by Jaym Gates
CH: I have a Champions T-shirt like everyone else.
TBC: Don’t you see, then? Don’t you see that the world needed me? Why is light needed but to drive away the dark? My rustic reveries would not have been possible had they not been defended. History will remember me as a monster but I will know me to be a savior.
#
Channel 12 News Report, August 12, 2026
[Bonnie, Cliff, and Tera sit opposite Scott in the Channel 12 studio. On the screen behind them is a title card reading, “SUPER TEEN.”]
Scott James: It’s good to see you again, Tera. You’re looking more and more like your mom.
Tera Baker-Curtis: Thanks, Scott! That’s a real compliment.
Bonnie Baker: Very sweet of you to say, Scott.
SJ: Now that you’re older, have you given any thought to whether you’ll be joining, uh, the family business?
TBC: I don’t even know where I’m going to college yet.
Cliff Curtis: You’ve still got time, honey. No one’s forcing you to make choices now.
TBC: Everyone’s got to make a choice sometime, huh?
BB: We’re defined by the choices we make.
SJ: This is real heavy stuff!
TBC: Guess the Annihilator made a choice one day.
CC: Wasn’t a good choice.
TBC: Maybe it’s not that simple.
[Bonnie reaches into her purse and pulls out a muffin.]
BB: Have an orange spice muffin, dear.
[Tera takes the muffin.]
TBC: That’s a good choice. You’re right, Dad, Winston didn’t make a good choice.
#
Raw Footage from The Huang Interview, June 9, 2039
Tera Baker-Curtis: That is an absurd question. You ask some absurd questions, has anyone ever told you that?
Cynthia Huang: Just imagine if things were different. What if your parents had been like his?
TBC: I imagine things may have gone differently. I imagine I would have become a hero, a rebellious act against such mistreatment.
CH: But that’s not what happened with the Annihilator.
TBC: You seem incapable of comprehending the nuances of human behavior, Ms. Huang. As if each person will react to adversity in the same way. As if each person will react to comfort in the same way. My parents nurtured who I was, though they did not know who I was. They ignited my true self, chilled my false one. Love, respect, admiration — I fed off of them, Ms. Huang.
CH: And these nuances resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
TBC: I could express remorse but I’ve already negated such trifles.
CH: We really mean nothing to you, do we.
TBC: On an individual level, only two of you mean anything to me.
#
Channel 7 News Report, October 1, 2033
[Two identical Indian men stand side by side. They give each other a high five, and a blinding flash of light emits from the impact. When the light fades, only one young man remains. Chyron on screen reads, “NEW HERO(ES) IN TOWN?” Zoom out to show African-American man with microphone.]
Don Harrison: Don Harrison, reporting live for Channel 7 News, and I’m here with … what should we call you?
Govinda Sharma: I haven’t come up with a name yet! Sorry, didn’t know I was going to be on TV. I just wanted to help. I’m thinking something Rama-Lakshmana-y. Laksh-Man? I don’t know.
DH: Well, at least five people will be calling you their savior after what you just did.
GS: I can’t believe I really did that! I’m still alive! They are too! Because of me. Wow.
DH: I know they’re grateful.
GS: After 8/14, that was a wake-up call. I saw Terror on the news and I just knew I couldn’t not use my powers for something more. There are other superheroes out there, sure, but there’s also me. It’s my duty. Look at what the world is, right? It needed me, so here I am.
#
From the Notes of Chicago Tribune Reporter Anna Wilson, October 1, 2033
Juanita Herrera, survivor
The dude just split himself in two, it was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen! Like, I’ve totally seen super people before, but nothing like that. And both of them, or both of him, or whatever, they pushed the car out of the way, like he must really work out. The train went by and we still screamed because, like, we almost died. But he saved us. I need to call my sister now. She’s gonna flip.
#
Raw Footage from The Huang Interview, June 9, 2039
Cynthia Huang: So that’s your story.
Tera Baker-Curtis: You wanted my story. You have my story.
CH: The secret origin of Terror herself.
TBC: May it enlighten the populace and win its timeslot. Perhaps the world will change its mind about me. But that is irrelevant. What they think is of no import; what matters is how the world changes. I’ve made an impact. What have you done?
CH: I’ve gotten your story, for one.
TBC: You got nothing, Ms. Cynthia Huang, daughter of Marjorie Huang. I gave you this story. And some lovely family memories.
CH: They said you wouldn’t talk to anyone but me.
TBC: In you I can see the real impact I have had. Poor thing. I hope you treasure our time together.
CH: Allow me to give you something in return. Tim, bring them in.
