Am I still human?
1
The rain beat against the pavement in a strangely soothing and constant pattering rhythm. The gaunt, unearthly-pale, figure kept his face shaded under the ragged hood of the sweatshirt as he stumbled through the dim, early evening light that seeped through the blessedly heavy silver of the clouds, defusing the last of the day's harsh radiance.
"Am I still human?"
The question seems like a spiritual one, one of deep personal complexity but the original thought was something a little more corporeal, a little more sterile, and a little more clinical in the scientific analysis of his own strange physiological condition. Am I still human? It was more bearable to face the question in a bio-physiological context than in to face it in a spiritual context. It seemed that the answer was likely "No" if he had to look at it in a spiritual way and he could not bear that at the moment so he chose the clinical definition of human for the consideration of the question that was easier for his analytical mind to process. He was a man of science after all. Science was easier to face than the spiritual.
And so began the routine of biological self-analysis. His feeding habits were almost directly equitable to the South American vampire bat, a bat whose genetic material had in-part been a component of the experiment he had conducted upon himself, along with other components and electrical current. Who would have thought his half-mad research would one day have practical effects such as the use of the glycoprotein known as Draculin (named after Dracula) found in the vampire bat saliva, and used naturally, by the animal as an anticoagulant was now synthesized as a commonly used blood thinner- the countless lives saved and made better by such things could not make up for all that he had done and wanted to do…
The biochemical composition of his own blood was now something highly unique. It would cause such things as virally induced cancer to be self-limiting and transient events in the life of the organism that inhabited his blood, that had once been a recognizable blood disease that had been killing him until that monstrous transformation happened…
The experiment had been a success- more or less. It had saved his life but at what cost? The disease that had condemned him to a slow and agonizing death, was changed somehow. It had spared him from death. Death had been waiting for him his whole life, like a lion to gobble him up. And it had been nearing its final roar at the time of his desperate experiment to save himself... He had been forty-five-years-old at the time of his self-experimentation that now seemed ages ago and many men die at a younger age but usually they are older when death comes for them in this day and age. And considering his rare blood disease he had been amazed to have survived that long but he could only stave off death for so long, proverbially dodging the Grim Reaper's scythe. And the disease had caught up to him like a forest fire that had raged out of control. Today though, over four-decades after the original experiment, he was something different, something ageless, and the disease was something different as well.
The disease had changed- mutated by his own experimentation into something within his blood that seemed to have its own base level of intelligence, enough so to alter him, to suit its own need and want for survival, to procreate itself by the consumption and transformation of fresh blood cells into ones similar to itself. The disease had become a new strain of vampirism so eerily similar to the supernatural variety of that he could count the precious differences on his hand. And hadn't the nineteenth century author Bram Stoker (the writer of Dracula) once compared the supernatural variation of vampirism to a disease? Perhaps that's how all forms of vampirism begins, the mutation of a disease or virus into something almost alien in its nature.
Unlike the supernatural vampires he did not need an invitation to enter a home. Symbols of faith could not harm him. He cast a reflection a mirror (though sometimes he wished otherwise). He could not transform into a wolf, or a bat, or into mist the way the likes of Dracula could change into such things. (And he knew all too well that Dracula and others like Dracula were most dangerously real). And he could not manipulate the weather to summon the storm or wind to do his bidding, at least he did not believe he could do that. Perhaps that would be something that would develop in time like his ability to hypnotize others. He also did not require soil of his homeland in order to rest as Dracula required it (or so Bram Stoker had claimed). Maybe Dracula's need for that was only psychosomatic. He could only speculate.
There were more differences between himself and the supernatural vampires but those were the first differences to come to mind. They were precious, these differences, because they made him feel more human, less like a monster, more like a living being than something dead or undead even though death was no longer something permanent for him. (And he had died many times, hadn't he?) He no longer had to fear death as he did before his desperate experimentation. Now he feared living as the thing he had become.
The similarities to the supernatural vampires were alarming to him...
Years ago, before he had become this creature, Doctor Michael Morbius had been a Nobel Prize winning biochemist and hematologist. He had been happily engaged to a kind hearted woman named Martine yet all the while he had been suffering from a terminal blood disease. The proverbial sword of Damocles had dangled over his head by a fine thread. It's hard to dream of tomorrow when tomorrow may never come. It is hard to plan a future marriage and happy years when you know in your heart you only have months or days and your lovely bride will be left a lonely widow...
In the early nineteen seventies Dr. Morbius had desperately experimented with a cure for himself at a time when he knew survival was near to impossible. He did not want to leave his fiancé, Martine, alone. He had gone out onto the yacht with Emil Nikos, his friend and partner in research, with the certainty that if he could not cure himself that he would die out there on the water.
