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[spiderman]

_{Series #1}
With Great Power

1. The Itsy-Bitsy Spider

At the largest and most profitable car dealership in Brooklyn, a massive explosion suddenly blows it off the face of the Earth, leaving only a smoldering crater as piles of shattered concrete, twisted metal, burning cars and other heinous debris rain down. Throughout adjacent streets, car alarms blare, as stunned witnesses frantically scream for someone to call 911.

Two years ago, Peter Parker put on the spidersuit for the first time. Now it’s collecting cobwebs.

No one has seen Spiderman in ages. Even J. Jonah Jameson has stopped pestering Peter for pictures of Spiderman. The so-called ‘masked webslinger’ has faded from newspapers, social media, talk shows, everyday conversation. Peter thinks about this as he sits in traffic in Manhattan on his way home from another grueling day at the Daily Bugle, looking around at the city, wondering how it’s doing. Wondering if his dusty spidersuit is buried in his dresser or his closet or somewhere else. He can’t even remember anymore.

He had put Spiderman out of his mind until about last week or so, when his spidey-senses began driving him crazier than normal. Abruptly having constant severe flare-ups, like some horrific disaster is about to befall the city. They detect things often, but he always ignores it. Recently, however, his spidey-senses have been absolutely unbearable, like a blaring siren or an itch that can’t be scratched. They’re particularly overwhelming as Peter inches his way home, and hears what sounds like a huge truck backfiring. Pleading to his spidey-senses that he can’t go anywhere or do anything right now, he rubs his temples, turns up the music on the radio, drums on the steering wheel, looks around the city, does anything he can to drown out his spidey-senses. Usually this works. Usually.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to fight crime anymore, or doesn’t feel like he can do it. It’s just logistically impossible. New York is a colossal city, and not even a superhero can be two places at once. Whenever a crime happens, there’s always another somewhere else, and another, and another, and another. And there’s always a crime happening, day and night. Plus, Peter often has other important things to focus on too, like, say, working at the Daily Bugle, commuting, or sleeping - things that are hard to sneak out of. So Spiderman had to carefully choose when, where and why he fought crime.

Crimefighting had become a thankless and burdensome ordeal for that very reason. Far too often, he’d swing to or from somewhere and hear things like, ‘why didn’t you save me from carjacking?’ or ‘why didn’t you stop my relative from getting shot?’ or ‘where were you when I was getting mugged?’ He always felt terrible, because he shared their pain. He wishes a superhero had been there to stop Uncle Ben from getting killed. A real superhero, not some washed-up 30-year-old loser in a spider costume. So Spiderman realized he can’t fight every crime. Honestly, who can? Superman? Batman? Not even them, even if they were real. At best, superheroes can only put a band-aid on their city’s axe wounds.

And then of course there’s all the cops investigating Spiderman, declaring him a vigilante, like they mistake him for a competitor. Trying to nab him at different scenes, offering rewards for information, issuing non-stop APBs. Sometimes even the cops themselves were responsible for the crimes Spiderman fought - lots of innocent people getting bullets, beatings or knees on their necks, many of whom he rushed to the hospital, with some later receiving flowers on their headstone. Lots of contaminated crime scenes, false reports, warrantless searches and innocent people in handcuffs, cruisers or jail cells. Mayor Eric Adams, a former cop himself, had publicly chastised Spiderman multiple times, scoring cheap political points with a growing number of ‘anti-spideys,’ or as Spiderman thought of them, ‘arachnophobes.’

So hardly anyone ever called Spiderman a hero, although it’s not like he was ever in it for that. And he had attracted far too much attention to himself, much of it overwhelmingly dangerous. All he ever wanted was to use his powers for good. Now he wishes the spider had bitten someone else.

“With great power comes great responsibility,” Uncle Ben repeatedly told him. But Uncle Ben had never seen this kind of power, and this kind of responsibility. Has anyone?

Not far away in the fiery remains of the dealership in Brooklyn, rattled survivors and awestruck witnesses experience a kind of power that would break Spiderman’s brain. A second explosion blasts the petrifying nightmare a few circles further into Hell. The anguished screams louden. A dense dust cloud scratches the sky as more flaming debris pours down.

Across town in the gridlocked streets of Manhattan, Peter is still sitting in an endless row of cars at an endless red light, wondering if there was some way to rid himself of his spiderness. To quietly help others follow the golden rule and love one another, without his superpowers.

But Peter’s thoughts are derailed as it becomes downright impossible to ignore his spidey-senses, when he hears what sounds like the truck backfiring again. His spidey-senses are flaring as if something is horribly, gut-wrenchingly wrong. He can sense that numerous people had died, or at least were facing grave danger.

Miles away from where he sits, ambulances, firetrucks and police cruisers begin rushing into what looks like the wreckage of an apocalyptic meteor strike. A deep crater has torn up pavement like it had been pummeled by the angry fist of God. A mountain of debris burns under searing flames as though doused in an ocean of gasoline. Dozens of crushed cars and crumpled trucks are strewn about like they had driven through a cataclysmic war zone. Bodies are scattered about, mostly in several pieces. Injured ashen survivors with thousand yard stares stumble around in a shocked daze or writhe in agony on the ground yelling for help, as panicking good samaritans desperately try to administer aid or rescue people trapped under the rubble. Piercing screams of horror, shock, anger and pain permeate the plumes of smoke loud enough to be heard from space, like soldiers bellowing their last shrieks on the battlefield. First responders don’t know where or how to begin, but they immediately start hauling it while calling for backup.

As rescue efforts begin at whatever is left of the dealership, Peter notices smoke rising in the distance from across town. The two loud booms he just heard suddenly start making disturbing sense - it clearly hadn’t been a huge truck backfiring or anything like that. His heart sinks as he wonders: is there actually something or someone that truly, badly needs Spiderman? Should he have been acting on his spidey-senses all along?

Peter follows his instincts and flips through different radio stations, but finds nothing. Then he focuses his spidey-senses on all the people around him. And listens intently to everyone on the sidewalk, in a car, on a bus or in a lobby, like having an individual conversation with everybody in a crowded auditorium - a kind of eavesdropping he’s only needed to do once before. A couple people mention something about a car dealership and an explosion.

“No way dawg, the dealuhship near yo house?” asks one motorist into his hands-free device two blocks down, as he holds off on stuffing his face with a slice of pizza bigger than his head.

“Oh my God, is he okay? Is everyone? You guys were just across the street though right? So - okay, I’m headed to the hospital now, please tell him I said I love you,” whimpers a pedestrian across the street. She starts booking it as her face bursts into a torrential rainstorm of tortured tears, and in her shaking panicked frenzy, she fumbles her keys and drops them, hollering enough obscenities to make a pirate faint.

Peter senses he will get a complete picture in 3, 2, 1…

Buzz buzz. In his car’s cupholder, his cell phone vibrates with a group text from J. Jonah Jameson to the Daily Bugle’s photojournalist team.

“BOMBING IN BROOKLYN!! DOZENS MIGHT B DEAD! DCPI SAYS SOME ECO-TERRORIST NUTJOB CALLED THE GREEN GIANT OR THE GREEN GOBLIN IS TAKING CREDIT!! GET UR ASSES 2 THIS ADDRESS AND GET PICS ASAP!!!..”

To be continued…

[spiderman]

2. Fueling The ‘Oil’ In Turmoil

Peter facepalms harder than ever after J. Jonah Jameson shouts via text that some vile terrorist has attacked the city. With a pounding heart and a sweaty forehead, he wonders just how bad it is. Just how many people are dead, or hurt, or scarred for life. And ‘the Green Giant’? ‘The Green Goblin’? What kind of names for a mass-murdering lowlife piece of trash are those? He does find it a little interesting that the suspected culprit is an ‘eco’-terrorist - that’s not the city’s usual flavor of terrorism.

But never mind green, the only color Peter can see is red. A much different, darker shade of red than that of his spidersuit. He hammers the driver’s side door. Twice. Thrice. Enough to leave a dent.

People are dying, when he could have done something to stop it. His spidey-senses had been trying to warn him all along. And he acted like it was a nuisance. He could have saved lives. He could have spared someone from losing their Uncle Ben. And probably get chastised as a ‘reckless vigilante’ by the police, the press, the public and even the Mayor for it like always, though maybe this time it would have been truly worth it.

But he has no time like the present. Despite the darkening bags under his bloodshot eyes after a long day of getting pictures for the Daily Bugle, he decides Brooklyn absolutely must be his last stop today. Peter urgently inches his car almost onto the bumper of the car in front of him, but the endless stretch of traffic has barely budged in the last few minutes, even with a green light. He frantically scans the streets for available side parking, but finds nothing. If he had his dumb spidersuit, he could abandon his car and just swing across the city. But he can hardly remember where it is. He’s trapped like a pet spider in a terrarium. Like the bastard that bit him, and gave him these stupid powers.

As the gravity of the situation sinks deeper, he pummels the driver’s side door again and again. He hammers the steering wheel, as he screams superhumanly loud, louder than any of the victims in Brooklyn, loud enough that his spidey-senses detect people around him turning their heads. The docile orb weaver is imploding into a venomous black widow.

Deep down in the festering rotting pit within, he suppresses every nagging reminder that he shirked his ‘great powers and great responsibilities’ as if they were bad memories - like, say, those of people getting shot, stabbed, strangled or beaten by crooks, the mentally ill or the police. He had never wanted this level of power or this level of responsibility. No sane person ever would. If he had known the disasters that would make his life a living hell, murder Uncle Ben and wreck the city, he wouldn’t have come within a hundred miles of the scumbag spider that bit him.

After an hour of aggressively crawling through traffic and keeping his ears glued to the radio, all while narrowly avoiding becoming a road rage statistic, Peter finally manages to pull within a block of what he heard was once a car dealership, at least before it was blasted into a charred crater. Even with the Sun beginning to set, he can’t believe what he sees.

A mile of police tape stretches from crumbling war-torn buildings to an enormous hole in the once-peaceful suburbs of Brooklyn, while all the flashing emergency lights in the city highlight what looks like an apocalyptic mix of Gettysburg, Omaha Beach and Korangal Valley smoldering atop the Chicxulub crater. Piles of crumpled, shredded, blackened cars are strewn about. Some thousands of pieces of paper, most burnt or torn or both, are scattered about or blowing away in the wind. Paramedics pour their hearts and souls into treating devastating injuries as ambulances rush people away or come right back to pick up others. A field of black body bags lines the crumbling burnt ground, although there’s clearly not enough available. Around the police tape, crowds of people cling to each other as they sob, scream or gaze in horror. News vans from every station in the city clog the area, as talking heads ramble into microphones and cameras. A black-armored bomb squad seems to be giving the all-clear after triple checking every crack, crevice, nook and cranny with dogs or robots - of course, they wouldn’t have let anyone get close if they had found something. And there are enough cops around to make it its own precinct, who are either aiding in the rescue, securing the perimeter, interviewing people along the tape or canvassing the neighborhood. Peter feels like he’s going to puke, wondering what could possibly drive someone to cause this level of pain and suffering.

With his camera strapped around his neck complete with an extended telephoto lens, he tries to push on with the job he came here to do. Peter approaches the police tape with a decent shot coming to mind, thinking of juxtaposing three cops standing on the other side of the tape with the horrific nightmare they literally and figuratively face. He tries to think of Aunt May and the paycheck that’ll go to support her as he struggles to stomach the insanity, the immorality, of having to be journalistically artsy about the worst atrocity to hit New York since 9/11. It makes him feel a little better to think he’s not entirely alone in all of this, and not just because of Aunt May or some of the other staff from the Daily Bugle around here somewhere. His girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, is a staff writer for the Daily Bugle, and she too is in the area, although his spidey-senses can’t seem to find that one important needle in this overcrowded haystack. They had texted a little bit while Peter was sitting in traffic, and while she confirmed she would be coming to the scene, she stopped responding before she could specify where or for how long - a typical exchange when dating a reporter, it’s always been apparent. Peter wonders if she got the same kind of whiplash as he did when arriving at a horrendous crime scene like this. But recognizing that his attention span is in free fall, he tries to keep himself focused on getting some solid shots, starting with the officers across the tape.

Before he can even raise the camera to his eye, however, the three cops notice him. And one briskly turns around with brows more furrowed than Peter’s ever seen.

“Hey back the fuck up, asshole!” the officer bellows with an accent that should automatically make him a Yankee or a Met, his pudgy finger pointing in the opposite direction, as the other two cops look at him, then at Peter, then back at the officer all without turning around.

Peter raises his badge from the Daily Bugle slung around his neck. “I’m with the press,” he asserts.

“I don’t care if youse the King of France!” the officer yells, finger still pointed. “Back the fuck up before I toss your ass outta here!”

Peter gulps, quietly sighs and gently lets his camera dangle, as another officer quietly tells the first one, “Aw va fangool, he ain’t hurtin’ no one, just let the little finook be.”

But Peter is already stepping back and stumbling off to the left, as all three cops eyeball him before two eventually look back at the rubble, and finally the one, dropping his chubby finger and going back to crossing his arms. He puts this out of his mind, sensing that the million cops in the area are highly suspicious of anyone in the vicinity, since the monster who committed this horrible crime is still on the loose, and criminals often like to revisit the scene of the crime. Peter starts looking through the catastrophic wreckage for another shot, another angle, another something to make this unholy sight worth something other than Spiderman’s most atrocious failure of all time.

