally poofy or if they had just been smacked around a bit, but you could’ve sworn you’d seen lips like them somewhere on a particular.

You grimaced; that was enough of that. Time to make that call and leg it. With fingers still trembling, you returned your focus back to turning your phone screen back on.

Crack.

You froze, your breath stilling. Normally, you would have been very willing to link another noise in the alleyway with the trash that adorned it. However, this was a very specific sound. In fact, you could’ve sworn it sounded like . . . bone?

You weren’t sure of the demon that compelled you to do so, but you dared to glance at the body once more. Your gut dropped and your heart beat a painfully cold palpitation.

Hadn’t his left shoulder appeared more broken than that?

Sn-ap. This time, you saw it: The shoulder, in an almost jerking but completely unnatural movement, snapped into a more normal-looking position. In fact, if you weren’t so ensorcelled for all the wrong reasons, you might have considered it good as new.

CRACK. The loudness of the noise caused you to jump, your eyes flickering to where you believed the source of it to be. You watched in horror as the bone protruding from the man’s leg began to inch inward, crick after crack until it finally placed itself back into its rightful home. In fact, it took you a moment to realize that as it was rehousing itself, the rest of the broken limbs and features were correcting themselves as well. You barely registered the cacophony of bones snapping and flesh squealching, either because your heart was drumming a fearful beat inside your head or because your brain just forbade it to spare you. Either way, after the longest minute of your life, the body that lay before you wasn’t quite the same one you’d just found.

It was back to what you assumed was normal for it: A regular guy with no broken limbs or busted lips. Of course, there was still some blood here and there but that was the last thing you were concerned about. Though frankly, with the blizzard of thoughts whipping about your head, it was hard to decide what you should be concerned about: The body, the fact that it was just busted beyond belief mere seconds ago, the fact that it magically (albeit grotesquely) fixed itself, if you should just call the goddamn police and get the hell of out here.

Then his eyes snapped open. With that, your thoughts collected themselves in a single file line of concerns, that eye-opening thing being at the very front of it.

A loud, wet gasp flew from his lips, creating a gurgling noise in the cramped space of the alley. He jolted his body upright so fast, it was a miracle he hadn’t broken his neck in the process. The sudden movement, the sudden noise – it was all too much.

The corridor rang with a glorious pang, followed by an unceremonious plop of the man’s body returning back to the dirty concrete. He was out cold once again, though it was probably for the better: Had he been awake, he definitely would’ve been complaining about his re-broken nose.

You shuddered; the fact that “re-broken” was the proper word definitely wasn’t doing anything for your mental state. You were in the middle of debating whether or not this was even still a matter for the police (twenty Starbucksless blocks for one, the fact that you might be dealing with a demonic possession for another), when you heard it again: That sickening crack of bone, though you knew without even looking that it was his nose. Your eyes screwed themselves shut, your body flinching along with every snip and snap of the cartilage repairing itself. Even when it all went quiet, you didn’t look. Frankly, you were at a loss of what to even do at this point; the entire scenario was way more than what you’d bargained for, and there was no public protocol. At least with finding a busted body, there was some inkling of what to do. But this? You weren’t even sure what you were dealing with, much less with how to deal with it!

“Impressive.”

For the umpteenth time in the last half hour, you jolted. The fear that spiked through you had been more than enough to pop your eyes back open against your personal wishes. Normally, hearing another person’s voice in such a bizarre situation could’ve been a godsend. But this voice . . . It wasn’t human. It was deep, but also unnerving. It was carried in a rattling, almost metallic way that made its threatening cadence all the more evident. It was your fear instinct that forced you to turn towards it and source it. But even with a face to match the voice to, you still weren’t certain as to what you were seeing.

The first thing that came to mind was goop. The second was oil or ink. But the third was, “HOLY SHIT TEETH TEETH FUCKING NEEDLE TEETH WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING?!?” And as tempted as you were to say any of that, you found yourself unable to so much as emit a whimper of horror. As you stared into the large, milky eyes of the many-toothed, oily goop thing that was protruding from the man’s arm, you found yourself rightfully out of words. If this evening didn’t kill you, you had a feeling that whatever the hell this thing was would. And its creepy grin did nothing to convince you otherwise.