The experiment had been successful... more or less... He had unintentionally ended up turning himself into a scientifically created vampire. And poor Emil Nikos, his life-long friend, had been the first victim of his terrible and now constant hunger…
Morbius found himself struggling against an all-consuming desire for living, warm human blood. Though blessed with heightened senses, agility, speed, the capacity to defy gravity and to glide on air currents, the power to hypnotize those of weaker wills than himself, the ability to heal from what should be fatal injuries, and was likely not aging, there were also several drawbacks. He had an aversion to bright light and of course, a constant hunger for human blood that whispered silently in the back of his mind to do terrible things and soaked his daytime dreams in blood. Morbius also could not quite pass for human as he has bat-like pointed ears, crimson eyes, and chalky white skin with sharp, claw-like nails on his hands and feet.
Am I still human?
The question had not been a spiritual one at the moment though it often turned to that. The question was of a physical nature. Was he the host for a vampiric organism that had once been a mundane disease or was he the vampire? It's sometimes speculated that supernatural vampirism is nothing more than a complex, mutated virus…
The blood- his very blood- itself would seem as immortal as the Turritopsis dohrnii (the immortal jellyfish, the very first organism to be discovered with confirmed "Biological immortality.") if you ignore the prospect of it being utterly destroyed- such as by being consumed in A fire or his (its host) own decapitation…
Often he had stared at his own blood under microscopes, checking under one microscope and then another- microscope after microscope, as if somehow he would see something that he had previously missed, some change, or some way to undo the terrible thing he had done to cheat his own death, as if a different microscope might reveal something different about his own blood samples.
If he took a sample now he already knew what he would see. There would be a peculiar quality of the structural detail of a seventh leukocyte. There was a complex tripartite nuclei. And there it was. This strange structure that had once been a sick man's blood cell might appear to have the ability to change healthy human cells (when introduced to it) according to the type of cell being consumed by the cell structure and reproduced into ones of a similar nature to the structure. They would birth living versions of the strange new type as quickly as the original human cells die. The blood even endured in temperatures to the like of fifteen degrees Celsius outside of his body, which now seemed to be a host for this thing.
The disease had transformed into something of a symbiotic organism living within his veins. It was like a fungus in a way. It sustained itself through him, making Doctor Michael Morbius its slave. He was quite sure if he was human he would be dead by now. The thing inside him was the only thing keeping his vitalities functional and keeping him relatively ageless. The organism in his veins sustained his awareness and gifted him with certain heightened senses in order to ease him in the hunt for what the organism within his blood craves to sustain its own strength. The living vampire is a host organism for another entity living on a microscopic level within his very cells. Sometimes, as horrific as it seemed, he felt that the blood had its own strange, low-level of consciousness, but just enough to desire survival and to use the vampiric host and the vampire's instincts to do so and to potentially procreate itself by spreading itself into other host organisms, creating other vampires.
When he drank blood, his body burned and used every aspect of the digested blood and that is why his bowels and bladder were pretty much atrophied. They have no real use to the vampire. That is also why the reproductive organs bore no seed because that is not how the organism in his veins spreads itself and procreates. And it is not necessary for its survival. It did however whisper a silent suggestion that to relieve loneliness he could create others like himself…
No! Not ever again! Never again! He would never make another to satisfy that dreaded desire.
When he drank human blood the red blood cells carry the nutrients that his body used as fuel. The leukocytes (white blood cells) were for healing. The platelets were for the necessity of clotting and plasma for hydration. All creatures require hydration. Nothing of the blood went to waste. He burned it all.
The instinct, drive, and yes, that repulsive yet seductively appealing yearning, to hunt and kill was a byproduct of the symbiotic organism and its silent command to sustain itself through the obtaining of more blood.
Without a new infusion of blood for it to latch on to and birth out newer versions of itself, the host organism (Morbius) theoretically would not necessarily die but instead fall into a dormant or hibernative state until properly fed or roused into feeding. Of course by then his human mind would probably be completely overcome by the raw instinct to kill, as it had been on that very first night when poor Emil had been the closest living thing to the newborn vampire. He would wildly and nearly mindlessly seek to slake his thirst though hunger seemed the more appropriate word. Thirst was something he associated with hydration. This was much more than that. If such a time of constant starvation for blood should happen then his reasonable mind would not return until the feeding was done and someone lay dead at his feet.
