Sometimes I wonder what carnage they must be getting up to. But then I realize... they will see the truth that I saw when it all comes full circle. The twinkles in the sky are only the ghosts of dead stars. And there is nowhere in all of existence that is more beautiful or more real than my interior. Than inside this house. Here... right here. Still... as I craft a reality of my own making... I can choose to be God. 
Appearing in "The Lonely House"
Featured Characters:
- Jon Shayde
- Scott Rawson (First appearance; dies)
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
- Carnage's Hive
- Kenneth Neely (Main story and recap)
- Unnamed Hel-Guard
- Hela
Other Characters:
- Malekith the Accursed (Ghost, soul or spirit)
- Venom Symbiote (Malekith's codex)
- Carnage (Elsie) (Referenced)
- Dee (Referenced)
- Frank (Referenced)
- God (Mentioned)
- Jerry (Corpse, skeleton or other remains)
Races and Species:
Locations:
- Prime Earth
- Ten Realms
- Niffleheim
- Nidavellir (Mentioned)
- Earth (Main story and recap)
- North America (Main story and recap)
- New York (Main story and recap)
- New York City
- Brooklyn
- St. Estes Home for Boys (Ruins)
- Brooklyn
- Ithaca (Only in recap)
- Fuertes Astronomical Observatory (Only in recap)
- New York City
- New York (Main story and recap)
- North America (Main story and recap)
- Ten Realms
Items:
- Spotted Dimension portal
- Symbiote Codex
- Cletus Kasady's scalpel
Synopsis for "The Lonely House"
In Hel, Hela reclaims the incapacitated Malekith the Accursed and leaves to return him to his place of punishment, the Draugar restraining Jon Shayde vanishing as she departs. Ignoring Shayde, Carnage opens a Spot portal and prepares to lead his group through to Nidavellir. As Ken Neely asks what the writhing clump of darkness in its hand is, Carnage states that it is a piece of the Venom symbiote and that just as a symbiote's host can influence it, a symbiote leaves an imprint of itself in former hosts. His desire to become the crimson symbiote's next host further shaken by this revelation, Neely nonetheless follows it through the portal.
On Earth, a teenager named Scott Rawson livestreams himself approaching the ruins of St. Estes Home for Boys, the site of urban legends such as it being haunted by the ghosts of the children who died when it burnt down, its hallways prowled by an undead serial killer or a monster-possessed girl. Dismissing the rumors as overhyped, Scott boasts that he's unimpressed and enters the ruined orphanage to find its interior to be in shockingly pristine condition. As Scott downplays his confusion at the room not having any windows despite there being some outside, his viewers alert him to bloody writing appearing on the wall behind him, instructing him to "leave some skin in the game". Spotting a bloody scalpel on the floor that wasn't there a second ago, Scott cuts his hand and a door opens. Despite his followers urging him to leave, Scott presses on and finds himself in a dining room where a corpse is eating a severed face. Shaken, Scott informs his followers that his father owned a robe just like the one the corpse is wearing. Picking up a scalpel, the corpse stands and hands it to Scott as more bloody words appear, telling him to cut off some of his face and feed it to the corpse. Doing so, a bloodied Scott staggers into the next room to find a red-haired man sitting in an arm-chair.
The man, Cletus Kasady, tells Scott to turn off his phone before asking if it was the robe that made him go through with the act of mutilating himself instead of fleeing like most other visitors have. Smugly stating that Scott just has to know how he knew about the robe, Cletus creepily licks the blood flowing down Scott's neck from his facial wounds. As Scott asks who he is, Cletus introduces himself as an orphan who grew up in St. Estes and that despite having travelled to distant places and even other dimensions he keeps finding himself coming back -- positing that the orphanage was his true first symbiosis. Cletus exposits that after he bonded to the Extrembiote he assimilated the ruins of St. Estes into it, turning the building into an extension of himself, and as such was able to peer into Scott's memories using the piece of skin he offered up in the first room. Cletus claims to have insight into Scott's mind that even he isn't aware of, tantalizing him by offering to show him more. Opening the door to reveal an M. C. Escher-esque simulacrum of Scott's childhood house, Cletus expositing that as a child Scott had caught his father cheating on his mother and been bullied at school before becoming a bully himself, revelling in the admiration of his lackeys. As Cletus offers to show him more in exchange for more offerings of flesh, Scott recoils and protests that this can't be real. Throwing open the door to outside, Cletus snaps that if Scott wants the "truth" so badly, to believe that St. Estes is nothing more than the burnt-out ruins of an abandoned building, he can leave but will have to accept that he's just a child with an adulterous father who became a clichéd bully, and that he is boring and pathetic. As Scott continues to protest that the visions Cletus showed him can't be real, Cletus retorts that life claws away at people until they die, filling the gaps with lies about themselves they believe to be the truth, but that he took pieces of Scott and showed him a different truth -- asking which felt more real.
Throwing his phone through the open door, Scott agrees to follow Cletus deeper into the building. As Cletus closes the door, Scott recalls that he said he keeps returning to St. Estes despite having journeyed even to other worlds and dimensions, asking if Cletus found nothing that could keep him from coming back. Melancholy, Cletus admits that he once had a soulmate, but that they recently had a falling-out while standing on the brink of apotheosis. Cletus laments that his soulmate chose to pursue godhood, but asserts that sooner or later it will see the error of its ways and return to him. Asserting that nowhere is more perfect than the interior of St. Estes, Cletus returns to his armchair -- surrounded by the corpses of his most-recent victims, Scott's exsanguinating body now among them -- and asserts that he can create a reality of his own inside St. Estes, and therein choose to be God.