Missing
“DADDY!!”
Eddie’s heart skipped several beats and had to be rearrested by Venom as he jumped to his feet. Agony’s voice rattled the walls, shook the floors and almost shattered the windows. At the same time across the house Sleeper was startled by his sister’s screeching cry of despair and when a small infant is startled they’re really only left with one natural defense- to cry loudly and hysterically. So now two of their children were screaming and crying.
As they tried to settle Sleeper down Agony ran in and sobbed into the fabric of Eddie’s sweatshirt, her hot tears soaking through
“What is it? What’s wrong?” All of their shared parental instincts were going haywire at their darling Agony seeming to be in, well, agony.
“I can’t find her anywhere!” She wailed.
“Can’t find who?”
“She’s gone!” Agony continued to sob.
“Precious, you have to help us understand. Who is gone?”
“MALICE!” She screamed at them in despair.
This was bad, after her siblings Malice was Agony’s best friend. She knew where her kitten was at all times, Agony had a better awareness of Malice than Eddie and Venom usually had of their six spawn. Malice being gone was nothing short of sheer devastation in Agony’s world. They understood now why she was so inconsolable.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay. We’ll find her, Agony. We just have to look around a little.” Eddie tried to reassure her.
“Why would she run away?” Agony was still crying despite their attempts to soothe her.
“Uhh..” Eddie didn’t know what to say, he didn’t know what motivations a cat might have.
“Cats do weird things all the time, right V?”
“Yes. Like Anne’s cat who hated you. Mr. Belvedere.”
“A cat hated you?!” Agony ripped herself away from him looking absolutely revolted.
Eddie stammered and shifted Sleeper from one shoulder to the other.
“He didn’t hate me, honey. He just...didn’t like me very much.” Eddie tried.
He never thought he’d have to explain Mr. Belvedere’s condemnation of his character to anyone- least of all his daughter. But she was even more upset now. Thanks, V.
“Apologies.”
“It does not matter how another cat felt about your father. Malice likes him very much so he did not make her run away. We just have to go out and look for her.”
Agony sniffed and took a deep breath before nodding in agreement.
“Go get your sister and brothers, we will all look together.”
Of course the other kids knew that this was the most dire of circumstances for Agony, the only thing worse would be if Sleeper or one of her other siblings suddenly went missing, so they were eager to help. Well, eager might not be the best word to describe Carnage’s level of enthusiasm but they were certainly willing at least.
“Daddy, we need more people! We’ll never find her with just us!” Agony tugged on Eddie’s arm as they walked down the street in search of Malice.
Her iridescent opal eyes were watery as she looked up at them and before Eddie could even start to explain that other people were busy with other things Venom was manipulating his other hand to pull out his cell phone and start dialing. Venom was even weaker to both their daughters’ charms than Eddie was and Eddie was pretty damn weak to them.
“Anne, we need you. Bring Dan.”
“Annie you don’t-!” Eddie wrestled with Venom but they ended the call before he could explain what was happening.
“Venom! She’s gonna think there’s some kind of emergency!”
“This is an emergency to our daughter. I took appropriate measures.” Venom was unperturbed by Eddie’s flustered state.
“Let’s get up higher, we will see more.”
“Wait don’t-” Too late, Venom was already engulfing him and taking over to bring them somewhere that would undoubtedly be nauseatingly high off the ground.
Venom scaled the tallest structure they could find (a church steeple) and Eddie swallowed back the butterflies in his stomach as their kids laughed and waved to them from the sidewalk below.
“We’re not going to be able to see a cat from way up here, V.”
“Wrong. There is something moving within that cardboard box.”
Venom was right, In the alleyway between the church and the next building a beat up old cardboard box was rustling around. Sometimes Eddie hated when Venom was right. The trip down was of course worse than the trip up because at least on the trip up Venom had to take the time to climb the wall- the trip down was a freefall. His stomach flipped as the concrete raced to greet them. Sleeper was tucked in Venom’s left arm squealing with pure, unadulterated excitement.
“Venom!” They landed safely of course but Eddie was not happy that they would do something so potentially dangerous with Sleeper involved.
“I would never let anything happen to either of you.”
If it wasn’t fire or sonic sound they were both still unsure of the kind of threshold for pain the children had. They didn’t know if becoming a splat on the sidewalk would tickle or seriously hurt and Eddie really didn’t want to find out today.
“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Agony interrupted using all her body weight to pull Venom’s hand towards the alley.
She approached the rustling box and before they could put themselves between her and it she was pulling the flaps back. All the hope on her face, however, was dashed when a rat hopped out of the box with a pizza crust and scurried off into a storm drain.
“You’re not my cat!” Agony yelled after the rodent.
At the mouth of the alley tires screeched as a car slammed on its brakes- it was the familiar silver Nissan that Anne drove. Dan and Anne were stumbling out of the car and running to them with panic in their eyes.
“We got Venom’s call! What’s wrong?!” Dan was asking as Anne was checking Eddie and all the kids up and down for potential injury. Dan was wearing scrubs which meant he’d come here in a rush straight from surgery.
“It’s okay-” Eddie started but was cut off by Agony.
“Malice is missing!” She cried, drowning out Eddie’s assurance they were not actually in the midst of a life threatening emergency.
“Your cat?” Anne asked.
The looks on Dan and Anne’s faces went from fear to confusion to feigned fear for the sake of Agony’s six year old feelings.
“Well then we’ll have to split up to find her.” Dan smiled making Agony smile back- her hopes restored.
They split into three groups- Eddie and Venom with Carnage and Sleeper, Anne with Lasher and Phage and Dan with Scream and Agony- surely they could find Malice with this many of them looking.
They looked up and down every street, under every car and in between every building for a ten block radius with no sign of Malice. They drove to their local animal shelter next to see if anyone might have picked her up.
“What color is the cat?” The shelter employee asked.
“She’s black.” Dan answered.
“No, she’s white.” Anne said.
“She’s orange.” Eddie corrected, suddenly glad that Agony was distracted by a puppy right now.
After the employee told them that no cat like Malice had been brought in they decided to keep looking. But eventually it got dark and they had to call off the search for the night. Agony cried the whole way home. They got back to the house and Eddie had to carry her from the car as she sobbed into his shoulder.
“It’ll be okay, Agony. She’ll turn up soon.” Anne kissed the little girl’s forehead before she and Dan went home after helping them search for hours.
They set her down on her bed and she flopped into it with another round of sobs.
“Perhaps she should sleep with us tonight.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Eddie agreed.
They transferred her from the girls’ room to their own and sat on the bed rubbing circles on her back until she finally cried herself to sleep.
“Let’s get this one to bed now.” Venom brushed a thin tendril across Sleeper’s tired little face.
Walking into the nursery Venom fumbled around for the lightswitch as Eddie leaned over the railing of the crib to put Sleeper down.
“Meow.”
That was the sound of an inconvenienced orange cat by the name of Malice who, up until right this second, was napping in Sleeper’s crib.
They very carefully replaced Malice with Sleeper in the crib and brought the fluffy orange cat into their bedroom where their daughter had just cried herself to sleep after a long and fruitless afternoon of searching. Eddie gently shook Agony awake and she still looked as sad as she had when they got home.
“Look who we found.”
“Malice!” She gasped and wrapped her cat up in a big hug to which the cat replied by purring loudly.
Agony fell asleep still hugging Malice who was still purring.
“Next time this happens we should look around the house first.” Eddie decided.