He gazes forlornly through all the weeping crowds, streams of water pouring down on defiant flames, football fields worth of twisted torn-up crushed cars, firefighters and good samaritans practically moving actual mountains of shattered concrete to rescue people still trapped under the rubble. What could Spiderman have done to stop this? What could anyone have done? And what can Spiderman do to stop something like this from happening again? The terrorist surely won’t stop at this, says a knot in his stomach. Peter is certain that there are two things he absolutely does not want: the city to be attacked again, and for him to have to go back to being Spiderman.

His vision blurs as he once again starts to lose focus of the armageddon in front of him. In his mind’s eight eyes, haunting images of future terrorist attacks mesh with harrowing memories of fighting crime as Spiderman. More people get blown to bits, just like they got blown away by thugs, the unwell or the police. Blood on his spidergloves. Handcuffs around his wrists. His mask coming off in front of everyone - Aunt May, Uncle Ben’s ghost, Gwen, his other best friends Mary Jane Watson and Harry Osborn, J. Jonah Jameson and the Daily Bugle, the cops, Mayor Adams, all the criminals he got locked up, the public. In the background, a terrorist fleck of pond scum watches and laughs maniacally, as they rig their next bomb.

Peter snaps back to reality as his spidey-senses pick up three of the other photojournalists from the Daily Bugle approaching him, cockily bouncing around with their cheap clunky cameras like they think they’re the next Ansel Adams, emanating practically no respect for the graveness and seriousness of their ungodly surroundings.

“Hey hey Parker, on time as always,” jeers Terry Kidder, a formerly unpaid intern who got brought on as a freelancer - just like Peter - and now thinks he’s destined for the Met. “Check out this sweet snap I got bro. Some real front page above the fold shit. Jameson’s gonna give me one of his cigars.”

Terry holds up the back of his camera to him, blaring the screen. Peter expects it to be some half-assed high school clip that doesn’t even deserve to get lost in a darkroom, but he actually finds himself impressed and even a little jealous with what he sees. He beholds a gloriously Renaissance-esque, perfectly-framed picture of the smoldering crater as paramedics rush an injured survivor to an ambulance on the left, blurry cops sprint in from the bottom and a team of firefighters and good samaritans on the right lift up a chunk of concrete to expose another, screaming injured survivor underneath. In the distant background between wisps of smoke, the Statue of Liberty shines like a beacon of hope. Peter nods approvingly at Terry, but forces himself to cut it short. This picture could legitimately win a Pulitzer Prize, that absolute jackass.

“Nice, Terry,” Peter retorts. “How soon you get here? Cops take you in for questioning yet?”

“Ha, yeah, very funny bro. I hope the guy who did this gets what he deserves, I’d strangle him if I saw him,” Terry responds with a scowl, taking back his camera and clicking through what may be more unbelievable and downright lucky pictures of their hellish settings. He shows some to the other two photojournalists, smiling and laughing and even high-fiving, which makes Peter absolutely nauseous.

But Peter is more preoccupied with the unforgiving crime scene around them. He examines the cooked remnants of what used to be a quiet and safe neighborhood, unable to take his eyes off of Spiderman’s biggest and most serious fuck up since he caused Uncle Ben to get killed.

“You guys know anything more about… I don’t know, what happened here? And why?” Peter asks the other photojournalists.

Hearing no immediate response, he looks back at them, which snaps them out of their repugnant little art gallery. “Huh? Oh, nah bro, I only got that one text from Jameson,” Terry answers.

So did Peter. He huffs out of exasperation. “Well, Jameson’s only the Graphics Editor. Have any of you heard from Vic? Sam? Robbie, even? Anyone?” He doesn’t know why he’s asking them, other than desperation. There’s no way Assistant Graphics Editor Victor Pei, Assistant Managing Editor Samantha Scriven or Editor-in-Chief Robbie Robertson would be getting any word to these dunces.

“Nah,” Terry responds, as the other two photojournalists shake their heads practically in unison. But then he perks up. “Ooh! I did get, like, a news alert that the guy who did this released, I think, a video or something.”

Peter’s eyebrows leap to the top of his forehead, as he steps in closer. And tries to push past his sheer idiocy in leaving his phone in his car during a frantic hurry to race towards this unsightly ground zero, which could have given him the answers he needs right now. “Really? What did they say? Is it a manifesto? A list of demands? Tell me what they said. Tell me!” he spews out like a coked-up auctioneer.

But Terry just shrugs. “I dunno bro, I’ve been too busy getting these dope-ass shots.”

“Well can you get your phone out and check? Now? Right now?”

Terry shakes his head, with one eyebrow slightly raised, as if in suspicion. “Nah bro, my battery died, sorry,” he disappoints Peter, as he points his thumb at the other photojournalists. “And don’t ask these two either, they left theirs in my car when we drove in. Like always.”

Peter’s eyebrows plummet as he darts his attention away, the black widow in him crawling back up again, as his last hopes for quickly finding the terrorist’s video rapidly dissipate. He slaps his palm on his forehead, and gazes around as the dizzying emergency lights start to blind him. When he was trapped in rush hour traffic, obsessively listening to every radio station in the tri-state area and wishing he knew where his spidersuit is, he never heard any news about a tape being released, let alone other crucial details that would help Spiderman investigate. The last thing he wants to do right now is ask the police, or one of the eight thousand news vans in the area. If he just had his stupid spidersuit on him, he might be able to quietly prowl the area for evidence, at least late at night, under the cover of darkness. Assuming he even wants to do something like that, which he isn’t sure that he is. Without it though, he’s just Peter, one of a thousand members of the press mucking about.

He groans. “Did I hear right that this place is a dealership?” he keeps pushing, gesturing broadly. “Or at least, was? Before, you know…”

In Peter’s peripheral, Terry nods slightly. “Yeah, that’s what I’ve been hearing from the fuzz and some of the reporters around here. I mean, based on the amount of cars lying around, that’s kinda what it seems like anyway.”

That does make sense to Peter. Of course an eco-terrorist would attack a place that buys and sells one of the most polluting, carbon-emitting items on the market. And in Brooklyn too, the most populous borough in America’s most populous city. Peter suddenly finds himself deeply conflicted by what he’s struggling to process. The terrorist does have a righteous cause in fighting to stop climate change (if, of course, that is their actual goal), but violence - let alone this level of violence - is unequivocally not the answer. Peter is certain that climate change can be curbed without bloodshed, without death and destruction, without terror. Eco-terrorism just defeats its own purpose - case in point, the cataclysmic crater in this corner of Brooklyn. Nothing hits him harder, though, than the thought that he could have just listened to his spidey-senses and prevented what was essentially an act of genocide.

“God…” he groans again. “Alright, well… you guys try to talk to the cops or anything? Any of the… I don’t know, all the people around here? All these… poor, sobbing people? Who probably have funerals to plan…”

“Nah man, cops almost took my camera,” Terry answers. “I ain’t messing with these guys on a day like today, no way.”

One of the other photojournalists, Phil Fields, nods in agreement. “Yeah we almost got arrested twice today dude. It was awesome.”

Peter rolls his eyes. All eight of them. Based on what Spiderman has seen, you don’t want to get on the bad side of the NYPD. “Yeah, uh-huh… seriously though, you don’t want trouble. Rarely are shots ever that good. If you do get into trouble though, it’s usually safer to just comply and lawyer up. Usually…” Peter advises, before he mutters under his breath, “Who knows, maybe some eight-legged clown will bail you out…”

Then he looks back at them. “Anyways, I guess, let me know if you ever get any more news about…” His eight eyes crawl back to the ruins, doubting his sentence before it’s even finished. “…Well, whatever happened here…”

“Will do, yo,” Terry promises, before the three go back to comparing the gruesome grandeur on each of their glorified Kodaks.

Peter keeps examining the tattered carnage, wondering how long he’ll put up with staying here. Terry probably got all the best shots to capture the story, but J. Jonah will have Peter’s ass if he doesn’t get anything. Yet his efforts to envision how he’ll frame some kind of picture of this grisly, prime example of Spiderman completely and utterly letting the city down only gets blocked by images of the city getting blown up again by that chickenshit public menace. What could possibly be on that tape the terrorist released? If it was a manifesto, what would it say? If it was a list of demands, what could they be? If it was something else entirely, then what? And what will it take to bring a waste of oxygen piece of human filth like them to justice? Peter has never wanted answers for something so badly in his entire life, while also wishing that he never had to ask such sickening questions.

And then there’s the other matter weighing on him like a fat elephant: how would people react if they see Spiderman again? Would they welcome him back? Cheer him on and breathe a sigh of relief? Gawk and stare in awe at an actual real-life superhero? No, not even in his wildest dreams, Peter expects. Spiderman doesn’t deserve any of that, for starters. People would shout things like ‘oh now you decide to show up?’ or ‘where have you been?’ or ‘why didn’t you stop the bombing?’ or ‘you got a lot of balls showing your mask around here’ or ‘you know there were 50 different crimes last night and God knows how many since you’ve been gone? So why don’t you just get lost, again?’ - all things he was already asking or telling himself. Meanwhile, kids would cower behind their parent’s legs from the “scaywee man” like always. So there would be no high-fives. No waves hello. No excitement, celebration or hoopla, nor anything remotely close. There would just be an intense version of the usual sea of insults, cynicism, impugnment, middle fingers and shared pain. Cops with guns and tasers drawn, handcuffs twirling, sirens blaring, drones flying, a Digidog pouncing. The Daily Bugle and other mainstream media running stories and op-eds about the return of the ‘masked vigilante’ or the ‘wallcrawling outlaw’ or other ridiculous descriptions which make him grind his teeth, terms of anything but endearment that’ll also spew out of Mayor Adams in press conferences, televised addresses and other speeches before all kinds of arachnophobes increasingly supportive of - or at least unresistant to - letting the king of cops put the city under mass surveillance and the chokehold of police brutality. And not one person in the world understanding that he just wants to use his ‘great powers’ for good, which he takes as his ‘great responsibility.’ Or so he once thought. Peter wants to find the spider that bit him and squish the living hell out of it.

While feeling like he has something in common with the surreal crater and massive debris field before him, he tries to remember that he has an actual job to do here first, with a camera and a badge, not a mask and a warrant. A job not to help him, but Aunt May. That at least feels like something worth doing. His spidey-senses suddenly point him to a cop bending over to pick up a burnt and bloodied $100 bill, who then examines it as he straightens back up. Immediately, Peter hauls his camera to his eye and snaps a picture with the officer inspecting the bill, as a heap of debris and frantic paramedics aid screaming survivors in the background. He figures he can sell it as some kind of allegory for the devastation wrought by the terrorist, or something.

True to his ever-hopeful rose-tinted glasses though, Peter expects the officer to place the bill into an evidence bag he holds in his other hand. But he doesn’t. Instead, the officer discreetly stuffs the bill in his back pocket. Peter quickly snaps pictures of this flagrant display of ‘protecting and serving’ at its finest, though he doesn’t have a clue what he’ll actually do with the shots. But that quickly becomes the least of his concerns. Through his lens, he sees the officer nervously look around, as if he knows what he did is wrong. Then the officer spots Peter, camera still on his eye, aimed directly at him. Peter’s flaring spidey-senses detect that the officer’s terrible day has just gotten much worse, thinking that he got caught red-handed by a suspect for the bombing or at least some idiot who’ll use these pictures against him. Normally the officer might be more lenient, according to Peter’s spidey-senses, but not on a day like today. Not at all. The officer’s brows furrow, his face reddens, and one of his hands immediately points at Peter while the other jumps to his holster.

“Hey! Lemme see that camera! Gimme that right now!” the officer hollers at Peter, as he starts stomping towards him, practically with steam billowing out of his ears like something out of a cartoon.

Peter drops his camera faster than a cinder block off the Empire State Building. He freezes, leaning much more towards human than super.

“Oh shit Pete…” he hears Terry quietly react, as the three other photojournalists watch with their pants turning brown.

Words fail Peter. Everything fails him. If he was in his spidersuit right now, he’d just swing away, maybe wrap the officer in a nice cocoon. But he’s not. He’s just some rubbernecking nobody with a camera finding himself at the wrong place and the wrong time, like he was when that douchebag spider bit him.

The officer draws his gun and points it at Peter as he stampedes toward him. “I SAID GIMME THAT RIGHT NOW!”

Then, as if things weren’t bad enough, the first officer from before joins in. He too draws his gun and starts marching hard enough to crack the ground even further. “I fucking knew it! LET’S SEE SOME HANDS, ASSHOLE!” he hollers.

Peter’s spidey-senses are on maximum ultra-overdrive. He can sense nearly everybody within fifty feet watching in horror, anticipating the second tragedy of the day. He can sense that the two officers with guns pointed at him have an aggressive ‘shoot first question later’ mentality today, and compliance probably won’t save him. So Peter decides something has to give. Even at an atrocious scene of death and destruction like this, few things matter more to him than Aunt May, Uncle Ben, Gwen, Mary Jane and Harry - maybe even the city itself, despite everything that it’s put him through. And he’s had it with cowering in the shadows. He’s had it with having guns pointed at him. He’s had it with seeing appalling crime scene after appalling crime scene. It used to be that Peter has had it with being Spiderman, but now it’s more like Spiderman has had it with being Peter. Mask be damned, the wallcrawler emerges once again.

