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Silence.
Eddie Brock had forgotten what the lack of sound had sounded like over the past year. Between the sounds of the city, motorcycles, nagging bosses, explosions, chickens, and a bodymate, there had been no room for silence in Eddie Brock’s life.
Now, there suddenly was. Abruptly, what he truly thought was good for him came into fruition. Was his apartment trashed? Yes. Did he have one too many bruises that he was used to having? Yes. Did his nose still tingle from where he had been headbutted not once, but twice in rapid succession? Very much so. But he felt stilled. Steady. Ready.
After coming to terms with the resounding loss of not only the Ducati but the television, there were three very achievable things on his mind that next morning after the best night’s sleep of his life: One, to clean up the apartment, two, to purchase a new television as soon as possible, and three, to evict Sonny and Cher.
Apartment cleaning, which keeping a high cleanliness level had never been a primary directive of Eddie before, was somehow the easiest despite the absurd amount of red M&Ms wedged in spaces that one wouldn’t think M&Ms could live in. In defiance, the pizza box with the Golden Rule written on it was tore down first. Wrappers upon wrappers were then picked out in between the couch cushions and bags upon bags of various food and tire scraps grew around the trashcan, starting to take up more apartment space than even the couch did. Then there was the matter of huge holes punched in the ceiling’s drywall. A mom and pop shop that wouldn’t question why he was buying only polyurethane plastic film and an obscene amount of duct tape in the casually ragged state he was in was thankfully only located three blocks away. With his own two, very normal hands, it took quite a while with his amateur repair skills and fingers that were much more used to typing on a laptop to patch up the holes. As he washed up from various gunks and smells in the shower afterwards, Eddie couldn’t help but think how easy this would have been only mere hours before.
Dropping off Sonny and Cher didn’t come into full fruition until the sun began to set on the Golden State Park, and even then that was after hours of deliberation on where the absolute hell Eddie Brock was supposed to take two borderline house trained chickens. It would have been more than awkward and definitely more than bizarre to walk up to the chicken farm and hand back two chickens that were not missed to the operator and be all like, “Sorry, a friend stole these two here a while back intending to eat them but apparently chickens ‘don’t have brains’ and these two were ‘friends’ as well so he just couldn’t so you can have them back now. Also, sorry to hear that a lot of your stock goes missing every couple of nights that’s really suspicious. No, I’m not Eddie Brock and even then he wouldn’t do a story on chicken liquidation since missing chickens are the least of the world’s worries at the moment.”
Golden State park was frequented enough to be a park, but not posh enough for random passerby to question why two meticulously kept chickens were minding their own business around the Cervantes statue. It was someplace safe. Someplace where, if Eddie ever did need something or someone familiar to say, be upset that he was mourning the loss of a nuisance with, he could easily come back to without being looked at particularly weird.
After that short goodbye, Eddie meandered over to the most expensive electronics store he could think of, bought the largest and most expensive television that he could stick in the back of an Uber, perused the chocolate at the register only out of habit, and went home to the cleanest apartment that he had had since moving out of Anne’s.
Television setup he had become a little too familiar with, so he wasn’t surprised when it was a five minute job with a negative amount of hassle. Back in comfy clothes and that worn ragged robe, Eddie Brock sat down, propped his feet up on the coffee table with a mesmerizing amount of beauty marks in it, cracked open a cold one, and flipped on the latest Detroit Lions game. Everything was quiet. He was stilled. Steady. Ready.
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The game was turning out to be the longest football game that Eddie had ever watched. It was also quickly becoming the most uneventful, even though the Lions were up as they entered the second half.
Chatter from the television was especially bland tonight, the usually involved and peppy commentators bland in Eddie’s ears. No swearing, he thought. Or colorful commentary that usually evokes obscenely strange images in ou-my mind. It felt as if his thoughts were flatlining. It seemed like there was nothing to think about. That there was nothing to do.
This is what I wanted. Silence. Normal.
Right?
He waited for a whole three minutes before realizing that the only response that he’d get was from himself this time. It was just him, alone, in the newly cleaned apartment of his dreams, sitting in front of the television of his dreams, starting to feel the buzz of four beers taken in rapid succession.
This is what I wanted. You know that, Brock. He chastised himself as he sat up to fiddle with the beer bottle. In the reflection of its curvature, he saw claw marks driven deep into the wood of the table. He saw holes poked into the armrest of his couch. He saw a pile of chicken shavings from the house that he had missed, swept into the corner. A small corner of a ripped peanut M&Ms bag that had gotten caught in the floorboards. Chips in the brick on the wall that had been made most recently, as Venom declared Eddie evicted from his own apartment as he threw their things around and out the windows.
