by Peter David
“You want rent? Fix this damn door!”
He shoved so hard that he actually ripped the door off its top hinge. He glanced back, and Ditkovitch looked terrified. As for Ursula, whatever entertainment she’d found in Peter upbraiding the surly landlord had given over to pure fear at Peter’s outburst.
Even Peter was stunned at his ferocity. Without another word, he entered his apartment. He rebalanced the door so that, although it was still free of its hinge, it was at least securely closed. Then he threw the bolt for good measure and stood in the middle of his room.
He looked down at his hands. They were shaking. His entire body was trembling. He had no idea how to feel. Part of him was giddy, riding some sort of bizarre emotional high. But another part was intimidated by the intensity of the feelings he’d unleashed. Particularly so since he had no idea just how far they could lead. Would he possibly have completely blown his stack at Ditkovitch? Lost his temper? Punched him? Ditkovitch wasn’t a super-criminal with a sandy body that he could make rock hard with a thought. He was a normal human whose head could literally be shattered by the force of a single blow.
Lightning blasted the sky outside, and Peter jumped at his reflection in the mirror. For a split second he thought he saw something else in it—the black spider-suit, but larger than it was at the moment, with bristling teeth and an impossibly long, frightening tongue lashing out like a serpent’s. Then it was gone… except the image of it had been seared into Peter’s brain, and now he was beginning to experience the same sense of intimidation that he’d inflicted on Ditkovitch.
He stepped back, studying his image in the mirror. On impulse, he rearranged his hair, bangs now hanging over his forehead, giving it a looser, more aggressive look, and there was steel in his eyes. Then he looked at the busted hinge. Pulling open the top of his shirt, he looked down at the black and silver costume. Is it making me feel this way? Is that even possible? Of course it is. Anything’s possible because I don’t know what the hell this thing is. But I’ve got to find out.
Shucking the outer clothing, he started pulling off the suit. The gloves and mask he’d easily been able to remove earlier and tuck away in his pockets. Perhaps that had resulted from a meeting of the minds between himself and the costume: after all, he couldn’t very well walk around in street clothes with his mask on, and with his mask off, he couldn’t have his gloved hands protruding from his shirtsleeves. But now the rest of the outfit didn’t appear to want to go anywhere. Somewhere in the back of his head, he was having second thoughts, telling himself that he should leave it on, that he had never felt so free before, so powerful. Is that me telling me that? Or is it… this… ?
That terrifying thought was all he needed to spur him on. Unfortunately it did not come without a price.
The suit was indeed sticking to his skin, and it was like peeling off a coating of glue. He fought not to cry out as the costume resisted his efforts before finally giving way.
When he did manage to pull it off over his head, it made loud popping sounds, as if he were pulling an octopus’s tentacles clear but the suckers were trying to hold on.
It took long minutes before he was finally divested of the costume. Part of that came from its incredible adhesion to his skin, and part from that Peter was fighting not only the costume but also himself every step of the way. Toward the end it went faster; it seemed the less of the costume he was wearing, the more diminished its influence upon him… Is that really true? Is it influencing me? My
God… what if it decided to turn me into a mass murderer? Except it would never do that… except… how do I know that?
He threw open the trunk that sat at the foot of his bed where he habitually tossed all random stuff scattered around the apartment whenever somebody (i.e., Mary Jane) came to visit and he needed to clean up fast. Wadding up the black suit, he tossed it into the trunk. He stared at the crumpled ebony heap, waiting for it to move. To do something. To spring back out at him and wrestle him to the ground. Instead it simply sat there as if to say,
What’s your problem? I’m just an article of clothing, for crying out loud. It’s all in your head, boy. All in your head.
I got enough stuff going on in my head without you there, Peter thought frantically, and yet he felt an impulse to reach down, put the suit back on, let the world know that the power of Spider-Man was to be feared and—
Shaking it off, he slammed the trunk lid shut, then locked it for good measure. He sank into a chair, unable to take his eyes off it, still trembling from the intensity of his emotions.