Against his own advice to the other photojournalists, he bolts. Bolts away from the cops. Away from the scene. Away from all this chaos and suffering and madness. But he doesn’t run like a normal person. No, he runs faster than any human on Earth ever has. Faster than Usain Bolt on steroids with a turbo jetpack. Faster than any bullet ever fired. As fast as a spider escaping a wad of tissues. As if he has eight legs instead of two. The surrounding, torn-up buildings blur like the stars do when the Millennium Falcon shifts into hyperspace. Behind him, the officers drop their weapons in a stunned slack-jawed daze like that of all the other witnesses, as one cop mutters, “How the…”

Peter races to his car intending to high-tail it out of there, a lot like some of the criminals he halted in their getaway cars, much to the chagrin of the police and the victims of simultaneous crimes he couldn’t stop. Had he just now resisted arrest? And stooped to the level of those whom he used to web, essentially proving everyone right about his vigilantism? It’s already too late, this is no time to reflect, nor reconsider, nor take moral inventory. Not like he can run back and apologize or explain himself - that would only make matters worse. Might make the cops pump him full of lead, or at least give him a black eye - assuming they weren’t originally going to do one or both of those. As much as it makes his blood boil that people - that police - saw him use his powers without a mask, which was surely caught on the officers’ body cameras, Peter finds this more poignant than anything, because it all goes back to the night that that garbage, vermin, despicable, disgusting, fuckface spider bit him.

To be continued…

[spiderman]

3. The Dominoes That Felled Peter Parker

Two years ago, Peter strolled through the Daily Bugle’s headquarters for the first time in eons.

As a freelancer, he rarely set foot in this sprawling cube farm masquerading as a stumpy skyscraper, literally and figuratively overshadowed by the Daily Globe and the New York Times both down the street - it had probably been weeks since the last time he visited. All the photojournalists normally submitted work on the web, but today the Daily Bugle’s entire site was down - even their emails - so Peter had to manually hand in his work on a flash drive to Vic, his immediate supervisor. This had happened a few times before, so today’s incident bounced off him like a bullet that hit Superman. The Daily Bugle’s website was usually laggy and glitchy anyways, which Peter heard was because they couldn’t afford to focus on such a top priority despite efforts to stay afloat in a rapidly-digitizing industry, making him wonder how much longer it would be until he needed to look elsewhere. On his way out of the Graphics Department, he passed by J. Jonah Jameson’s office, who stopped him dead in his tracks.

Whistling, J. Jonah called out, “Hey! Parker! Hold on a sec!”

Peter nervously stepped into J. Jonah’s ridiculous office overstuffed with cigar boxes, poster-sized pictures of the city and a gorgeous view of Midtown Manhattan behind him. On his desk was an oversized golden nameplate, blaring that he was the proud Graphics Editor of a kitschy tabloid fighting to become a legitimate and trusted news source equal if not superior to the two world-renowned publications headquartered down the street. “What’s up John?” Peter responded with a slight quiver in his voice, hoping today wasn’t the day he’d get a pink slip.

J. Jonah rummaged through a pile of papers on his desk, then furiously clicked through his desktop monitor, muttering a string of flower-wilting obscenities under his breath at the Daily Bugle’s imploded website. Then he assured Peter, “Just got a last minute job. Figured you would like it.”

Internally breathing a sigh of relief, Peter probed, “Uh, sure, what’s up?”

Uncle Ben taught him to always be open-minded, which was often applicable in the many instances in which J. Jonah randomly had a last minute assignment. Peter usually accepted such tasks, since being behind the camera was one of the only things he loved more than fattening up his paychecks, at least while he still could get paid from this drain-circling sweatshop. He thanked his lucky stars that he wouldn’t have to dust off his résumé and portfolio today. He always thought that if he ever got an interview with the Daily Globe or the New York Times, he would immediately go out and buy a scratch-off.

J. Jonah went back to rummaging through his desk, before he triumphantly pulled out a wrinkly coffee-stained piece of paper as if it were the Sword of Excalibur, which he held out as Peter walked up and took it. It was a rough draft of an article to be published tomorrow in print and online, with an address scrawled at the top. To Peter’s usual disappointment with any assignment, it was written by someone other than Gwen, although that didn’t deflate him in any way - it just didn’t boost his interest like Gwen’s stories did. “You went to NYU right?” J. Jonah asked back.

Peter nodded. “Yeah, class of 2016,” he answered as he glossed over the sheet. “New York University professor wins Nobel Prize,” the headline read, with a subheading that elaborated, “Dr. Lesya Tkachenko of Kyiv pursued study on Chernobyl spiders even after moving research to New York to escape Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

Explained J. Jonah, “Some biology professor there just won a Nobel Prize for her work on mutant spiders from Chernobyl or something. She’s teaching a class tonight around 7:30, I told her I’d send someone down there to get a pic of her or something before class. We’ll add it to your paycheck next Friday, or some other Friday if the damn checks get delayed again. Can you do it?”

Peter nodded again, as memories of diligent and artsy college days studying photography at NYU flashed through his mind. It had been several years since he graduated. He wondered if he could still remember where everything was. “Yeah, yeah I can do that,” he volunteered with his best attempt at enthusiasm and excitement, which he thought he should be feeling anyway since this was a rather unique assignment in which he’d go back to his old stomping grounds and meet a Nobel laureate. But his heart was also sinking as he thought about getting home late to Aunt May and Uncle Ben, and not having time to visit Gwen a few floors down.

“Great,” J. Jonah cheered. Then he went back to aggressively clicking through his desktop monitor with a war face as if ready to throw the whole thing out the window. “I’ll let you know if our godforsaken, ratshit website gets back online, but if not, then hand it in to Vic by 11 tonight. He can take it at his house. If you don’t know where it is, call him and ask,” J. Jonah instructed. “Don’t screw this up, Parker.”

By 11? At Vic’s house somewhere in Staten Island or Brooklyn? For one picture of a probably below the fold story that might also get little engagement online, circling his career around the same cul-de-sac as always? Why was he agreeing to this? Maybe the job was worth it just to go back to NYU and meet a Nobel laureate, although Peter couldn’t help but wonder if he should dust off his résumé and portfolio anyways. “I’ll do my best,” he promised before he hustled out the door, checking his watch on the way out. It was just after 6:45 PM, and NYU’s main campus in Greenwich Village was fairly close, maybe ten to fifteen minutes away depending on gnarly rush hour traffic.

Gwen, Aunt May and Uncle Ben were all sympathetic as to why he was “having a late night” as he so sandwiched it between apologies. He ultimately made it to Greenwich Village in decent time, despite bumper-to-bumper gridlock. But he had not gotten there in enough time to wander nostalgically through Washington Square Park outside NYU’s main campus and gaze at all the breathtaking sights where he shot tacky, overly-artsy C+ pictures for his classes, like the Arch, the statue of George Washington on the Arch, the fountain, the bronze statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the bronze bust of Alexander Lyman Holley, gorgeous autumn foliage and scenic spring flowerbeds. Peter missed the days when he was mainly taking pictures for the sake of art, instead of paychecks. But try as he might to soak up this little homecoming of his with a high-caliber ultra-professional camera that completely outclassed the crappy junk cameras he used in college, he had to remind himself that right now he could only focus on the illegible address that J. Jonah hastily scribbled on a raggedy crumpled sheet. Whatever it said, Peter had a decent idea where to go, and kept hurrying.

When he eventually found the building, he might’ve been locked out of his appointment if he hadn’t caught a student on her way out of a side door, who kindly held the door open for him as if she thought he were also a student despite the camera slung around his neck. The address that J. Jonah gave him didn’t list a room number, nor even the floor, but it at least seemed to match a sign posted at the front of the building. He considered calling him, but by now J. Jonah was probably long gone from his office, puffing on cigars in his ritzy Manhattan penthouse ready to rip apart any brave soul who dare disturb him with work matters after hours unless it was an absolute, ‘on this day in history’ emergency. And Vic wouldn’t know the answer, certainly not any of the other photojournalists. Based on his experiences at NYU, he knew the school didn’t list any public contact information for the professor on their website just like they didn’t for any of his professors back in the day, out of what he figured was a security precaution. He might be able to get Gwen to reach out to the writer and get the professor’s contact information from them, but that would take too long and cause him to miss his appointment. Peter sighed. As was often the frustrating case, he was on his own - freelancing at its finest.

Moving to the edge of the hallway so as not to block the way like J. Jonah did with this assignment, he decided to scan for clues through the rough draft under the chicken scratch address. “Twenty years ago, researchers at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv formally posed a question many life scientists had long sought to answer: how did the effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster impact surviving flora and fauna, especially those which eventually returned to the area?” The draft then went on to broadly describe the worst nuclear disaster in history, and the lethal impact it had on the surrounding environment and nearby population centers. “After the disaster, authorities established the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to protect the public from the most irradiated areas. To this day, many people believe that the CEZ is a barren and uninhabitable wasteland due to extreme levels of toxicity. However, the CEZ has actually become a flourishing wildlife sanctuary, as the abandonment of cities and towns allowed nature to retake areas once claimed by modern civilization. Today the CEZ is the third-largest nature reserve in mainland Europe, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.”

The draft still wasn’t helping Peter, and he was running out of time. He decided to start meandering through the blindingly-white hall decorated with illustrations of DNA, molecules, animals and other subjects relevant to a side of NYU that Peter had never seen before. Carefully, he peered into different labs and rooms, hoping to find something or someone that would point him in the right direction amongst the fields of microscopes, laboratory glassware and stacks upon stacks of foot-thick textbooks. But he didn’t know what exactly he should look for. Starting to sweat as the expiring clock upped the ante, Peter had no choice but to stop again and keep hunting for something, anything, in the draft that would help him.

“A team of researchers headed by Dr. Lesya Tkachenko received special funding to study a species of spider - the Araneus diadematus, better known as the European garden spider, the cross orbweaver and other names - which was found maintaining thriving nests close to the nuclear power plant. Since the CEZ is one of the world’s most radioactively-contaminated areas, researchers theorized that local flora and fauna - including A. diadematus - could have undergone genetic mutations from high levels of radiation exposure, which raised questions as to how exactly they and their offspring were affected.”

Feeling a little stupid, Peter figured - duh - he should look for spiders, or webs, or something of that ilk. But were they even here in this particular building? The subheading appeared to indicate that they might be. If so, he had a great and simple photo in mind: the professor standing next to the spiders. But he first needed to look for confirmation that the spiders were actually nearby. He skipped towards the end of the draft, but wound up finding it in the middle.

“As the Russian invasion of Ukraine loomed, Dr. Tkachenko accepted an invitation to move the mutated spiders to NYU’s main campus in order to finish the study in safety, despite challenges presented by the recent birth of the next generation of mutated spiders, which formed the last piece of the study’s puzzle as the final draft of the analysis was being written.”

It also formed the last piece of Peter’s puzzle. Maybe if he found the spiders here, he would also find Dr. Shelob. Of course, they could also be in another building, he considered. So he kept looking, and looking, and looking all throughout this one, even though he was getting an increasingly bad feeling for what he felt like was something other than the rapidly dwindling time. At this rate, he figured he would probably find the professor right as her class starts, and then what would he do? Loiter for a few hours?

But then, at the very end of the hall, Peter thought he found an eight-legged jackpot. In the back of one lab overrun with state of the art equipment and wooden desks used as bases for mountains of textbooks, he spotted a couple rows of what looked like fish tanks filled with mossy rocks, tiny trees and some of the shiniest, most intricate spiderwebs he’d ever seen. This had to be it. Peter wandered into the lab, leaving the door slightly ajar so someone would see him. “Hello?” he called out. But no one answered. He wondered how security around here could be so lax.

Peter approached the spiders in their little enclosures. Terrariums? He wasn’t sure what to call their habitats because they appeared specially-designed for this study, but terrarium was his best guess. The outside of each tank had a piece of masking tape with something written on it in what looked like Cyrillic, so he figured he was in the right place, or at least close to it. Many of the spiders seemed calm and gentle, peacefully relaxing on their shimmering webs or on some part of their ornate tanks like the mossy rocks or outstretched branches on their little trees. Others seemed downright deranged. A couple of them were banging their heads against the glass, or haphazardly spinning misshapen webs that kept falling apart. None of them outwardly looked like “mutant spiders from Chernobyl” as J. Jonah kindly put it, although Peter wasn’t sure what exactly he was expecting. For the most part, they looked like the typical spiders he would normally see in the fall, weaving huge webs across paths and trails as if expecting to eat like kings.

The mutant spiders all had what seemed like a specially-made, thin mesh net that barely formed a ceiling at the top of their habitats, which seemed open enough to give them fresh air, get them water and cool their interiors, but not enough for them to escape. And each had a little ceramic pool fused to the top of their trees, which were filled with water - except for one poor spider, whose pool appeared bone dry. That spider was feverishly trying to break through the mesh roof for a little water dispenser hanging overhead, the nozzle having been accidentally turned away from the pool somehow, and dripping water onto the side of the tank as opposed to the inside. Peter nervously glanced around, still not seeing anyone else in the lab. He figured it wouldn’t hurt to try and help this one spider. Would it? He had a sinking feeling about it, but assumed it was just because he might get caught messing with the study. All he had to do was move one little nozzle to help this one little spider get some water. Cautiously, he reached for the nozzle, intending to pull it back to its rightful place. And that’s when his life changed forever.

