~~~ Much inspired venture from 'Venom' trailer, because Tom Hardy is a literal beast. An idea grayorca and I came to while drawing parallels with 'IT'. While she decided to take a more personal approach and base it on her own AU, I took the liberty to be more literal than that. Still not sure if I should continue it or not. ~~~
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Eddie tried to breathe.
He didn't have a problem with it, not at the moment. The situation couldn't be less stressful. History class at Mr. Lark's who kept babbling on and on about the Gold rush and obviously couldn't care less that half of his class fell asleep on the benches and the other half was fully engaged in no-rule Rubber War, throwing pieces of rubber at each other. He couldn't care less about taking a note of how sickly pale Eddie was, how sweat-covered his face and hair were and how each his breath wasn't because he was sleeping, too, but because he tried to maintain control.
Of himself.
Eddie's left hand was on the desk, fingers opening and closing in unsynchronized rhythm with breathing. The right one was gripping an inhaler under the desk so hard that his entire arm shook. Eddie knew he could bring it up to his mouth and press is if he started hyperventilating, but he knew as well that he wouldn't do it, just as he knew the inhaler would be useless.
Unless It wanted differently.
Eddie's breath hitched uncontrollably and he squeezed his eyes that have already been shut. Steady. Steady. Focus...
He hadn't slept in days, and anyone normal would've succumbed to exhaustion and died already. To go for so long without proper sleep tortured by endless nightmares of things he never knew he feared. People don't know how lucky they are when given every chance to sleep. Why won't It let him go? Why won't It let him live?
Because that's what It wants. It was It, and that was the only thing It knew how to do.
Eddie grunted when an angry growl erupted in his stomach and sounded off loud enough so the student sitting next to him turned his way. Instead of concern, however, his eyes shone with wary disgust. Not even noticing, not even bothering, Eddie's breathing increased. Easy, easy-... slowly. Breathe, c'mon.
But when another growl emerged, more clear this time as well as more animalistic, it became clear no internal words are gonna help him gain back control.
And it wasn't his stomach at all.
Eddieeeee...
No. No. Not again, please, no.
A whimper escaped him and he automatically pulled at the inhaler, but just as he predicted, it didn't do him any good. He merely felt a disgusting sprinkle of something hot that resembled dust rather than water. A heart caged inside his chest contracted and was beating like crazy, storming like a chugging train. He barely opened his eyes, lids heavy and tortured from the lack of sleep, and the voice in his head giggled.
Shut up. Stop. Please don't, please just... don't.
But it would. Eddie knew it because it never left. It was always there, at the back of his overburdened head, drilling its way through his thin bones, flowing through his blood, dreaming cocooned in the center of his heart. Sucking the energy out of him. Using him.
Like a host.
„Eddie?"
This voice didn't come from his head, but to his right. It was Bill whose blue eyes shone with unheld-back concern. Denbrough saw what their teacher inexplicably didn't and it baffled him just as same as seeing Eddie show up in school like this. It has been bothering him for weeks, but he'd unexplainably always forget to ask and remember again when he'd see Eddie next. It was a weird experience. Like reading a column, then closing the book to repeat what you just read only to realize you failed to comprehend half of the text and the moment you reopen the book, you realize that yes, you've been there before.
Seeing his friend like this made him baffled at how the hell was he able to forget something like this each time. Eddie looked more than awful and Bill wondered how did his mother let him out like this.
„Y-y-you okay, Eddie?"
The smaller boy didn't seem to register his existence. He lifted one weak, shaky, skinny pale arm, breathing heavily. The inhaler was in his hand. He was so weak that he couldn't raise a hand above his head level. Eddie didn't speak so it took a bit longer for the teacher to notice him.
„May I be excused?" Eddie breathed, voice no stronger than a whisper.
Mr. Lane waved him off like he was a bothersome trouble child not worthy of his time, but Eddie obviously didn't care. He stood up, staggering, then walked out of the classroom on insecure feet. The door shutting itself swallowed the sound of the teacher's voice.
