Crash Course

Eddie sits in the chair at the table in his small kitchen, his posture slumped and his brain reeling. There’s so many thoughts inside that it’s almost too much. They mix with the memories and clog the connections in his brain until it’s throbbing inside.

The heated words and the yelling. All the violent tossing and painful quips. Eddie had been too caught up inside his own anger to step down. He’d been far too gone to back down despite him knowing he’d gone too far. The anxiety he’s kept inside can only be held at a distance for so long until it turns to rage.

But what had started as a simple argument had blossomed into a full-blown fight. And as Eddie looks around now at the aftermath, he’s forced to realize just how badly he’d overreacted. His apartment is trashed. The neighbors will surely be calling in a complaint. He’s going to have to fix the holes in the walls and the breaks in the ceiling. He’s going to have to clean up the debris scattered everywhere and come up with a believable excuse to tell his landlord as to how all of this could have happened. And he’s going to have to shell out the money for the worser repairs.

He sits in silence, his breathing slow and his thoughts stunted, and wallows in the aftermath. He’s too exhausted now to stay angry. He’s also too tired to keep that hate he’d fixated on so well before.

Maybe it’s because it’s too quiet now. That the events that transpired earlier had been too loud and too explosive. And the hours between the fight and where Eddie sits now only serves to make the hollowness inside feel strange. It might just be that. But days pass, and that strange hollowness inside remains the same.

It could also be that he’s spent too many months with the symbiote inside his head, that he isn’t used to all the silence. He’s spent too many days falling asleep to the feeling of the symbiote swimming inside, and too many days of waking up to a familiar fidgeting. The symbiote was never quite still inside.

But now, in the wake of their arguing and their fallout, Eddie just feels empty. Everything is too still, too silent. And the longer time stretches on, something bitter begins to set in his mind.

It turns sour and drips like acid down his throat. It leaks through muscle and bone and settles somewhere inside his chest. There’s pain there now, in the space where the symbiote used to take up residency inside him. The days pass, and Eddie tries to forget about it and move on. It’s better off this way. They were too toxic to remain in the same space.

But the pain only gets worse. It deepens the longer Eddie wallows in the silence. It spreads to his limbs until they’re too heavy to lift. He finds himself sitting and staring into nothingness more often than not, his head empty and his chest aching with an emotion he doesn’t want to acknowledge.

He finds his thoughts circling back to the symbiote within a week of its absence, against his will. He starts to wonder how it could be doing out there on its own. If it’s managed to find a host able to contain it, and how they’re fairing together if it has. If it’s found someone that knows how to handle its behavior better than he had, and if that same someone now treats it with more respect.

But those thoughts often lead him down a dark road. One to where Eddie feels too inept and never good enough for anything that comes his way. That he’s too good at being selfish and never bothering to consider how others might feel against his greed.

Do you even know how lucky you are that I chose you?

He hadn’t wanted to read into it then. He doesn’t want to now, either. But he can’t help but fill in the lines between their past conversations with some of his own thoughts when the worst of his emotions start to settle in his chest.

He was lucky. He really was. Through all of his faults and everything that people in his life had thrown him away so easily for, the symbiote had stayed. It had tried to help. It had tried to follow the rules to keep Eddie complacent and remain with him where others had shied away, even though Eddie had left it starving most days and forbid it from doing little aside from sitting inside his skin and keeping quiet.

“If you want to live in my body, you have to abide by my rules.”

Treating it no better than a mere thing that he had to deal with versus a living being with its own thoughts and needs. Hell, Eddie treated bums on the street better than he ever treated the symbiote.

Unfortunately, it takes this long for him to realize just how exhausted he’d made the symbiote for having to deal with his constant controlling and abusive behavior.

I am here because, unfortunately, I don’t have many options.

But even then, even though the voice inside his head had sounded tight and strained, Eddie had felt something off. Something shaking inside that radiated pain and anger. Something that Eddie closed his mind to just so he didn’t have to deal with it.

Eddie is too good at deflecting when he’s trying to keep himself at peace. He hadn’t wanted to recognize how his actions had affected the symbiote. How it could have felt pain from Eddie constantly trying to push it away instead of embracing it.

But now, he can’t help but wonder. Is it happy now, and thriving, with someone else? Is someone else smiling because of it? Is the symbiote protecting that same someone in all the ways it had once protected Eddie?

