Paint
It’s been two and a half months since they moved into their new home and Sleeper was finally sleeping through the night in his own room. It took weeks of crying and tantrums and Eddie sleeping on the floor of the nursery but they finally did it. To celebrate this newly achieved baby milestone they decided they should decorate Sleeper’s room for him. The last time they decorated a nursery was for Carnage and they did not do a very good job of it. They painted it blue first and Carnage didn’t like it, then they tried pink and Carnage didn’t like it. Yellow got an even worse reaction. They tried several more pastel, soothing and kid friendly colors all with disastrous results. After awhile Venom suggested the obvious: red. Carnage was happy as a clam with a terrifyingly red room. In fact, Carnage would probably demand their current room be painted the same bloody color if they weren’t sharing with Lasher and Phage who would undoubtedly oppose.
“Pink! We should paint it pink! With glitter!” Scream jumped up and down.
“And what if Sleeper doesn’t like pink and glitter?”
“I don’t care.” She answered honestly.
“Your room is already pink.” Eddie gently reminded her. “Let’s pick a color we don’t have yet.”
“Glitter is a color we don’t have yet.” She pouted.
One by one Eddie and Venom popped the lids off of several cans of paint so they could at least try some swatches on the walls. The floor was covered in newspaper that crunched and crinkled with every move they made. They decided to start with a soothing blue- something to help their baby sleep. Eddie was pretty adamant about not having another blood red nursery in his house. Sleeper sat near by frantically waving a paintbrush around and splattering himself all over with the pastel paint. The older children were far more interested in the paint colors they weren’t using- the black, the white, the purple, the green, the orange, the yellow and of course, to Eddie’s chagrin, the red. The wall next to the rocking chair was a big, beckoning, blue canvas that the kids couldn’t resist; totally empty and ready to be filled up with their own imaginative little creations. Eddie and Venom didn’t notice their offspring’s artistic adventure that was unfolding behind them because they were bickering about exactly which indistinguishable shade of blue was right for their eight month old son.
Scream, Agony, Phage, Lasher and Carnage were finger painting their various creations all over the wall with no real method to their madness- stars, hearts, flowers, planets and many little monsters of Carnage’s imagination started to bloom across the wall. Carnage worked on a mysterious winged creature while Phage painted a rocket ship among Lasher’s many stars. By the time Eddie turned around, Scream and Agony were completing opposite ends of an only slightly lopsided castle. Eddie and Venom watched quietly for a while at their young children covering the wall with all the small impressions of their wild and whimsical imaginations. Even Sleeper was marking up a small piece of the flat blue canvas with little colorful, clawed hand prints- waving his arms and smiling broadly as he worked.
Eddie felt Venom grin in response and cover his hands with their own large taloned ones before moving him closer to the wall. Venom pressed their hands into the inky black paint and then pressed their paint covered hands to the wall above Sleeper’s much tinier hand prints. The claws on both of their hands making their fingertips look pointed. The other children excitedly ran over to press their own hands on the wall in all their favorite colors.
“Dad, put yours too!” Lasher tugged on Eddie’s (now his again) hand.
Eddie just laughed and allowed himself to be tugged to the wall where he dipped his hands in the white paint and pressed them to the empty space underneath Venom’s black hand prints. He thought his clawless prints looked a little funny among all of his family’s different sized taloned ones.
“You, my love…” Eddie looked down at Sleeper who was grinning up at him.
He picked up the baby who was covered head to toe in different color paints.
“Need a bath.”