Bill looked at Stan to his right who shrugged. Like a game of telephone, the Jewish boy then looked behind at the bespectacled loudmouth who wasn't even loud at the moment. Usually he wouldn't shut up, particularly during history, and would pretend he was JFK or Winston Churchill if only to derive some life out of Mr. Lane which would earn him a juicy F in conduct column.
Now he stared at the door, mute as a fish, expressionless look on his face like he could summon the one who just left through those hypnotically large lenses.
.
.
Eddie burst into the bathroom running up to the row of sinks and gripping one of them. He wasn't wheezing, but the tempo of his breath didn't change and standing wasn't exactly a pleasant change as compared to sitting down: the boy could feel his knees shake. He retched before even checking if there as anybody else in here with him. One thing he certainly wanted to avoid. Public bathroom, the residence of more germs than there are drops in the ocean (but that became the least of his problems) was certainly private enough for only two people present to get away with something horrid.
Eddie heaved and his abdomen muscles clenched to the burning point of pain like a vinegar-skinned python coiled around his skinless self. His ears clogged as if someone shoved a fist to each of his ears and no matter they reached the furthest point they could fit, they still insisted on pushing on.
Of course, nothing left his stomach because there was nothing to leave. Everything in this damned useless body was empty. Only at the same time, it wasn't at all. Eddie Kaspbrak was a rusty, demented shell of what he used to be, and just looking up into the mirror proved so.
Something that resembled eyes with no glow of life left sunk so deep into the swollen dark sockets tucked under the grey bags hanging below them. This pale skin in the reflection Eddie's seen only once, and it was on an elderly man on the brink of death he saw during one of many emergency room visits when he was younger. On the top of his head was something that resembled a birds nest soaked with rain and moisture, tangled and denying every concept of health and normality. There were cheekbones cutting through his lifeless cheeks and protruding under the bloodied eyes, two lumps like worm larvas that live under the skin and feed off of him.
Parasites.
His not-his stomach exploded again and Eddie jumped when the sound resonated around the tiled room as if an actual beast abided in each of its vents. He suppressed another whimper as best as he could and clutched at his abdomen, fighting off a new wave of nausea which wasn't supposed to be there.
Then there was this voice, coming from beyond the deepest pits of Beelzebub and all his instruments of death echoing much the same within the skull-defined borders of his head. The voice growled, sneered, mocked, cheered, wailed, seethed, laughed, screamed and cut like a knife, buzzed like a hornet nest and rumbled in the lowest of frequencies, like the deepest depths of dark Mariana trench and Challenger's deep.
Such was the power of that voice. One which Eddie couldn't escape for months now, couldn't put a stop to it and had no way of shutting his ears to have some mercy and ignore it. One they used to simply flag as 'It'.
Eddieeeee...
„No", he said out loud, even as he knew It heard him perfectly well the same way, but he had to maintain some way of credibility to remind himself he was still human, that he was not a part of this insanity. The voice that left his throat shook all too much, so he tried again, pointing equally fierce eyes against his reflection as if it were something else. ˮNo. Stop it."
When the infernal giggling began, bouncing inside his skull like a dozen ping-pong balls, he gnashed his teeth, voice growing to outvoice the noise.
„No. I said no. Hey! Shut up! Shut it, I said!"
The last was nearly a scream, cracky as it was since puberty started to make changes to his directed objectification, voice included. It began to sound more masculine every week, and Eddie was glad. Somehow, the confidence grew along with it. But such thing could never help him against his situation. Nothing could help him. He knew, he tried.
Eddie was like Hulk. Only, Hulk at least had the capacity and reason enough to do good, to help people. It had nothing of a kind. It took away, It loved seeing others suffer, It harmed people. And It made sure to remind Eddie accordingly each day of hell he was forced to go through and that always seemed to stretch on to forever.