“That’s some swing you’ve got,” it complimented. You did not appreciate it. “But as outstanding as it is . . .” It narrowed its eyes and widened its grin menacingly, “I would greatly appreciate it if you did not use it to damage my property. It was my general understanding that vandalism is a bit of a big deal for your humans. Consider this my warning.”

Okay, yeah, no the fear was too much. You raised the skillet at an angle. The thing’s eyes widened.

“I SWEAR TO GOD, IF YOU HIT ME WITH THAT – You know what? Go ahead: I dare you. Hit me with that thing again and I will eat you.” It capitalized on that threated by giving its rows of jagged teeth a lick. Normally you might’ve wondered if such an action would be painful given the nature of its mouth, but the foulness of its tongue made you immediately discard that query. Besides, as curious as you were, you didn’t want to know what sort of deity this thing was swearing to.

You lowered the pan albeit to a shield-like position, though a part of you recognized the idiocy of it. Nightmarish ooze or no, a shield does not a kitchen skillet make. Nevertheless, the goop demon seemed pleased enough.

“Good,” it hissed. “I will admit that while I am not enthused that such a small human managed to take us down using only cooking ware, it is at least more amusing than accepting that we got our ass handed to us by a guy with a stun gun and a dog whistle.”

There were many things about that sentence to unpack but specifically, there was one that was just enough to suspend your disbelief.

“‘U-us?’” you whispered. The creature nodded in one slow, oozing gesture.

“Yes,” it confirmed. “He and I.” You regarded the man from which the glob was sourcing.

“We are . . . one, I suppose you could say,” the creature explained. Your eyes drifted back upward to meet with the whites of its own. Your breath shuttered about your throat. You dared to continue.

“Who . . . Who are you?”

You never thought the thing’s smile could grow any further. But as its oily face drew back to reveal even more pointed teeth, you were proven wrong. You didn’t feel as nervous, though. It was almost as if you were beginning to forget how to be in all your curiosity.

“Us?” it smiled, eyes narrowing once more with delight.

“We . . .” It raised up with pride, “are Venom.”

Venom. So the thing had a name. At least that question was answered. Unfortunately, the satisfaction of that didn’t appear in your features so much as they remained as neutral as they could for the moment. From the look of bemusement beginning to leak into Venom’s oily countenance, you gathered that this wasn’t the effect he had been looking for from you.

“It’s a lot more effective when we speak in unison,” Venom glowered, nodding his “head” toward his unconscious partner. You sights once again flickered to the poor bastard and you winced.

“Oooohhh,” you groaned quietly. “S-sorry?” You almost wanted to smack yourself with the frying pan for that. Why the hell were you apologizing? To validate this thing’s stolen thunder? Hell no!

“Apology not accepted,” Venom muttered. You could practically hear the pout in his tone, a fact which almost disturbed you. It was then that you heard a low groan emit from the man. At this, Venom turned himself entirely towards his human.

“Seems he’s coming around. Finally.” Venom swiveled back to you. “Do not hit us again. I can still eat you, even when he’s awake.” With that threat, he began to slink back into the body. For a moment, it was like ink was seeping into the human’s sweatshirt. But it disappeared just as quickly, signifying that Venom had, like the bones before him, returned back from whence he came. It was as if thick ink had splattered across the man’s clothing before disappearing all together.

Ordinarily you would have transfixed on that sort of thing but after everything else that had come before it (and in a span of about ten minutes at most), it was practically matter-of-fact by comparison. Therefore, you weren’t startled this time when the man woke up once more, sharply inhaling as though the air were finally being allowed back into his lungs. His eyes bulged against greying lids, flickering everywhere they could before landing on you. And then the skillet you were still holding. You could practically see the moment he remembered what you’d done.

It hurt Eddie’s lungs to breathe; apparently V hadn’t gotten around to fixing minor internal discomfort. Still, that didn’t stop him from taking a sharp intake of air as he felt himself being shot back into the realm of consciousness. But as a stinging sensation resonated within him, he regretted it. The only thing he could do in that moment of shock was wait it out; he did his usual method of taking in his surroundings, trying to recollect what all had happened when –

Aw, fuck, he cursed inside. There was another person present. He was beginning to wonder how much you had seen when his eyes happened to register that you were holding something: A skillet. Immediately, the memories of moments before began to flood back into the forefront of his mind. He woke up, you jolted, bang, he was back in the blackness.

