SYMBIOTE HOLOCAUST
CHAPTER ONE: Nothing
Rain. It just had to be rain. It seemed like every time he went outside, it was rain. He hated rain so very much. Rain was boring. It was just...clear. No color, no personality.
He walked down past a few stores and brushed past a few people. There was an older gentlemen who sat on the sidewalk near a grated vent, taking in the heat from underground. His clothes were tattered and dirty, and he wore a thick, gray beard. His face was stained with soot and dirt. In his right hand was a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels, in his left was a paper cup with a little loose change in it. The old man held his cup out.
"Good evening, sir. Boy oh boy, you must be a lawyer or something. Got any spare change? I just need to get something to eat..." the old bum said.
He stared down at the old man. After a moment of thought, he reached down and grabbed the cup of change and the bottle. Humming happily to himself, he walked away while partaking of the liquor. Dumbfounded, the old man picked himself up off of the ground and followed while shouting.
"Hey, get back here, you prick! Ya' know how long it took me to save up that money?" the old bum yelled.
He continued walking, continued drinking, without acknowledging the old man.
"Hey, look at me! You hear me? Gimme my stuff back, you sack of crap!" the old man yelled.
He stopped, lowered the bottle, and looked back over his shoulder.
"Problem?" he asked.
"Who the hell do you think you are?" yelled the old man.
"Who am I?"
The old man was about to say something, but he suddenly found that he had lost his ability to speak. That was because a red and black spear had come from seemingly nowhere and impaled the old man in his heart. Eventually the spear retracted, and the old man hit the ground, dead.
"Truth is, I don't even know anymore," answered Cletus Kasady as he walked into a nearby cemetery.
Cletus walked and walked while still sipping on the Jack Daniels. Eventually he stopped at a grave and stared down at the tombstone. At first his face showed no emotion. But then it slowly shifted. Now his face showed nothing but anger. He hurled the bottle at the tombstone. The bottle exploded and spread liquor and glass all over the tombstone and the ground. Cletus continued staring at the tombstone, and it was then that the anger in his face changed to sadness. He dropped to his knees and allowed himself to weep for the first time in years. Then, after a moment, he looked back up at the tombstone.
"So, you proud of me, Ma? Little baby Cletus, your bundle of joy, your flesh and blood, your legacy....this is me...I'm...I'm..." Cletus paused for a moment, and then raised his fists into the air. "I'M NOTHING!" Cletus allowed himself to lower back to the ground. "Not a damn thing..."
Just then a group of teenagers began to approach Cletus. There were five of them, the oldest being nineteen. He was the leader. He walked up to Cletus first.
"Hey, man, you okay? It ain't normal for a guy to start screamin' for no reason," the leader said.
"Yo, Mark, you ain't gonna kill 'em, are you?" said one of the leader's friends.
"Shut up, I'm tryin' to talk to the guy," said Mark.
Cletus didn't even bother to look up.
"Hey, you deaf or somethin', pussy?" Mark said as he drew a knife. "Let's have the wallet, punk. Hey, you hear me?"
Cletus looked at Mark over his shoulder.
"What do you plan to do with that?" asked Cletus, indicating the knife.
"What do you think, pussy? Gimme the fuckin' money before I cut you!" demanded Mark.
"You? Cut me?" Cletus grabbed a sharp shard of glass from the ground and ran it across his wrist. "That's funny..." The blood leaked out of his arm and ran across the ground.
"Dude, he's fuckin' nuts..." one of Mark's friends said.
"Shut up. I don't care if he's got screws loose or not, he's gonna get hurt," said Mark.
"Kid, you don't know what it means to get hurt..." said Cletus as the blood started to run back up his arm. Some of the blood started to run black as it ran over his whole body. "But I would be happy to show you!" said Cletus as the last of the blood covered his neck and head.
"What...what the hell is that?" one of Mark's friends yelled.
"You really wanna know? Come on. I started a freakin' riot just a couple years ago. I beat up this town's resident webslinger and his black and white retarded clone on a regular basis. But, what the hell, I'll tell you anyway, just because I like hearing my own name..."
Cletus rose, turned, and fired a dart from his wrist that embedded itself in between the eyes of one of Mark's friends. Immediately they all turned and ran, and he chased after them with ease.
"I'm Carnage, and I'm..." then he stopped. For once, he couldn't even think of a cool line. He couldn't think of anything. "I'm nothing..."