When the phone jangled sometime later, Peter was still in the chair.
He jumped a few feet, startled by the noise, and when he grabbed up the phone, he was relieved to hear Aunt May’s voice. He wasn’t sure he could handle Mary Jane right then.
“Peter,” she said, getting right to it, “I’m worried about you. I told Mary Jane, and maybe I shouldn’t have, but this business with this Marcus person—”
“Marko. Flint Marko. And you don’t have to be worried about anything, Aunt May.”
“I don’t?”
“No.” He was about to tell her more, but after taking another glance at the trunk, he suddenly felt the need to get out of the apartment as fast as he could. “I’ll be right over, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
He’d had to be judicious in the retelling. Several times he almost stumbled over a pronoun, nearly saying I rather than he in describing Spider-Man’s confrontation with Flint Marko. He helped himself by sticking as closely to the truth as he could. He explained that Spider-Man apparently listened in on police band radios; that Marko’s being sought in connection with the death of Ben Parker had been broadcast; that Spider-Man had confronted Marko, a battle had ensued, and…
Peter wondered if he’d be able to go into the specifics of what had happened, as “told to him by Spider-Man.” He didn’t hesitate, as it turned out. Indeed, he went into nearly excruciating detail, including Sandman’s agonizing last moments and his being reduced to nothing but a small river of mud.
A fitting end for someone who was little more than creeping dime.
Aunt May’s eyes widened as the narrative progressed. When Peter finished, he leaned back in his chair and let out a long breath, feeling exhausted just in the recounting. He waited for May to say, “Thank God Ben can finally rest easy” or “Heaven bless Spider-Man for ridding the world of such a monster.” In short, he wanted her to react with the same sort of adulation and praise that the rest of the city had heaped upon him during the “We Love Spider-Man” ceremony.
Instead, to his surprise, May said nothing at first. After some seconds had passed, she finally remarked, “Oh. I see.”
That was it.
Not exactly the reaction that Peter had expected or hoped for.
He was about to ask her if she fully understood everything—that Marko was gone, Uncle Ben avenged, the city safe. Before he could:
“Spider-Man?” she asked, as if she thought Peter might be misinformed. “I don’t understand. Spider-Man doesn’t kill people.”
Peter was stunned at the response. Until that moment, he hadn’t even registered the full ramifications of what he’d done. He didn’t regret for an instant how Marko went out. How could Aunt May even begin to understand? When you’re in a fight for your life, you don’t hold back. If you have an opportunity for a killing blow, you take it, and especially when someone deserves it as much as Flint Marko did…
Except…
When did “deserves” have anything to do with it? Did Norman Osborn deserve to die for all he’d done? Yes. Dr. Octopus? Unquestionably. Yet given the opportunities in both instances, Peter had never even come close to taking them out. Both had perished, but not by his doing. The Goblin had impaled himself on his own glider in a failed attempt to kill Spider-Man, and Octopus had nobly sacrificed himself to save the city. In the case of Sandman, though, it had been no quarter asked nor given.
And it had never occurred
to Peter that it should be otherwise. Was that wrong? A bad thing?
“I thought you’d be…” he began, and then, as much to convince himself as her, he asserted, “He deserved it, didn’t he?” hoping that Aunt May would respond in the affirmative, settling the question for him.
May Parker did him no favors in that regard. “I don’t think it’s our place to decide who deserves to live or die,” she said, sounding a bit surprised and even disappointed that Peter would have to ask such a thing.
“Aunt May, he killed Uncle Ben.”
She nodded. “Ben meant everything to us, but he wouldn’t want us living one second of our lives with revenge in our hearts. It’s like a poison. A venom. It can take us over. Before you know it, turn us into something ugly.”