As the days pass there’s too many thoughts and emotions that starts to feel too negative in his headspace. It makes him feel worse for wear and strangely bitter and jealous inside his own body. It makes him upset to even think about it.

And then, within time, regret starts to sink in. It’s heavy and deep, sitting inside his chest like a thousand thorns weeding through his organs. He falls asleep to silence with a heavy heart and the sinking feeling of loneliness, and wakes up feeling more exhausted than he ever has.

Eventually, he decides enough is enough. He can’t even focus on his own work anymore with the turmoil inside. He’s got to get rid of this pain that’s only deepening inside. He’s got to find a cure for the depression and grief settling in his lungs. He makes the dumb decision to return to his old habits: alcohol.

But no matter how much beer he buys it’s never enough to completely block everything out. He’s still alone inside the same apartment the symbiote had left him in, still alone and still hurting. Nothing changes aside from his rising alcohol content. In fact, the booze only seems to heighten his emotions. It only brings them out more clearly until he’s drunk enough to start sobbing over how shitty of a human being he is. How ruined and how unworthy he is, how all he does is harm everyone around him. He’s too broken for anything in this world, or outside of, to want to stay with him. He’s too damaged for that.

So, he makes an even dumber decision.

It’s almost two in the morning and he’s already been drinking. His chest has been painfully tight all day, his mind filled with too many self-deprecating thoughts to let him do anything but wallow in his own self-pity. Something would be better than nothing. Anything to get rid of this gnawing feeling inside that won’t go away.

Eddie decides to go out to spend some time at whichever local bar is closest. He doesn’t even bother with showering. No real reason to when he’s done nothing all day but sit and stare at the wall, anyway.

But all the bars are closed for the night, and Eddie quickly finds his options narrowing down. He hadn’t bothered to check the time before he left, already more than tipsy from the beer he’d tried to self-medicate with. After Eddie realizes why everything is closed, he switches his focus.

There are multiple places in town that would still be open now. There are even places that are open 24/7 in the area. But those are clubs meant for party goers and the rowdy youngsters to have fun. And Eddie’s never been much of a fan of the loud and the vibrant atmosphere. He’s more of a silent drinker, only going out when he needs the attention to take his own away from other things.

But going to a club has become his only choice right now because of how early it is. For the promise of booze, and for the chance of a person or two to talk with. For someone to be able to take away these awful thoughts burning him alive from the inside so he can enjoy the silence inside instead of feeling hateful for it.

It doesn’t have to be a woman, and he’s not looking for sex. He just doesn’t have anyone else to talk to and no way to clear his head. The only other person he could call or invite would be Anne, but that’s out of the question. She has a new life now with Dan, and after everything he’s put them through and how nice they’ve been to him he doesn’t want to come across as trying to seem too needy. He doesn’t want to make their relationship strained or have to be blamed for any ill feelings between them.

But he’s hurting inside, and it’s become almost too much to handle. He just wants to be able to live in the moment and be taken from the past. He doesn’t want to have to keep thinking about how hollow he feels inside, or how inadequate he is. Any person will do. He just wants simple, stupid, and mundane conversation. If he hooks up with a girl who decides she wants sex after, he’ll gladly give in. But it’s not the sole reason he goes.

Once he finds a club his hand is stamped with a simple black ‘X’ on the back. But it’s after the man at the entrance eyes him up and down, ultimately deciding after a tense moment or two that he isn’t a threat despite the fact that he’s clearly already been drinking.

“I don’t care if you’re bar hopping or here looking for something specific. Don’t start shit here, or I’ll personally throw your ass out. You got that?”

Eddie just nods, a lopsided grin on his face that’s filled with false confidence. “Of course, buddy.”

The term makes Eddie wince, the feeling it evokes too connected to some of his memories. But the term slips out anyway. And the man in front of him winces even harder than he does at it, rolling his eyes before looking beyond him at the people behind.

“Yeah, don’t call me buddy,” he says, and ushers him inside. “Let’s not hold up the line.”

There’s some damage to his ego already as he steps inside, mostly because he feels more than a little awkward after the interaction. He’s long since lost his luster for appearing confident. Even after he makes his way past the crowds and sinks down onto a stool at one of the two bars inside the large room, even after he orders a quick shot of whiskey to calm his nerves and lets his eyes scan his surroundings, he’s still feeling awkward.