Carnage eventually rushed forward and tore into every one of the teens except for Mark. Blood painted the ground, with bones and pieces of flesh for extra decoration. Eventually everybody was gone but Mark and Carnage. Carnage glared down at Mark while breathing heavily, not fully knowing what to do with him.
"What's the point?" Carnage thought aloud. "He'd just be another victim. Just another pointless kill. Why even go on? Why even keep living? Why even...why...wait..." In a moment of inspiration, Carnage glanced back at the tombstone. "Heh...thanks, Mom..."
"What...what are you gonna do with me?" asked Mark as he backed away on the ground.
Carnage knelt over Mark and flashed a toothy black grin.
"What's your name, kid?" asked Carnage.
"M...Mark..." Mark replied.
"Mark, my friend, you're gonna be part of history..." said Carnage.
******
The three thugs burst from the door of the convenience store and jumped into their car. Then they took off as quick as possible.
"Yo, how much we get?" one of them yelled to his partner in the backseat.
"I count about three hundred so far!" the other yelled back to him.
"That's it? It wasn't even worth it!" the third one yelled.
The car sped through the streets. It wasn't long before there was a police car trailing them. The guy in the passenger seat turned and fired back at the cops.
"Die, you pig motherfucker!" he screamed while firing. He ducked back into the car and looked at his partner. "Can't you drive this shit any faster?"
"Shut up, man! Don't worry about those cops, we're clear!" the driver said.
Just then there was a thump on the roof of the car.
"What was that?" asked the one in the back.
The one in the passenger seat looked out of the window and up.
"What the fuck is this?" he asked himself. A second later a guy in a red and blue costume poked his head out from above the roof of the car.
"First of all, gimme this," the guy said as he grabbed the gun and crushed it.
"What the fuck?!" exclaimed the thug in the car.
"Secondly, watch that mouth, kid," said the guy as he punched the thug in the face and knocked him unconscious.
"What the hell happened? Rico's out!" screamed the guy in the backseat.
On the other side of the car, the back door was ripped off. Spider-Man poked his head in while upside-down.
"I'm not even gonna comment on the guy's name, but... 'out'? That's the term you guys use for unconscious? You kids and your newfangled slang talk..."
Spider-Man quickly fired a web that pinned the guy to the seat. Then he rose back up to the roof. Crawling forward, he poked his head in front of the windshield.
"Smile, you're on Candid Camera!" said Spider-Man.
"Ah! Get away from me!" yelled the driver as he slammed on the breaks. The jerk caused Spider-Man to fly off of the car, but he caught himself on a lightpole, gracefully backflipped while holding onto the pole, and then landed on top of it. The car sped forward again. Spider-Man swung with his webs from pole to pole while trailing the car, and then he landed of top of it again.
"Stop the car or I'll be forced to waste another stupid joke on you!" demanded Spider-Man.
"You can't stop me, Spider-Man! You can't stop me!" screamed the driver.
Spider-Man paused for a second, and then he punched through the roof of the car.
"Wanna bet?" said Spider-Man as he fired a web that pinned the driver's foot to the break. He fired another web to hold the driver still, and then he jumped off of the car. The police were on the car in seconds.
"Don't move a muscle!" yelled one officer as he drew a gun on the driver.
"Like he has a choice..." Spider-Man said with a smirk.
The police all focused on getting the unconscious and webbed up thugs out of the car while Spider-Man watched.
"Oh, sure the Fantastic Four prevent a crime, they show up on Oprah Winfrey. I prevent a crime, I'm on America's Most Wanted. You know what? Screw you guys, I'm going home. To the Spidercave!" said Spider-Man. He expected somebody to laugh, but nobody was even looking his way.
Just as he turned, Spider-Man noticed something peculiar a few feet away. Not too far away was the entrance to a cemetery. He knew it well. It was where he, Venom, and the Black Cat had faced Carnage at the end of the riots that he had started. He walked toward the entrance and then crouched down. There, on the ground, was the body of an old man, seemingly homeless, covered in blood. It seemed as though he had been impaled with something.
"Who could have done this?" Spider-Man asked himself.
It was then that he noticed something else not too far away. A few feet away, there was a message on the ground. Spider-Man walked toward the message and immediately knew that it was blood.
"I'M COMING"
"Ah crap..." Spider-Man moaned aloud.
END OF CHAPTER ONE