Hunger
The dark eye filled ocean once again surrounded Basil. He looked up once again at the massive jaw-mouthed monster. As usual, no fear.
Only this time, there was a new feeling besides annoyance. It was odd. It was sickening. It made Basil's stomach churn and gurgle and groan. Basil couldn't help it. He felt himself grow larger, bigger, until he was towering over the monster he once feared when he was younger.
He reached down, his claws sinking into the beast and pulling it out of the black waters. Bringing the hand over his head, he slowly lowered it into his mouth, his tongue slithering over it and lathering it in saliva, until-
"HUNGRY."
Basil jumped awake and nearly screamed.
Panting, he feels his heart beating faster than he'd like. He takes a deep breath and breathes out.
He looked over at his kitchen.
Right.
Yesterday, he had come home after…that, and had pigged out a couple of his meals.
Great job, Basil. You're unemployed and down 3 days worth of food.
He groans and gets up, walking over to his bathroom to brush his teeth. Now that he has no job, guess there's more time for dental hygiene.
He applies the toothpaste and starts to brush, looking in the mirror.
He blinks.
The room instantly goes dark, illuminated by a dim blue light with a black, one eyed creature standing behind him in his reflection.
"FOOD."
Basil nearly spits out his toothpaste as the voice goes off in his head. The sirens and danger signs are going off in his head, he can feel himself sweating and his anxiety flooding his system, but somehow he doesn't move.
He just blinks again.
The room is back to normal. But Basil hasn't stopped sweating, the sickening feeling in his stomach hasn't stopped.
He gives a nervous small laugh to himself and continues to brush. He's really losing it now.
As he throws water into his mouth, gurgles and spits, he feels the strange strong urge to eat. Not like his typical 'breakfast hunger', something larger. It was odd, but Basil didn't fight it. Opening his freezer, he takes out the bag of chicken nuggets he had been saving for…something. He didn't remember, but it didn't matter anyways.
Pouring them all out haphazardly onto a plate, he places them into an oven and sets the timer. He taps his fingers impatiently as he waits, then immediately starts to dig through his cupboard for a snack to eat while he waited.
Somewhere in the back of Basil's mind, he knew this wasn't natural. That it wasn't good or healthy for him to do this. That he may be sick. That he should see a doctor.
But in the front of his mind, he could only attempt to fulfil his hunger.
Basil grabs a bag of chips and opens it with force in one pull. He throws multiple of them into his mouth and starts to crunch down on them.
The oven timer goes off and Basil quickly opens it, burning his hands and wincing in pain as he shakes them to cool them off.
He throws two more chips into his mouth as he goes over to grab his oven mittens. As he does, the phone goes off. He places it under his head and right shoulder as he puts his mitts on.
"Hmrllr?" Basil says, mouth crunching down on the chips.
A burst of laughter comes out from the other end. Kim.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I-HAHAHAHAH! Okay okay, I'm cool- pft HAHAHAAA!"
Basil swallows down the chips. "Haha, very funny. Why'd you call?"
"Just wanted to check in on you, did not expect to hear you answer the phone when your mouth was full." Kim answers. Basil can hear her footsteps in the background. She's walking down the usual path to work.
"Uh…okay." Basil says awkwardly, placing the plate onto his kitchen counter. "Well, I guess today I ought to look for a job. Get a couple of help wanted poster numbers and photos."
Photos. Basil thinks back to what happened yesterday.
…he shakes his head trying to forget, the evidence can wait.
"Then uh, I'll do some applying online for interviews, submit resume, normal stuff."
He pops a nugget into his mouth. "Thrt rall srnd nrmul?"
Kim bursts into laughter once more.
"PFT- HAHAHAHAHAHAAAA! Thrt Rall Srnd Nrmul- I can't, I- ahem. Sorry, sorry." She controls herself and breathes out, stopping the urge to continue.
Basil gulps down the nugget. "Well that's the plan anyways. Nothing else. You've got work the whole day in the mail room, right? Guess we're both pretty busy-"
"Wanna go out for dinner today?" Kim suddenly asks.
There's a long awkward pause.
Basil speaks up.
"...what?"
"I know you heard me the first time." Kim says in complete confidence. "Dinner. Tonight."
Basil frowns. "I don't- I don't understand. What, you gotta impress your friends with a boyfriend or something again?"
Basil shudders as he thinks about the time Kim had her elbow wrapped around him for a majority of thirty minutes at a club party as she walked around and chatted.