Predictably, the voice sniggered, then turned wobbly and melancholic for a split second all of a sudden, but Eddie knew it was a farce. To be melancholic, you had to feel, and It didn't have feelings. It felt nothing, only triumph upon harming the other.
ˮAww, but we are hungry, Eds. Yes, yes we are, we are growing restless, we are growing impatient. Don't you feel it? Haven't I made it obvious enough, you little shit? Wehehell... I'm sorry. I hope you can forgive me. Let me make it up to you."
The python around his guts was back. It made the teen convulse harder than the previous fits and had him gagging and gripping at the sink's edges anew. The growling could now rival a lion. There was a cult of black spots dancing before Eddie's exhausted eyes and were he not clenching the sink when he did, he would've slid down to the floor after his knees gave in. Arms shaking, grunting, he managed to straighten back up while the voice laughed mockingly. Shoving the tears of despair back, because he'd learned already how useless they were, he stared down his reflection again.
„Don't you see?" It exulted. ˮDon't you feel? We need to hunt. We need to feed. We are hurting. It hurts us both, Eddie."
„We!" Eddie fired, slamming his hands against the white porcelain, then cut himself off, trying to find a different approach. It was like this since the beginning. The creature actually referred to them both at the same time, with 'we' like the two were in some impossible way symbiotic. This was nothing like it! As symbiosis was cooperation, sharing, mutual help, compartmentalization, unity. This — what It did to him — this was nowhere beneficial for him as far as Eddie could ascertain.
He forgot the days when he was a carefree child, hanging out with his friends, when his biggest problem was calculus homework, getting away from Bowers and his gang's hands and hiding bruises he got in the Barrens from mom. He forgot how it was to admire the sun, be caressed by the wind, the taste of food, the feel of water going down his throat. He forgot what it was like to stress over homework, or what freedom it always was after it'd be completed.
He forgot how to live.
Because of It. Because It somehow nested inside him, like a tapeworm which was everywhere around his body including the head and it refused to leave, fed off of him, used him, tortured him, had him trapped in a prison of himself which he couldn't escape. Wouldn't let him sleep or eat, but was keeping him alive at the same time.
Eddie breathed like an olympian several times, trying to collect the thoughts he had to share in his own head. It fell silent. It would do it sometimes. Let him speak, express his pleadings and thoughts, but then It would only mock him and make him throw up until there was nothing to throw up, and even then, It would play around and find a way to make something to be vomited (sometimes things that aren't even meant for human bodies). So much that Eddie would nearly faint, but he never did. It would never allow him such mercy. Then It would laugh so loud that screams couldn't cover it.
„We cannot- just- hurt people", Eddie chanted the mantra he must've repeated a thousand times for the past few months. It wasn't his first, nor would it be the last time he would try to get to It, trying at least — if he could do nothing else — to figure out whatever held him hostage of his own self.
There was a break of uncharacteristic silence. So quiet that Eddie failed to hear his surroundings and it made him instinctively look around. No more hums of the pipes, no occasional murmur or drop of water, no distant chatters from next-door classrooms. Like Eddie got seceded from the rest of the world.
Then he felt a shift inside him. Like the underside of an ocean wave when it would hit the shore and take everything with it. Much in the same way it took the hairs on the back of his neck and tensed them up to their maximum.
Eddie stepped back in horror watching his reflection shift. Something on his face moved. It reminded him of an aquarium and the way light falls on the glass and if it's too strong, there's not much chance you'll be seeing anything on the other side, but if the fish comes close enough you could capture a movement and then jump back when you realize how close the proximity actually was.
The fifteen-year-old felt something similar right now, only this was impossible tenfold. This was a mirror, not glass. But he wasn't seeing things. No, the shifting was there — and it was increasing, becoming more clear, so in the end, Eddie's already pale face turned white in there and his head as if enlarged three times. In addition, two lines of blood-red dawned dimly over his eyes and to the corners of his face. Like someone was doing a merging photoshop on his face.