The music is loud here and the lights are too colorful and too bright. People are everywhere and clustered together, most of them grinding against each other with drinks in their hands and their hands up in the air. There’s quite a bit of excited yelling and a lot of obnoxious laughter bouncing off the walls. Eddie isn’t even there for five minutes before he starts to feel a headache coming on. Yeah, the party life is definitely not for him.

When his glass of whiskey is placed in front of him the woman tending the bar tries to hand him back his card. He pushes his hand against hers, asking her to hold onto it. He’s going to be there a while.

He might even use the moment to try to disclose some of his troubles to her in hopes of a little conversation. Her eyes look soft, and her expression looks even softer. Her voice is low and soothing, her dark hair pulled up and pinned with curls spilling around her face. Her demeanor is light and comforting, something that’s easy for Eddie to lean in to. It calls to Eddie in ways that make him yearn for her attention. But she’s clearly busy, and seems disinterested in anything personal.

She ends up passing him a short, but fake smile instead, cutting him off mid sentence. “Okay hun, I’ll start a tab for ya’.”

She leaves him to himself with his card in her hand, and Eddie is left once again to his dark and bitter thoughts. The minutes pass by, turning the hour on the clock and continuing course. And he’s still sitting there by himself.

He orders two more drinks while he waits for someone, anyone, to decide to come and keep him company. He sticks to beer this time so he doesn’t get ahead of himself.

People come and go at the bar. Most of them are couples out for a good time or people just ordering more drinks for those still in the crowd. No one ends up sitting on either stool beside Eddie, not even as the second hour approaches. Eddie waits, slow sipping his beer, and just ends up feeling more alone in this place full of people than he had ever felt by himself in his apartment. Something starts to feel detached and broken inside.

It’s two more beers later that he decides he should just give up and go home. The booze hasn’t helped at all aside from dim the music blaring in his ears and muffle the lights strobing in the distance. It’s done nothing to dull the ache in his heart.

But just as he’s trying to flag down the bartender someone’s booming voice starts to rise above the rest. It comes closer, until it’s almost directly behind him. A hand slaps over his back, and someone sits rather heavily in the seat to the right of him. The sudden touch makes Eddie jolt, but the other doesn’t seem to notice his alarm.

“Man,” the other sighs out, half stretched over the stool and facing the crowd. “Women born with attitude these days or what? I just can’t catch a break today.”

Eddie cradles his beer, unsure of what he’s supposed to do with that information. He doesn’t understand if he’s supposed to comment or not, if the guy is trying to direct his speech toward him or someone else. Eddie isn’t looking his way, so he’s not sure. It’s not until the guy pokes at his shoulder that Eddie looks up.

The guy is smiling, his demeanor relaxed. “I take it you got the same result?”

Eddie is still too deep in his feelings and his own spiraling thoughts to understand at first. And maybe it shows somewhere in his expression. Maybe his pain and his vulnerability is too easily carried on his sleeve, because when he turns his head and looks up the man's expression seems to change.

Maybe they talk, and maybe the man orders them both a few drinks in solidarity. He might offer to pay for them, too. Eddie might start to feel more comfortable talking, and he might get a little too chatty. The longer they talk, the longer his broken expression might be making the stranger feel some type of way.

The man might be offering him his support and trying to console him, but Eddie becomes too plastered to even understand any of the gestures. The man might also be offering company for the night, but it’s done in a strange way, with words that sound too awkward and a voice that doesn’t sound as enthusiastic as it should.

It takes longer than he’d ever be willing to admit to realize that he’s just been hit on. Something he’s never even bothered to entertain.

“Ah…” Everything clicks in his head, but the normal internal reactions aren’t there. There’s no alarm bells and no disgust. There’s nothing there to make him get angry that this is what his night has come to and nothing solid to get him to get up and storm off. He gives a bland, but slurred answer as his only response. “Not really into that, sorry.”

There might be more there that Eddie’s intoxicated brain just misses. Some words strewn together that sound like ‘me either’ or something similar. It doesn’t make sense, especially after the fact that the guy had just essentially asked him out. For what Eddie can only assume means sex.

Eddie tosses the confusion aside. He drops the subject. But he completely misses the way the stranger is smiling at him now. He doesn’t see the way he carries himself or the emotions behind his tight expression. He doesn’t hear how much the stranger is trying to assure him he’s lying.