Even the ability of transvection (flight) or self-levitation (which he did have) had a sort-of logical explanation if one studied parapsychology based on the enhanced development of his brain- particularly within the temporal lobe. The extra usage of the brains capacity could increase psionic potential such as empathically absorbing the brainwave patterns of others and reconstituting them as coherent instinctual, comprehensive patterns of images, emotion, and perhaps even full words (in short, mind reading).
Morbius could not precisely read minds but he could influence them if the wills were weaker than his own, an ability to transmit his own will into the minds of others and induce a type of hypnosis. And sometimes he could sense things such as the presence of vampires of the more supernatural persuasion. But what does supernatural mean anyway other than super (to be advanced) and natural (of nature)? This meant that the literal translation of supernatural was "advanced quality of nature" which just meant something natural but not yet explored or defined by science- but not actually outside of science. There was a strange comfort in this consideration. Perhaps he was evolving, over time, into something indistinguishable from the supernatural vampires. His heart and soul hoped that was not the case. Though that would account for why it had taken him so long to develop his capacity to hypnotize others. It had not apparently been there immediately after his physiological transformation, or at least he had not immediately noticed it. But then again there had been a self-loathing that had limited his exploration into his new and curious abilities in those early and blood drenched evenings.
Transvection could be the result of telekenetic potential in being able to lift one's own body mass through psychokinetic and electromagnetic energy manipulation by a sophisticated synaptic structure of the brain, particularly within the now unusually developed temporal lobe. This was aided by the fact that his physiology had deviated so much from human that his skeleton was now only superficially human. His bones were now hollow, like those of a bird, which made gliding over the air with transvection to lift himself quite easy for him.
With such abilities his metabolic rate had become something incredible, and as a result of the increased metabolism, demanded continual nourishment. He was always hungry…
Dehydration and other discomforting factors and potential biological temporary shutdown compelled him to feel a requirement of feeding on a regular basis. That and there was, for him, a natural euphoria caused by the chemical reactions of the prey, picked up by the olfactory senses though not precisely what he'd call a smell. That made the hunt near to irresistible at an addiction level. The hunt combined with the feeding produced a euphoric high for him.
Also because of the difference in biochemistry, (just like how a wolf can tell a species or even an individual person from a different person just by scent), and his psychic inclination, he theoretically, should be able to detect another of his own kind. And often he could sense other vampires- not just those he, himself, had cursed to this damned half-life, but also those of the more supernatural style of vampire.
The blood in his veins, for all its incredible abilities, such as making virally induced cancers and other ailments self-limiting, bore certain limitations of its own. As he was highly light sensitive, his own blood could be highly combustible and photosensitive because the vampiric organism had limited his diurnal awareness for the necessity of the hunt, which when the prey is humans, is night time, when the prey is most vulnerable and usually most docile. Humans, for the most part, are not usually nocturnal, so it's the perfect time for the predator that is a vampire.
Its practicality that has him, and those like him, function at night. Since the daylight is not a necessity that produces the daytime weakness, fatigue, disorientation and vulnerability. The loss of pigment in the skin could be the biological method of maintaining nocturnal favoritism within the host and or was also the result of the organism's fixation on the nocturnal hunt, focusing its purpose on what is useful for that and therefor limiting that which would make daylight more bearable.
Dr. Michael Morbius had always been photosensitive so enhanced photophobia because of the transformation seemed to only exaggerate an old and life-long weakness because of the disease that had been within his imperfect blood.
A vampire's blood has certain other frailties. For example, a vampire burns iron far faster than a human.
His ears were pointed as hearing was enhanced. His nasal passage had changed, improving sense of smell and his eyes, which had once been a deep, midnight blue, were now as crimson that mocked the memory of the very microscopic image of his own red blood cells. A physical reminder of the blood he hungered for constantly, that's what his eyes had become. His eyes were like the blood - the substance he insistently longed for. He saw so keenly in the dark that daylight induced physical pain in those poor, photosensitive receptors. Sidewalk pavement would glow with harsh, white fire and brutally bounce its way back from the tree leaves dancing in breeze, if he dared linger out in the morning. Sharp eye tenth that were dangerous fangs, and sharp, claw-like nails at the ends of his thin fingers could extend and retract like those of a cat, all the better to hunt… and to kill…
2
Am I still human?
The question trailed away. The distraction was that terrible gnawing hunger within. Someone might die tonight, his heart told him. Turn yourself in. Surrender to the tender mercies of humanity. If you do not do this then you will kill. You don't want to kill.
He shook his head. He could not bring himself to do it, to turn himself in.