It was therefore understandable for him to assume the worst and act on instinct – by scrambling upright and trying (and failing) to move away from you. Even with healed limbs, his body was sore but it didn’t stop him from raising an arm in defense.

“Whoawhoawhoa –” he slurred, blanking out your objections against his assumptions.

“Calm down,” he suddenly heard resonating inside his skull. “She won’t try anything. I made sure of that.”

What, what? It was enough to make Eddie pause. The hell did that mean!?

Brows furrowed, he lowered his arm. “Did . . . Are you okay?” he asked

Your face wrinkled incredulously. “E-excuse me?!” you demanded. “Am I okay!? What the hell about you?!”

“Well, I just thought –”

“You show up in a goddamn alleyway, looking like a Halloween horror show prop, you fucking heal, get panged, you have a – a thing, and you ask me if I’m o-fucking-kay?!” you screeched. With every addition to your list you made, the man grimaced. Though at that last part, that seemed to change: Less cringing, more realization.

“Wait . . . You –”

“KEEP IT FUCKING DOWN OUT THERE, FUCK!!” The sudden roaring from seven stories up the apartment building silenced the both of you. It was punctuated by a window slamming shut. The two of you remained silent, the only noise left being the distant sounds of the city and your labored breaths. You sat there, staring at one another, both clearly wanting to speak but being uncertain of what exactly to say amongst the array of possibilities. But for Eddie, there was at least one that he desperately needed to know before anything else.

“So, you uh . . . You saw him?” he asked.

“She just said she did,” Venom stated bluntly.

“Yes,” you confirmed in a low mutter. Eddie nodded, casting his eyes to the side. To alleviate the growing awkwardness, he raised a hand to the back of his head and scratched at an itch that wasn’t even there.

“Ah,” he offered plainly. He pursed his lips. “So, uh . . . What exactly did he do . . . Y’know, to keep you from bashing my brains out again?”

“. . . He said he’d eat me.”

“Still might,” Eddie heard. In spite of this, he forced an unconvincing smile of assurance.

“No, he won’t. He’s just bluffing,” Eddie insisted.

“Yes, I could.”

“We have a deal going on where we only . . .” He searched for the right word. Considering all the crap he’d put you through, no matter how unintentional, there was just nothing soft enough to lighten the blow. “We only deal with bad people, let’s just put it that way.”

That honestly wasn’t the most reassuring thing, but you had no choice but to take it. Still, your morbid curiosity wasn’t about to let it rest.

“Is it a . . . a demon?” You weren’t expecting a sensible answer, much less an honest one. But you needed something to grasp on to. Something to confirm, once and for all, that this wasn’t a shared hallucination of some kind.

The brunet shook his head.

“Nah,” he stated. “More like a paras –” He paused. He said, “An alien.” The beat he’d created for himself gave you all the reason to doubt his claim. However, in the lighted projected from your phone, you could see those eyes of his. Through all the exhaustion they held, there was honesty present in them. They told you, pleaded with you to trust his words.

And you did.

And that was when it hit you: the sudden realization of where you knew that face from. You almost wanted to sock yourself in the face for not recognizing him before – after all, how many men had lips like those?

“Holy shit,” you said mindlessly. “You’re Eddie Brock, aren’t you?”

Eddie tensed. Should he lie? He could totally lie, right? He’d been working on his career-destroying bluntness over the last few months, surely he could at least bend the truth a little into a direction that didn’t convince you he was Eddie Brock, take-down investigative journalist.

“. . . Nnnnnnooooooo?” He slurred. Fuck. He began to wonder if he had enough money to bribe you into silence.

“We could always eat her,” Venom offered. Immediately, Eddie was broken out of one panicked thought process into another.

“No!” he hissed to himself. “We are not going to eat her!” (Your eyes widened as your grip on your nearly forgotten cooking ware tightened.)