He might offer more drinks, and Eddie might decline based on how his mind is starting to swim. But he might also offer one last shot, telling Eddie it’s a parting gift that will help him forget his troubles for the night. And Eddie, still drowning inside and unable to escape his inner demons in lieu of possibly forgetting them, accepts the offer. It’s just one shot, after all. And he’ll close his tab and leave after.

But something isn’t right. The shot tastes the same as it should, but it makes Eddie’s body feel too heavy and too fuzzy. It only takes a few minutes to sink inside and spread, and before Eddie realizes it his mind cuts off. Everything goes black.

Meanwhile, the symbiote has it just as hard. It’s made to suffer more or less the same, with the added bonus of constantly having to fear death. And Eddie has no idea. He isn’t aware of how it’s struggled without him. He doesn’t even know that it’s made its own way into a local club at one point or another as it tries to survive, jumping from person to person because none of them seem to be a decent enough match. Just the average man, each one too weak to hold the symbiote’s body and each one without enough adaptable connections inside for it to tether itself to.

Where Eddie’s body had unknowingly made space for the symbiote the others just crush it. It gets compacted inside all of these strange bodies, strangled and suffocated until it can no longer bear to struggle. It has no choice but to leave each host empty inside and barren on the ground as it clamors for a new body.

It had been vastly different with Eddie. With Eddie, his chemistry broke easily and pulled itself apart for the symbiote. It let it weave itself inside with cells of its own. Others just crumble the moment it tries. These other hosts disintegrate inside faster, too. Their organs fold too quickly under the added pressure. Not even making the host eat normal food can keep them going for much longer.

Where Eddie’s body had acclimated quickly to the symbiote, the others just fail short. It becomes blindingly obvious that the task of simply finding a new host is going to be far more than just that.

Sitting inside Eddie had always felt warm. Almost too warm. The bodies it chooses now as potential hosts are never enough, the personalities always so ill-fitted and their insides too cold against the symbiote’s skin. Cold and gritty and unwelcome.

It isn’t long before it starts to miss sitting inside Eddie, if only to be able to simply exist in peace. Even if it has to be confined to Eddie’s rules and Eddie’s way of life. The symbiote starts to miss even the spiteful way Eddie used to regard it when he was particularly stressed.

Eddie’s words were one thing. What had actually been inside was another. The symbiote knew better than to take Eddie’s frustrations to heart. But too much negativity and too many emotions had gotten in the way. Now, the symbiote just misses it. It misses him.

But by the time it realizes it’s craving Eddie’s company it’s already too late to entertain the idea of returning. Too much has already been said, with too much hate and too much pain between them.

Eddie had been too ready to get rid of the symbiote. He’d said as much. And unfortunately…there had been some truth to that statement. The symbiote had felt the tremor of it inside.

His life was made too difficult just by its presence. It brought about too much anxiety and too many struggles. Eddie’s mind was too weak to conform and give in to completely become one.

Now, the symbiote is left sulking in the deepest parts of town in the aftermath, going through one failed host after another, longing to return to Eddie but feeling too much guilt for the trouble it’s caused him. It’s a trauma that comes with too many thoughts, and every one of them leaves a bitter and acidic taste on the back of the symbiote’s tongue.

It’s easier to just stay away. It’s easier to let Eddie be and let him live a normal life, something his human mind will be easier to adjust to. Even if it hurts the symbiote to have to stay away. Even if it aches to feel it, the desire to see him so carnal and alive that the symbiote has to force itself to stay stationary when all it wants to do is take control and run.

The same grief that had festered in Eddie starts to roil inside the symbiote. It starts to stick to the walls inside each cell and blossom inside it. If it’s true, when the symbiote had told Eddie he’d been lucky to have been chosen, the symbiote starts to realize that it should have been more thankful too.

Eddie’s mind may have been buckling under the pressure and been unwilling to adapt, but his body had welcomed it with open arms. It had become a wayward place where the symbiote could call home, where others just feel too foreign and too difficult. The mind could be swayed, it could be better enticed into accepting many things. But the body is out of its control.

The symbiote goes through many hosts. Twenty come and go. Then thirty. It’s up to about fifty in only a week’s time. By the time it spots a peculiar looking man in the slums it’s up to seventy.

It’s after a few days of intense lament and days of yearning, where the symbiote begins to throw hosts away faster than it had in the beginning out of sheer frustration. One by one they fall, all incompatible.