Go to Jennifer Walters, he thought to himself. Go to her and she will help you. She has helped you before. She will do it again. She is your friend. There is no shame in admitting you cannot do this on your own anymore. You will drive yourself mad. With her help you might be able to…
Be able to… what? Not kill? Feel like a person again? Learn from her goodness, borrow from that luxury of mortal clarity and certainty that he lacked and so many heroes had? No. He was too ashamed. He could not go to her now. He could not bring himself to face her after all he had done. The now dried and putrid blood from his most recent victims still stained his clothes but it was not fresh enough for the hunger to be subdued.
Those last victims had been nights ago in an alley on West Broadway…
It had been close to two in the morning when the men had cornered a woman there. Morbius had not known the particulars. Whether the woman had cheated those men out of money or if they meant to rape her and she had been a random target who unfortunately had been out late, it hardly seemed to matter now. What mattered was that she had been begging into the lonely night for aide, screaming for help and he had heard her. And he had been hungry…
His own, empty stomach, had lurched as he had swooped out of the sky like a black angel bathed in the light of nearby streetlamps. Claws slashing through unwashed, sweat drenched flesh with horrific ease. The thick, luscious, crimson liquid-pleasure splattered everywhere in a violent eruption. His sharp, dagger-like teeth tore through flesh, bursting through the carotid artery, where so much freshly oxygenated blood could be found, so good, so strong, so soothing…
All reason was lost. His vision was hazed in red. There was no logic, no rhyme and no reason. There was just the blood. Warm, raw, and excellent. The heart of one victim throbbing in his ears like an Indian drum, a drum that beat so loud it seemed to cause the ground to reverberate around them before it finally slowed and then the wonderful throbbing and slushing of blood was gone and he wanted more. It filled the emptiness within him with so much life, energy and pleasure that for a brief time it seemed that all guilt and shame was blotted out. The Hunger was a master that could not be denied.
Jugulars were torn out completely in a violent whirlwind of feasting and slaughter. Bones in the wrists and ribs had been crushed as he had fought to still his dying victims with animalistic detachment. He had not even heard the sickening cracking or the screams as they were abruptly silenced.
The woman had screamed, more afraid of Morbius than of her attackers. He had not anticipated a "Thank you" or any sort of gratitude. He knew he was not a hero. What he had done was not to save her life though that had been not been an unwelcome outcome. It had not been an act of heroism. It had just been to satisfy his own hunger. The fact that she had been terrorized by these men had just been an excuse to ease his lingering conscience.
And that slaughter had eased his hunger for a little while but now it was back, demanding another tribute…
A brutal feeding of days before could only keep The Hunger in check for so long. And now it was insisting upon another violent satisfaction.
Now in this early evening where rain became drizzle there was an exhilaration, a feeling of being alive that came from running down damp alleyways and leaping with jungle-cat agility, springing from the battered cardboard boxes and rubbish bags, a desire to bound over the chain-link fence and then stalk the shadows.
His thick black, shaggy hair, curled around his gaunt face as he sniffed the air. There was something peculiar and yet wholly familiar to him wafting on the air.
He knew that scent. It belonged to one very particular man. It was not the human, himself, that Morbius detected first (though the human did have a peculiar and familiar blood). No, the scent that reached his nostrils was a chemical compound he had been unfortunate enough to be trapped within many times in its more solid form … web fluid. Biodegradable yet man-made web fluid that mimicked the nature of actual spider-webbing when exposed to oxygen. Often Morbius half-jokingly imagined that the base ingredient was something as mundane as corn starch but he had never taken the time to properly analyze it and the substance dissolved so fast anyway… Within an hour the sticky webbing would dry out, become brittle, and disintegrate into dust and then nothingness. It was an ingenious self-degrading process that limited forensic evidence. Forensic evidence of the hero (or vigilante) known as Spider-Man…
Morbius would admire it for its cleverness if the substance had not been used against himself so many times in the past. Now his predatory instinct was demanding that he surrender himself to the abandon wild pleasure of hunting living prey, the one thing that could subdue the pain of guilt temporarily, only to replace it, cruelly, with more and deeper guilt yet by the scorching rays of daylight.
Now was he hunting Spider-man or was Spider-man hunting him? Who was confronting a nightmare? He or Spider-Man? He knew what he was. He knew that to this hero he was the monster. He understood and accepted this.
It had been over a year since Morbius' escape from The Raft, the super-human prison, and it had been nearly as long that Spider-man had abandoned his so-called "superior" tricks and costumes and reverted to his nostalgic attire. Morbius had not forgotten Spider-Man and he was certain Spider-Man had not forgotten him.
