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TEST DRIVE MEME #10
a. that's where we both belong
[you wake up.
it doesn't matter where you were before. going to bed? dying? opening the door to face a great evil? same result. you wake up in a soft bed with starched sheets in a cool, darkened room, sunlight peeking out from behind thick curtains. maybe you're alone; maybe you aren't. maybe you immediately notice the folded paper on the bedside table near your head. if you don't, you better fix that real quick: you won't be able to even open the door before you read it.
the note itself is written in a neat hand on white card stock; there is a stylized logo of a ship with the words SERENA ETERNA printed underneath. the note reads as follows:
Dear Passenger(s),
As your cruise director, it is my great honor to welcome you aboard the Serena Eterna, your destination for fun and adventure! We know you could have chosen any cruise line for your vacation, and we're very grateful you chose ours! On behalf of the Captain, I would like to assure each and every passenger that will we do whatever it takes to fulfill all your needs and desires during your journey with us.
At your earliest possible convenience, please attend the mandatory lifeboat drill by the end of the day. I'm sure everyone is very eager to get started on all the fun and sun, but safety always comes first! You can find your life jacket in your cabin's closet; carry it to your assigned muster station on deck one, where I will take you through the drill. If you can't find me in the crowd, just look for the gal with the winning smile!
See You Real Soon!
Sincerely,
Gal Friday
you walk to deck one. you have no other choice: every time you try to step in a direction some unseen being considers "not towards deck one," you find your legs no longer move, staying stock still, frozen. whether compelled quickly by curiosity, or delayed by pure stubbornness, the result is the same, and you are left milling around with other similarly curious or stubborn people.
you see someone in uniform near the front of the crowd. she seems to be a gal, but is missing the winning smile, along with most of her other features. she seems to see you, though, rushing to your side and placing a lei around your neck with great formality. a voice, cheery but artificial, sees to come from nowhere and everywhere.]
Welcome aboard! I'm so happy you could join us!
[you touch the lei. rooster feathers, lotus seeds, and a carved circle of something white and hard, linked onto a silk string.
after the drill is completed, you are seemingly free to go. or, well, your legs work, now. and maybe that's as good as it's gonna get.]
b. and there's plenty of that down by the sea
[it’s strange to think about, isn’t it? how all those new passengers, the ones grumbling or shouting their way through the forced muster drill, have absolutely no idea what happened just last month. no idea about the labyrinth. no concept of why anyone around them would be a bit more hesitant around shadows.
they’ll learn.
sometimes a shadow is darker than it’s supposed to be. very rarely does anything come of that; just a vague sense that someone is watching you, and little more. sometimes, though, the shadows move. sometimes they grab at your ankles as you walk. sometimes they give you a shove as you go down the stairs. sometimes they pull your hair, or pinch your arm.
sometimes you feel something sharp cut into your lower leg.
that’s not a shadow, though. that’s a fiddler crab. you see the crab, sometimes. the cut isn’t from its claws, which don’t look very intimating; it’s not a very large crab. the cut is from the large kitchen knife crudely taped onto its back. it’s probably fine. it's not chasing you. there isn't evil in its heart. probably.]
c. think I'll go back to the Keys
[one day, in the atrium, two pedestals suddenly appear. on each is a large button: one green, and one blue. pressing the blue button gives you a little treat, popping out of thin air next to you. pressing the green button sends a small electric shock through your body. weird, but, hey, pretty avoidable, right?
except, it seems to be spreading. to every other button on board.
in the elevator. on the soda machine. the arcade. your phone. the bell on Friday’s desk.]
Venom | Marvel
You watch the muster drill. Perhaps you're one of the newcomers, here because you have to be, perhaps a longer term resident, here to scout the new blood from the sides. There is a woman without a face passing amongst the arrivals, handing out leis. There's a gap between two of them, however, and she drops a lei in the space. It lands in a puddle of something dark and black. Oil? Did someone liquefy somehow? Is it gonna be mopped up or do you just need to watch where you step? It slips from your mind as the drill goes on, but just as everyone is finally free to go, out of the corner of your eye, you could swear you just saw the puddle run off.
2. Do animals talk in this universe?
News has traveled of a crab with a knife taped to it stalking the shadows. A small thing, easy to miss, completely normal except for whatever prankster taped the knife on. That's what you heard, but what you see is a much larger crab, black as night, knife seemingly fused into its back, and... why is it hanging from the ceiling? Where did all these spiderwebs come from?
