Saw your recent piece, and I’ve got a question: What are your thoughts on Eye-aligned Joey? Also why did you choose the Web for him?
My Joey is aligned with the eye as well! Not his primary patron, but still.
I think eye-aligned Joey would be very cool! It was my original pick for him, and I feel like it could work really well. Ultimately I chose the web for him because I felt it fit a bit better than the eye. To me he’s more of a manipulator than an observer.
Sammy freezes halfway through the door into Joey’s office.
The room is in disarray. The furniture has been shoved haphazardly up against the wall. Papers lie all over the floor, schematics and model sheets and sheet music and other things he can’t begin to guess the purposes of. There’s a few books too. Bottles of ink sit scattered among the paper. Some of the same things that clutter the floor are suspended from the ceiling, hanging by thin strands of something clear and shimmery. And at the focal point of the mess, sits Joey.
Joey is so very, very wrong.
He has too many eyes. Pure black and shiny, but Sammy can feel them staring at him, sharp enough he swears they could cut him. Joey has too many limbs, too, long, spindly arms jutting out from his torso where they shouldn’t, ending in claws that look like they’re supposed to be hands, but had something distinctly insectoid to them, fingers long and sharp and chitinous.
He looks almost startled, posture stiff, inhuman eyes wide in surprise. Then he sighs, and shakes his head.
“For someone who values his privacy as much as you, you really should learn to knock,” Joey says with only a hint of mock disappointment. His voice sounds wrong. “I’m sort of in the middle of something.”
Sammy tries to speak, to turn around and flee or even just back out of this horrible room, but his voice dies in his throat and his limbs are frozen in place.
Joey tilts his head. “Though, I was just about done anyway,” he murmurs thoughtfully, raising a hand toward Sammy. He closes it into a fist and yanks it toward himself, and Sammy finds himself stumbling forward.
He can’t see anything there, but he can feel something wrapped tight around his ankles, his wrists, his throat.
“Yes, I can make time for you.” Joey grins up at him, showing off something that looks somewhere in between cartoonish fangs and glistening chelicerae. “Sit down.”
Sammy doesn’t have a choice, does he? His limbs are moving on their own, guided along like a puppet. Joey waves another of his hands, and a space on the floor is cleared in front of him, papers and inkwells lifted into the air to make room. Sammy is sat down in that space.
He feels like he can barely breathe, barely think. His heart is beating so fast it feels like it could come out of his chest.
Joey’s grin falls into a look of false concern. “What’s wrong, Sammy?”
“Wh-“ the words he attempts to force from his throat come out as little more than a hoarse wheeze.
Joey leans in, reducing the space between them to mere inches. Sammy tries to pull away, but he can’t, held in a vice grip by the creature in front of him.
“You aren’t afraid of spiders, are you?”
———
Sammy wakes with a start, a strangled gasp escaping his throat as his eyes snap open and all of his senses go haywire for a moment. He sits up, every sensation forgotten aside from the awful feeling that something is crawling on him, dozens upon dozens of tiny legs dancing over every inch of his skin.
There's nothing there.
There's nothing there.
There’s. Nothing. There.
But the sensation doesn't go away, no matter how much he tries to make it, no matter how much he claws at his arms and face, willing to risk drawing blood if it will just make it stop-
"-mmy! Sammy!” A voice cuts through the blood rushing in his ears. He blinks.
Jack. Jack is here. Jack is here, beside him, looking so concerned it makes his heart break, holding his hands so he can't scratch at his skin anymore.
"It's okay, you're safe," Jack says softly, and Sammy knows he's telling the truth, because as he focuses on the feeling of Jack running his thumbs gently over the backs of his hands, the crawling feeling fades. As he focuses more on the presence beside him, the rest of the world starts to come into focus.
Sammy takes a deep breath, forcing himself to relax and slow his heart rate. He leans back a bit, not quite lying back down.
"That's it, just... just take it easy," Jack smiles gently, releasing one of his hands in favor of resting a hand on his shoulder.
"What... what happened?" They're in the infirmary, and he is lying on one of the cots. Jack is in a chair next to it, looking exhausted but so very relieved.
"You passed out. At least that's what Joey said," Jack pauses. Sammy feels a spike of panic at the name, and he can feel that crawling trying to return. But Jack speaks again, and it fades. "He called me to his office, said he needed help carrying you down here... he told me you went to speak to him but just... collapsed out of nowhere. Hit your head pretty hard, too. I'm... I'm glad you're okay, I was worried... you are okay, right?"
He takes a shaky breath, and sighs. "Yes, I think I'm fine... my head hurts, but..." He trails off, fidgeting a bit with his free hand. "J-Joey, was he..."
Some kind of horrific spider creature? Covering me in webs or moving me around like a puppet?
"...okay?"
Jack nods slightly, but something about the movement seems wrong. "He seemed fine. Really worried, a bit freaked out... I don't think he does well with the sight of blood."
"I was bleeding?"
Jack doesn't respond. He doesn't even give any indication that he heard, just... staring.
"Jack?” Sammy feels a spike of panic, gripping Jack's hand tighter.
He shakes his head, blinking a bit, seeming to have snapped out of whatever had taken hold of him. "Huh?"
"...it was nothing, nevermind."
"You sure?"
Sammy nods. He isn't sure, but he gets the feeling he isn't going to be able to get a response.
"Alright... well, Joey asked me to tell you that he wants you to go home and take the next few days off. I personally think you should probably see a doctor, too, just in case... head injuries aren't really something to be taken lightly... oh, uh, he also said to find someone who can drive you home or at least get you a cab, I don't know why he asked me to do that, but... if you want to go, I can take you."
Sammy is silent. He does want to go home. He doesn't feel safe here, not anymore. Not right now. Even if he was just imagining everything he saw.
"Yeah... I think that would be good."
It is a few hours after Sammy is deemed well enough to be left alone that he finally notices the gash on the back of his head, held shut by a small mass of blood-caked cobweb.
