Bored Insanity
I shouldn't be doing this. I really shouldn't… thought the young man Peter Parker, known to the world as Spider-Man, as he shot a strand of silver, sticky web at a nearby building. Mary Jane is probably at her cousin's birthday party right now, having a good time. Ugh—I should be with her, taking her to a movie or something. Or dinner. Stupid cousin and stupid party… leaving me alone to brood in my brightly colored tights…
He released the strand as he arced around a corner, and shot another, gaining momentum. I mean, really, here I am. Boyfriend to the prettiest girl in New York, and instead of being with her, I'm swinging around in red and blue tights on a Friday night. Ugh! What's wrong with me?
Before he could continue his particularly poignant personal monologue, however, his sixth sense buzzed. The Spider-Sense indicated danger almost directly below. He landed on a nearby building edge and peered down. A dimly lit alley lay before him, in which two hooded figures were getting ready, it seemed, to attack the figure of a slight young woman. Finally…
He leapt from his crouched position on the building ledge. "This isn't where I parked my car!" he exclaimed loudly as he hit the ground only yards from the shadowy men. Great, Pete… now you can't even think of your own lines? Stealing from movies? God, I've sunken so far…
With barely a thought, he sidestepped one of the thuggish men as he bull-charged at him, hollering gruffly, "It's Spider-Man!"
To this, Peter turned around wildly, feigning excitement, and yelled, "Where?!" He fired two web strands from his wrists at the man whose back was now facing Peter. When they connected, he pulled hard. "Wait! I see him!" The big man fell hard on his butt.
The second man, who seemed to have been broken out of his momentary shock, pulled a long knife from his back pocket, brandishing it nervously. His eyes were wide with fear. Peter stood there for a moment, staring at the man. Neither moved. After several long seconds of silence, Pete declared, "I have a question."
The man, who didn't know what to do or say to this, dropped the knife, muttered something like, "Bat-$# crazy…" and took off running in the opposite direction. Peter playfully smacked his gloved palm against his forehead and lazily flicked a wrist at the fleeing criminal. The glob of web hit him squarely on the back, and Pete pulled him back, spraying him with a mist of webbing to secure him to the ground. Crouching, the ghostly white eye pieces stared motionlessly into the crook's face. "Ya' know, I was just going to ask what you thought you were going to accomplish with that knife. I mean, before my costumed butt kicked your un-costumed butt. Come on, I'm Spider-Man. I face octopus men, and electric man, and sand men. I know you've seen the movie (which I didn't see a dime of)… Surely you knew the knife wasn't going to do you any good?" Peter waited; the thief simply whimpered.
"Ugh! You thug-thievy-crook-people are all the same. Like your friend, behind me. He's thinking, maybe, if he's real quiet, he'll be able to get away. The only problem with that, being—" Before the bigger man could get up to dash off, Peter aimed a wrist over his shoulder. Excluding his head, the man was soon encased in a sticky web cocoon. "…he's wrong."
Dusting off his hands with loud claps, he approached the victim, a woman who had gotten up from the ground when Spider-Man had shown up, but decided to stick around for the show. Pete handed her the purse, which had been thrown aside in the alley. "Here you go, ma'am." Just as he was about to scale the adjacent building to leave, she spoke up.
"You nuts?" she asked, her voice thick with a Brooklyn accent.
"What?"
"I said, are you nuts? You know, a wackadoo?" One of her eyebrows was raised slightly, as if she were asking the question to a disobedient child.
"Am I nuts? Nuts?" repeated Peter. He didn't answer immediately, instead leaped to the side of the building. Crouching on the wall in the shadow cast by the street light several yards away, so that all the hard-boiled New York woman could see were his reflective eye pieces, he growled slightly, and said, "No… I am—the NIGHT!" And with that, he swung off, smiling under his mask in spite of himself.
Fin