“Fine!” Venom scowled. His voice then returned, though with a hint of suggestion. “Maybe we could . . . ‘eat’ her in that other way, then. The non-sustenance-gaining but still plenty satisfying way –”

“NO!” Eddie snapped. He could practically feel the symbiote within shrugging.

“It’s a good method of keeping silence in my opinion. Won’t know unless we try.”

“Please. Just shut the fuck up,” Eddie hissed through clenched teeth.

“I, I promise I won’t tell,” you stammered insistently. You raised the pan back up as a mock shield, both to pathetically attempt protection but also to hide bits of your worrying appearance. “It’s just . . . Well, you’re some guy my college roommate got me into; she used to stream your stuff all the time, I used to watch your crap for essays and – Shit, no, I don’t mean crap, I mean –”

“Nah, nah, some of that was crap. You ever see the one about the rats at Cawthon Pizza Kitchen?”

You grinned wearily. “Only every time I consider ordering pizza.”

A beat of silence followed. Well, on your end it was silent. For Eddie, he could hear his alien parasite snickering.

“Ask her if she saw the outtake where you thought a rat scurried across your foot and you screamed like a pussy!”

Okay, enough was enough. Without warning, Eddie began to shove himself up off the dirty ground. You followed suit.

“Okay, not to cut this short or anything – it’s been a blast, almost literally, but, uh . . .” He fruitlessly brushed off his clothes. He paused, as if cut short.

“No,” he said sternly. After another moment of him not speaking, he repeated himself. “I said ‘no.’” You began to worry your lip. Considering what had been said previously whenever Eddie did this, you had every reason to feel concern.

“You’re not . . . gonna eat me, are you?” you wondered. Immediately Eddie switched his attention back to you.

“Nonono,” he raised his hands in defense. “Not you, you have our word, it’s just –” He bit a corner of his full lip. “Okay, the long and the short is that we’re kind of ridiculously hungry right now, and the bastard’s saying you owe us.”

“Oh!” You pursed your lips. “That’s, um . . .”

The man waved it off. “Don’t worry about it. Just point me in the direction of the nearest convenience store or whatever and we’ll be gone like the wind outta your hair.” He added a smile to the end of his sentence. You were happy to return it – at first. But the way he flinched as it spread caught your eye. You once again took notice of the small scratches and blemishes that still marked up his face, even after Venom’s apparent handy work. It was silly, but you couldn’t help the feelings they instilled in you. Sure, you hadn’t been the one to put them (well, most of them) there, but that didn’t negate the fact that you had smacked him hard enough to break a bone.

“No,” you found yourself interjecting. If you weren’t possessed by enough guilt to be steadfast on the matter, you would have appeared just as confused as Eddie did upon your interruption. You went on, “I mean, I don’t have much on me but, like . . . I got one of those cheap microwavable cupcakes. You can have it, if you want, I mean. I feel like I owe you for clocking you.”

“Oooohhh. Eddie, I like her,” purred Venom.

You didn’t hear that, of course, but Eddie sure did. And something inside him was a bit concerned that that was his cause for quirking a grin at you, rather than the thought of actually eating something.

Epilogue:

For whatever reason, the gravity of the situation didn’t entirely hit you at its full depth until long after the two of you trekked up the stairs to your abode. Nor did it occur when Eddie (or perhaps it was Venom, given the ferocity with which he ate) attacked the consolation cupcake. It actually hit you after Eddie’s departure (though not before him expressing his thanks and a lighthearted if awkward inclusion of “maybe seeing you around”).

You had just taken an alien-possessed Eddie Brock into your apartment and fed him a cupcake to make up for the fact that you’d broken his nose with the skillet you used to cook your eggs. It was the sort of strangeness only heard about in stories from the web or on the silver screen. Granted, most stories and movies would have chided at you for wandering outside at night and then bringing somebody you didn’t even know back to your place. The fact that he was also a host to a carnivorous, insatiable ink thing stood only to worsen the effect.

But as you finally lay down in the wee hours of the morning, there was nothing you could do about it. What was done was done. Things would never be quite the same after this night. The story had changed lanes, the script revised to reflect something less like the boring biopic you’d initially imagined, and deep down knew you were probably never going to get back so long as Eddie and Venom existed in your life. Though as you fell asleep, you deliriously decided it wasn’t something you minded.