Somehow, the sting of last night began to hurt in a new way, even after having to learn about Anne’s engagement. It was deeper. More raw. This hurt permeated his entire being down to his bones, not just leaving his head and heart scathed down the middle this time, oh no. He sagged back down into the couch, sinking into what fluff support it had left, picking at one of the holes on the armrest and letting the rest of him turn to mush.
This is what you thought you wanted. And you know what happens when you think you want something, Brock. You destroy what you have to get to it. You destroyed your relationship with Anne, who did nothing but good for you, when it came to you wanting to drag Carlton Drake’s nose through the dirt. Now, now look at you. Loser. Loser. LOSER!
“SHUT UP!” Eddie roared at the sound of Venom’s voice leaking into his own thoughts, throwing the beer bottle onto the brick wall just to watch it shatter and see if he’d feel any different by breaking things. He always did feel slightly better once there was some sort of inanimate object to maul and haul and –
“No, no that’s Venom’s thing! Not mine. I don’t break shit, no. I don’t eat people, no. That’s alllll Venom’s doing,” he tried to convince himself as he began to pace, his bout of lethargy suddenly over and turning into extreme restlessness. Venom, Venom, Venom! It’s all about Venom in his mind now, as soon as his guard falls down.
How hollow and different and missing he’s felt all day cleaning eats away at him in chunks, not used to what he had considered normal. Normal had become satisfying not Anne, but an amoeba of teeth and profanity. Normal had become having an idea and having it challenged as an appropriate course of action. Normal was eating chocolate to the point where a normal person would have had their normal teeth rot out. Normal was eating people. Eating full chickens in one go and coughing up wishbones. Blowing aliens and mad scientists up. Normal was having the suspicion that there are multiple CIA and FBI files opened on him right now. Normal was never being left alone to stir in the silence.
I said that we were Venom. We.
Eddie stops at one of sets of claw marks on the coffee table, tracing each grove with his own finger, picturing the black claws of their shared existence. He remembered what it first was like, seeing a black, goopy mass with a foreign face and too many teeth emerge from his own skin as he sat cold and wet on a buoy out in the Bay. How he became we within a matter of hours. And then how we became he in a matter of seconds after poorly articulated thoughts and feelings.
He was real shit at that, wasn’t he? Trying to express himself in constructive ways? Better yet, he was real shit at knowing who he was and knowing the difference between what he wanted and what he needed. He denied the allegations against him when it came to handling himself and his affairs earlier when Venom confronted him about it, but did he really prove himself in the moments afterwards? Or did he prove Venom right?
Then, it felt like he was in the right. He felt like he was the one that had been made victim from their new relationship, constantly having to alter his life and public presence and status to satisfy the whims of the bodymate that gave him little in return. Now, a new little voice that suspiciously mimics Anne’s hints that he is the one that was in the wrong and escalated the situation. He was the one, once again, that broke himself up with someone that was not particularly bothered by him being him for all his flaws.
That urge, that desire to feel like his life wasn’t all running and jumping from skyscrapers and having to debate dinner and get over Anne and interview the most unsavory of clientele was what he thought he wanted, without knowing that what he needed was already right in front of him.
Venom was what got him into the spotlight as a premier journalist again. Venom was the one that kept Eddie from doing stupid things, like attempting suicide on the way back from hearing about Anne’s engagement. Venom was the one that consoled him afterwards with a very passionate and honest attempt at cooking breakfast, even though he immediately turned around and ruined his shot for his Kasady exclusive. But he had never heard, no felt, such apologetic emphasis from the symbiote before. And even then…
Even then it was only because Venom was in Eddie’s mind, defending him from Kasady’s goading over his past. Something that Anne was never confident or in the know to do on those weird days where Eddie would wake up on the wrong side of the bed or he’d walk by the most perfect father son pair doing the most perfect father son things in the park and come back ruffled by it, unable to shake it from his memory.
After all that, that showing care and support and love on Venom’s end Eddie couldn’t see it, blinded once again by his delusions of the self. They even shared a body and mind for Christ’s sake, and Eddie couldn’t see what he had in front of him.
“I’m the biggest idiot and loser and insensitive bully in San Francisco now, aren’t I? Now that we put Carlton Drake away?” Eddie mutters to himself, finally sitting back down on the couch with his head in his hands.
In no instance did Eddie want to be without that rush and thrill of being entangled in Venom, caught in the heat of battle or simply moving across the San Francisco rooftops. It had quickly become comforting, being encased in a sentient bullet proof vest. It stilled his mind and steadied his body. It made him feel ready.
The rapturous celebratory yelling from the television at a Lions touchdown is rudely interrupted by the breaking news bulletin sound, interrupting Eddie’s thoughts as well.
“Breaking news,” the anchor announces. “Cletus Kasady has escaped from prison tonight, on the eve of his execution.”
“Oh shit!”
There’s a furious pounding at Eddie’s door.