"No, it's-" Kim sighs as though she's frustrated. "It's just the two of us, like at a restaurant. Eating. Talking. A-Alone."
There's a slight moment of Kim stuttering and trying to form a full sentence. "Like…like a uh, you know, d-date."
Basil couldn't help but laugh as he heard that.
"Kim, that's something you do with someone you're actually dating."
Kim groans.
"Look, I'll just pick you up at seven tonight, okay?"
"...okay?" As Basil said that, the line hung up. That was odd.
"APPOINTMENT AT SEVEN, REMEMBER."
Basil nearly jumped out of his seat and stumbled backwards into the floor. Luckily, he just flinched.
"...s-sure, creepy voice in my head." He replies, before continuing gobbling up the plate of nuggets in front of him. Funny, he was able to control himself earlier, but now he was just biting two or three of them at a time. That was odd.
…oh well. Nothing he could do now except eat.
Basil took a notebook with him as he took down numbers from bulletin boards. He had planned to take photos of the whole board originally, but he felt disgusted, scared even, bringing his phone with him. So he had left it at home.
He looked across the board. Dishwasher at a diner, answering phones at a bank call centre, waiter at a restaurant, barista at a café, homeless shelter staff, someone needed a babysitter, burger flipper at a fast food place, burgers were nice, maybe he could get some hotdogs as well, there were some stands nearby, and maybe afterwards ice cream, he really liked the cream tarts they sold around the corner.
Basil snapped out of it and wiped the drool from his face before anyone saw him. A grown man was dripping saliva looking at a bulletin board. He had to get it together. He was losing it.
"EAT."
Nono, Basil wasn't going to fulfill that request. He was going crazy, and nobody needed to know, but that didn't mean he had give in everytime.
"EAT."
Basil's stomach growled. But he shook his head. Money was tight. He couldn't afford anything unnecessary.
"EAT."
Basil didn't want to listen. He didn't want to obey. Even as he felt his stomach growl and churn and yearn. Even as his eyes drifted at pictures of tasty food on the board.
He was slipping. He wasn't going to let himself fall. His wallet depended on it. His mental state depended on it.
Not a chance.
"That'll be 4.50." The stand owner said and Basil reluctantly passed the amount, taking the hotdog. He wanted to cry like a baby in the middle of the street, but he held back the urge. He just grabbed a mustard bottle and squirted it over his bun and sausage.
Basil tried to control his hunger, but just like before, he couldn't. In less than a minute, he found himself gobbling up the hotdog and gulping it down, his hands empty and with the concerned look of passersby. He gave a small nervous smile before walking away.
His stomach growled. That literally didn't make any sense.
"FOOD."
"I just HAD food!" Basil hissed to himself. "Now shut up!"
"EAT."
Basil did his best to ignore the voices, even as they grew louder and louder, and his stomach growled louder and louder.
Not loud enough to stop him from seeing movement down a dark alley which made him jump. He squinted.
A man was holding a woman up by the arm, knife in his other hand and attempting to wrestle her purse away.
Basil didn't think. He was so used to jumping to what his instinct told him. He ran up and pushed the mugger away.
The woman hits the floor momentarily, before grabbing her purse and dashing out of there with a quick "Thank you". Basil would've said no problem, if he hadn't realised the situation he was now in.
"Tch. Figures. Look at you, you're practically a goody two-shoes asking for trouble. Alright, let's not make this difficult. Wallet, watch, whatever." The mugger says, pulling out his knife.
"Please, I don't-"
"I'm giving you to the count of three." The mugger says aggressively, stepping closer.
Basil steps back, he can feel the sweat dripping down his head and down his back. He feels sick, like he's about to fall. He leans over slightly and wobbles. His stomach churns and growls once more.
A slimy wet sensation starts to slide around Basil's body. He didn't know he was sweating that bad. He looks over at his arms and his eyes wide in horror.
A black goop, mixed in what appears to be white veins envelops his entire right arm. He looks over, his left is almost identical. He looks down, the black goop has also appeared on his chest and his legs. Basil nearly screams as he grows taller, larger, the goop starting to surround his entire being.
He wanted to shout, he wanted to do something, anything. But he didn't. He couldn't.
He was hungry.
As the slime covered his eyes, Basil looked through what appeared to a lightly tinted glass. Only that wasn't the only difference. The body he was feeling wasn't his own. He didn't have claws. He wasn't this tall. He wasn't this buff.
And his mouth was never so big before.