In hindsight, you would see this as the rough beginnings phase of the odd couple story your life actually wound up being.

[goy-bullshit-translator]

I'm not the anon who asked about Purim but what is the Purim story?

ALRIGHTY *cracks knuckles* I got off mobile and on desktop for this so you know it’s serious.

Purim Story: They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat. 

The year is 367 BCE. The town is Shushan, Persia. The scene zooms in on a large castle in the middle, big, decadent, just the right amount of finery and prestige for a king who’s a complete asshole. The king Ahashverous is sitting on his throne, lording over his subjects in the way only a completely pompous and detached king can. His wife Vashti is off in her rooms, chilling, doing something, enjoying her queenly life. King Ahashverous decides he’s in the mood to party, so calls up all his dudebro friends, they’re chilling, dancing, drinking, having a great time, when King A gets this great idea to call his wife Vashti down for a little entertainment, a little dancing for his guests. Wearing only her crown. So, for reasons obvious to all but the most entitled frat boy (Ahashverous), Vashti declines and refuses to do as he asked. He gets super pissed by this and demands her killed, which is promptly followed out. Vashti is out of the picture and villianized in children’s purim skits for eons to come. 

So the King is sitting there, having just disposed of his unruly wife, when he realizes he needs a new queen. Well shit, how’s he gonna get one on such short notice? He calls up his right hand man, his advisor Haman (BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO), and tells him to go fetch all the women of Shushan, as he will hold a beauty contest and whoever wins will have the blessing of being the King’s wife. 

Enter Esther, a young Jewish girl, orphaned at a young age and who has grown up with her uncle Mordechai (THE JEWISH GUY), who works in the Palace. She’s young, sweet, innocent and pretty, so of course she’s a prime subject for the King’s beauty contest. She shows up, struts her stuff, and lo and behold, the king has a new wife! They get married, and she’s trapped in a world of pompous royalty and anti-semitism. Oh yeah, no one knows she’s Jewish. 

Meanwhile, Mordechai, on his daily trip to the palace, overhears two guards, gossiping about how they’re gonna murder the king, just gonna kill him brutally and painfully and all that good stuff. So, let’s be real, the king probably deserves this, but that’s besides the point. Mordechai is shocked and appalled, and rushes immediately to notify the court of this impending murder plot, the guards are taken and executed, and life goes back to normal. 

Mordechai continues his walk around his Shushan town, when he happens to cross paths with Haman (BOOOOOOOOOO). Haman, being the asshole he is, insists that everyone who he walks past must bow to him. Mordechai, being the Jew that he is, refuses. Now Haman fucking hates this. If Mordechai won’t bow to him, then all the Jews won’t bow to him, so he must not be the most important person in the world and that’s simply not permissible. So he sidles up to his personal pal the king and is like “hey. hey bud. hey my dude my pal there are people who don’t respect my authority or yours. They won’t bow to me what kind of filthy rats.” and the king’s all “holy shit there are people who wont bow to you we gotta do something!!” and H*man smiles and goes “yeah dude i got the perfect solution. Let’s just kill them. Kill them all. There’s no way that could go wrong.” And the king, (who’s probably still drunk), is like “Yeah dude sounds cool!!”, and willingly signs off on the order to murder all the Jews. Now, H*man is a little bastard who doesn’t give a shit about what he’s doing, so in order to decide when he’ll commit this mass murder, he rolls some dice, called Purim, to choose a date. (Hopefully you see the obvious connection to the holiday). The dice land on the 14th of Adar, the decree is made and sent out into the city, and the Jews of Shushan collectively go “oh fuck we’re gonna die.”

Back to our good pal Mordechai, who’s walking around Shushan again (he seems to go on a lot of walks), when he notices one of the posters declaring the murders of the Jews, and is like SHIT SHIT SHIT WAIT my niece lives in the palace. She’s the gotdamn queen. She’s gotta have some sort of power, right? So he runs over to visit Esther, and is like Esther sweetie babe please go talk to your husband please make him reconsider mass murder maybe? Thanks? and Esther’s all “what the fuck i haven’t seen my husband since the wedding if i enter his quarters without an invitation i’ll be fucking murdered” and mordechai, who’s had enough of his niece’s wishy washy shit, goes “YOU”RE GONNA GET FUCKING MURDERED ANYWAY IN CASE YOU FORGOT YOU ARE ALSO A JEW” and Esther’s like “okay yeah i’ll see what I can do.”