No.
Eddie gasped when the other face stretched into a sneer across his own terrified one. The vilest, red-lipped, perfectly familiar face.
Into It.
In the blink of an eye, the sneer stretched out of ranges of its possibilities to a widely opened hole filled with razor teeth. Eddie screamed when It surged forth and crashed the barrier which divided them. He stumbled back, but the clawed fingers snatched his jaw before he could make another move. Something leaned out, waist deep out of the broad mirror which cracked and was drilled with lines and sharp edges, but no bit left its proper place. The closest ones shivered and glimmered if the creature would move in the slightest and that creature was, of course, clad in silver satin and ruffled collar. The orange hair was filthy and in disarray, gaining the sooty-red shade, and the eyes sickly yellow, but it was all Eddie could distinguish before squeezing his eyes shut firmly enough so not even screwdrivers could part them open again.
Branches of pain were spreading around his captured jaw braced in a white glove, but the boy could feel pointed edges of lethal claws challengingly poking from the inside's tips, just to prove they were there. Eddie cringed, gripped the frilled wrist with both his hands but fighting was of no use while he breathed hysterically and tried to ignore the obnoxious proximity of the being's face to his as well as the foul stench from its mouth.
„Look at me."
Eddie didn't want to and didn't do it, at first. He hated when It did that. Insisted on humiliating him each chance It had in such a way that he had no way out except to accept whatever the creature wanted from him. The measures of power were unfairly incomparable between them which It used all the time, ever to Its favor.
Eddie Kaspbrak gagged and coughed if nothing then only wishing this stench of rotting death and hunger went away. The grip tightened threateningly. Tears of torture escaped on their own when the boy's eyes finally opened.
„Pop quiz, Eddie Spaghetti!" The malevolent yellow blaze shone with incontinent glee. ˮWe love those, don't we, Eds? What do you say? Let's play a pop quiz, eh?"
The grinning drool-dripping face of the Devil didn't change a bit when Eddie didn't answer and kept clutching Its wrist like it was the rope of dying hope. His eyes were futile, begging orbs.
„Between us two, which one belongs to a race limited by death and stupidity? Hm...? What? Cat got your tongue, or am I gonna have to get it? You gonna tell me, Eddie, or am I gonna have to extract it out of your miserable self?"
The claws pierced the glove tips and snailed into Eddie's skin with deliberate slowness, drawing tiny streams of blood and Eddie couldn't stop a moan of pain and a new tour of tears, which the being was clearly keen on accepting as an answer, or maybe it just didn't care the slightest anyway. Its word was the final and the only one.
The jolly mask of a crazed clown then dropped along with the infernal grin, but Kaspbrak didn't know if he should consider it a good sign or no. Seriousness didn't make the clown any less frightening. And neither did the completely steady, impossibly deep Tartarean voice which abruptly lost every possible inch of childishness.
„Comprehend it, Eddie. You are weak and pathetic and without me, you would be bleeding on the sidewalk with that Bowers brat doing whatever he intended to do. In fact, I was going to let him but remembered you could be of better use than that. Ergo, you should be thanking me, isn't that right, Eds? I'm not asking you to thank me, multiverse no. I don't even hold that you owe me — it's a sniveling tradition adored by humans, and in the end, the bills never come due. No, if anything, I should be thanking you. Your presence at the moment has provided me with a vision of how to exist without re-he-hest. Think of that; now all I can do is eat and thrive for eternity and beyond. I am the Eternity. So the way I see it" the creature cocked its head and the grin was back like it never left. ˮWe can do whatever we want."
„You mean what you want."
Eddie said it with courage he didn't recognize. He should've felt scared by all means, and he should've cowered like he did until then. But the sentence toughened his dark eyes and made them spit defiance back at the painted yellow-eyed face. His knees weren't shaking as much for a second.
The forehead fell into a frown so deep that it hid the clown's pupils.
