Spiderman: The Unintentional Wolf Spider

The soles of the suit meet harshly with the jagged earth. I wince, my body and my minor wounds absorbing the impact, my tail pointed out to help me regain my balance. I still feel guilty for cutting a hole in the suit, but there is no way I could fit my fluffy oversized monstrosity into a pant leg. I release and let the end of my web flit away, retreating to some unknown place.

Scouring the earth, I can’t see much. The dust is heavy down here, and even with my enhanced vision, it’s hard to discern exact shapes through the smog. At least my mask filters the air.

I walk for a bit, searching under rubble for anything still alive. A dog, a civilian, but there are none here, and though I could see plenty from the roof, in this little area, there are no corpses either.

I hear a soft sob. My ear twitches toward the sound, unsure of what I heard, but as I scurry in that direction, there is no mistaking it. Someone is very much alive and very much in need of help.

I put my hand down on the rock and swing my leg, hurdling a chunk of protruding concrete. I run towards the source of the sound, ducking under a fallen street lamp. After a few moments of tailing the noise, I come into a vaguely clear area, it's small, but it's long. I've come up along a stretch of road. The once smooth rock now looks like a giant took their finger through cake frosting. It's all busted up, but the sidewalk next to it is left mostly unharmed for a small stretch.

My feet skirt against the ground when I see them.

It's a boy. He’s wearing a black suit with red accents, two long streaks of it trailing up his sides into his arms. He's maskless. He's sobbing. Ugly gasps and wails rip out of his body like he can no longer breathe. Below him, propped up on the rubble of the road, is a girl. She's also in what I assume used to be a suit, but the fabric that covers her is now mangled and torn. She's unconscious, a peaceful look on her almost untouched face. She has blonde hair that's dyed vaguishly pink with some brighter strips of blue. Most jarringly, she has a huge gash down her side, almost ripping her open like a gutted fish.

I shift my hand to clamp over my mouth. I'm not sure if I want to suppress this wave of nausea that comes over me. I'm so desperate for even the small relief sub coming would provide. Sometimes, in this line of work, the horrible sights make the urge to fall to your knees more tempting than the apple Eve ate, more tempting than the serpent who baited her. "Kneel," the voices say to me, my own tempting snake dominating my mind, "Kneel." This intense dread shakes me to my core.

Her blood is mixing with water from a busted fire hydrant. The liquid pools, horrifically beautiful as it courses through the dust, the black of the road beneath them shining through its almost clear hue.

I gasp in horror, it’s just too similar.

"No!" I internally shout at the onslaught of pictures vying for my attention. I punch them down with all the mental strength I have, fighting them off with the anger and frustration that builds each time they come to torment me. "I can’t let you consume my mind now. I’ve got to do something to help."

I’m afraid to penetrate his heavy cloud of grieving, its intensity might knock me over. But if I can prevent a loss, then I'll do everything within my power too.

When I reach him, I hesitate. He must know I'm there but he’s so locked into the situation that he pays no mind. I stoop down beside him.

Then he looks at me, with desperate eyes, tears violently bursting from his eyes. The contortions of pain on a human face are so uncomfortable for me, and his is so raw I noticeably cringe.

“Please, can you help? She needs help!”

I am almost shocked to immobility. This whole situation makes me feel ill. I nod, and barely stutter out:

“Ye-yeah.”
I lift my hands up but shy away from actually touching her body. I glance over her quickly, looking for any sign of life. I honestly can't tell.

I can't help her, but I can try to find someone that can.

I rush back over the stones, looking for anybody when in no time at all, I see someone. He has wicks and a studded jacket, and he's carrying a very battered guitar in his hands. He's looking around with an intensity that makes it clear that he's looking for something.

“Hey!" I shout to him. His eyes make contact with mine and I flinch. “There’s someone over here that needs help!"

He breaks out running, and I’m eagerly waiting for him, poised to start moving as soon as he gets to me. In a moment I’m swiftly making my way through the rubble again, trying not to lose him.