3. Get Gooped
It happens when you're alone. Somewhere dark. One of the shadows is darker than the others, and just as you investigate, it leaps at you. It grows rapidly around you, across you, worming its way across your skin, sticking to you like tar. In seconds, its got you completely, wrapped over every inch of you, and just as you worry about how you'll breathe, you feel air flow from it to you. Not just air, but touch and smell and sensation. It turns clear for you in front of your eyes, like a mask. And a voice itches into the back of your brain.
3
But not a few seconds later, it’s over. And a voice speaks. Bold, authoritative, louder even than his own. Phil flinches.
Is he shaking? Maybe. He’s on his knees, staring blankly at the floor. It’s several beats before he whispers to himself, “… what the hell is going on?”
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He feels his wings flex and stretch behind him, without his input. He feels his arm twitch, much the same, but it stops with just a touch of resistance. Whatever threat this thing might pose on his autonomy, its mostly hollow. For now, at least
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And then his wings move of their own accord, and Phil tries not to tear his own stomach open to get it out.
"Stop! Stop! Stop, stop it, stop it, stop. We're not doing this. Not like this." (But maybe like something else.)
Always utterly helpless against his circumstances--does he have to be helpless to his own body too? "Don't you know how to say hello? Maybe hi, how are you, what's your name, before you jump on their face and start--you--just--off. Get off."
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It falls off of him, melting and recoiling all at once into a puddle a few feet away. It's not been resisted quite like this, not since Peter. It was used to Eddie, who wanted Venom. Why isn't Eddie here with it? Where did Eddie go?
The puddle across from Phil raises up where it settled, and it resolves itself into a toothed maw and eyespots. "Iiiiiit does not... speak well... on its own..."
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"Okay," he huffs, dusting himself off as if there's anything to remove. "Listen, that's still a way better impression than jumping on someone and speaking into their head, you get that, yeah? We can have an actual conversation like this. Right? Okay? Geez."
He mutters as he wipes particularly vigorously at his neck, then shakes his head and sighs. "Okay. Um. First... first of all, thanks for... uh, listening to me. Second of all, hi, my name's Phil, what's yours?"
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It collapses in on itself every few bursts of words, struggling to move in all the necessary intricacies of speech. After repeating that name -Venom- it falls back into a puddle and... flows? Paces? It's quick when it does, but it keeps to the ground, and never much closer to Phil than it is now.
"When it makes... Venom... Venom is strong... And then it... Feeds... Adrenaline... Emotion..."
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It's hard to read into a puddle of sludge with two floaty eyes and a mouth, but god, he's trying. He feels kind of bad watching it struggle to speak, especially knowing how many questions he has. But the alternative is currently intolerable, so it's this or nothing, really. The black and the toothy maw are not giving him good impressions. But it listened when he told it to get off, and it's... not coming closer right now, even if it looks agitated. For a moment he thinks that maybe this politeness is a ploy, but then, if it knew anything about etiquette, it probably wouldn't have jumped on his face and immediately demanded he "wear" it. Right?
"Okay," he says slowly. "So... what are you? Organic? Machine...? Why do they call you and your host 'venom?' What does it mean, if I, er, 'wear' you, and you... fffffeed? On me?"
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A question was dodged. It bubbles, and stops in place. If a puddle could look sad...
"It was... Abandoned... By its host... Spider-Man... Hated it... New host... Eddie hated Spider-Man... Hated with it... It fed on hate... Eddie called them Venom..."
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“Okay. Got it. But if… if you’re eating hatred and adrenaline and stuff, are you taking something from your hosts? … Why did Spider-Man leave you?”
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Another sad burble, and almost a flinch at the word leave.
"Spider-Man... Hero... It tried to be hero... While he slept... Spider-Man tried to take it off... It... Resisted... Scared Spider-Man..."
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There's a lot, a lot, a lot of stuff going on here, but in all of his time Phil has largely discovered every sapient creature to more or less want the same things. This... uh, puddle, only grows more familiar by the second. Symbiote, it said it was. Socially obligate. As they all are. Just less literally. Symbiote. Regretting. Not... not understanding. Ah. Is that why it fell off of him so quick?
He doesn't really want to say he's been there about a puddle of goo that was on his face a few minutes ago, but, like. A little bit, okay.