It’s approaching winter and there’s a deep chill outside, and despite it being almost six in the morning it’s still dark out. The lamp lights outside aren’t bright enough to illuminate properly, but it doesn’t matter. The symbiote has better sight than any ordinary human. It can see the different wavelengths in colors and vibrancy even without the sun. It doesn’t need the dim lights of the street lamps to see that this man is a better fit than any he’s come across so far. Well, since Eddie.

The man walking toward the symbiote and its current host looks promising enough. More built than Eddie and without the wet and messy look that Eddie had always carried. The air around him looks different too, a light orangish hue emanating from him as he takes long strides along the crosswalk. Similar to the light Eddie had given off. It’s very promising. A fine specimen to try on.

The host it’s currently using is already entering acute organ failure. Just a woman in her late thirties that it had entered out of desperation not even an hour ago. She’s frailer inside than she looks. This man will definitely do, for the time being. Hopefully, it will even work out in the long run.

The two pass in the crosswalk, and the symbiote reaches out with its host’s hand to grab onto his wrist. Initially, nothing goes wrong with the transfer. It slinks forward over skin and veins, leaving the woman behind to mend her own wounds before sinking into the man with relative ease.

The man turns quick after the brief interaction, prompting the woman to as well. Looking through its new host’s eyes, the symbiote gets to see the damage it’s caused. The exhaustion from it is written all over her face.

“You good?” The man is calm inside, and cordial on the outside. A difference in the way Eddie had always been so frantic.

The woman nods, tripping over her own actions and words. “S-sorry. I uhm, thought you were someone else?”

The walking sign at both ends of the crosswalk changes from white to red, and they both accept the misunderstanding and move on. Nothing bad happens right away, which is a good sign. The man’s internal organs don’t immediately start to quiver.

On the contrary, his heart continues to beat wildly as if nothing has happened. The sound of it is constant and deep, just like Eddie’s. It’s accepting even under the added weight. Another good sign.

There’s confusion there inside the man’s mind though, a moment where he knows something’s clearly just happened that maybe shouldn’t have. But he’s quick to shrug it off and shake the tension from his shoulders. It doesn’t take long before he’s forgotten it altogether.

But everything is not as it seems. And it doesn’t take long for the symbiote to realize that there’s something different inside this host. Something terribly off. The symbiote isn’t able to understand it at first, too blinded by the initial green light of their compatibility and the chance for a new home that feels so familiar to the one it’s had before.

It’s not until it reaches inside the deepest parts of its new host, coiling itself up along his spine enough to be able to touch his mind with a single tendril. There, it’s able to see the truth. There’s too much inside that’s rotting and crumbling, too much sweltering under sadistic tendencies and devious thoughts. There’s too much blatant toxicity inside, so much of it that the symbiote quickly finds itself retreating.

The thoughts running through this man’s mind make the symbiote’s skin itch. His ominous temperament makes it want to run away.

The symbiote was wrong. They’re definitely not compatible. If the symbiote stays, it knows it will only be forced to change for the worse against its will. It will become this man’s weapon, and nothing like a companion.

Eddie had been a lot of things. Frustrating to deal with, spiteful, easy to irritate and easy to break down, hard to talk to and even harder to understand, to name a few. But Eddie had never once forced himself on the symbiote when it actually mattered. He always caved in the end. He never forced the symbiote to change permanently, just tried to alter the course of its actions to more manageable ones that he could tolerate.

This man though, the symbiote knows its life will be the exact opposite if it stays. It will become a slave to its host, confined to his every whim and unable to decline if they fully connect. There’s such an awful and burning aura inside.

It needs to leave now, before the man ever even realizes it’s inside.

The symbiote searches those who pass by. But as the next hour comes and goes there is too few of them to pick through. And they’re so far in between. Eventually, the symbiote decides it doesn’t have the time to be picky at all. The next person to pass will have to be good enough as a vessel from one host to the next. Even if it’s a child.

It’s still dark out and it will be more than easy to connect with someone else. Not as easy to see here where they’re walking. Less street lamps.

A curious thing stirs inside. The man it’s connected to suddenly has lucid thoughts circling inside. Something that’s strange and something that’s rife with emotion. The symbiote would take a peek if it were anyone else. It certainly would jump at the chance if it were Eddie and he’d been less sheltered and more willing to let it poke around.