[Bonnie and Cliff walk in. Tera stands abruptly.]
TBC: Mom? Dad?
Cliff Curtis: All this time out in the world, and you never called! No hello, no goodbye.
Bonnie Baker: We missed you, honey.
[Tera paces in the cell.]
TBC: Have you been listening all this time?
BB: You said such nice things about us, pumpkin.
CC: Little less nice about you, though.
CH: Ignite, Chill, and Terror, together again after a decade.
TBC: I was always thinking of you. I want you to know that.
[Bonnie reaches into her purse and pulls out a muffin.]
BB: I brought you an orange spice muffin.
[Tera sits down.]
TBC: It’s too late for muffins.
BB: We just wanted you to make the right choice.
CC: Don’t know about these choices, Tera. Thought we taught you better than that.
TBC: Ms. Huang, please send them aw —
CH: Bonnie, Curtis, your daughter will be executed in hours. Is there anything you would like to say to Tera?
BB: We love you, dear.
CC: But we wish you wouldn’t have killed so many people.
Spiders
Ferrett Steinmetz
He watches romantic comedies as most men do: alone, knife in hand, wedging the tip underneath his carapace until his gray skin wells up with blood. He itches to shove the knife in, to unleash those luscious endorphins that simulate love but a wound deep enough to provide release might cost him his job.
If this film is good enough, he promises himself, he’ll allow himself a taste. Not too much. The skin beneath his exoskeleton is already crisscrossed with shamefully straight scars — not ragged curves from a proper set of fangs, no. He covers his female-given scars with layers of makeup, outlining his wounds proudly in bright-colored swirls only males can see, yet hiding his failed love affairs from females’ weak eyes.
He hates touching the good scars. All he feels is what was taken from him.
As the opening music starts up, the television droops in the cheap webbing of his wall; he scuttles to follow the cracked screen, ignoring the hitch in his step from the old, good wounds.
That’s when he notices the male in this comedy shares his name: Mesoth.
Excited, he cuts shallow trails under his belly. It’s not unusual for the lead to share his name – there are only so many names anyone bothers to give a male — but any connection to this fantasy sets his pedipalps quivering.
He settles in to watch, cutting off last night’s scabs in anticipation. The two leads are introduced: Mesoth, a plucky meat-har
vester, and the Female, a cunning trader. The two have separate adventures, coming so close to meeting that his knife quivers as he prepares to ram it home —
Yet fate conspires to interrupt the two lovers’ predestined meeting: a webbing collapse, an incursion from a rival tribe, a fungus-plague that clogs Mesoth’s best friend’s lamellae until he suffocates. Mesoth doesn’t even get to watch his friend die: he stumbles over the shriveled, mold-furred body, the meat having rotted enough to burst the shell.
A bad death. Useless.
For the sixth time this long evening, he frets that perhaps this is a horror film. Maybe the film-Mesoth also rots alone. But no! Finally, Mesoth comes within scenting-distance of Female!
They exchange no words; they cannot. They share no common language. Yet Female’s tricobothric hairs prickle at his scent.
She whisks him up in her great jaws, carries film-Mesoth back to her birthing chambers. Real-Mesoth’s breaths go shallow as he readies the knife, imagining a woman taking him.
Female removes Mesoth’s robe, removes Mesoth’s jewelry, removes Mesoth’s head with one clean bite. She strips his exoskeleton off as he quivers rhapsodically in her web, stabbed deep with her eggs. Good eggs, firm eggs, eggs that will grow strong.
Time passes. The younglings hatch, Mesoth’s body given fine purpose, the little ones champing eagerly upon his flesh. As the credits roll, montages of Mesoth’s beautiful children blaze across the screen: them hunting rival tribes, spinning great bridges, flying high into the air on exploratory parachutes …
By the time the screen darkens, Mesoth — the real Mesoth — realizes he was so caught up in bliss he forgot to cut himself at the film’s climax. It is getting late. He has to go to work tomorrow. He can’t oversleep, it’s hard enough for a male to find employment …
The screen flares with an advertisement for the next film: another comedy. This one is historical, not his favorite genre, but …
His belly itches to be eaten.
This knife feels so good.
As the next movie sends lambent light flickering across his web, the entire complex pulses as one: a hundred bachelors watching hungrily, shamefully, in silence, each pretending the others don’t exist.
#
The next morning, he’s trying to save the lives of two males before they float away. He orders the other workers daub fresh webbing onto the base of two quivering tethers stretched high into the air, trying to stop it from pulling free.