Spider-Man was one of the more unusual so-called Heroes of New York City. Not only was he a skilled acrobat with some apparent knowledge of chemistry but he was also not entirely human. The man's blood was eradiated somehow. Morbius did not know the details in that Spider-Man had been a boy of fifteen-years-old at the start of his Super Hero career. He had been bitten by a spider that had been exposed to an unusual form of radiation and now was blessed with some of the Spider's traits. Enhanced strength and agility. A love of heights and dark corners. A strange ability to stick to walls and ceilings through tiny hairs within his skin that actually were nearly microscopic and could actually secure him safely to gravity defying positions through the light-weight, thin, porous material of his costume. Spider-Man's strangest ability though had to be what he called his "Spider-Sense" a sort of sixth sense or mild clairvoyance that allowed him to know when danger was close or if an enemy was watching him and roughly the location of the enemy. It also served to help him to know how to move in combat, something Morbius could not help but envy a little.
"Take him. Kill him. Drink his blood. It had helped you once before, caused what had seemed to be a temporary remission from this terrible condition. His radioactive blood might do it again, or it might end the pain for a little while by simply filling the emptiness inside and satisfying The Hunger. At the very least he can make you stronger for a little while, stronger than you usually are. Either way there will be some relief. You have nothing to lose." This is what his instincts- what The Hunger, that terrible thing inside of him, in his very blood cells, told Doctor Michael Morbius.
Find the Wall Crawler, take him by surprise, sink your fangs into that red and blue costume, mocking and inviting you and let the real red color gush over it…
What did he have to lose?
"Are. You. Still. Human?"
The silent commands of his appetite were replaced by the question that cut through the threatening frenzy of violent rapture.
"Are you still Human?"
The voice whispering in his mind hardly sounded like his own voice. His conscience had replaced his own inner voice with that of Becky. Dear Becky, his Becky… That woman-child that proclaimed herself to be his "Sidekick"- who had stupidly exposed herself to danger… for him. The girl who had been unafraid of him or of anything else that goes bump in the night for that matter, the woman who somehow knew about A.R.M.O.R (Alternate reality Monitoring, and Operational response), whom he used to work for. The girl who treated him like a person…
Why was his mind haunted by her now? She would verbally slap him, call him stupid for not listening to his own better nature, but just in her own vernacular that he could not replicate within his mind with much ease. His imagination was not well equipped for suitably replacing her real presence with a simulacrum made of memory and hope. Where was she now? He missed her now. He wanted her to talk him down from what he wanted to do…
Morbius followed Spider-Man's familiar scent, the faint smell of that webbing, that was nearly odorless to human senses, and that thundering heart pumping mildly radioactive blood, mild enough to be theoretically harmless, but radioactive enough that he could practically feel the difference if he stood close enough, as if the good red stuff produced a vibration in the air that he felt more than he could smell it. A sort of natural ozone that no human nose could detect and that no other blood seemed to have.
Morbius climbed up the damp brick wall, claws digging into mortar and concrete and finding the tiny crevices that his claws could use as he made his way up the wall, aided by his own physical lightness and the boost from his transvective ability to levitate himself. He climbed up the wall and made his way to a ledge.
He did this instead of simply flying via his transvection (even though it was secretly the one power that he actually fully liked and embraced as a vampire) because he was afraid that if he simply lifted off the ground and then let his light weight body glide over the wind currents that The Web Slinger, Spider-Man might see him. It was bad enough that he would probably notice him quickly with that wretched Spider-Sense of his.
Morbius took a leap and landed soundlessly on the neighboring roof. He took another leap from building roof to slightly sloped roof and then another flat roof. It felt good to be so high up, so far away from those busy human souls, those pounding hearts, and all that that pumping blood, that bustling blood. He liked to be above it, where he could not be tempted to interfere with it and snuff out one of those burning candles of mortality.
Morbius' darkest fears and darkest desires mingled into one. He would see this through and before this night was over he would have his revenge for all of their previous encounters. Spider-Man did not yet know it but he would face Death tonight. He was somewhere in the darkness and Morbius was ready for the fight.
Spider-Man knew that Morbius was out there somewhere but that was not Spider-Man's priority tonight, in fact there were many things he considered priorities before facing Morbius. There were so many monsters, so many varieties of evil within The City, so many threats and dangers to innocent lives that he had to categorize and prioritize them accordingly. Morbius, very simply, was not at the top of the list. In fact at the moment he had much bigger distractions to worry about such as the battle he had earlier which left him with a literal throbbing in his head that made the effort of moving through the air much more difficult than usual but he had to make it look easy or his enemies would take advantage of the moment of weakness. He had to make it look easy.
Spider-Man pushed himself up and forward, an easy bit of self-propulsion over the rushing city.