But these thoughts already feel different. They feel dark and too rough around the edges. Too sharp in all the ways they should be blunt. The symbiote tries to steer clear of the way they tremble and beg for its attention. The way they try to reach out just to sully its shine.

Relief floods the symbiote’s senses when it starts to feel the vibrations of someone making their way to them. It sits inside, holding itself in silence and biding its time. Still trying to hold itself away from those dark and foreboding thoughts.

It’s just about to leave when something familiar touches its senses. It’s barely there, too drowned out by all the other poison currently swirling inside its host’s mind. But it makes the symbiote halt nonetheless. It still makes it falter. Because there’s something strange inside those quivering thoughts. Something familiar in the distance between the past and present.

The symbiote stops itself from moving and switches to focusing instead. It delves inside, closer to those thoughts instead of pulling away. The person it had been so set on to become its next host passes by them, and the symbiote barely notices. It’s too stunned and too confused by what’s inside to bother with anything else.  

Because there’s flashes of images and flashes of feelings. Sensations rise to the surface from past experiences. All of it with too much nostalgia to feel coincidental. And it leaves the symbiote completely lost for words.

There’s a flash of black and a passing glance of something pale. Blue eyes that seem to shine under strobing lights. Tense fingers that grip the base of a whiskey glass filled with a deep amber fluid. Familiar lips that part as the glass is tipped back to let all of the liquid inside with a single gulp. A familiar pattern of facial scruff.

But there’s missing pieces in what starts to feel like memories, blackened spots that flit back and forth that the symbiote can’t keep up with. Like scratches on a record they skip, too much time in between and not enough information to sew them together without its host knowing. The symbiote tries hard to focus, its cells starting to strain under the tension.

Something is awfully familiar here. And in the worst way possible. It decides to reach out again, to lift itself and touch upon its host’s mind once more in hopes of gaining more access.

It doesn’t make anything better, but it definitely adds some clarity. Fragments are pulled forward, of an image of the bottom half of a familiar face and an awkward smile. But the atmosphere here feels anything but uplifting. There’s something demented unfurling in the memories of its host.

There’s a skip, and a new memory surfaces in place of the previous. It comes with the vision of clear fluid being poured into a drink, and another vision of that same glass being tipped back by the same familiar face. It goes alongside the quick memory of him starting to sink in his seat and over the counter of what looks like a bar ledge. He opens his mouth as he’s slumping, but nothing comes out. The motion of his hands become less coordinated.

The symbiote watches him struggle, doing nothing. Just as its host does.  

The scenery switches too fast and the symbiote fumbles to bring it back. It almost pulls too hard just to retrieve it, which makes its host stop his stride. He’s clearly felt the touch that time. The symbiote waits for the moment to pass, for its host to stop scratching the back of his head with confusion swimming inside. It tries to be more gentle the next time it reaches out.

It’s greeted with a more dimly lit scene. And this time, it feels more closely woven and more put together. More intimate in the way the scene plays out. They’re somewhere different this time. And the light is much warmer.

A thumb caressing the side of those familiar lips. That same thumb rubbing over the bottom before dipping in past the crease and prying between teeth. It presses down against the tongue inside. And the man does nothing. If the symbiote concentrates hard enough, it can almost feel the wetness inside. And the overbearing warmth.

But the time skips again, and suddenly that familiar man is back in that place with the bar. He’s stumbling over his own feet trying to get out of his chair. The memories flicker, scratching against the inside of the host’s mind in fragments that are so crudely put together. It switches to a different time in that same space with all those vibrant lights, where the symbiote is able to see more clearly through the host.

It feels the man fall against its host as he tries to stand on shaky legs. It watches in clips as a card is exchanged on the table. The cracking scenery warps as its host takes the man by the shoulders and helps him outside.

Then black falls over its vision, and something that sounds like a struggle and heavy breathing takes up the residency in the space between. They’re suddenly inside somewhere when the vision returns, where the man is still there and still struggling to stay upright. The symbiote quickly recognizes that same warm light from earlier. When a thumb had been against those lips.

Everything about this feels wrong. Too wrong and too strangely intimate and completely out of place with what’s happening. The symbiote doesn’t like how it makes it feel. Confined and intoxicated at the same time.

The symbiote watches its host push his hand forward. It watches the man fall back and crumble against stained beige sheets. And suddenly his face is fully there and fully recognizable. Suddenly, that familiar man is much more than just familiar.

Eddie.