i'll be your guide to the other side (die, you're all gonna die!)
Peter Parker-Lombardi was wandering around Queens in a drunken, delirious haze. His mind was clearing, however it was still relatively fuzzy, and he recalled the night’s events.
His mother, Mary, who had coerced him into running away on a high, had been arrested, leaving behind a large stash of drugs and alcohol in the place they had decided to stay at on their midweek bender.
His mentor, Tony, had been the one to call the police in the first place, and was apparently staying with his sisters and cousins because he was worried Peter would return in the middle of the night.
His sister, and probably his best friend, Caterina, had stared at him with eyes devoid of emotion, and she looked disgusted. He couldn’t blame her, but he couldn’t help it, could he?
Peter had had a hard life, and he pondered this fact as he fiddled with a bag of cocaine, and sipping on a bottle of booze. His birth, where his mother was in a bathtub at a frat party. His father getting arrested when he was four, to his brother overdosing at five. Him continuing the cycle of Parkers to go off the rails and turn crazy.
He didn’t believe he had turned crazy. He had always been crazy, he thought, in his own way, but he was. Peter sighed, and undid the ziplock bag, looking for the scrap table that Mary had nicked from a local park, with his help.
Peter poured the whole thing out, not knowing how much was in there, and got out his student ID card, separating the white powder into thin lines, as he had done so many times before.
He snorted. He thought of his family, the ones that had always supported him and his ambition. He snorted. He almost laughed at the image in his head of Tony reacting to him going off the rails, and he thought that it would distort his view of Peter being a ‘kid’.
Peter hadn’t been a child for a long time.
He snorted again, and suddenly, he was on the moon. He laid down, slumping against the brick wall that scratched his back, and extended his legs in front of him, leaning back. He was on the cliff, and suddenly, he had been pushed off. The temptation clawed at him, and he watched as the colours changed and became funny images that made him smile in the midst of an alley in the middle of Queens, in the middle of nowhere.
Songs rushed through his head and he thought of Back in Black, by AC/DC, the song he had heard countless times in Tony’s lab as they worked on the webs for Spider-Man and his suit. He thought of Spider-Man, the responsibilities that he didn’t want anymore, and grinned, breathing shakily. His head started to hurt. He began to sweat, and he clawed at his t-shirt to take it off.
He sniffed, wiping his nose. He vomited onto the hard concrete, red specks splashing back into his face as he laid to stare at the stars. He inhaled deeply, but began to cough. His eyes watered as he vomited again.
At the Parker residence, Tony had managed to track Peter’s phone, which he had slid into his pocket when he had his short stint at home. Tony rushed into the car, followed by Caterina, who had shot Tony down when he began to argue about the matter.
They found the alleyway surprisingly quickly, and had rushed down it, not expecting to see what they did. Caterina gasped, blinking rapidly, a hand shooting up to her mouth. Her eyes started to water and she blocked out the signs of Tony talking, typing something on his phone.
You knock a Parker down, another one will take their place, she thought. Caterina felt selfish and guilty, but she wished that Peter wouldn’t die. That Peter wouldn’t escape their fucked up family, and he stayed with them. He raised them until they were all old and wrinkly.
It was a fantasy that would no longer become true. Caterina whimpered. As she stared into her brother’s eyes, she saw her future in front of her. Police sirens dragged her away, and Tony’s firm hand clasped onto her shoulder.
She screamed as she got back to the house. Peter’s body had been taken for investigation, and she immediately collapsed into Ximena’s arms, and suddenly, like magic, Ximena knew.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” she whispered. Caterina could only nod against her chest, as she cried for her future, and her siblings’. Valentina was now hers, Carlotta was now hers, Mario and Luigi were now hers.
Mario and Luigi, she thought, as her heart broke, and the only love she knew withered away, had seen two of their brothers die. Caterina knew that they would “bury” Peter’s body next to Ricardo’s for sentimental value.
This was all Mary’s fault, Caterina acknowledged. Caterina cried into Ximena’s jumper, and Elisabetta wailed. Perhaps they had all felt the cord snap, just like Ricardo’s had, and perhaps the baby was wiser than they knew.
They all gathered around the same spot, and the sight was eerily familiar. Malena, Ximena, Caterina, Valentina, Mario, Luigi, Carlotta, Mateo and Tony all gathered around the same gravestone that they had made for Ricardo, and had began to dig a hole.
Tony was doing most of the work. Him, more than anyone, understood their need to acknowledge family, and the death of them. The family was weeping, and it was a sad day.
“Someone’s going to have to tell Richard,” Ximena said, her voice cracking slightly. “And Gabriela.” Malena nodded, her face contorted in pain.
They had no body to bury, but would throw sentimental items into the ground. Caterina threw a Prince Charming plate in, one he had gotten for his third birthday and had kept ever since. It had long become scratched and flawed, but it meant the same.
Mario and Luigi threw an, ironically, Luigi and Mario puzzle in there, only to symbolise the fact that he had named them, while he was in a phase of video games.
Valentina threw a cardboard envelope in it, the envelope was filled to the brim with paper made hearts they had done together for Valentine’s day. Tony wiped a tear from his eye as he put on his sunglasses.
Caterina bounced Elisabetta on her hip as Ximena and Malena stepped forward to do the same, and they spoke quietly. Tony bent down and put a formula in there, whispering something inaudible to their ears.
Caterina, like her brother before her, cried.
Caterina cried with the realisation that her brother had been knocked down the hill, and Caterina cried with the realisation that her predecessors had had before her.
These were not Peter’s kids anymore.
They were hers.
END