Hatred was drawing Morbius closer to his prey and toward his revenge. Just one death tonight, just one death and his blood lust would be sated.
Spider-Man released the sticky, thick strand of webbing thread. This was followed by a flip, not exactly to show off, (well, okay, maybe a little bit to for showing off) but it was to give him a little extra umph before he was able to choose the next tall building. Now his left arm stretched out and he pressed down on the hidden button under the palm of his glove using the exact pressure of his middle and fourth finger (the one just before the pinky). It had to be exact. He designed it that way on purpose so that he would not accidentally shoot webbing when trying to make a fist.
The webbing shot from the device at Spider-man's wrist. The end of this cable of webbing secured itself to a ledge and he swung forward. To him this was second nature, easier, in fact, than walking. He had no fear of the sudden drop to the city streets far below him even with the current injury induced dizziness threatening to throw him off his game. Now Spider-Man raised his right arm and shot a strand of webbing thread (cable) toward the opposite end of the street, released the button and took a hold of the now loose thread. He raised his left hand and repeated the same process as he let go of the the previous strand. He made his way down 9th Avenue and then made a sharp right at the intersection he wanted.
Morbius stopped near 9th Avenue.
There he was.
Morbius could see the Wall Crawler- The Web Slinger himself- Spider-Man.
There would be blood. Morbius needed to end this. For far too long he had been the hunted. Now he was the hunter, as he felt he should always have been the hunter, and through the misty drizzle of rain he felt like the king of the night.
Morbius watched from a distance as the figure moved with acrobatic ease, to turn a corner on the near-white thread of his webbing that seemed so frail yet supported the man's weight and could support heavier. Morbius watched with a quiet awe and yearning to know that the man bore that power without a need to take lives to sustain it… He felt a growing envy.
Morbius did not know that this strange man had gained his strength, agility, and sixth sense for danger from the bite of an eradiated spider. There was a lot about this man that Morbius did not know… Secrets that might have sent Morbius reeling but he would learn those secrets tonight…
Morbius stalked his prey from a distance. Deep inside he knew he could not really win against Spider-Man, not in a fair fight anyway. Spider-Man would have to be weakened or rendered unconscious for Morbius to truly stand a chance against him.
Spider-Man was stronger than him, had more experience in physical battle than he did. Spider-man's bones were not hollow. Spider-man did not require drinking blood to maintain his strength at optimum levels.
Perhaps Morbius did not really want to kill Spider-Man for his repeated defeats, humiliations and pain and to maintain this uneasy freedom (if you could call it that). Perhaps Morbius anticipated getting caught and returned to his cell in The Raft so that he could be stopped by one who likely would not kill him. Or maybe Spider-Man would finally have had enough of their strange and dangerous back and forth. Perhaps he would put an end to him once and for all just as he seemed almost willing to do the last time Spider-Man had captured Morbius.
And yet Spider-Man had not killed him the last time, nor had he killed him the time before that, or the time before that. No. The man's more noble (or foolish) instincts had always prevailed spared Morbius' life which had only added to the burden upon Morbius' poor conscience. Why spare him? He was a killer? Didn't he realize how high the likelihood was that he would kill again?
It wasn't until he got close that Morbius realized that despite Spider-Man's usual acrobatic movements something was wrong. The scent of eradiated blood was a little too strong and some of it had been exposed to open air.
The Web Slinger was wounded and from the looks of things, he was almost out of the web fluid that became oobleck-like upon hitting the air and then solidified into sticky web cables.
Spider-man was so distracted with keeping up the pretense that he was fine, for whomever he thought might be watching, that he had not yet detected Morbius, or so it seemed. That meant that his Spider-sense, that strange ability Spider-Man had to detect danger was at least temporarily dampened.
That likely meant whatever was the matter was a head injury that it was limiting Spider-Man's mental cognition. Now would be the perfect time for Morbius to rid himself of his enemy and to satiate that terrible hunger within him. The idea of the wound was maddening to his ever-demanding hunger.
Morbius continued his stalking, soundlessly leaping from shadowy ledge to shadowy ledge, from fire escape to roof and riding up wind currents so that he could feel his stomach within him, rebelling against the defiance of gravity that the rest of him found such ease in. He compelled himself to rise up, to keep out of direct view.
To Morbius' utter amazement Spider-Man still had not noticed his presence even though, yes, the danger was great for him. Predator and prey in a savage jungle of concrete and steel. Morbius landed with cat-like ease behind a large old ventilation chimney and he watched with wide, crimson eyes something he never thought he would bear witness to with such nonchalant casualness.