Peter nudged the nozzle back over the pool, and as water started to drip into it, he triumphantly began to withdraw his hand - only to graze the mesh roof where the spider had nearly busted out. Suddenly, he was electrified by a sharp stabbing pain near his wrist which was accompanied by the sensation of sharp sinking needles. He yelped and quickly snapped his hand back, finding that it was swelling and turning red around what looked like two little bite marks.

What the hell just happened? Peter panicked. The draft mentioned that these types of spiders only bite humans if provoked, which he believed he hadn’t. Maybe it was from the spider’s inability to get water. Or maybe things were different for the mutated descendants of survivors of a nuclear accident, he rationalized. The pain in his hand was rapidly growing, spreading through his wrist and into his arm, causing him to suck his teeth. Hurriedly crumpling the draft into a ball and stuffing it into his pocket to free up his other hand, he glanced at the stupid spider who just whooped his ass despite being a fraction of his size, still flailing all over the mesh roof. “Fuck… ahrrg, you eight-legged motherf - ahhggg,” he chided between groans. “I was only ahhhg helping…”

Peter wobbled back from the terrariums, tightly gripping his wrist as the agony breached his shoulders and seemed to be charging straight to his heart. He knew he wouldn’t be able to get any pictures of the professor now. Would he have to go to the hospital instead? As a freelancer, he didn’t work enough hours to enroll in the Daily Bugle’s employee health plans, so all he had was the cheapest private insurance his paychecks could barely cover. And the Daily Bugle would probably laugh if he tried to file for worker’s comp over a measly spider bite, if that’s even what just happened. But all of this was quickly taking a backseat.

The room was starting to spin. His heart was pounding like a racecar with a brick on the gas. Sweat was pouring out of him to the point that it dripped. Peter stumbled out of the lab and back into the hall with his shoulder blasting the door wide open, as he fiercely clutched his wrist like it was a winning lottery ticket, except that it was as far from that as anything could ever be. He booked it to a trash can next to a bench a few feet in front of him, where he doubled over and puked like a drunken frat boy with food poisoning on a dizzying rollercoaster.

After what felt like hours, a pale Peter soaked in sweat then straightened back up and contemplated whether or not he should call 911. The only reason he thought he shouldn’t was because his insurance probably wouldn’t cover an ambulance ride, and he’d be burdened with an outrageously unaffordable four or five digit bill from the world’s most expensive taxi. So Peter assumed it would be better to just haul ass to his car, if he could even make it without collapsing, and from there he would decide whether to go to the hospital or just drive home, curl up under the sheets and hope he’d live to tell J. Jonah and Vic he didn’t get the shots because he wasn’t feeling well. Obviously, and rightfully, they would be pissed, but Peter didn’t have any other choice. If the Daily Bugle’s ancient abacus of a website had just been at its normal level of barely functioning today - and if the spider had been getting water, if J. Jonah had given him a more specific address, if he had not accepted the assignment at all, if the spiders had been moved anywhere else, if a certain murderous Russian dictator had not invaded Ukraine, if nuclear disaster had not befallen Chernobyl - he would probably be having a nice evening right now with Gwen, or Aunt May and Uncle Ben. Instead he had to fight with the worst spider bite of all time - or so it seemed at first.

As Peter began putting one leg in front of the other, he realized something was absolutely, deeply wrong - but not in an “I’m about to meet God” type of way. He was suddenly able to walk faster than anybody ever had before, as if his legs had morphed into supersonic jet engines. The hallway blurred as he zipped from the trash can to the door - at least 20 or so yards, he estimated - in the kind of time that not only seemed to shatter Olympic records, but all the known laws of physics. Peter wondered if anybody had seen his lightning-fast jump, but he had a bizarre, apparently psychic sense that the closest people to him were some students early for class in a room down the hall and somewhere across from the lab in which he was bitten, although he couldn’t pinpoint exactly where or how many students there were. He knew it wasn’t Dr. Tkachenko’s class, though - she was in her office on the third floor, but Peter only had a few minutes before she walked down the hall to start her class.

But how could he know even a tiny bit of any of that? Something told him it was directly related to the spider bite. Spiders, Peter had long known, often have excellent reflexes, intuition and awareness of their surroundings - especially when tissues, shoes or other squish factors are involved. But this was much more than that. Something that bordered on extrasensory perception, probably like that of spiders mutated over the course of decades by a nuclear disaster. Spider senses? Spidey-senses? Whatever it was, Peter was more enamored with the immense relief he felt as the pain started to subside. His quasi-teleportation and strangely heightened cognition both seemed to have made him feel better than ever, but he was still getting rocked by occasional waves of vicious nausea like swings of the Reaper’s scythe. So something, he deduced, was still horribly wrong. Something within him, whether it was his supposed ‘spidey-senses’ or something else, was screaming that the spider bite had somehow bombed his entire system, like something out of a cheesy Hollywood superhero movie. He couldn’t figure out what had actually happened though. His prevailing belief was that the spider, though belonging to a species not normally known to bite, had infected him with something that was making him sick and delirious - like some of the other spiders bashing their heads against the glass.

Peter heaved the exit open with enough force to nearly knock them off their hinges. But the door was strangely stuck to his hands, like bubblegum super-glued to hair. He frantically shook off the door as if it were filthy disease-ridden dirt - and wound up ripping it off the doorframe, accidentally chucking it to the ground before he lunged for it at light speed and briskly caught it in midair. As he nervously glanced around for witnesses, thankfully seeing none, he then lifted up the heavy wooden door like it was made of helium and gently leaned it against the frame, taking extreme caution to not get his hands weirdly stuck again, though he did have to unglue his fingertips. Nobody seemed to notice anything, and his newfound ESP or whatever seemed to agree. Yep, this is normal, Peter tried to convince himself.

He continued scurrying to his car in his best efforts to maintain typical human speeds, wondering if he was actually experiencing reality or just one of those cliché hallucinations that fictional characters have when they’re dying. But he was far from greeting his parents on the other side. Peter was about to find out that his life was only just beginning.

To be continued…

[spiderman]

4. Goblin Mode

Under the cover of darkness and a black spandex head-to-toe bodysuit, Norman Osborn plants bombs all over the most lucrative and popular car dealership in Brooklyn long after it closed for the night.

These are far from the trite, homemade bombs made in the oven like Grandma’s cookies, or welded together with random scrap metal like an amateur hour gimmick. No, these are classified, state of the art, high-tech OsCorp bombs made for the Navy Seals. Nicknamed pumpkin bombs, these had been carefully crafted to make dynamite, C4 and atom bombs look like birthday candles. Carefully crafted to raise absolute hell with the firepower of the Fourth of July, Hiroshima and World War III combined, the kind of kaboom that would make the MythBusters wet themselves.

And the nickname isn’t much of a misnomer - impressively small and lightweight for the kind of crater they can blast, each pumpkin bomb is a modest orange sphere that can fit in the palm of one’s hand and weigh like a feather. They can be flattened or folded to fit into tight spaces, and can self-camouflage by changing their color and texture to that of their surroundings. They can be rigged via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to detonate later, or they can be detonated immediately by pulling a pin - anyone who handles one must always be careful not to blow themselves up. They can even hide connections to devices, sense tampering or detect premature detonation and self-correct for any such contingencies. These bombs, the result of decades of top secret testing known only to the uppermost echelons of OsCorp and the U.S. Department of Defense, are considered so advanced that a person could be sitting right next to one and not know it until it’s too late.

Norman was supposed to make millions off of them, but decided it was more worthwhile to shift the family business into green technology, against the vociferous protests of the DOD and other longtime clients, plus investors and the entire Board of Directors including his own son Harry (of course, Harry was only an intern while a freshman in business school at NYU then). But Norman did keep a pile of the pumpkin bombs. He never had a reason for locking them away in a shuttered storeroom labeled ‘Top Secret - Keep Out’ at OsLab V, but he had a nagging feeling that maybe one day he would find a good reason. Now he knows that tomorrow, at rush hour, that day is going to come.

Norman plants bombs on some lampposts in a row of cars, and then puts more under a handful of those cars, ones he knows for sure won’t sell. In the weeks he had remotely spied on this dealership with hidden OsCams, he had seen many of these four-wheeled holes in the ozone layer rust endlessly on the lot, getting neither visitors nor test drives. To him this was maddening. The dealership would be printing money if they had just ditched these gas-guzzling deathtraps for the new line of fully-electric OsCars. But no, they just had to cite the same “safety concerns” and “quality issues” as nearly every other dealership in America. “We are sorry, but we cannot accept the OsCar unless OsCorp addresses its many public concerns,” the dealership had responded to their sales pitch via email, regurgitating the same bullshit propaganda that must have originated with one of OsCorp’s competitors - probably Tesla or Ford, Norman places the blame on their multimillion-dollar loss. Well, when he gets his way now, no dealership is going to be selling any gas-powered cars at all. Especially not the largest and most successful dealership in the Big Apple, the one place in this rotten city more responsible for trapping carbon in the atmosphere than any other, the first of many such polluting places that could have simply invested in OsCorp’s clean and harmless chariot of the future.

More bombs under unsellable banes of Earth’s existence. More bombs discreetly stuck to lampposts, much like the light about to go out in many people’s industrious lives. Then Norman stomps to the main showroom, as an empty pill bottle clangs around in his backpack - to him, a trophy for his bravery in going off all his psychiatric medicine some months ago. But also a good excuse if he’s caught tonight.

He surmises that Emily, his wife of 22 years, would be immensely proud of him. When she was killed by Hurricane Sandy 12 years ago, Norman’s life split into a ‘before’ and ‘after.’ It was an especially ironic and cruel twist of fate for Emily to fall victim to a hurricane as far north as New York, since she was a lifelong ardent climate activist and the former co-chair of the Green Party who blamed rare northerly hurricanes (like Hurricane Irene the year before) on the climate crisis. In the months leading up to her death, she had been publicly sounding the alarms over climate change’s responsibility for the surge of major storms in the Big Apple, and warning that things were only going to get worse unless there was worldwide direct mobilization against climate change. Before Hurricane Sandy, Norman was firmly against climate change action, believing that it was just a hippie liberal utopian fantasy that threatened OsCorp’s overhead and profit margins, a mindset which frequently formed its own hurricane over their marriage. But when he lowered Emily six feet into the cold damp ground, Norman suddenly got the nauseating sense that she had always been right, that he could have just listened to her and done something to save her. So he promised her that he would do everything in his power to make sure no such disasters would ever hit New York again. That climate change would never take anyone’s life again. He was going to refocus OsCorp onto green technology and monopolize a solution to the climate crisis. He was going to mobilize the whole world against fossil fuels and their deadly impact on Earth, through innovation, activism and revolution. Since he failed to save Emily, costing him the love of his life and driving his son to drugs, it was his duty to save the world.

But throughout the next dozen years of dwindling OsCorp valuation and threats of termination as CEO by the furious Board of Directors prompted by even angrier investors, Norman found himself increasingly alone in his quest to save the world. He thought he would become a venerated leader - a hero even - in the green cause, inspiring a wave of ‘Osborn-Agains’ to renounce their unsustainable ways and live harmoniously with Earth. He thought OsCorp would be hailed as groundbreaking and cutting edge. He thought he’d get a Nobel Peace Prize, or at least become the Time Person of the Year. He thought people would actually show up to his rallies, protests and marches. His overwhelming confidence, and fudged sales projections “showing”, that OsCorp would go supernova in green technology was frequently the only thing that spared him from being fired as CEO at the apoplectic hands of the Board and investors.

But to Norman’s surprise, he and OsCorp only became the butt of endless ridicule by talk shows, memes, columnists, documentaries and word of mouth despite the millions he sunk in swaying public opinion, slowly hardening his resolve against giving humanity the benefit of the climate change doubt, and leading him to suspect that the only thing that will make people take his beliefs seriously is violence. Norman had gone from one of the top 10 wealthiest people in the world to struggling to barely lift OsCorp into the Forbes 500, making him fiercely determined to do whatever must be done to save himself and OsCorp. Even to this day, everybody and their mother believes that he’s just another insincere cookie-cutter billionaire (well, multimillionaire now) looking to make a quick buck, exploiting the climate crisis for his own personal and financial gain, even though he’s always been painfully aware that there’s nothing quick about these bucks.

Sure, he might’ve had to commit the largest round of layoffs in American history when he abruptly overhauled OsCorp. Sure, he might’ve made countless disparaging remarks about “spineless liberals” being “too weak on climate change,” or about “fascist Republicans” being “too insane to even admit the reality of the climate crisis.” Sure, he might’ve botched a run for president that couldn’t even clinch the Green Party’s nomination - twice. Sure, OsCorp may have put out a number of “shoddy” and “questionable” products according to “experts,” the feds and other morons who bought into their competitor’s outrageous lies, drowning OsCorp in lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit as well as investigation after investigation after investigation. Sure, there may have been numerous disgruntled OsCorp employees who became whistleblowers despite Norman’s efforts to silence them with money, litigation and even the unthinkable. But Norman has always been vocal about his mission to save the world, despite the fact that no one - not the brutish Board of Directors, not the imbecilic investors, not the pestilent public, not even his druggie only child Harry - believes him. So if the world - especially the Board - isn’t going to believe him, then he’s going to force everyone to believe him.

