"Get out of my ass!"

Erika had spent a long, long, long time throwing up whatever lining that had once been in her stomach, her trembling hands now literally stained with red sin braced against her knees as she heaved and gagged and questioned what the fuck just happened. She'd definitely just ate someone, no, no, whatever that thing inside her was ate someone, and she could just taste it upon her tongue, could feel that awful fullness in her stomach that made her feel like she was about to burst it rip apart at the seams and she wished she could say that just her breakfast came pouring out of her bloodied throat, for her own sanity.

But that would of been a lie, a really bad lie but a lie nonetheless, because she was pretty sure there was thick wad of curly hair and...oh god, was that a tooth? Yeah, that was definitely a fucking tooth in the pile of bile, fuck her life. But she knew she couldn't stand there forever, hiding in plain sight away in the street, holding onto her bag that miraculously hadn't been stolen and using it as an improv trash can for whenever the mood to throw up struck her, and then, after a few minutes where nothing but dry heaving wreaked havoc upon her possessed body, she thought it was about time she tried to go home.

And so, for the third time that week, Erika was running, thankfully, not for her own survival this time, her boots pounding off of the pavement and making her feet ache because she stupidly hadn't broken the stupid things in and she was using the 'calm' walk a few hours prior as a chance to do so...and the young girl honestly doubted she'd ever ran so much in her life, in fact, she despised running with a burning passion, hated the stitch that would form in her side, hated the way a mere minute of her simply jogging sounded like she was fighting for her life, and god, the fucking boob sweat.

The boob sweat was the real killer, her mom used to complain about it all the time when she'd exercise on that stupid second hand treadmill they'd gotten from a junk sale which really was a disaster waiting to happen, and Erika would laugh because she was a little shit and eat a whole jar of jam in front of her to make her jealous as she'd curse and flick said sweat at her, and then her dad would start chasing her down with a glass full of water to defend his wife's honor and she'd scream and they'd laugh and all would be forgiven by dinner.

"MM, DINNER."

Motherfucker. She ran faster, and when her apartment came into view she practically flew at it, stumbling over the pavement with her hitched breath caught and her eyes aching with the weigh of unurshed tears, wanting whatever was inside of her to stop, stop talking, stop moving around inside of her and stop fucking eating people because she definitely had a feeling that that wasn't going to be a one time thing as she fell inside her own home sobbing...again.

God, she'd definitely stepped in dog shit on her journey, which really was just the cherry on top of the cake as she grunted, trying to rip her shoes off because the last thing she needed was shit all over the living room. Which was a really normal problem compared to the fact she ate someone at least an hour ago, and the voice inside her wasn't some onset mental illness but actually something sentiment and huge and apparantly hungry considering, once again, it used her body like a vessel to eat someone who yes, was a massive dick, but did she really need that mental image of his face being crushed between very sharp teeth?

Weirdly enough, she felt strangely used by the black mass inside of her, and violated, mainly violated because what the fuck? It couldn't eat people in it's own time? She was already traumatised enough. Erika finally managed to tear her boots from her feet, leaving them at the door and practically ripping the carpet in her attempt to run through the home where she only had one destination in mind, throwing her disgusting bag in the bin while she was rushing past the kitchen and promising herself that she'd get rid of it before Phil got home.

Her stumbling feet finally arrived into her safe haven, her bedroom that had once felt so big, that now only felt like the walls were closing in, suffocating her, pressing against every side of her body and squishing her together until she'd just go pop and paint the pale walls with her own red sin. And then she slammed the door shut behind her, sucking in a breath that was more a sob than anything else, before her gaze wandered over towards her vanity, where the broken pieces of her camera still lay...and above it, her large mirror plastered with polaroids of a different time.

But...the mirror had never looked so ominous before at it showed the mirrored image of her bed as she stared at it fearfully, looking at the sheets that were a dark inky black that just felt some kind of ironic considering what was inside of her. But there was something about the clear sheen, the disoriented reality inside of it that made her feel fucking terrified. Her stomach was filled with unease, something about it sending her fragile heart pounding into what she was sure was a cardiac arrest as it drummed in her ear like a beat of her own instruments of death, getting louder and louder as she stood there and trembled.

And it was a strange fear to suddenly feel, that much she knew, a very strange fear indeed to have because it had never been something to be scared of before all of this complete and utter bullshit because it was just a fucking mirror, a reflection...but Erika was absolutely terrified to look into it, for it to catch a glimpse of her, to stare at herself...because she really didn't know what was going to be looking back at her.