Yes, Spider-man was most definitely injured. And he had been making a show of hiding it until he found the narrow alley where he hid his street clothes in a web pouch high under a narrow window garden shelf.
Spider-man dangled by one hand and removed the webbing-satchel, leaping down to the alley below. He took out the rumpled jeans, sneakers, and shirt, together with a leather wallet. It seemed strange to Morbius, to see Spider-Man's wallet, reminding him that like, himself, Spider-Man must on occasion move among ordinary people.
There was no witty banter or biting sarcasm. There was just the man, who looked vaguely disorientated yet relieved to be alone. Perhaps Spider-Man was afraid he was being chased by someone.
And then it happened. Spider-man reached with casual ease for the back of his mask that covered the whole of his head in a red, form fitting sack of porous, thin material, still allowing him to breathe easily through it. The same thin material the rest of his costume was made from, with web designs working its way over the whole thing.
The skin was Caucasian in appearance. The hair was messy, almost wind swept despite the protection the mask had given it, and some of the hair stood up in a spikey chaos from the natural static cling.
The hair was dark brown and the eyes were a distinct hazel, wide, innocent and almost puppy-like. How could one who had seen and done so much seem so innocent? No, not innocent… good. The eyes of a man who did good and believed in good and could sleep with that faith in goodness triumphing over evil.
Those were the eyes of one who had the luxury of moral certainty, as Morbius saw it. The clarity of what he believed to be right and what was wrong and never wavering from the course that his heart put him on.
And Morbius's jealousy became hate and the thought of that but something startled him before rage could get the better of him. Something utterly alarming about the whole boyish visage struck him.
He did some fast calculations and estimations based on the physical features before him and found his mouth hung open in agape at the revelation.
This man… This enemy… had been little more than a boy of fifteen or sixteen the first time they had done battle, seventeen at the most, maybe, and he, Michael Morbius, had lost! He had been defeated by a mere boy- a child.
The humiliation of it was great. But then… humiliation was replaced with something worse than humiliation. Then came the guilt… Raw, and profound guilt. How many times had Morbius come close to killing this child? What sort of monster was he that he had come so close to murdering a child and now still contemplated taking him into his fatal embrace?
Morbius felt himself reeling as if Spider-Man had punched him in the stomach.
The horror of discovering that Spider-Man had been a child, by Morbius's own standards, when they had first fought, worked to distract him. Morbius had been distracted from the dark crimson oozing down the right side of Spider-Man's head where a bruise and gash at his forehead could easily be seen by one with nocturnally incline eyes. And easily smelt by one with preternaturally keen senses as well.
Morbius watched Peter Parker, his fingers digging into the chimney that he was peeking out from behind. He was trying to determine what his next move should be. Suddenly killing him no longer had quite the appeal it had a mere five minutes earlier when the hunt had begun. Suddenly he wanted… He wanted… What did he want? He was not sure…
The contemplation was broken by the rumble of an explosion. The small grenade tossed into the alley nearly obliterated Morbius's intended prey but miraculously Spider-Man had pulled the mask back on and was already on a high brick wall, safely out of harm's way despite his mind-fogging wound.
Spider-Man had not felt Morbius with his Spider-Sense but he had detected the grenade before it was thrown. He had felt it like a distinct tingle in the back of his neck that danced its way up his spine and into the back of his scalp and back again down again, causing his hair to stand on end from that strange tingle.
Thank God for small mercies. His Spider-Sense seemed to be returning with crystal clarity despite the concussion that had temporarily fogged it and his mind in general.
"Terrific," Spider-Man quipped "As if I didn't have enough of a headache tonight because of those goons from earlier."
The grenade had come from a cackling figure perched atop a hovering board with mini rocket propulsion system on each wing. The figure had just reached the alley's mouth and had not seen what Morbius had seen, did not know Spider-Man's secret identity. This intruder had just known he had followed the Wall Crawler to a place of vulnerable isolation.
The hover board (or glider as these things are sometimes called) resembled the conveyance of the super villain known as Green Goblin yet Morbius and Spider-Man both already knew that this was not The Green Goblin. This was some cheap imitator who had simply gotten a hold of some nice toys and was trying to make a name for himself by taking on Spider-Man and perhaps killing him. Spider-Man was not a fool though and he understood that just because someone was just a cheap knock-off of another villain or Super Human that did not mean he was not a threat.
The mad figure wore a dark purple cloak and a mask that vaguely looked like a Beetle's head with large black eyes yet the rest of the costume resembled The Green Goblin.