"You scared him," Phil says. "Well... taking control of someone's body is a good way to do that. That's the kind of thing that takes a lot of trust. The most you could give someone, probably."
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It pauses, and the liquid seems to curl in on itself.
"It doesn't like... Thinking alone..."
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“Listen, kid—uh, goo?—you’re going to have a tough time here if you just jump on people without saying anything first. I’m not gonna lie, I don’t have a great first impression of you. But.”
A pause as he thinks. God, he hopes he doesn’t regret this. He’s never been more regretful that there are no animals on the boat. Except maybe that evil crab.
“It sounds like it would’ve been easy for you to hang onto me, but you didn’t. You left when I told you to. I appreciate that a lot.”
This is a stupid idea. This is phenomenally stupid. He should call someone and he knows he’s not gonna. His kids are gonna kill him this is so so so stupid why is he still talking.
“So I’m gonna put a lot of trust in you that you’re gonna do that again. Okay? We gotta be in agreement on that. If we’re not, then this isn’t gonna happen. But if we are, then I’ll… I’ll let you hitch a ride for a little bit. Deal?”
He holds out his hand.
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All at once it crumples, takes on a new texture, seems to go limp. And suddenly he holds in his hand the sleeve of a black formal overcoat. Wing holes included.
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3. Get Gooped
Then, a voice worms itself in his mind, and Karkat growls in response, “NO, WE WILL NOT DO ANYTHING OR BE ANYONE. YOU WILL KINDLY GET THE FUCK OFF OF ME BEFORE I PERISH FROM ANEURISM AND/OR HEART ATTACK. IT HAS ALREADY BEEN A ROUGH COUPLE OF WEEKS WITHOUT EVIL SLIME WHISPERING OMINOUS FUCKING SERENADES INTO MY EAR, AND I WOULD LIKE TO GO BACK IN TIME TO THE POINT BEFORE I HAD TO DEAL WITH ANY OF THAT OR WAS AWARE THAT IT WAS A GENERAL POSSIBILITY.”
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The overwhelming presence pulls itself from him, and all of a sudden what was a second skin is now a black cloak draped over his shoulders. He still feel the air that it feels, still feel it hanging at the back of his thoughts.
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“DON’T YOU DARE BRING HER INTO THIS.”
His teeth are clenched. Every ounce of toxicity, hatred, and yes venom in his body spikes at the intruder, trying to making the act of inhabiting Karkat as emotionally taxing as is physically possible.
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But it worries. It can't survive on scraps and stolen tantrums, it needs to manage its potential hosts. The pressure lifts from his mind, and the voice reaches out again, sounding like it comes from nowhere, as opposed to from the back of his skull.
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“NOW KINDLY GET THE FUCK OFF PLEASE.”
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"Iiit does not... intend to scare..."
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the one with the goop
Momentary panic melts away to something else as her vision suddenly clears, and she finds herself looking around in response to that voice in her head. "Excuse me, but... I'm not sure if we want to be Venom." She also has no idea who or what a Venom is, so there's that.
2
The spiderwebs have caught Webber's interest. For perhaps obvious reasons, considering that the child staring upwards into the crab's web has what appears to be a four-legged spider for a head and is covered in the same bristly black fur all over his body.
"You're better at climbing than we are..." They make a motion similar to rummaging in their back pockets, not that they appear to have any pockets in their oversized floral shirt, and hold out a hotdog weiner that they found under a chair in the lounge. It's only got a little bit of lint stuck to it. "Are you hungry?"
also goop
It feels fair to assume, at first, that this is a precursor to another ugly and frustrating death. All over a cup of goddamn coffee, for added insult to injury. She's absolutely furious when her lungs give that first, uncomfortable lurch of wanting air. Silently swearing at the Captain, or at Sparkles, or at whatever being might be higher than those two — and still trying to push hands forward and crawl out of this mess, even if her hands don't feel like they're doing as she commands.
Then, just as suddenly as she'd started to suffocate, she can breathe. Just as quickly as the room had gone dark, it's back in all the fluorescent-bathed glory Windjammer ever had. She can smell dark roast, and feels a push at the back of her consciousness that sounds a lot like a whisper.
And, she freezes. Confusion reigning, with fear as it's second in command. Whatever this is had her, and then just relented? Is trying to... coax?
"What?" she splutters indignantly. But it'd mentioned strength. And this is not an immediate no.