Zoom in on the king, who’s trying to go to sleep in his big kingly beds, and just can’t fall asleep. So instead of suffering through insomnia like the rest of us plebians, he calls for someone to read to him from the royal records, cause they’re so fucking boring they’ll have to put him to sleep. So one of his servants is doing so, and he stumbles upon the time when Mordechai saved his life. He realizes that Mordechai never actually got an award for all that snazzy shit, so calls in his boy Ham*n. “Hey. Haman. My dude my bro my man. If there was someone I really liked, who did a huge huge favor for me, like, yaknow, really helped me out, how should I reward him?” Haman, the stuck up brat that he is, of course things Ahashverous is talking about him, and so says “well…. i would dress him in the king’s finest robes and put him on the king’s finest horse and have someone parade him around the streets of Shushan yelling “THIS IS A MAN THE KING WISHES TO HONOR LOOK HOW GLORIOUS HE IS” and Ahashverous is all “dude you’re brilliant. Okay tomorrow afternoon, get that Mordechai dude and have this done to him. You’ll be leading the horse and yelling.” Haman realizes he fucked up. Haman reaaaaaaaaaaaaally hates Mordechai now. He hates him so much in fact, that he builds a set of gallows specifically for murdering Mordechai alone. 

Esther, meanwhile, is trying to build up courage to go see the King and explain the whole “I’m Jewish please don’t kill my people” issue. First, she fasts for three days to be ready, and asks all the Jews of Shushan to fast with her. Once those three days are up, she figures she can’t just waltz right in to his quarters and say “don’t kill me”, so instead she dresses up all fancy, and waltzes into his quarters with some fancy (skimpy) clothing on and an invitation to a party. The king is thrilled to be invited to a party, and manages to overcome his instinct for murdering his wives to accept the invitation. At the party, they’re chilling, they’re laughing, they’re having an all around wonderful time. when Esther goes to make an announcement. “Hem hem hem” she coughs. “I brought you here today for something very important.” Everyone is paying attention. “I’m having another party tomorrow night and you’re all invited!!!! And so is that Haman dude. Make sure he’s there. Really.” Well of course our frat boy king is delighted and agrees that he and Haman will absolutely 100% be there. 

Cut to the next night, where they’re at the party and Esther goes to make an announcement. “hem hem hem.” she says. The king gets ready for another party announcement. He loves parties “Someone” says Esther. “Someone, in this very room, is trying…. TO KILL ME!” Shock! Terror! Awe! Emotions! The party guests are very confused, until Esther gives the full explanation. “I’m a Jew… Haman’s a dick… etc.” So of course the King is so distraught, because he can’t have his lovely wife that he loves so very much (that he thinks looks hella hot) be murdered! But he’s also in a bind. Cause here’s the thing about kingly orders, like the one about killing the Jews. They can’t be undone or retracted. Looks like the Jews are still screwed. That is, until Mordechai gets this great idea. More murder. “Look.” he says. “People have been given legal permission to kill us. I propose you simply do the same. Write out a little kingly decree, saying that the Jews have the legal right to kill anyone who attacks them, and can fight for their lives. Then, it’ll just be a battle of the strongest and of course the Jews will escape just fine. We’re good at surviving.” The king, who’s really just a pawn at this point, is all “well that’s a MARVELOUS idea! Let me write up this order immediately, I’ll get right to it!” This second kingly order gets written, the decree goes out, and the 14th of Adar rolls around.

There’s mass murder. Everyone is fighting or killing or dying. Mostly goyim are dying though. The Jews successfully manage to protect themselves, keeping their culture alive, turning what was supposed to be a day of mourning into a day of wildly happy celebration, the Purim festival we know now. They also found and seized Haman, hanging him upon the gallows he built for Mordechai. And to this day, we eat hamentaschen to mock this fool’s hat/ears/pockets. Whatever we’re mocking, Haman was a dick who looked ridiculous. And we’re still here bitch, so ha. You lost.