The robber instantly recoils, dropping the knife and making a break for the way out, but "Basil" grabs him, his claws sinking into his legs as the man screams for help in pain.
He dangled the criminal in front of him. He felt his mouth grow larger, and larger, his massive jaws yearning to clamp down, his massive tongue started to slither over the mugger until…
…a resounding snap is heard as Basil bites off the head, chews and swallows.
He didn't feel hungry anymore.
There was a much worse feeling.
The goop slowly started to return to wherever it had come from inside his body. As soon as he was back on his own two feet, he gagged, attempting to throw up as he looked at the headless corpse, remembering what he had just eaten.
"MORE HEADS. WE SHOULD LOOK FOR MORE HEADS TO EAT."
"Hrkk-! No, no more heads, please, oh god I'm gonna be sick, I-"
Basil tries his best, but to no avail. No spit, or vomit. Just a gross bloody taste in his mouth.
He wipes the cold sweat off his head. He tries to steady himself, but all he can do is stagger out of the alley. People look at him oddly as he constantly lurches and groans.
He didn't want to process what the heck was that. He eventually had to, but he wished he could forget it.
"HEADS AROUND US. YUMMY, TASTY, HEADS AND BRAINS."
"NO!" Basil shouts, and this time he properly realises his public blunder and starts to run.
What the hell was happening?
He dashed and sprinted despite his pitiful stamina until he found a public restroom. Quickly entering, he felt it slowly reaching his throat as he entered the stall. He leaned over and what seemed to be a smelly, bloody, fleshy mess was puked out into the toilet.
Basil shudders in disgust. He looks away after flushing, not wanting to think about it. That unfortunately was not going to happen as a swishing wet sound was heard extending from his back.
He was forced down onto the closed toilet seat, and a dark slimy tentacle reached out and locked the door. Basil felt his fear rise again. He couldn't move, almost paralysed.
The wet moving sounds were slower this time. A head attached to a pile of moving black tendrils extended outwards from his back and into his eye range.
The massive, gross, yellow and rotten jaws were unlike anything Basil had ever seen before.
The massive white eye with a singular black pupil was not. Basil remembered that horrifying plague.
His demon of denial.
Basil gulped.
"...what the hell are you?" was the only thing he could say, and even then it was a whisper.
"My real name would probably sound like incomprehensible garbage, but where I am from…they call me Venom."
Basil struggles to breath and speak.
"You…you ate…you ate…that guy's…h-head…I…I ate that guy's…oh god…"
"Fuel in the tank. I would have already eaten you, if your organs were not so pathetic they could barely be a meal. You should feel lucky you're alive."
"Y-yay…h-hahahaa…" Basil laughed nervously with a hint of lunacy. This was either one complex nightmare, or it was real and Basil had gotten himself into the strangest, most terrifying situation ever.
"You're not always lucky, are you, Basil?"
"H-how do you know…th-that?"
"I know everything you know. I am inside your head. What do you think about this form? Nostalgic?"
Basil gulped. He knew what the thing was referencing. The massive white eye.
It chose one of his worst fears from his past.
"W-what are you…g-g-gonna do with…me…?"
"For now? Nothing. Keep me fed, and I may not need to eat you. I have plans, and when the time comes…"
Basil looks down at his left arm as a black tentacle slides and wraps around it slowly, almost ticklish. But Basil didn't feel like laughing.
"...you will follow along. Understood?"
Basil couldn't say no.
How could he? It was life and death.
"...okay. "
With that, the creature retreated back into Basil's body, and in a few moments, he felt control return to his body.
He slowly stood up and over to the sink.
He looked in the mirror.
He was sweating greatly. His shirt and jacket was soaked, his hair was wet, his palms were almost gleaming.
But more than that.
A black blob was standing behind him. With a singular white eye and dark pupil looking right at him.
He laughed, but it wasn't funny, so he cried. If he wasn't losing it earlier on, he was going to lose it eventually.
Basil reached into his wardrobe and picked out a fresh new set of clothes to put on.
The fear fueled sweating had gotten so bad that it had soaked his clothing entirely. He fortunately usually planned his outfits for the week ahead of time with spares, so it was good to be cautious. For once at least.
He hadn't heard the voice of that demonic entity for a long while now, at least not since he took control of Basil's body at the convenience store and nearly made him steal about 7 bars of chocolate.
Basil had to wrestle his own arm and buy them legally, but that was all gone as he devoured the whole bag on the way back.
Even if the monster was one who wanted food, Basil's hunger was real when it was. And he still felt dirty the way he had gobbled down the chocolate snacks.