„No matter what you think, Eddie", the voice of hell didn't falter, ˮyour fate was always in my hands. Only now, heh... I took the liberty to make it more literal. You and I are one now. So if you value your existence", the claws extended, further burying themselves under Eddie's flesh. ˮyou will do as I say."
„No." Eddie spoke without thinking.
One eye revealed its pupil as if the clown lifted a nonexistent eyebrow. ˮThat's not your call to make, I'm afraid."
„Please, man, just- - just let me go, I can't take this anymore, I'll—I'll go crazy, just... please..."
Saying all that was a huge mistake that couldn't be helped. Eddie felt familiar pressure of despair squeezing from all sides and It seized it and tied it together with bottomless hunger latched onto both of them, and Eddie felt the train of salvation leaving the station way too early with him left behind cemented on the platform.
When the being stretched its mouth to grin again, the teeth seemed a lot bigger then they were, and yet somehow, It could still talk comprehensively. ˮWhy, wouldn't that be convenient." The claws retreated and the ripped gloves repaired themselves like the video played backwards. It only released the tracks of red blood to flow more freely. ˮRemember what I told you, Eds. Maybe we'll get to play another pop quiz before it happens. Really, I- I think I'll grow rather fond of those!"
The grin turned into a broadly parted jaw which lunged forward to finally end this and rip the boy's head off his shoulders.
But the only thing Eddie did while screaming helplessly was stumble backwards by his own force he thought was suspended in the relentless grip of Its claws. But there were no claws. There were no razor-sharp tusk-teeth or silver court-fool Rennaisance suit. When he looked up, there wasn't a single crack in the glass. There, he could only see, was his mindless and terrified reflection, and nothing else.
Eddie finally succumbed and doubled over retching and vomiting onto the floor. There was nothing to vomit but the stomach acid, of course, and it was only good for burning his throat and gripping his abdominal muscles into a knot. The coughs drained all of his leftover strength and pressed him on his knees and palms. One hand ended up in the greenish-yellow puddle.
He wanted to finally cry for real and believe the tears would make some sense now, that at least they would serve a cause every child should rightfully have, but they weren't coming. They weren't because, regardless of how his human, instinctive part insisted on it, his subconsciousness lifted a red flag, having realized long ago that tears are only to be wasted for nothing. They had nothing to satisfy in this world anymore. He was all alone and no one could help him. Tears were the best candidate for a while, but they, too, abandoned him in the end.
So Eddie coughed a few more times to get rid of as much acid that was still stuck in his throat and threatened to take the second road to his lungs. While his abdomen ached, he tried to somewhat gain control over his shaking limbs and their nerves that lost their fundamental footing.
The door slammed open, exploding among the white noise of nothingness. The doorway welcomed the middle-aged school janitor who seemed too tall and lifeless as a statue being clad in grey overalls from where Eddie was kneeling on the tiled floor. Disgust twisted the man's face while he was piercing the thrown up mess like he could make it vanish only by looking at it.
Then he looked at Eddie and by God, if Eddie had seen concern or shock in them, he'd be surprised. When the man displayed nothing but anger and irritation, Eddie could only look away.
„For fuck's sake", the janitor seethed, not even reaching out to help him get to his feet. ˮIt's the third time in two weeks. You kids incapable of reaching the toilets? Are they that far away, or should I perhaps bring them closer somehow? Gather them all right at the door for Your Majesties, why not? What are you all, three-year-olds?"
Eddie was sure more words followed as well as orders he gets up, but he felt no particular wish or urge to listen or comply. In fact, he felt nothing. There was nothing to read on his sweat-covered face and blood leaking down his neck and dripping off his chin. The red liquid mixed with the substance on the floor. Eddie watched it spread in threads like oil paint and wondered if he'd get an artistic award if he drew something with colors he was offered now.
He might've thought he felt nothing, but the growl and twist of his abdominal muscles has reminded him otherwise.