"Shut up, it's just a mirror, it's just a mirror, it's just a fucking mirror." Erika kept muttering, shaking her head as if it would clear the dark haze buzzing around it, drowning out any other thought as she slowly, painstakingly slowly, walked further into her bedroom, her eyes wide open, refusing to even blink in case she missed something...before she finally stood in front of her vanity...only to find her normal reflection blinking at her as if to say you're a fucking idiot. Yes, she looked like she'd seen a ghost, yes the bags under her eyes looked like a corpse, yes her cheeks were gaunt and sunk in...but it was her, completely her, definitely her.

However, the young girl found herself looking into the mirror for longer than she probably should of, searching for something, anything other than the new hole in her brand new fucking shirt where the knife had been plunged into her, again, to find proof of everything that had just happened. And then she saw it, just for a second, just a mere flicker of it...as her gaze clouded over with white when her shaking finger brushed where the wound had once lay as if expecting the phantom pain to ground her.

"Hey! I saw that, asshole!" She shouted swiftly, slamming her hands upon her vanity desk, not caring at the broken fragments of her past, of her mourning heart as they fell to the floor, she talked like that thing killed, violent and wrathful, pulled from her belly and all of a sudden inside her bleeding throat with a scream of despair because her prison of flesh was never meant to hold something other than her grief...and yet here it was, being forced to make room, forced to make a home out of a human being when it wasn't possible. "Come out you fucking parasite! I want some answers."

"PARASITE!?"

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, of course that thing is fucking sensitive, and then there was a string of black, a moving abyss of darkness stringing a line from her forehead to her desk...before it suddenly snapped and her head whacked off of the very thick wood with such a loud crack that she truly throught for a moment the bastard had broken her fucking skull for a shitty insult as she cried out, frantically swatting at the black goop as it yanked her forward again and again until she was sure it was going to kill her before finally letting go as she fell back, swearing every curse word she knew and holding on to what felt like the broken fragments of her brain.

"What is fucking wrong with you!?" Erika screamed, shooting up and glaring at the mirror, not even startling at the sight of the large monster that was now crammed into the reflection, glaring back at her with those big old killer whale looking eyes that she wanted to prod out with a very sharp knife, her rage forcing her to lose all control of her fear, her hesitation, her inhibitions because what the hell was this things problem? If anyone should be throwing hands it was her. "You just made me eat a dude, like literally I just picked someone's hair out of my teeth and you're drawing the line at me calling you a parasite?"

"IT'S RUDE!"

Oh god, was she having a stroke? It felt like she was having a stroke because this couldn't be happening? So the thing inside of her didn't mind eating people or abusing her, yet it got all pouty because she was mean to it? How the hell was this her life? She really wished that spider bastard had just let that bus crush her, or, better yet, she really wished she had jumped off that building when she had a chance all those months ago so she wouldn't of had to deal with this crap fest. "Rude? Rude? Are you or are you not living in my ass? Huh? Yeah that's what I thought, you're the rude one, you're the weird one in this whole situation we've got here."

"NO! YOU ARE!"

For a moment, Erika actually forgot what the whole point of this was, losing herself into arguing with the literal monster that lived beneath her mortal flesh, squabbling at it like they were children with the barbed thorns of her mourning hatred hooking under her skin to make her angry, to make her so very human when she wasn't even sure she still was...but she did remember eventually, remember that this thing in front of her was a mass of black agonies, of a massacre waiting to happen, and she forced herself to swallow tightly. "What are you? Why are you here? Why are you inside me?"

"WE ARE VENOM-"

Everything about this thing freaked her out, the way it moved, the way she could hear it's breathing as if it was right beside her, clogging up her veins with it's dark intentions as they stared at each other in some kind of dangerous standstill...but then the second the huge bastard started talking about we again, she was instantly shaking her head with a scowl. We didn't kill all those men, we didn't fucking eat one of those men, we didn't call ourselves a pussy because we were rightfully terrified, there was no fucking we there was on him and Erika who was just getting dragged along for this shit show. "No, no, enough of this we bullshit. What are you?"

"YOUR KIND CALLED ME A SYMBIOTE, AN ALIEN...BUT WE CALL OURSELVES KLYNTAR."

"Wait, we? There are more of you? Do they all eat people too? Because that was fucking disgusting, by the way."

