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It was 3:43pm on a dismally grey, drizzly Tuesday. The only way Eddie could tell it was 3:43pm and not 6:27am or 5:12pm was by the bright red LED light of the clock on his beside table.
Three days ago, central heating and cooling had gone out in the building. It had yet to be fixed.
The situation honestly hadn’t been too much of a problem at first, given California was notorious for its temperature extremes during the summer not winter. Eddie made sure the windows were shut and finished writing a piece on the winter solstice celebrations in San Francisco that afternoon.
However, global climate change threw a wrench into normal weather and the following night, an unusual frigid cold front swept down over San Francisco.
Tuesday morning, he interviewed for another freelance piece, and the interview had not gone well. Once Eddie returned home, he elected to dive straight into bed, shielding himself from the cold winter air with three thick blankets. He wanted to do nothing more than to curl up and wallow in the comfortable safety of his bed.
He’d developed a tough skin through the years of freelance work, but that particular day reminded him too much of the day he’d lost everything in New York and set up packing to seek better fortunes in California.
Unfurling himself from the cocoon of warmth to turn on the space heater and go on his laptop to seek another freelance gig seemed an impossibly monumental task.
Eddie… Venom’s voice slithered into his mind.
“It’s too fuckin’ cold,” Eddie mumbled, pulling the blankets in more tightly around himself.
A black tendril snaked out of his leg and pressed the button on the space heater, which sputtered into life and began to pour warmth into the room.
Gratitude poured through Eddie’s mind, and he felt a bit guilty about snapping at his partner. “Thanks…”
Eddie tentatively began to push his blankets away. The air was not yet what he would classify as welcoming, but neither was it harsh and biting. Now, he just had to wrangle up the energy to grab his laptop. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed heavily, the firm dismissal he’d received earlier in the afternoon replaying through his mind.
There are ways to shield you from the cold and from those thoughts you do not want in your mind. Suddenly, another tendril shot out of his left wrist, and began to fasten around his right. It slithered over and around his wrist, rather than splatting on and delving back through Eddie’s skin.
“What?!” Eddie scrambled back, but found his movement immediately impeded by the deceptively thin appendage lashing out and fastening his bound wrists to a bedpost.
Venom’s voice whispered in his mind. Safe. Eddie’s flare of panic reduced a few notches, but he still remained alert.
“What’s safe?” he asked the creature.
Shield. Venom used the word again, but Eddie could tell it was a concept the symbiote could not find a word for as the alien rifled around in Eddie’s vocabulary. Safe, it reiterated.
Weirder things had happened, Eddie supposed, and Venom had only ever protected him since their brief separation, despite voiced threats to his organs when the creature was hungry.
“What are you doing?” Eddie asked. He watched in fascination as the sinewy tendril around his wrists looped over his skin.
Weaving. Venom responded.
It did indeed look like weaving. Instead of bleeding into one amorphous mass, the strand looped itself into a repeating pattern around his forearms, holding them in place. There was still enough room for him to wiggle his arms but not to free himself from the intricate web.
The strands pressed down into his skin. It was not hard enough to be painful, but was a constant, present force.
Throughout, he could feel Venom, not only in his mind but all around him. It was different from the way the creature enveloped him in their suit. He felt protected in both instances, but it was as if Venom’s voice was echoing in his ears, Safe. Safe. Safe.
It was getting harder to focus, he felt the last dregs of his panic fade away as the strand met his elbows, and crawled over his shoulder, beginning a harness around his torso. At the same time, another ropelike strand began lacing around his legs.
Eddie was drifting, a heavy sleepiness overcoming his mind, as he allowed his body to be moved freely by the symbiote.
He felt his arms being pulled back over his head, looping into the woven harness around his chest and back.
Suddenly, he was airborne, hanging from the ceiling of his small apartment over his bed in a mass of sinewy strands.
You are mine. You are precious. You are safe, was the last thing Eddie heard before falling asleep.
***
Eddie woke slowly, but his consciousness came tumbling in fully as he remembered falling asleep wrapped up and suspended as if in an orb-weaver’s web. Now, he was in his bed, blankets covering him. The only sound in the room was the ever-present traffic outside his window.
The experience had been so surreal, he wondered if it had been a dream.
Not a dream. Venom’s voice sounded pleased. Woven shield.
“It worked,” Eddie responded. He still felt residual calmness from the entire affair, and well-rested, despite the fact that the clock only read 9:37pm.
Good. Venom replied. Do not like it when you are unhappy. This was successful.
“It was,” Eddie agreed. “Maybe next time I can sleep up there.”
We can make weaves for sleeping. Venom replied, humming as it basked in the calm pleasure of its host.
“How does it work?” Eddie asked.
He felt a mental shrug from Venom. Do not know. Learned from others of my kind. Can be used for pleasure, for torture, or both.
It didn’t take a huge stretch of the imagination to see how it could be used for torture but, “Both?”
Venom chuckled cryptically. Food, Eddie. And water. For you. It’s necessary after.
“Oh, really? This isn’t just you wanting dinner?” Eddie flipped off the blankets and recoiled at the cold. The space heater had timed out.
No. Would rather stay here and feed on your liver. Venom responded. Do not like the cold, either.
“Why not?” Eddie asked, kneeling down to switch the space heater back on. He didn’t like the cold because it was uncomfortable and made his toes go numb, but the symbiote seemed to be immune to such mundanities.
He felt Venom moving within him. Cold and dark… and alone… bad memories.
“Ah,” Eddie felt a rush of discomfort from his partner, and decided not to pursue it further. Although the symbiote’s alien emotions were exactly that—alien—there were some human analogues, and Eddie was getting better at reading them.
To Eddie’s surprise, Venom continued, the discomfort easing away. It is never truly cold here. There is always warmth within you.
“Humans are typically warm on the inside,” Eddie chuckled.
Not just any human. Mine. Venom purred.
Eddie smiled, “And I’ll always keep you warm. As long as you don’t eat my organs.”
We go hunting tonight? Venom asked, excitement evident in its tone.
“Sure. But how about some tater tots first?” the journalist hopped up and strode towards the kitchen. Job hunting could wait one night.
An appetizer… Eddie could feel vibrations of delight, and laughed. Tonight hadn’t turned out so miserable after all.