Peter was stupefied by her reaction and said, “I’m sorry, I guess I…”
In his mind, he saw once again that brief glimpse of a ravening beast reflected in the mirror. Had it been real? In his mind? A glimpse of things to come?
It’s like a poison. A venom. It can take us over.
Peter took a deep breath, exhaled. How should he feel? Confused? Ashamed? Grief-stricken? Would he have done things differently if he’d had it to do all over again?
Who knew? That frightened him more than anything else.
He nodded, apparently in agreement and understanding of what she was saying, but his thoughts were in turmoil, harboring the same brooding fury from earlier. Had the suit placed it there, or exacerbated what was already present, or… ?
Peter had no idea, but he knew he had to find out.
Returning to his apartment (and mercifully not encountering Ditkovitch while doing so), Peter again stared at the trunk for a long while, trying to decide the best way to get a sample of this… this whatever it was… off his costume. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. He was afraid that, if he opened the trunk, he’d be wearing the costume inside of five minutes. He simply didn’t trust himself. It couldn’t have come out of nowhere. It had to be hiding here somewhere. That thought was daunting, because it ascribed same sentience to whatever had bonded itself to his costume. At the very least an animal-level intelligence, or perhaps even more. He didn’t like to consider that possibility, but he had no other options.
Peter crawled on the floor and checked under the bed.
Nothing there but dust bunnies the size of his head. He continued to look around… and then his gaze lit on the closet. Of course. It made perfect sense. He’d even had a strange feeling that the shadows in there had been shifting. It must have been the suit, or the thing on the suit, that had been residing in there, waiting for its opportunity. The more Peter thought of the aspects of intelligence the thing possessed, the more concerned he became.
He went to the closet and opened the door, not sure what he was looking for. If it was some sort of living thing, maybe there would be some sort of secretion or excretion… something that he could gather as a sample. He moved his clothes around, pulled out the shoes that were piled on the floor, and nearly missed what he was looking for. But he noticed it just before he tossed one of his shoes aside. Slowly he turned it over and looked at the sole.
Some sort of black splotch of goo was on it.
If he had given it a casual glance, he would just have thought he’d stepped in some street tar. Because of everything that had happened to him with the suit, he knew better. He tried to remember the last time he had worn the shoes, and it came to him immediately: the opening night of MJ’s play.
As he got a scraper and a specimen jar to transfer the goo into, he ran through in his mind everything that had transpired that night. The play, the ride out to the Palisades, hanging in the web hammock with MJ, riding back, Harry’s assault…
Once again his concerns returned to Harry. Was it some sort of weapon that Harry had thrown at him?
Something he’d developed in a lab and… ? No. No, it made no sense. Harry was many things, but he simply didn’t possess the scientific genius or invention of his father. Still, it could have been something that OsCorp had developed and he’d incorporated into his arsenal. But it didn’t seem right. Maybe…
That shooting star?
Could it have… ?
“Aw, c’mon,” he muttered as he transferred the inert goo into the jar. He couldn’t believe he was entertaining the notion that something from outer space—a meteor or asteroid—had made landfall near him and discharged lame sort of alien lifeform. And that alien lifeform had attached itself to Peter’s shoe, come home with him…
Still… he was reminded of Sherlock Holmes’s great precept: Whenever you eliminated the impossible, whatever remains—however improbable—must be the truth.
Harry had inflicted some sort of self-replicating virus on him during their battle. Impossible.
A creature had hitched a ride on a meteor, fallen to earth, and seized Peter Parker as its host. Impossible.
Peter didn’t foresee a shortage of impossible theories; improbable ones. Holding up the jar and staring at the black goo within, Peter hoped that the man to whom he was bringing this sample would be able to point him toward the right impossibility.
Dr. Curtis Connors stared with fascination at the specimen jar, shaking it slightly and watching the goo move around within. Peter stood several feet away, glancing around Connors’s office/laboratory, fascinated as always to see what his favorite professor was working on. He noticed a chart on the wall of different types of lizards, and an anatomical model for a lizard nearby. He considered that rather curious, since to the best of his knowledge, Connors wasn’t a herpetologist. So what was the sudden interest in lizards?