With each pumpkin bomb he straps to the topmost car dealership in New York’s topmost borough, Norman can feel that he’s inching closer and closer to proving everyone wrong about him and his beliefs. To curbing climate change and not only saving the world, but OsCorp and himself. Emily’s death will finally be worth something, even if it means the death of “innocent” carbon footprints.

He jams his lock picking kit into the main entrance of the showroom and wriggles the lock before he busts the doors open. The dealership’s alarm system starts beeping, prompting Norman to sprint to the keypad a few feet from the door and type in the passcode he had seen employees enter day in and day out. Thankfully, it reminds him to turn back on the security cameras he managed to hijack and disable with an OsTablet before sneaking onto the lot, a failsafe in case the bombs don’t go off and wipe out the cameras along with the entire dealership plus any forensic evidence Norman leaves. The alarms stop, but he figures he should make this quick in case someone shows up.

Clicking on a flashlight, Norman is immediately repulsed by what he sees splayed out in the main showroom. The new 2025 Hottest Year on Record. The new 2024 Category 6 Hurricane. The new 2025 Sixth Mass Extinction Event. Each could have been the 2024 or 2025 OsCar, but no, one OsCar out of ten thousand blew up on an Arizona highway in the middle of summer and caused a three-car pileup that killed the driver, bringing about whistleblowers, a recall and an investigation which all asserted that production had been “rushed” and safety protocols “breached.” (Well, OsCorp had to take the lead somehow, that’s how a lot of businesses do it these days - Boeing, for example.) But instead of the OsCar, the showroom is a monument to the climate crisis, reminiscent not of all the fines slapped on OsCorp’s wrists, but of Emily drowning in her upturned submerged Prius in streets flash-flooded by Hurricane Sandy, hammering the driver’s side window until she was forever stuck with her fists on the glass - an unforgettable sight with which to be introduced to her body that haunts Norman’s dreams every single night, making him beg for insomnia. Each of the showroom’s eyesores gets at least two bombs somewhere crafty like the glovebox or the steering column, although Norman is starting to run low on ka-blams. He hurries all throughout the building to plant bombs under salespeople’s desks, in offices, behind water coolers, even in the bathrooms - wherever lots of people might be present. He only has a handful left when he runs out of places to put them, but he figures he can place the rest outside the showroom.

For a split second he wonders what would happen if he gets caught. Police would take him in for sure, but he has a perfectly good reason why he’s here. Internally, he rehearses that explanation for the umpteenth time, a fairly simple excuse partly rooted in truth as well as rumors swirling in the tabloids, like the one for which Harry’s dumb best friend works. “Oh, I went off my meds, I’m so confused! I don’t know where I am,” Norman would explain it away, slowly reaching into his backpack to sneak out the empty pill bottle.

It’s not entirely a lie. It’s more… convenient than anything. For years, Norman had been taking a fistful of psychiatric medicine, necessitated primarily by a written threat from the Board of Directors co-signed by several key investors to hold a vote on his termination unless he seeks help for his “grief challenges” which worsened after Emily died, Harry started showing up to Board meetings high and OsCorp should have become the number 1 company for green technology. It was a threat that often still pops up to this day - a couple months ago, the Board threatened again to vote on his termination unless OsCorp’s share price is net positive for at least one quarter. But he always hated those pills, even more than the Board. He thought the pills clouded his judgment. Made it hard for him to think clearly. Made him commit critical blunders as CEO, as a presidential candidate, as a father. It’s the pills that caused both Norman and OsCorp to fall on hard times, because they hindered his leadership abilities as well as his senses of logic and reasoning. So when the Board threatened to fire him a couple months ago, Norman secretly threw away all those stupid pills - antidepressants for depression, mood stabilizers for borderline personality disorder, antipsychotics for schizophrenia, experimental drugs for psychopathy and narcissism, a pharmacy’s worth of psychiatric drugs - and even cancelled his next psychiatry appointment. He was going to try and turn OsCorp around and avoid termination without medication, because in all the years without meds, OsCorp was a jack of all trades, and clan Osborn was thriving. Now OsCorp is a master of absolutely none and his family is a shadow of itself. So far, he believes he was right to ditch those pills, despite rising concerns from the Board and Harry that he seems a little off-kilter. Since going off those mind-numbing meds, Norman feels as though a dense fog has finally lifted from his mind, and soon, OsCorp will be profitable again and he will avoid getting canned from the business that his father started.

He buries a bomb in a little flowerbed outside the main entrance. He nestles another bomb underneath a trash can. Then he takes the last bomb out of his backpack, which then passes in front of a floodlight as he considers where to put it, the sight of which causes him to double over in maniacal laughter with visions of the dealership laid to waste, like a war zone in an apocalypse. The shock and awe of the bombing is sure to spark an OsCorp renaissance, because when the dealership is blown to smithereens - and when more attacks are threatened, when a full-scale revolution is launched - the relentless fear and horrendous violence will force everyone to surrender their unsustainable lifestyles and start buying green, catapulting OsCorp’s share price and cementing Norman as the captain of industry he should have become years ago - effectively making green by forcing the world to go green. Climate change will go the way of the dinosaurs that get turned into oil instead of museum exhibits, and everyone will point to Norman as the trendsetter, the leader, the hero, whom everyone had always been wrong about. He’ll get elected and reelected president, during which time he’ll ban fracking, subsidize clean energy and lead the United States to achieve net zero emissions. He might even run for a third term, and a fourth, and a fifth, he’ll stay in power as long as it takes to save the world - the U.S. Marshals will have to drag him out of the Oval Office kicking and screaming, and from there he’ll just reestablish himself at Camp David and turn all the Osborn-Agains into his own personal army. Whenever he retires, whenever he is done saving the world, Emily will have finally stopped rolling in her grave, and his boy might finally get sober. He figures he should have gone off his meds months before he did.

No one will ever catch him for this bombing either, nor any of the others that may follow, of that he’s sure. The NYPD or the FBI will chase down endless dead-end leads. The best investigative journalists in the world will all find themselves scraping the bottom of the barrel. Even that public menace Spiderman - assuming he’s still alive or a free man - won’t be able to stop him, seeing as how that vigilante loser probably already gave up on fighting crime. No one will ever suspect that the CEO of OsCorp brought civilization to terms with the havoc it’s wreaking on the planet - that would almost be like accusing Bill Gates of being the head of Al Qaeda. Norman is certain that he will be like the Zodiac Killer or Jack the Ripper times a thousand, except his actions will have a lasting positive effect on the world. He should have gone off his meds years ago.

He flattens the last bomb and chucks it onto the roof, before hurrying back inside to turn the alarm back on. On his way out of the showroom, he closes it up by locking the door with the lock picking kit, then reaches into his backpack and takes out another crown jewel from ‘the good ol’ days’ - as the Board and some investors mistakenly call it - when OsCorp was rivaling Apple, Microsoft and Google in smart technology. The OsTablet, the same one he used to overpower the security cameras, was once an infinitely superior alternative to the iPad despite what consumers, “experts” and sales records may have thought.

Norman scurries from the main showroom down to the street at the end of the lot, as he powers on the OsTab and connects to each of the bombs he planted. He doesn’t even make it to the street before he’s able to rig each and every one of them to blow at rush hour tomorrow, the most polluting time of day, in a staggered order - two explosions back-to-back, one to take out the first victims and then another to take out good samaritans and first responders, unless he screwed something up like he did when he was on those pills. He wonders how anyone could say this is an ‘inferior device’ with ‘inferior capabilities,’ except for maybe the screen repeatedly freezing. After using the OsTab to power back on the dealership’s security cameras, he marches away like an Olympic gold medalist stepping off the podium. He then takes the subway back to OsCorp headquarters while hiding his celebrity face under a non-descript hat, face mask and outfit. The next stage of his getaway involves hitching a limo ride to his Manhattan manor once he gets back to the OsTower - his normal ride home despite efforts to take eco-friendlier public transportation, which were shot down by the Board over “concerns for his safety,” making him look like a hypocrite even when he’s tried to convince the world otherwise. He figures that at least for tonight the limo will be useful as part of his alibi, rather than more carbon in the atmosphere. Any witnesses to this late night excursion - especially his driver and the OsTower’s security guards, whom he’d practiced sneaking past beyond security camera range for weeks - are only going to hear that he was just “burning the midnight oil,” the same excuse he’d tell police if ever questioned, that way the security guards and his driver could then back him up. Norman figures he would have never conjured - let alone carried out - so brilliant and meticulous a plan if still medicated, though he did have to cave a little into sweet impulsivity when choosing where to place the bombs. But that won’t matter when the bombs go bye-bye along with the dealership tomorrow.

Later strolling out of the OsTower after successfully slinking back into his office and changing into his normal suit and tie, the security guards wish him goodnight and the driver likewise buys his alibi. Norman spends the limo ride on the OsTab, discreetly reviewing his written manifesto and a tape of him in disguise declaring his demands to the world, both of which will automatically be released to the biggest media outlets in the city and the nation the second that the bombs go boom. He grins from ear to ear all throughout, taking this as proof positive he should have never taken those pills at all. Emily would definitely agree, and soon, so would the Board, the investors and Harry, although he isn’t planning on telling any of them. All they’ll need to know is that OsCorp’s share price and valuation are skyrocketing to the Moon - literally and figuratively blowing up.

The Sun rises at dawn several hours later, bathing the dealership in the last sheen of morning light in which it will ever glow. Employees of the dealership begin to wander in and open up shop, completely unaware of the target that’s been placed on their backs. Soon, they - along with the city, the nation and the world - will cower in terror. Everyone is about to beg for mercy from the wrath of the Green Goblin.

To be continued…

[spiderman]

5. Out Came The Sun And Dried Up All The Rain

With a lead foot, Peter recklessly races away from the smoldering blast zone with tears raining down his cheeks and fists pounding the driver’s side door, as FBI trucks roll past him going the other way.

He wipes his eyes and puts a second hand on the wheel, obsessively glancing in the rearview mirror while he zips like a racecar driver through silent streets. No cops seem to be tailing him after he sprinted away at light speed from officers pointing their guns at him. He sees nothing, no cars or even pedestrians, only a distant giant burning hole in Brooklyn that will forever remain Spiderman’s most unforgivable failure of all time.

The radio in his car is off. His phone is off, even with the text he sent to Aunt May telling her he’s fine and on his way home, in response to her earlier message asking if he’s alright. Even with Gwen still probably at ground zero, and some kind of tape or something from the Green Goblin circulating online. Peter figures he’ll get to that later, whenever (or if ever) he feels like trying to help a city that never wanted any help from an eight-legged loser. With Spiderman having let the city down worse than ever - proving everyone right about him - and with cops as well as Daily Bugle staffers having to witness Peter use his powers without a mask, he doesn’t want to hear anything from anyone tonight. He wants to squish every spider that dare cross his path, like he wishes he could do to the ungrateful bastard that bit him.

The streets of Brooklyn are eerily silent tonight. Normally they might be popping with walkers, joggers and other pedestrians going about their business, but tonight there is hardly anyone around, except for police interviewing crowds or individuals with tears streaming down their faces or thousand-yard stares quietly screaming from their widened eyes. Lights are on in many homes, but not all of them, even the ones with shattered windows, torn-up siding and ripped-out doors. New York hasn’t looked this bad since 9/11, and it’s all Spiderman’s fault, Peter takes great responsibility.

A few miles and a few turns down the street, Peter pulls into a sudden police checkpoint right outside the Jackie Robinson Parkway. Cops are interviewing anyone in any car, blaring flashlights into cabins, rummaging through trunks, even administering breathalyzers and “walk a straight line” tests. His first reaction is to thank his lucky stars that he doesn’t have his spidersuit on him. His second reaction is his heart plummeting when he realizes that the officers who drew their weapons at him could soon have something to do with this terrible night going from bad to worse. But it might not be wise to move, since some cops are anxiously watching the line, and pulling over any cars that try to escape. Peter figures this must be what it’s like to be caught on a spiderweb.

When Peter finally pulls to the front of the line twenty minutes later, he rolls down the window and squints as the officer’s flashlight beams directly into his eyes.

“License and registration,” the officer orders, as two other officers inspect the inside of Peter’s car with flashlights. “And pop the trunk, and unlock all your doors.”

Peter yanks the trunk handle near the steering wheel, then leans to the side and pulls his wallet out of his back pocket, opening it and taking out his driver’s license, which he hands to the officer who immediately starts poring over it. Then he reaches over to the glovebox, pops it open and rummages for a second before pulling out his registration, which also gets handed to the officer. He follows this up with a double tap of the unlock button on his driver’s side door.