When we get back to the scene, red suit is holding the girl's hand to his lips, concentrating his worried eyes on her placid face.

“Oh no." the guy next to me utters. Then he's jogging towards them, by their sides in an instant, panting.

He kneels down beside her, putting his hands on her face. Red suit looks like he wants to protest, but he's too desperate to object.

Her head softly tilts with rescuer's hands, but its movements are too malleable to point toward consciousness. He looks her over, giving her condition a more thorough examination until he's fully assessed and grimaced at the clearly messed up bones in her chest. He looks up.

“Okay Gwennie,” he whispers, looking intently at her face. “You're going to be just fine, my drummer has been through a lot worse than this, haven't ya?” His eyes are full of compassion, but I can see the determination he has, and also the faith he has, that she understands him.

“I have to perform CPR to get your oxygen going again because one of your lungs is probably pierced. It’s going to hurt like crazy because you got a broken rib, so I’m going to need you to quash that and try not to get any more internal bleeding alright love?" He smiles slightly, tightening his jaw.

"You're going to be fine Gwennie, I believe in you.” With that he kisses the girl's forehead, and starts compressing her chest, wincing as he feels the disaranged bone beneath him. “One two three” he chants under his breath.

My head is spinning like a reel of film, my thoughts shoot rapid fire until I’m finally hooked on something I can do to help. I’m going to find a way to get this girl to a safer location where she can get proper medical help. But we need backup. We need someone with proper medical equipment instead of a guitar. Though I'm guessing rescuer can carry her by himself, Red suit looks too incapacitated to move her, and I don't know if I could bring myself to. I don't want to feel the weight of a body ever again. I don't have time to go searching again, I need to get someone here now.

“Help Help!” I call out, my voice hoarse and the words crackled. “Please we need help.”

“Shut up!” The one red suit says to me. "We need to be quiet!" I can’t register what he’s saying, I need to get this girl help fast.

“Help! Please, we need-”

Suddenly a hand clasps over my mouth

“What are you doing?” It’s red suit. I can now see that he has hazel eyes and they're filled with crazed animal fear, still puffy and red from the tears that haven’t fully evaporated. I shove his hand off my mouth. I hate being touched without my consent, and I'm eager to get his hands away from me. I spin around to face him as I shove his sweaty hand off my mouth. “What are do-”

But then a voice rumbles through the air, all-consuming of the atmosphere, as full as the sky above us, and colored with the same dark hues.

“There you are Spiderman. Or do you prefer Miles Morales? Took me a little while to find you, but now you’ve got nowhere to hide. Does that scare you? Make you feel like a little spider caught under a glass? Good. New York is my house now, morales. and I don't plan on catching and releasing pests. Hmmmm, on second thought, I don't like 'morales'.

I think I’ll keep calling you Spiderman, I can’t have my archnemesis sounding like just a kid from Brooklyn. An incredible villain deserves at least a decent-sounding hero. Speaking of which, I think it’s time for our epic showdown! How about you and I have a chat face-to-face?"

Another swirling void of black appears beneath the now frantic red suit, and suddenly he’s disappeared, falling into a seemingly endless crater. I scream.

“And your friends, I don't want them running off with you again, so why don’t we say goodbye?"

There is an unholy rumble in the earth.

"Say toodle-o spider friends!"

The ground lurches. I hear an unearthly groan as metal snaps.

The building above us comes down faster than I've ever seen a structure crumble, it’s as if you flicked the base in a house of popsicle sticks. The looming rock is coming down on us with a speed that triggers flight or fight so violently it feels like you might burst.

Rescuer and the girl are in the center of its path.

I see him whipping around, desperate for a way out. He scoops up her body, but no matter how fast he runs he’s not going to make it. Rocks tumble down around us, the dust exploding in plumes of debris. It’s all happening so fast. In that split second, I nab both of them with my webs, and hurl them with all my strength, launching them to the side of the chaos and out of the lane of destruction.

