via
https://ift.tt/2U9rsAka prompt i guess if you’re still taking them? I’d love to see a Venom AU based around this post:
https://ift.tt/2FIqd0Sthe way you write Symbrock is just… my absolute favorite <3
Thank you to @hgk477 for coming up with this prompt.
Eddie scuttles out of his room, clutching the textbook to his chest. Slows and flattens himself against the wall, his breathing coming fast, his heart pounding against his chest.
He opens the book, checks the list.
If pitch black shadows darker than dark creep up on the walls, leave immediately. It’s not your room anymore.
Eddie closes his eyes and slumps back against the wall. Not his room. He wants to cry. The book slips from his hand and cracks hard on the ground. He jumps, catches his breath- and the stairs creak.
Oh please no.
Eddie hesitates, eyes darting from the staircase to his bedroom door. But given the choice between being in the monster’s room, or being in Carl Brock’s house-
He hurries back down the corridor as Carl makes his unsteady, drunken way up the stairs. Hesitates for a moment, hands pressed against his door.
It pulses under his hands like a heart, black slicking up under his fingertips.
Eddie swallows, and pulls the door open, ducking inside with his eyes screwed shut.
Nothing happens.
He can hear Carl stop a few feet outside his door, breathing heavily. Drunk. Please don’t come in please please please-
And Carl turns, feet scraping rough on the worn carpet. The creak of his door, closing with a click.
And silence, nothing but-
But the rustle of the walls, the pulse of a heartbeat through the room. Inside, something moves, a creak too far away to fit in the space. Eddie’s hands clench into fists, then he forces them to relax, tries to remember the book, something he could do-
Read bedtime stories to your monster.
Eddie sucks in a breath, it tastes like new pennies, like blood. “Do you want a story?”
There’s a pause, and Eddie flinches as something scuttles over his fingers like a a tangle of spiders. “Once upon a time,” Eddie starts, “There was a-” his mind is blank, he can’t think. “A beautiful princess. She was wise, and kind, and loved her children so much.”
The breathing deepens, Eddie can feel the door ripple against his back, soften as though welcoming him. When he pauses, there’s a little nudge, it wants more.
“But her prince was- cold, and sad. He lived so long in darkness, and although the princess brought him the sun, he was still- far away. The princess tried to warm him, to warm them all, she tried so hard…”
What happened then?
The words reverberate through him, not quite hearing but deeper, his whole body thrumming through it. “She died.” Eddie whispers, his mouth dry. “And the sun fell away, and everything was dark.”
Oh, that is sad.
“The prince closed himself away, little by little, in smaller and smaller places, until finally he crawled inside a bottle, and there wasn’t anything left of him but broken glass.”
And the children?
“The children were alone, they had each other to begin with, but then one of them grew up, and went away to find the sun elsewhere, and the boy was left alone.”
Alone. A murmur, over and over, alone alone alone. Are you alone, Eddie?
Eddie licks his lips. “Yeah.”
We are alone too.
Eddie takes a deep breath. Leave an arm, any arm, dangling from your bed.
He reaches out a hand into the void of his room, and finally dares to open his eyes.
His room is awash in black, bubbling over everything like a waterfall of pitch. It runs down from under his bed, over it, pools on the floor and ebbs, slowly, so slowly, towards Eddie.
Eddie grits his teeth, fights to stay still, not run. His hand trembles in the air as the monster inches closer.
Slowly, so slowly and is it- is it worried? Is it scared of him? Eddie licks his lips, “It’s okay.”
The monster slips closer, mounds itself up into a stalagmite of black, coming up to touch his hand. Eddie forces himself not to move, to drop his hand down a little to meet the monster halfway.
It’s warm, and soft, like firm jelly. It pulses under his hand in little bursts of heat, then trickles up his arm.
Eddie jerks back, he can’t help it. The monster stops, and Eddie swallows, and reaches back out. “It’s okay.” He repeats.
It runs up, over his arm, over his shoulder and down his chest and he’s warm, soft as worn flannel, tight as a comforting hug. Eddie blinks back tears he hadn’t realised had been welling up. No one had touched him so gently since Mary gave him that last hug before vanishing on that greyhound bus and gone forever.
Eddie. The voice is a voice now, deep and rumbling in the back of his head. Not alone now.
No. And it feels so good Eddie isn’t sure what to do. The monster book never said anything about this.
But it does give him an idea about what to do next.
Offer food once in a while.
“He should be asleep now. Do you want something to eat?”
HUNGRY
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