The males are brown dots against a vast blue sky, their white webbed canopies pulled out behind them in the wind. Mesoth can feel their panicked scrabbles vibrating down the taut line as they try to crawl back to safety.
Gentle breezes were supposed to carry them to rocky outcroppings on the far side of the abyss, where they’d set a tether line; Mesoth and the other webgineers would use that filament to set up sturdier anchor silk to expand the empire outwards.
Instead, an unexpected squall swept them far out over the empty drop. He wants to tell them to ride the breeze, not fight it: spin out more thread, let the wind carry them as far as it needs to until this bluster passes …
The first canopy shreds apart.
The first male drops into darkness.
Mesoth orders his workers to swarm the second tether, piling sticky webbing up until the smaller males are caught in it, but soon the second male’s canopy ruptures. He falls, trailing his tether behind him, a thin gray arc marking his demise.
The remaining worker-males press their bellies against the ground, going flat with horror.
Mesoth alone stares into the abyss, longing for love.
Love would have prevented this, he thinks. Love would have given them a clean time of death, a use for their bodies, a last embrace to tell them how badly they were needed. Smashing against rocks brings no rhapsody; only a lover’s sharp bites can suffuse a male with exhilaration.
Why didn’t some female give them beauty? Why were they abandoned to die at nature’s whims, when a female — any female — could have gifted them with a perfect ending?
Why are they so unworthy?
He turns to the weatherman, signaling angrily with his smallhands. You should not have let them go out today.
The weatherman blinks his many eyes in slow derision. They wanted to smell clean. If you want safety, take a job at the chemical factories.
Mesoth’s spines bristle. The jobs available to males were menial or dangerous: who would waste time training someone meant to be eaten? The saddest cases — males with half-devoured legs — tended vats at the chemical plants, where sulfuric odors clogged their setaceous hairs, made them stink so badly no female would court them.
Whereas webgineering was considered a fine job. The clean outside air would, it was said, make you alluring. Though if this were a female profession, they’d be stocked with scientific tools to check for incoming currents. Instead, they were left to peer at clouds and live in fear of an uncertain death.
Go down and hire four new fliers, the weatherman says. His trim exoskeleton is draped in shining silver beads displaying his house’s crest, flashing metal designed to catch a female’s weak eyes.
Four? Mesoth says. It’s not safe to fly yet.
It will be soon, the weatherman replies. Then, when Mesoth pauses: We can do this without you, you know.
Mesoth unsheathes his fangs – not quite a challenge to combat, but enough to let the weatherman know Mesoth can be pushed too far. The weatherman averts all eight eyes despite his tiny size, telling Mesoth he is so unworthy a threat that he does not need to be watched.
Mesoth hisses and scuttles down the mountaintop, headed for the gates.
He understands why the weatherman is pushing so hard: if they claim the outcropping by week’s end, rumor has it the weatherman’s family will parade him through the next swarming party, where perfumers will alter his scent to appeal to high-born females. A tender young boy like that will be devoured before sundown.
While Mesoth still grieves for the two high-fliers, he wonders: If they had offered him a firm date for his death, a chance to fulfill life’s dream, how many would he sacrifice?
He wants to think he’d be kind, but nobody has made him the offer.
As he approaches the low gate where the petitioners clamor, tides of crawling males perch up on their legs. They rush the gate, gesturing with frantic motions: I’m strong, I’m fearless, my webs are second to none.
As always, his eyes pass over the flawless young males, the ones still gleaming from their last molting. No, Mesoth hunts for scars smeared beneath bright makeup, the prosthetic limbs, seeking the ones marked by love.
And as he points at the first worker, he —
Jaws clamp around his abdomen.
Mesoth goes limp with ecstasy.
The other males dance upon their hind legs, trying to get the female’s attention, but it’s no use: she lifts Mesoth up, her great fangs cradling him, so beautifully huge she rivals the mountain.
Then he sees the expensive silver jewelry dangling from her legs: the same crest as the weatherman’s. Mesoth’s pedipalps vibrate as he realizes she owns this mountain, she’ll breed such powerful children within him. His thoughts dissolve in bliss as his flesh parts under her sharp fangs …
She opens up her second-jaws, patting him down with her pedipalps from chelicerae to spinnerets, licking every inch of his body. Come on, Mesoth begs, riding joy, haul me back to your birthing chambers, have your way with me …
Of course it’s never that simple.
She places him onto on the ground, straddles him. She is so large that her abdomen’s shadow covers him like an eclipse, having grown gorgeously monstrous over long years. The crowd flattens respectfully as She exposes her scent-glands, rubs them all over Mesoth’s body, marks him as Her own.