I look up into the sky.

I’m all out of webs. I'm all out of seconds.

The building is upon me.

I’m going to be fine.

Why did this have to happen?

Crab Spider always gets back up-

Except when she doesn't.

Well if I’m dying now, I’m not going to close my eyes.

I stare up into the cascading chunks of rock and everything in me becomes very still, clear, except for the beating of my heart.

I even feel full of light.

Suddenly I’m rammed from the side, solid matter battering my stomach. I’m flying through the air faster than I’ve ever gone before, rushing past the twisted metal bars and burst water pipes, moved by something other than my own two legs. The solid pressure around my waist takes shape in my mind. Arms. Someone is holding me. We’re beaming past the falling shards of glass and rock, and while shooting so straight, we’re unable to weave between the debris.

I scream and a huge chunk of rock collides with my skull. I feel my scalp split open like butter jostled by a knife. The whole world flashes out of my sight and in an instant my ears are ringing, harsh rounds of sound spiking against my eardrums. My flesh took a moment to be in shock, but now the blood pools out of the side of my head, mixing with the fibers of my mask, soaking my cheek until it's slick with blood. I can’t see.

I can barely sense the world around me, and suddenly I'm on the ground, I claw slightly back into consciousness, my head aching. My mind squirms and sloshes like it’s dissolved into a champagne glass, swishing and swirling around and around -

I look up, trying to concentrate, my vision in one eye is blurred, and the other is so heavily coated in blood that I cannot open it. I barely have the strength to gasp when I see the face in front of me.

It’s one of the other mask wearers, this one with sharp, but wide eyes that shock me. The intensity of their stare startles a breath into my chest. They have fluffy black hair, that pours out from above the mask, it’s sleek and bouncy, crescendoing and lifting itself in waves. My enhanced smell enables the notice of a hint of coconut. The pattern on the lower part of his mask seems to resemble a spider web. Clever, why didn’t Crab think of that? It may not be scientifically accurate for crab spiders, but it gets the point across. They have three white markings on their face, two elephant tusks, and one dot in the center of their forehead, I think it's a bindi.

Whoever this person is, they must be my rescuer.

But I don’t have time to thank them, at least according to my body, which is pulling me rapidly into unconsciousness.

“Woah woah woah, stay with me, new girl.” It’s a boy's voice, but it feels like there are several layers of silk between us, as well as the entire ocean.

I can barely register his taps on my face until the repetition brings me further into reality.

I look up at his startled wide eyes, he’s pleading with me to stay awake, but my mind can only tether for a moment in this fog.

Briefly, the unwelcome thought blips through my mind: “Was this what I looked like?”

How many times have I had a nightmare of being in this position?

“Who are you?” I croak to him. Just those words amplify my exhaustion, soaking a new layer of it into my body.

I can tell from the shift in his eyes that he’s smiling now, and his voice is bouncy, despite the fact that I’m probably bleeding out, however, his grip on me lets me know that he hasn’t forgotten that.

“I am Spiderman!” he says it more like a grand proclamation than just an answer to my question. But then when he speaks again his voice carries a personalization, as if he’s sharing an inside joke with me, like we’ve been friends for ages. Does he make everyone feel this way?

“But I’m guessing that’s you too huh?”

Spiderman…

He’s asking if his theory is correct. If I’m Spiderman.

And somehow, though I don’t know who Spiderman is, I get what he’s assuming. He’s assuming that I’m one of the other mask wearers, these…spider people.

That I’m like her.

They really are so much like her.

I can feel my tears fading into the fabric of the suit.

I laugh a little.

“No, not even close,” I answer.

As I study his features, the blurry halo of light around him is becoming more opaque and the spots in my vision are obscuring more and more. I can feel the irresistible force of gravity shut my eyelids.

As I slip further away into unconsciousness, I can hear the faintest echos of his voice, as if I dreamed it.

“Come on new girl, let’s get you home.”

I feel the soft flow of the air again, and I fall asleep.