As the other officers continue taking stock of Peter’s clunky lemon, focusing on the trunk which only has a spare tire and an air pump and the cabin that only has Peter’s backpack and camera - both of which get grabbed for inspection - the first officer looks over his license and registration, radioing in Peter’s information which Peter is sure will doom him. The officers from the blast zone must have called in his description at some point, although thankfully Peter looks like he could easily get lost in a crowd. “White male, short brown hair, hazel eyes, approximately 6’0”," they would have said, describing tens of thousands of other people in the city and probably a few other people in line at the checkpoint.

But Peter’s worry train briefly gets derailed. “Why you crying, son?” the officer asks before looking at him.

Peter doesn’t have tears actively rolling down his eyes, but he supposes they’re still a little watery and bloodshot. “I just…” He doesn’t even know how to respond. “I dunno. I’m with the press and I had to get pictures of the bombing, and it was hard to see that, I guess.”

The officer nods, as if understandingly, and trustingly. Before he can respond, his radio buzzes in with something that seems to clear Peter. Another officer shuts his trunk while two others give back his backpack and camera before shutting each of his passenger doors, as the first officer hands back his license and registration. Peter senses that they’re trying to keep the line moving.

“In your line of work, I’d get used to things like that,” the officer says.

Peter takes back his license and registration, stuffing them in his wallet and glovebox. “You don’t know the half of it,” responds Spiderman.

Waving ‘thank you’ to the officers after they signal that he’s free to go, he pulls onto the Parkway and gets back to heading home, amazed that none of the officers who drew their weapons at him reared their ugly heads again. The incident must have gotten lost in the haze of madness throughout this horrible day, and luckily the bombing took out every security camera in a half-mile radius - the only cameras the incident probably showed up on are the officer’s body cameras, assuming they turned them on, which they probably didn’t based on Spiderman’s experience. Uncle Ben must be watching over, Peter assumes. However he’s allowed to drive away scot-free for now, Peter heads for Queens still feeling lower than a pauper.

Sometime later, after a draining drive through somberly silent Brooklyn and Queens streets, he pulls into his unusually quiet neighborhood and then the driveway of his house. The absence of Uncle Ben’s car weighs heavier than ever. Putting his car into park and shutting off the engine, Peter notices a light still on in the living room, even though it’s way past the time that Aunt May usually heads to bed. He sighs, then grabs his camera and his backpack and starts to head in. When he opens the front door and shuts it, he rests his back against it and turns his head up at the ceiling, eyes closed in shock, as if hoping to open them and see an entirely different world. A world without a crater in Brooklyn. He can hear the news blaring from the living room TV. “…are returning to our coverage of the attack in Brooklyn. The death toll is continuing to climb…”

And then Aunt May calls out, hearing her nephew walk in. “Peter? Is that you?” she hollers with a slight tremble, her voice soaked with the horror of the news.

His eyes burst open. “Hi Aunt May. Sorry again for coming home so late,” he responds as images of blown-up concrete, weeping crowds and scattered body parts haunt his apology.

“Oh Peter, this whole thing is just so terrible! It’s just awful! Are you alright?”

He slowly wanders into the living room, pictures of Uncle Ben and his parents glaring at him from tables, shelves and walls.

“…responsible for this attack has released a video threatening to commit further acts of terror…”

“Yeah I’m fine. It just sucks,” Peter mutters as he walks up behind the couch on which Aunt May probably hasn’t moved in hours. As she looks up at him with a concerned smile, Peter leans over and kisses her on the forehead like it’s a normal night.

Aunt May goes back to hunching forwards with her eyes transfixed on the TV, both wrinkly liver-spotted hands wrapped around a pillow.

Peter is similarly mesmerized by what his eyes behold on the screen. Originally expecting to see a news anchor or some B-roll of the blast site, instead he sees a snippet of the terrorist’s tape above a ticker which reads, “BOMBING IN BROOKLYN, SCORES DEAD; ‘GREEN GOBLIN’ TERRORIST CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY”.

The monster responsible for this atrocious crime doesn’t look anything like what Peter expects - then again, he doesn’t have a clue what he was expecting. The Green Goblin wears an all-green spandex suit covering every square inch of them, with the seven continents sharpied over their green face as flames shoot out from the top and sides. They have green chainmail over their chest, with pimped-out green shoulder pads and elbow pads overtop the chainmail. A highly literal interpretation of an ‘eco-warrior,’ Peter judges. The Goblin is sat in front of a blank green screen, wagging their finger as they lecture like an angry teacher scolding a classroom full of misbehaving children. The news station isn’t playing any of the audio, much to Peter’s annoyance, instead talking over them before cutting back to a haggard-looking news anchor who’s probably had as long a night as some of the first responders. “Reports suggest that the motive appears to be environmental activism.”

The news cuts to a press conference with Mayor Eric Adams, NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban, Deputy Commissioner for Public Information Tarik Sheppard and a handful of other local and federal agents, but Peter doesn’t stick around. He wanders away as his stomach swirls with the worst nausea he’s felt since that fucknugget spider bit him. As much as Spiderman wants to learn more, he also doesn’t want to puke in front of Aunt May - she might start to realize just how much the bombing took out Peter, and Spiderman.

“Did you see anything when you went there, Peter?” Aunt May asks as he steps around the couch and starts crawling down the hall to his dark and lonely room. “Anything they haven’t been saying on the news?”

Peter shakes his head. “No, just a big crater, and a big problem,” Spiderman testifies.

Once in his room, he shuts the door and gently sets his camera and backpack onto his bed. Then, after a brief pause to hold back more tears and choke back the nausea, he has to get moving again. He digs under his bed, but it’s not there. He races over to his desk, heaves open the drawers and keeps digging, but it’s not there either. Heart pounding like a thunderous war drum, he races over to his dresser and rips open each drawer, emptying them one by one as he tosses the contents all over the room. It’s not there either, and now sweat is beginning to drip from his forehead as the nausea rises back up. Oh my God, did I leave it somewhere? Where could it be? he panics with a tremble in his inner monologue. He shoves open his closet doors, but then takes a deep breath. Alright spidey-senses, I really really need your help right now. Please help me find it.

He takes a deep breath, and focuses on his arachnid sixth sense. Immediately, he gets a response. His spidey-senses direct him to an old gym bag buried at the bottom of a pile of clothes jumbled up with a suitcase and other random miscellanea that’s been collecting inches of dust. Ripping open the gym bag, he finds another bag, and rips that open too like a kid opening the biggest present under the Christmas tree. Aiming the inside of the bag towards the light in his room, Peter breathes his only sigh of relief in weeks. He sets the second bag down on the floor, and slowly pulls out his spidersuit, covered in dust, cobwebs and regret. How long has it been here? And how did it even get here - was this its normal hiding spot? It had been so long that Peter couldn’t even remember, though it had been nice to forget.

He pores over the red and blue suit with silver stripes, and faint scratches he patched with spider silk after being grazed by bullets. Do I even dare think about putting this back on?

His first thought in trying to answer that horrid question centers on all the crowds surrounding the police tape in Brooklyn, all the tears flowing on screaming faces struggling to answer questions from police, or watching ambulances hauling ass, or chasing after body bags getting carted away. All those innocent faces who wouldn’t be having the worst day of their life if Spiderman had just listened to his spidey-senses and done something to stop this. All those lives he could have saved.

But his second thought centers on the officers pointing their weapons at him. And not just at the blast site, but every other crime scene where Spiderman tried to help. The Digidog pouncing the night he stopped that one poor kid having a breakdown from committing arson at his high school, one lit match on a cafeteria full of gasoline away from blowing up the entire neighborhood. All the handcuffs shining in the moonlight when he stopped that drunk driver weaving recklessly around the Verrazzano Bridge, nearly taking out several families and then himself before Spiderman caught him in a web. The curses and insults and slurs the day he cocooned a would-be mass shooter at a shopping mall. Never a “thank you” from cops or civilians or the press - only “fuck you.” Never any credit for what little good he does, only a police cover-up that gives credit to the cops, and hit pieces in the papers. Never a peace sign or a wave hello - only middle fingers. Only scowls and children clutching their parent’s leg with panicked watery eyes. Probably the same reactions he’d have gotten if he stopped today’s bombing, and certainly what he’ll get if Spiderman shows his mask around this city again. But more innocent people died today under Spiderman’s watch than ever before, something he could and should have tried to stop even if all those people spat at him when they were alive, or would insult him if he had saved them, while victims of other crimes swear at him for not being able to be two places at once.

Consequently, Peter’s third thought is Uncle Ben. The one who instilled in him this twisted sense of justice with that ‘great power, great responsibility’ garbage that ruined Peter’s life as much as the asshole spider that bit him. Peter wishes he didn’t have any powers, that he was just a nameless average joe who could watch the news and go, “That sucks,” without knowing for sure he won’t restlessly toss and turn every night for the next few weeks. Uncle Ben didn’t know what he was saying when he uttered that unforgettable phrase. When you’re superhuman, it goes much further than great power giving you great responsibility. It’s also that great power makes you take great responsibility, especially when you do something like shirk your power and unwittingly let some terrorist fleck of gas station toilet scum commit the worst act of terror New York has seen in twenty years.

According to the news though, and apparently that terrorist waste of oxygen’s own tape, more attacks are coming. More people are going to die. More wanton destruction is about to befall the city. But this time, Spiderman has a burning fire under his ass - a fire fueled by the cremains of the innocent. And while law enforcement are surely handling the Green Goblin - case in point, the checkpoint outside the Parkway - the wheels of justice turn slowly, sometimes not at all. Plus, law enforcement has laws they’re supposed to obey, proper procedure to follow, red tape they would need to clear as the Goblin keeps on killing - one misstep could mean the Goblin walks away free. But at the same time, there exists a vigilante who operates outside the law, a vigilante with great power that might be able to stop the Goblin’s next attack. So, if Spiderman’s great power is the only thing that might be able to stop the Goblin’s next attack, then why shouldn’t he try? Why shouldn’t he lean into his vigilantism and do what the police can’t, knowing that more people are going to die if he doesn’t? Because he could wind up in handcuffs, unmasked, and no one will be left to take care of Aunt May then, that’s why. Also, law enforcement could very well catch the Goblin before their next attack, making Spiderman a moot point altogether. But what if law enforcement doesn’t catch Spiderman, or for that matter the Goblin? Would Spiderman really stand idly by and let that terrorist piece of trash continue to attack the city? The nation? The world? While hoping the powers that be will do their jobs, as Spiderman neglects his? He can practically hear Uncle Ben say it: “With great power…”

He brushes a layer of dust off the spidersuit balled up in his clenched fists, and groans. “Goddammit…” he mutters as he darts back up and slams the suit down.

Peter drags himself to his desktop monitor and begins searching for the Green Goblin’s tape and manifesto. In the distance, sirens faintly wail, begging for Spiderman. Like they did the night Uncle Ben died.

To be continued…

[spiderman]

6. The Mutant Spider From Queens, Part I

“Are you okay?”

Pale, soaked in sweat and bearing deep rings under his bloodshot eyes as he tried to cover up the spider bite on his hand, Peter stumbled past a slack-jawed Aunt May and Uncle Ben, racing towards his room at the end of the hall a thousand miles away.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Ate something bad tonight. Sorry, can’t talk now,” Peter lied through his chattering teeth.

He could hear them whisper amongst themselves like they were yelling. “Should we call 911?” Uncle Ben probed. “I’ve never seen him like this. I’ve never seen anyone like this.”

Aunt May shook her head. “We saw him like this when he got that really bad food poisoning that one time in high school, remember? He was out of school for days. He’s fine, but we should keep an eye on him.”

Peter burst into his room and immediately collapsed onto the bed. He was too hot to pull up the sheets, and too tired to move. Slowly, the nausea melted into drowsiness as he drifted off to sleep, hoping he would feel normal again when he woke up. His last conscious thoughts were wondering what on Earth that mutant spider from Chernobyl did to him when it chomped down on his hand, and if he should have just surrendered to medical debt from a trip to the hospital. He could have asked Aunt May and Uncle Ben to help him pay. He could have taken on a second or third job. At least he would still be alive.

The next morning, Peter woke up feeling noticeably better - but he instinctively knew something was still terribly wrong. He slowly leaned up in bed as the morning light spilled into his eyes with higher clarity than ever before, as if he could now see in 4K Ultra HD. His throat was drier than Death Valley in the middle of a summer drought, but luckily he still had half a glass of water from the other night on his nightstand. Reaching for it, Peter’s life abruptly changed forever. A strand of silk shot out of his fingertips and covered the nightstand in a tattered cobweb.

Peter held his hand up to his face. Oookay, he thought, obviously I’m still dreaming.

He laid back down on his bed, but never went back to sleep. He spent much of this time wondering if what he experienced last night was a dream too - from the spider bite to the door sticking to his fingers. After a while of laying there wide-eyed, he sat back up, only to see the cobweb still on the nightstand. He rubbed his face and his eyes, but still the surreality persisted. What the…?

Peter decided to stand up, at which point it became abundantly clear that his senses were firing on all cylinders. This was no dream - far from it. He could detect Aunt May putting plates into the dishwasher after finishing breakfast. He could count the exact number of spiders in the house. He could tell that he was able to climb a mountain right now and not feel the least bit tired. There was only one way to be sure that what he was experiencing was in any way real: he had to head back to NYU and look for a lab with a missing door.