Throwing on an almost identical set of clothes, getting a fresh set of socks, he sits on his musty couch and turns on his television, hoping to distract himself from today's events.
"-the deep space rocket built by The Life Foundation. It is said that all preparations to launch are already in order, and according to the CEO and head of the company, Carlton Drake, that all that is left is pilot training-"
Basil quickly shut it off. He felt himself panting. Pinching the space between his two eyes after closing them, he groans.
…he couldn't live like this forever. He couldn't.
More importantly…
Basil looked over at the phone sitting on his desk. The evidence he needed to put the entire company under for good.
Why didn't he just turn it in? What was stopping him? It would be so easy.
Basil reached out to take it, then stopped.
No control over him. No manipulation. For some reason, he just couldn't bring himself to pick it up.
Why?!
He closes his eyes, then it hits him like a truck.
Corpses littered. Left for dead. Fallen over.
…like her. It made him sick, it made him afraid.
What an idiot he was. 'Not afraid anymore', what a joke.
He wanted to break down, fall to his knees and start bawling his eyes out. There was no around, it wouldn't matter. Even so, he did his best to stand straight.
"APPOINTMENT AT SEVEN."
Basil flinched. "Y-yeah…I know."
"YOU ARE NOT GOING OUT LOOKING LIKE THAT."
Now Basil was offended. And afraid.
"I-I think I look…f-f-fine."
"I HAVE SPENT ONLY A FEW DAYS ON YOUR PLANET, AND I HAVE ALREADY STUDIED THE FASHION STYLE OF YOUR CULTURE THROUGH YOUR EYES. YOU DO NOT LOOK 'FINE'."
"Y-yeah well, wh-what does a…head biting, black monster, yellow rotten teeth…thing know about fashion?"
"ALLOW ME TO SHOW YOU."
The black goop once again wrapped around Basil, this time only everything's below his head and neck. It enveloped his clothes, then the slime shifted in colour becoming a dapper black and white suit, together with a tie. It didn't feel tight or even hot, even with his actual clothes underneath.
"That's…" Basil stood up and walked over to his bathroom to get a better look.
"...it's not…b-bad."
It really wasn't. It was quite dashing. Actually, Basil had never looked so good in his life. But he wasn't going to give the monster the satisfaction of knowing that.
Slowly, Basil reached down and grabbed a comb, dragging it across his hair. He combed his hair very rarely. It's not like he needed to.
He laughs a bit to himself. Kim was going to make a joke out of this one. But he wasn't against it, he could use a laugh. Besides, Basil knew that with everything Kim had been doing for him, allowing himself to be made fun of was the least he could do.
As though on cue, his phone starts to ring. He forgets about the photos for a moment and picks up.
"Heyyy, I'm downstairs! Ready to go?"
Basil gave a neutral "mhhfm" and hung up, stuffing the phone into his pocket, grabbing his wallet and keys, and walking out.
Walking down the stairs and towards the exit, he sees Kim standing there. Guess he's not the only one dressing like never before.
Her dress is a light blue, with her hair swept to the side so her face is in full view unlike usual. It was odd, unusual, but not bad. It was actually quite good.
Earings. That was also new. Red shining earrings were attached to her ears, which matched her red glasses perfectly.
She wobbled slightly, and one look at her feet indicated why. High heels, black ones. Basil only ever saw Kim wear regular shoes.
"Y-You're kinda staring." Kim says, and Basil blinks.
"Oh, sorry." Basil says. He was just a little surprised. "You look great."
"Y-you…uh…" Kim's cheeks seem to turn red and her eyes dart around, glancing at him before darting away again. "You're…you…you look great too. I didn't think you were…uh…gonna dress…well, like…that."
Basil frowns.
"You didn't? Then why did you-"
"UH! I uhm, uh…I booked a reservation at a nice place. Dinner. And uhm, yup."
Basil just continues to frown as Kim starts to fidget and shift, as though she was uncomfortable or nervous or flustered. She's barely even looking at him, her eyes are continuing to dart all over the place.
"Uh, okay. Let's go." Basil replies.
With that, Kim leads the way despite her occasional shaking, with Basil right beside her, the two chatting away as they walk towards the restaurant.
"Basil Moretta. Nuisance. Disturbance. Thief."
"Let me make it clear. Either he comes with you alive, or he dies, and you get what is rightfully mine back."
"The time of evolution is at hand. I will not be held back by a pathetic singular ungroomed man who failed to be a reporter. Get it done."