The night was quiet in Eddie’s apartment. A couple of dirty dishes piled up in the sink, and a coffee pot had been left running since the morning. Eddie paced back and forth with a bowl of cereal in hand, arguing under his breath with the creature inside him.
“Look, we can’t eat this, Venom,” he muttered, lifting a spoonful. “This is my dinner, not your second breakfast.”
A deep, wet voice growled through his head and out of his lips at the same time: “We need chocolate! And brains! This is not enough, Eddie.”
“Oh sure, because the store’s open at midnight and the cashier won’t suspect anything if some guy with a demon voice asks for brains by the pound,” Eddie snapped, dropping into a chair.
The apartment fell into an uneasy silence—then it shattered with a metallic hum that didn’t belong to this world. The lights flickered as if struck by a storm right in the kitchen. Eddie shot to his feet, the cereal bowl slipping from his hands and smashing against the floor.
“What the hell…?”
A glowing circle, violet and pulsating, tore open in the middle of the kitchen. The air smelled like iron and ozone, like the universe itself had ripped apart in front of him.
“Eddie! A portal. Dimensions. Delicious things.” Venom rumbled, thrilled. “LET’S JUMP INSIDE!”
“Are you insane? We don’t even know what—”
Before Eddie could finish, a figure tumbled out of the portal, crashing onto the dining table with a heavy thud that made the wood groan. The portal snapped shut instantly, leaving nothing behind but the figure gasping for breath among the crumpled tablecloth.
Eddie blinked, stunned. “…Well, that’s new,” he muttered, taking a cautious step closer. “Uh… hi?”
The figure slowly raised their head, eyes glinting with confusion and exhaustion. There was weight in that gaze—like someone who had traveled far too long, across far too many worlds, searching for something… or someone.
“Smells lost. Very lost,” Venom whispered inside, his tongue briefly flicking out at the corner of Eddie’s mouth.
Eddie lifted his hand in a nervous gesture. “Hey, no eating anyone, okay? …Right?” he said, glancing toward the window as if he could see the symbiote staring back at him.
Venom didn’t answer right away, only growled low.
Eddie sighed and looked back at the person sprawled across his broken table. “Alright, listen… I have no idea who you are, or how you literally fell into my kitchen, but if you can move and talk, I strongly suggest you start by telling me what the hell is going on.”
The apartment hung in tense silence, broken only by the creak of wood beneath the table about to give way. Outside, the world carried on like nothing had happened—unaware that, in this small San Francisco kitchen, the multiverse had just collided.