Snatching a clean shirt from his drawer as he threw off his sweat-soaked attire from last night, he was amazed to find the clean shirt stick to his fingers, as if his skin was made of glue. Like the door to the lab had been before he ripped it off the hinges. He frantically shook the shirt off like it had just crawled up from pond sludge - and then another web shot out of his hand. This time, Peter froze, while a heap of silk buried his shirt in a silvery mound on the floor. He noticed his middle and ring fingers were on his palm while his thumb was extended. So he tried this position again, pressing his fingers on his palm the way they had just been. Another web shot out, from his index and pinky fingers. Now sweat was beginning to drip from his forehead, as his heart sank. This was certainly no dream - this was realer than anything Peter had ever experienced. Was it?

He dug his shirt out of the web pile, and then decided to do one last experiment: tossing his shirt into the air, he aggressively fired a web at it, and nailed it to the wall in a perfectly-formed web that looked like a mansion for the eight-legged. Peter put his hand over his mouth, as slack-jawed now as Aunt May and Uncle Ben were last night. The spider must have done something to him, it was becoming screamingly obvious. Something that only happens in cheesy movies. But this was no summer blockbuster, Peter understood - this was real life. …Was it?!

As he hurried out of his bedroom and headed to the front door, he heard Aunt May call out from the kitchen, “Are you feeling better now?” Then she pointed at him. “Peter, you’ve got some cobwebs on your shirt there. I can dust in your room later if you don’t mind.”

Peter brushed off the evidence and looked back up at Aunt May’s concerned expression, thinking about her finding a room full of spiderwebs, and wondering what the hell was going on. “No! No need to dust, I’m fine,” he howled. “Uh… sorry about last night. But I’m feeling a lot better now. Sorry, again.”

Aunt May’s concern started to melt into surprise. “Are you sure? You didn’t look well at all. Let me just -”

She started walking forwards, arms extended to his face as if to inspect him, but Peter jumped back.

“No!” he cried, causing her to stop. “I… uh, might still be contagious… from something.”

Also I might be part-spider now, Peter imagined telling her. But as much as he hated lying to her or hiding things from her, no one would believe him if he told the truth. Even if he showed them proof. “Um, anyways, I got a job, to uh, to shoot, but I’m gonna wear a mask just in case,” he told her, thumb pointed to the door, fortunately with no web shooting out of it, as his camera jostled around his neck like a visible alibi.

“Okay, alright, be safe,” Aunt May beseeched. “Love you.”

Just outside the front door, careful not to have the knob stick to his fingers, Peter stopped dead in his tracks on the driveway. His eight-legged sixth sense told him to try something crazy. For a week, Uncle Ben had been complaining that the gutters over the garage were clogged. Well, Peter figured, if he truly was part-spider now, he could probably lend a hand or eight to Uncle Ben. Telling himself this is crazy this is crazy this is crazy, Peter walked up to the garage door and put one hand on it, immediately feeling it stick. Then he put the other hand on it, and felt that stick too. He extended his first hand way above his head until it stuck, then he did the same for the second hand. Peter felt his feet leave the ground, at which point he placed them on the garage door. Step by step, he then crawled up the garage door and walked right onto the roof exactly like a spider would. Staring in wide-eyed shock at his spidery hands as he stood on top of the garage, he suddenly felt he had a witness to this incredible feat. “Hi Mrs. Gardner,” the human spider waved to his next door neighbor, who watched in a stunned slack-jawed gaze from her kitchen window. She fainted.

Sensing that no one was watching now, although he certainly made sure to glance around just to double check, Peter fired a web into the clogged gutter, and heaved the beam of silk off to the side yard, taking with it all the gunk in the gutter. Satisfied by the sight of the empty gutter, Peter crouched down, then leaned forwards and quickly grabbed the garage door before crawling back down to the ground. If this is a dream, Peter thought as he settled on the driveway, I better damn well start waking up.

But what he soon found at NYU proved that he was more awake than ever. Sure enough, there at the same exact lab he had visited the night before, was a ripped-up doorframe with a tarp over it and caution tape strewn about. Peter stumbled up to the hole in the lab, gawking, his newfound spidey-senses picking up a couple students complaining about the missing door and how it made them have to take a back way into class. “No one knows what happened, but it sucks 'cause now I have to go all the way around now just to get to my lab,” groaned one student to his friends somewhere around the side of the building. Reported another student down the sidewalk to someone next to her, “I heard someone saw some guy walk out looking all like sweaty and sick and stuff.”

Peter’s head was spinning. Everything he experienced was real - the spider bite, the door, the webs shooting out his hands, crawling on the garage. He was now living in a corny science fiction movie. Like The Fly, only somehow worse - so was he going to shed all his skin, grow fangs and sprout six new limbs as he transforms into a giant spider? Or was he simply going to be cursed with this strange in-between where he’s an otherwise ordinary man that can shoot webs and crawl on walls? He certainly couldn’t tell anybody about this, especially not J. Jonah Jameson when he asks where his work is. No one would believe him, even with all the proof in the world. No one would ever believe him that he got bitten by a mutant spider from Chernobyl and suddenly turned into a human spider. Or would they?

The internet has some pretty shocking content on it, Peter figured as he drove back home with the radio off, wondering if he could swing from building to building instead of driving. Maybe if he set up a monetized YouTube channel with him showing off his new skills, he could make a little bit of money, gain some recognition and start worming his way into show business - that way, he could take care of Aunt May and Uncle Ben. Even if his abilities seemed too hard to believe. He could see it already: talk show interviews with the human spider, some kind of a creature feature in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, movie deals and even more fame and fortune that could help him take care of his adoptive parents for the rest of their lives. He could enter into amateur sports events - like getting back into boxing - and absolutely kick all ass. But what would the point be if nobody ended up believing him or his abilities? Even with the gaping hole in the lab at NYU, it felt like there was no way anyone would ever take him seriously. There was only one way to find out.

So that’s what Peter tried for a time. YouTube videos of the human spider shooting webs or crawling on walls, in a kitschy little suit he weaved from silk to protect his identity - but they never garnered more than fifty views apiece, or comments of something other than “Fake!” No matter how hard he tried to get people to watch his videos, there was little to no engagement. And there were certainly no talk shows calling him for an interview. Nothing from Ripley’s, or any movie studio, despite all the emails and letters he wrote with clips attached. Absolutely nothing that would signify the beginning of any kind of career in show business that a human spider would warrant. Just as he worried, no one believed him or his abilities. After all, who would? He could never even muster the courage to show Aunt May and Uncle Ben, for fear of winding up in a psych ward. Being a human spider seemed just too outlandish to be real.

All the while, everywhere he went, he could hear sirens blaring from police cruisers and ambulances. Gnawing at him, seeping deep into his subconscious, the sirens seemed to be screaming something at the human spider. Something about crime and injustice. But Peter could never figure out what, even though the answer seemed to be on the tip of his tongue. He was far more preoccupied with getting into show business.

But with his YouTube channel dragging for months, Peter eventually began to wonder why he was cursed with these spider powers, as sirens seemed to be screaming the answer at him. His spider powers didn’t help him at the Daily Bugle, they didn’t help Uncle Ben or Aunt May, they didn’t help anyone or anything. What kind of sick and twisted point was the world trying to make? What was his purpose? What was the purpose of being a human spider? In the end, he was destined to find out the hard way.

One day, Uncle Ben told him that “with great power comes great responsibility,” but Peter initially didn’t think twice about that statement or how it was applicable to the human spider.

Until, that is, it became the last thing he remembered Uncle Ben saying to him.

Until, that is, Uncle Ben was late coming home from work, and an urgent call came from the hospital that made Aunt May scream.

To be continued…

[spiderman]

7. The Mutant Spider From Queens, Part II

It was the worst day of Peter’s and Aunt May’s life.

Peter sped through every red light on the way to the hospital, nearly causing several accidents on the way there, resulting in more blown horns, shouted insults and flipped birds than he’d ever imagined possible. Before he knew it, Aunt May was leaning onto his shoulders, sobbing, as Peter stood slack-jawed poring over all the bullet holes in Uncle Ben’s body. Most were riddled on his left side, and one particularly heinous shot was placed directly in his left eye. Another was just above his left ear. “Yeah, that’s him,” Peter confirmed to the police officer in the morgue.

The coroner aligned the table that housed Uncle Ben’s gray lifeless body with a cold, unforgiving metal locker, ready to stow him away until the hearse arrived. All Peter could think about was how much hurt there was in the world. Who could see an elderly man and think to hurt him like this? Who could inflict this much harm onto another person? And why? Why?

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” the officer tried to assuage them with a heavy sigh, as if thinking to himself, Not another one. Not another victim. A thought, swirling in disbelief, which Peter’s spidey-senses immediately picked up on.

“Who did this to him? And why? Just why?” Peter demanded, brushing away tears.

The officer shrugged. “Don’t know yet. We’re pursuing all possible leads,” he answered. “What I can tell you is that it looks like an attempted carjacking. The attacker demanded his car, and your father refused, and lost much more than his car over it.”

Your father. Peter didn’t feel like correcting the officer, because there was a boatload of truth to this mistake. Uncle Ben had always been like a father to Peter, ever since he adopted him as a boy. Uncle Ben taught him everything, and supported him through everything. He was the one who told him to take up freelance photography. Now he had been ripped away from Peter because of one person’s greed. There would be no more Christmases, birthdays or other holidays with Uncle Ben. It was so goddamn unfair, random and senseless.

“You folks can stay as long as you like. Here’s my card, call me if you need anything. I’ll let you know if we find something,” the officer continued, handing his card to Peter before walking out.

Peter crumpled the officer’s card in his hand with a weak “Thanks.” Then he dragged himself to Uncle Ben and put his hand on his head, as if trying to bring him back to life. As if trying to undo everything that happened today. All it did was make him weep. Aunt May walked up and put her hand on his shoulder, causing him to turn around and hug her.

Earlier that day, Uncle Ben and Peter had been ensnarled in a rare argument, because Peter had made the mistake of confiding in him about his spider powers. Naturally, as most people would, Uncle Ben thought his web shooting was synthetic, so Peter didn’t bother crawling on the walls for him or demonstrating any of the other eight-legged gifts from his mutant “friend” from Chernobyl. Damn the spider that bit him. Peter figured that Uncle Ben wouldn’t believe his powers were real, but he didn’t expect Uncle Ben’s disappointment in the fact that he was using them to get into show business. “Forget about YouTube, if you can really do what you say you can, you should be using them to make the world a better place,” Uncle Ben told him the morning before he died. “With great power comes great responsibility.”

It took Peter seeing Uncle Ben’s body in the morgue to realize just how wrong he had been, and how right Uncle Ben was. His efforts to get into show business were going nowhere, because his powers were so outlandish. Even Uncle Ben, his most trusted confidante, seemed to think they were fake. But he had a point about putting them to good use.

Aunt May’s hand on his shoulder still, Peter turned back around and stroked Uncle Ben’s hair, and through his spidey-senses was jolted by the last moments of Uncle Ben’s life.

“Get outta the fuckin’ car!” the carjacker told Uncle Ben at a stop sign.

It was at this moment that Uncle Ben realized just how bad his wrong turn had been. He was in one of those neighborhoods where you should never stop at a stop sign, and his Mercedes stuck out like a blinking neon ‘Rob me’ sign.

Seeing the gun tapping his driver’s side window, Uncle Ben panicked and tried to floor it. And that’s when the bullets went flying. Dozens of them, shattering the windows and the windshield. Uncle Ben didn’t make it through the intersection. His car rammed into a pole across the street, as his body slumped over in the driver’s seat, blaring the horn. The carjacker ran away.

They looked familiar, the carjacker. Peter recognized him immediately. A few days ago, Peter was storming out of a wrestling competition he had won when a gunman burst into the event organizer’s office demanding money. Peter was halfway out the door already, but thought about stopping to help the event organizer - who refused to pay him the advertised price for winning because he was a “puny nerf that shouldn’t have won.” Peter could have used his spider powers to stop the hold-up and put the robber in handcuffs before they turned into a carjacker shooting up Uncle Ben. But spite made Peter walk out the door.

Peter’s tears melted into clenched fists, gritted teeth and furrowed brows. This was it for the human spider. No more dumbass YouTube videos. No more emails to talk shows with clips of his act. No more wasting a God-given gift. He should have stopped Uncle Ben from getting killed. So now he had to do something with his powers that would make Uncle Ben proud. Something that would make the world a better place, and all the while accept the great responsibility that came with his great powers. Now he was going to stop others from getting hurt. He would do more than just fight crime. He was going to kick crime’s ass.

The moment Uncle Ben died, Spiderman was born.

To be continued…

[spiderman]

8. Up The Spout Again

This is crazy.

Peter clutches his Spiderman mask, his spidey-senses flickering as footsteps pitter-patter past the pitch black Manhattan alley where he hid his car.

Am I really about to do this?

It’s been forever since he last went out crimefighting. So long that the mask in his hands feels heavier than it should.

All I need is a little practice in crimefighting, he tells himself. Stop a carjacker, hand them off to the police, and go home.

Maybe it’s too soon to try crimefighting again. The Green Goblin just committed their first bombing, and the city is extremely hot with cops, feds, and watchful citizens. Somebody’s bound to catch Peter with his spidersuit and he would surely get arrested, leaving no one to take care of Aunt May.