"HE WAS THE ONE WHO KILLED YOU, PATHETIC PUSSY LEFT YOU FOR DEAD IN THE GARBAGE...I SAVED YOU." There was a snarl in its, his, voice, and she could feel his sudden rage, his wrath as if it were her own as it pooled in her stomach like hot Lava, it was swift and violent and Oh so very abrupt. She didn't know how else to describe it other than this is how she image rotting would feel like, all consuming, taking everything you had, taking everything you were until you were nothing but bone...was that what it wanted? For her to be bone?

"Why? You obviously need something from me, don't take it personally but you don't look like the type to be a friendly neighbourhood menace on the regular." And Erika wasn't lying in the slightest when she hoped he didn't take it personally, or take offence to her less than kind words considering the simple word of parasite had the literal alien goop inside of her throwing a tantrum, a tantrum that had almost ended with her skull caved in which would of definitely been a great sight for her poor uncle to walk in and see.

"WE NEED A HOST TO SURVIVE, TO LIVE, TO EAT...AND YOU LOOKED SO VERY TASTY." He purred hungrily, the invisible seams of his mouth peeling open, flashing those terrifying white teeth that would give a fucking shark nightmares as he licked his tongue over every single one as if apologising to them for not eating her while they had a chance, sickeningly slow and weirdly satisfying because god, she felt like she needed a tongue like that to get the remaining brain matter out of her own teeth.

"So in other words, you saw a perfect opportunity to catch a free ride and just hopped right on in? You motherfucker, get out of my ass, okay? I don't want you, I don't want to eat people that was so fucking gross man." There was a trembling note in her voice, on the verge of hysterics as she waved her arms around, wanting to laugh, to cry, to start screaming at the situation she'd gotten herself in. In a world where there was a dude swinging around with webs, a lizard that had almost turned everyone else into lizards and probably only more stuff still coming...why shouldn't there be aliens added to the mix too? Fuck her life.

"YOU NEED ME, ERIKA...AND I NEED YOU."

"I don't need shit, you hear me? I don't need you." She didn't need anyone, she couldn't need anyone, alone was what she was, and alone protected her. She refused to need anyone like she'd needed them, because she knew how that fucking story ended, her memories sharp, they bit at her solace, her mortality as she desperately tried to grow thicker skin as to not feel miserys cruelness, to make sure she didn't bleed out at the seams with every brush of griefs sharp teeth. That's what she told herself, that's what she swore, promised, prayed...because love, because caring was just mourning in disguise and she'd learned that well.

And then, there was a sudden sting at her stomach, a physical pain that had her gasping and almost howling over because it felt like her insides were being hacked away with some kind of scalpel as she cried out, her trembling hands swift to press against her abdomen, wondering if cramps were some kind of twisted side effect for having a fucking symbiote...only too see the red sin now staining her palms, seeping into the crevices as she stared down at the blood, her vision blurring, head pounding, her heart slowly...before she looked back up into the mirror to see Venom simply looking at her ever so calmly because it was his doing.

"YES...YOU DO."

She gasped, her chest heaving with the force of it as she desperately tried to suck in the air greedily, but it sounded more like a sob as she realized exactly what he meant, that she was a dead girl walking, that she was now nothing more than a hollow corpse, a shell, a mere husk of a vessel with only this creature inside of her to pull her around like a puppet on a string...and without him, she was as good as dead. The black goop began to sink over her chest, pulling the gaping wound of her stomach closed and then settling inside of her like it was home as she touched what was her fucking damnation in terror, too much, too much, this was all to much.

"Why are you here, tell me why you're here. How did you get here, and how long have you been here?" Erika finally lifted her gaze from her flesh, a hard task considering she kept expecting it to tear, to rip apart if she even breathed too hard, for her insides to spill out with her intestines hanging low for the whole world to see and point. But the symbiote only let out a quiet noise, practically a purr as through the reflection of the mirror, it licked the air, that fucking god awful tongue tracing over nothing as she stared at it with her heart feeling like it had dropped down to her asshole.

"I WILL NOT TELL YOU...BUT I CAN SHOW YOU." His dark voice cooed, rumbling around his, hers, their chest like thunder on a storming night as he lifted his hand, black finger clawed with wicked intentions slowly placing itself against the reflection, and Erika hated that she knew what he wanted to do, could feel it, could sense it...as she found herself only hesitating for a minute before she gulped quietly, shaking hands clutching her vanity and smudging red all over the wood as she moved, and gently placed her forehead against the cold glass with her eyes fluttering shut....and then, everything went completely and utterly black.