Connors was careful as he examined the bottle since he had to do it one-handed. Peter glanced at the flapping sleeve where Connors’s right arm wasn’t and wondered if Connors had taken such an interest in lizards because he was planning to try to regrow his missing arm, just as some types of lizards were capable of doing when losing a limb. Then Peter shook his head and smiled. Creatures from outer space, and now a teacher embarking on a scheme out of a 1950s B movie. That was the problem when one lived a life where one used spider powers to fight guys made out of sand: it was impossible to distinguish between likelihood and absurdity.
“Where’d this come from?” Connors finally asked.
“I don’t know.” That was certainly true enough. Peter had thoughts, but nothing definite. “It was on my shoe. Would you check it out? I’m curious what it is.”
“Yeah. I am too. I’ll let you know.” Connors’s gaze shifted to Peter. “By the way, I saw your lab partner in the news the other day. Quite the sensation, our Miss Stacy in a romantic entanglement with Spider-Man.”
“I…” Peter shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “I wouldn’t call it an entanglement. It was just a kiss…”
“Well, when you do something that publicly, you’re asking people to draw their own conclusions.”
“Yeah, I… I guess you are,” Peter admitted. Certainly Mary Jane had done so, and none of them were to his favor. He wondered, for the first time since his entire world had gone dark, how she was doing.
The Jazz Room was a long-standing establishment down in the Lower East Side. During its heyday, top jazz musicians would stop in unexpectedly and start jamming with whoever was onstage. But that was many years ago, and the Jazz Room wasn’t what it used to be.
Then again, I’m not what I used to be either, thought Mary Jane.
Stepping out into a crisp, bright Manhattan afternoon, Mary Jane squinted and waited for her eyes to adapt. She’d only been in there for fifteen minutes. She wondered what it was going to be like when she was there for a full eight-hour shift. Glancing behind, she saw the sign waitress/ singer wanted that had been hanging in the window being removed by the manager. People were going on about their business, hurrying to jobs or appointments or to spend time with friends or family. Mary Jane watched them go and once again had that orphan-outside-a-banquet feeling. She was, as the Bible sa
id, in the world but not of it. She felt a desperate need to be a part of not only the world, but of something that would take her outside her own worries and frustrations. She walked through the city, seeing couples holding hands, exchanging a kiss or two, making even the simple act of crossing the street seem romantic. Feeling masochistic, she walked past the Broadhurst Theater. It was as if she’d never performed there. She was even beginning to wonder if it had ever happened, or if it had all been some sort of dream that had disappeared all too quickly upon waking.
MJ heard sirens and what she was reasonably sure was a fire truck in the distance. Police cars hurtled past. People watched them go by, talked to each other, speculated about what was happening. She even heard, “Spider-Man?” as couples queried each other as to whether the famed web slinger would be involving himself.
Mary Jane had no idea.
But thinking about him, about the life that had deserted her, prompted Mary Jane to step into a doorway, removing herself from the crowded street. She pulled out her cell phone from her bag and started scrolling down the directory of names. She stopped on Peter’s, naturally. Her impulse was to try to reconnect with him, to heal the fractures in their relationship. But in the past days, he had become almost unrecognizable… and now there was this new business with his uncle Ben. How was she supposed to be there for him when he had made it clear he wanted no part of her?
She needed to be with someone she felt needed her in return, and from whom she could find mutual support.
She continued to scroll down, then back, looking for a name to leap out at her. Finally, one did.
Why hadn’t she thought of him sooner?
She hesitated only a moment before clicking the dial button, then waited for the connection to be made. It rang twice, three times, four, and she prepared herself to be connected to voice mail… when she was startled by a sudden pickup.