But Peter figures if he doesn’t do something tonight, he’ll never. The bombing lit a huge fire under his ass, and the guilt from doing nothing about it would never cool off.

Maybe he should just let the FBI sort the Green Goblin out. They’re the ones actually trained and paid to handle this mess. Peter is just a washed-up 30 year old loser who barely has a job and lives with his adoptive mother. But what if the Green Goblin kills more people while the investigation is ongoing? Some of the blood would be on Spiderman’s hands, because surely he can do something to stop it, right? It’s just like Uncle Ben said: with great powers…

Peter hesitates for a few seconds, staring forlornly at the mask, then takes in a deep breath.

For all those I should have saved from the bombing.

He puts on the mask.

For Aunt May. For Uncle Ben.

***

This is definitely crazy.

Spiderman can’t believe what he’s doing. Swinging from the towering skyscrapers in Manhattan, the wallcrawler tails behind that police chase of a carjacker, with both police cruisers blaring their lights and sirens as the chase dangerously swerves through city streets, tires screeching.

It’s been way too long. His timing is askew, his swings a little wide or late, but muscle memory keeps the spider moving.

This is what Uncle Ben would have wanted, Spiderman keeps telling himself. To finally put on the mask after ages of shirking his great responsibility, for the sake of getting practice in crimefighting, at which he is surely rusty. But Spiderman can hear the complaints already. Oh, now you show up? people would remark. Where were you when the Green Goblin was bombing people?

We don’t want your help!

We don’t need your help!

Squish the spider!

Maybe he could stop further attacks, Spiderman tries to justify it in his head. It was his fault that he ignored his spidey-senses in the days leading up to the bombing, but he’ll pay special attention the next time and show up to stop the Green Goblin. Then maybe he wouldn’t be worried about innocent people dying under his watch. Then maybe people will be a believer in Spiderman. At least, civilians would - the police and City Hall would never. Oh, who was he kidding? Civilians wouldn’t either.

All night long, the spider has been distracted by the Green Goblin. Before breaking down and donning his spidersuit to once again take to the skyline, he had pored over the Green Goblin’s rambling manifesto. It was full of enraged blame on Congress and the White House, threats to assassinate oil executives, and promises of more attacks on car dealerships, oil tankers, and gas stations. They’re clearly someone who thinks they can save the world by burning it down.

Focus. Just focus, Spiderman tells himself as he swings just half a block behind the carjacker.

At some point after tonight’s crimefighting practice, he would have to return to the scene of the bombed car dealership to look for clues as to the Green Goblin’s identity and next move, if Spiderman could somehow get past the FBI.

The carjacker banks a hard left. Spiderman follows close behind, with the cops tailing just underneath him. Picking up the pace of his web-swinging, Spiderman figures he can outpace the carjacker, get ahead of them, and catch them with a big enough web.

Soon a few hundred yards ahead of the carjacker, Spiderman hurriedly shoots a massive web that blocks the entire street. The carjacker, slamming on the brakes, plows straight into it and immediately comes to a screeching halt as the web swallows them whole like an oversized fly. The car then lurches backwards, fender still glued to the web. Perched on the side of a nearby building, Spiderman watches as the cops also come to a grinding stop behind the carjacker, and briskly step out of their cruisers with guns drawn.

“Exit the vehicle now!” one officer yells at the top of his lungs, as all four cops slowly walk towards the car.

Nothing happens. The cops inch closer, and then stop. Fingers on the trigger. Spiderman’s spidey-senses tingle.

“I said EXIT THE VEHICLE!”

For a few tense seconds, Spiderman contemplates dragging the carjacker out himself. But then the driver’s side door creaks open. A teenager carefully emerges. Based on how young the boy looks, Spiderman wonders if there’s been a big mistake, and the boy is actually innocent. It wouldn’t surprise him.

“GET DOWN ON THE GROUND!”

The boy shakily begins to raise his hands, as if to surrender, and Spiderman thinks it’s all over. He could swing home, go to bed, and get up in time to deal with a call from J. Jonah Jameson asking for pictures of the return of “the eight-legged menace.”

But Spiderman won’t be getting any sleep tonight. His spidey-senses tingle again, and tell him to get ready.

The boy’s hands go higher in the air, but twist backwards with a tremble. As if thinking the boy raising his hands was him reaching for a weapon, the cops open fire. First the one officer, followed by the other three, who initially hesitated. The boy, riddled with bullets, immediately drops dead.

“NO!” Spiderman screams at the top of his lungs.

He jumps down to the boy’s body, as the cops start to move in.

“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?! HE WAS SURRENDERING!” the wallcrawler bellows.

The cops have none of it. Now the guns are aiming at Spiderman.

“TAKE OFF YOUR MASK AND GET DOWN ON THE GROUND!” shouts a different cop than before.

Spiderman shakes his head, clenches his fists, and grits his teeth, almost tempting the cops to try and shoot him too. The boy’s blood begins to swirl around his boots.

“I SAID TAKE OFF YOUR MASK AND GET ON THE GROUND NOW!”

As his spidey-senses tingle once again, telling him to prepare for something, Spiderman reaches his breaking point. He fires off a gargantuan web that wraps up all four officers in a cocoon.

“LET US GO NOW!” the first cop orders, groaning in discomfort.

Spiderman shoots a web over each of their mouths, then blasts a particularly hefty strand as thick as a steel cable that binds the cop cocoon together. In one heave, the wallcrawler yanks them inward and fastens them to the outside of the trunk of the stolen car.

He walks up to them, wiping the blood off his boot, then points his now bloodied finger like a teacher scolding a misbehaving student, and screams, “YOU JUST SHOT SOMEONE IN COLD BLOOD!” His finger drops. “You… you killed him…”

The cops, squirming, murmur something from their webbed mouths, eyes wide open.

Tears streaming down his face underneath his mask, Spiderman swings away. He stops on the roof of a tall building, rips off his mask, and screams at the top of his lungs. Then he stomps towards an air duct, and pummels a colossal dent into it. He can sense people down below on the street looking up into the sky wondering what the ruckus is, but he continues beating the air duct regardless.

That morning, Mayor Eric Adams receives a report on his desk, complete with statements from the officers at the carjacker scene and stills from their body cams. “Sir, the police say the masked vigilante is back, and they’re pressing you to do something about it,” an aide informs the Mayor.

To be continued…

[spiderman]

9. What Is This World Coming To?

It won’t stop playing in Peter’s mind.

The frantic screams of police to stand down. The sense that they feared the carjacker - the boy - was drawing a weapon. The cop’s bullets flying through the air. The groan of the boy when hit. The thud of his body on the ground. The warmth of the blood on Spiderman’s boots.

Peter tosses and turns in his bed all night, unable to do anything but ruminate about the boy that was gunned down by the police. The boy who might have gotten away and would still be alive if his car had not been caught in a web tangled by Spiderman.

It felt like his fault.

Peter rubs his eyes and sits up. If he had not put on the spidersuit and gone out crimefighting for the first time in ages, the boy might have survived the night. He might’ve had a chance at a good life - a trial to prove his innocence, a future in which he gives back. But no. Because of Spiderman, the boy was dead - a thought that settled, heavy and immovable.

Who even was he, Peter wonders? What was his name? What were his hobbies and interests? How many people loved him, and would go to his funeral? Peter knows at least one person who wants to go to his funeral, even though he probably shouldn’t.

Spiderman had had terrible nights crimefighting before. The evening that he caused a drunk driver to plow into the side of a building, narrowly missing several innocent bystanders and putting the driver in a coma for days. The night that some bank robbers nearly drowned after Spiderman sent them careening off the Verrazano Bridge. People had been collateral damage in Spiderman’s crimefighting misadventures before, but no one had died before. Until tonight.

Scratching his head and laying back down, he tries to make himself feel better by justifying it in terms of law and order. The boy was a lowlife carjacker, like the one that killed Uncle Ben. He probably had a hefty rap sheet, and might have gone on to commit more felonies if he had not been stopped. Now there was one less criminal on the streets. So maybe it wasn’t Spiderman’s fault. Maybe it was the police, society, the Green Goblin even.

But Peter knew that was all bullshit. No matter what he did, the boy was still a person, innocent until proven guilty. Now he would never have his day in court. All due to one wallcrawling loser who felt compelled to interfere.

It’s all part of the ridiculous ‘great powers, great responsibility’ mantra that Uncle Ben had instilled in him. When you have great powers, you not only have a great responsibility to use those powers responsibly, but you also must take great responsibility for your actions. And Spiderman’s actions had gotten someone killed tonight.

It’s all his fault.

At 8 AM, Peter gives up on trying to sleep. He heads into the shower, and gets hit with a barrage of intrusive thoughts about every mistake he’s ever made in his entire life. Asking that girl out in high school. Dozing off at his cushy security guard job and getting fired. The spider bite. Uncle Ben. And now the boy. He sighs, choking down a storm of tears.

Later, he steps into the kitchen to eat breakfast, acting as normally as he can. Aunt May is sitting down already with a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon. He hopes she doesn’t notice the Saturnian rings under his bloodshot eyes and his vampire-pale complexion. But she does.

Looking up from her breakfast, her eyebrows leap. “Oh, Peter, you look terrible. Did you sleep okay?” she asks in her musically-sweet voice.

Peter keeps heading for the pan of eggs and bacon on the stove. “Yeah, just had some nightmares,” he tells her the truth.

“Because of work last night?”

Peter - loading up a plate, even though he has no idea how he’s going to get anything past the gripping ulcer robbing him of any semblance of an appetite - pauses, and looks up at a picture of Uncle Ben on the wall above the stove. In his insomniac daze, he briefly thinks she’s referring to his crimefighting as Spiderman, but that’s no job - just a waste of time, a waste of effort, a waste of life. But then Peter remembers he was at the scene of the bombing last night, marveling at the Green Goblin’s horrendous work.

Peter sighs. “Yeah, I think…” He imagines telling her the truth. I think because I’m Spiderman and I got someone killed last night. But, still staring at Uncle Ben, he decides today is not the day. Now is not the moment. Will there ever be such a moment? “I think because of work.”

He turns around and begins heading for the fridge, where he opens it up and takes out a half-full jug of orange juice. “It was hard to see the bomb scene,” he continues as he reaches into the pantry for a glass, and pours some OJ into that glass.

He then sits down, and begins fighting to choke down his breakfast.

Things are silent for a second; that is, until Aunt May interjects with, “I heard it, you know. I heard the bomb go off. And then I went outside and saw the plume in the sky.”

In between labored bites, Peter nods and replies, “Yeah, I did too.”

He takes a sip of OJ.

“Terrible thing. Just terrible,” Aunt May drags the conversation along.

Things go silent again for a few minutes, as they both eat breakfast, Uncle Ben watching over from the picture over the stove. Peter’s mind is dead-centered on all the people who died in the last twenty-four hours, especially the boy. Slowly, the dam breaks. First Peter sets down the fork, unable to keep eating. Then his face scrunches in a pretzel twist.

“Peter what’s wrong?” Aunt May begs to know.

The dam breaks. A tear dribbles down Peter’s cheek, then another, then a third, until finally Peter is full-on sobbing at the table. Aunt May gets up and puts her arms around Peter in a tight hug. “Oh, Peter, I know it’s hard, especially with Uncle Ben gone.”

As tears flood his face, Peter frantically wipes them away in between groaning wails. “No, no, it’s just…”

“Just what?”

Peter slowly shakes his head. “Nothing. Just nothing.”

“It’ll be okay, Peter. Everything will be okay.”

Peter figures that one thing is certain: he’s done. He’s going to throw it all away: his spidersuit, his powers, everything. Things will be okay once Spiderman is gone.

And just at that moment, as the floodwaters finally subside while Aunt May kisses his forehead and sits back down, his phone rings, calling him back to a cold, sober reality. He takes his phone out of his pocket and immediately rolls his eyes at who he sees calling him.

“Hi Mr. Jameson,” Peter takes the call.

“Parker!” J. Jonah Jameson barks, cigar wafting through his phone. “That damn masked vigilante is back. You always seem to know how to get pictures of him, so I’m counting on you to get some more.”

“Uh, sir, I think the masked vigilante is retired, or gone, or dead, or something. He’s not back. I can’t get any pictures of him.”

“Lies! Slander! He was seen last night, interfering in a police chase. He’s back and I need you to get more pictures of him!”

Another tear rolls down Peter’s cheek. No mention of the boy who got killed, as if it didn’t matter at all.

“Or you’re fired!”

J. Jonah hangs up, and Peter slowly puts his phone down as he stares dead ahead. Getting fired would be a good thing, he thinks. He would be free from a job that enables him to be a masked vigilante. But there is still one person who would balk at that, because she badly needs his paychecks.

So he can’t hang up the webs. He has to be Spiderman. It would be wrong and dangerous to quit, because one of the most important people in the world to Peter is depending on it.

“That masked vigilante from a long time ago is back?” Aunt May asks, as Peter slowly nods back.

Yes, Spiderman is back, Peter explains to himself.

Aunt May shakes her head, as she stands up and takes her empty plate to the sink. “What is this world coming to?”

Peter wishes he knew.

To be continued…