"Hey!" Spider-Man called as he tried to cause a small verbal distraction while he reloaded his web shooters with tiny capsules hidden at his waistline in mini, barely-visible pockets in the Spider-suit, "Does Oscorp know you're ripping off their stuff? Not that I'm a fan but I think that look is trade-marked. You could end up sued. I'm just sayin'."
The distraction worked briefly. And Spider-Man was soon ready to fight.
The Green Goblin impersonator did not seem one for witty banter and did not provide a suitable retort to Spider-Man's effort for verbal jabbing but instead left the mouth of the narrow alley where he had been hovering and instead lead the naïve fool out into the open, into a dark side-street away from the evening crowd and into a space more suited for battle.
Morbius released his hold on the chimney and let himself rise up into the air. It was more like letting go rather than like lifting himself up. It was like releasing a clenched muscle to let himself lift up and float through the breeze. The hood he was wearing fell backward and his curling dark hair whipped around his gaunt, chalky face. The small soul patch of dark hair in the middle of Morbius's chin and his own wind swept hair were like shadows against the pale flesh.
Morbius followed the fast moving fight and passed by a man laying naked with a woman on a beach towel upon a low blacktop roof. The couple must have found the cool early autumn rain romantic. The rain was now subsiding and the evening was blessedly dark finally. As Morbius passed the couple he saw the clothes strewn about and carelessly snatched up the man's leather coat without thinking much of it.
Morbius placed the leather jacket on over the embarrassing hooded sweatshirt that young people today call a hoodie. He allowed the hood of the sweat shirt to dangle outside of the leather jacket and against his back.
When Morbius again neared Spider-Man and his opponent he found that there were actually two figures on similar gliders, one on either side of Spider-Man, who had been lured into what appeared to be a crude trap.
The one Goblin-esuqe figure that had followed Spider-man into the alley had grabbed a hold of a woman from the street and was now taunting the Wall Crawler with her. The other similar man was trying to draw a weapon but the man's movements were slightly too slow and Spider-man was fast enough to incapacitate that one with his webbing. A great spraying of it secured this one to the wall nearest him, causing the man to drop his sharpened disc he had meant to throw at Spider-Man's back.
The original Goblin-esque figure was in a rage at the thwarting of his partner and lowered his glider down toward the wet pavement. He released his hostage and allowed her to fall unceremoniously to the street, relatively unharmed, though probably shaken and mildly bruised.
Before Spider-Man could turn from his restrained enemy (Spider-Man was still sluggish from his head injury) the other was drawing out a similar jagged, bladed disc. He was ready to throw it as if the thing was a mere Frisbee but Morbius chose to intervene in that instant…
Morbius' chalky pale, clawed hand caught the hand that held the disc and squeezed until the disc was dropped. Unfortunately this required applying enough pressure until he heard bones begin to crack in the man's hand. The man howled with pain.
Morbius had not really wanted to break the wrist but he had done worse than that before while feeding. The man panicked and began to struggle.
The frenetic heartbeat made it difficult to not feed upon him. And why not? And why shouldn't he feed? Who would miss a man such as this? Someone might… Someone somewhere might…
The man screamed as he was knocked from his glider board but he dangled high in the air, now held firmly by Morbius whose fangs ached in his gums, itching to tear through the flesh, to rupture the carotid artery and let a crimson flood satisfy his need. The man continued to scream as his feet kicked at the empty air below them.
Spider-Man had turned his head just in time to see Morbius with his struggling, intended prey.
Spider-Man called out to try to stop the carnage, to try to save the man, who though deserved to be in prison for his crimes, certainly did not deserve to die. No one deserved to die and certainly not like that, not to be rendered little more than meat to a feral animal that had once been a man.
But it was the man that Spider-Man tried to reach now. "Morbius, stop! No!"
Morbius hissed with anger. "Why not?! He would have killed you! What do you care what becomes of him?"
The accomplice behind Spider-Man was wisely motionless in his webbing restraint and trying to be silent as to not gain the notice of the vampire.
Morbius held the intended victim in his arms as he hovered there in his own weightless state, his feet dangling the way the feet of a small child on a swing set might dangle while the other man's feet frantically kicked at the empty air under him.
There was no "Thank you." No great applause for heroism. There were no grand illusions here.
He, Morbius, and Spider-Man, both knew better. This was not to save anyone. This had been only to satisfy his own blood lust, his own desperate and needy hunger that reduced him to such animal-like savagery. And he was so very hungry. Morbius dropped the man and allowed him to run with his wounded wrist close to his chest.
If Spider-Man was so noble as to spare his prey like that then why didn't he just take his place? Why not? Someone had to die to end this nightmare.
How easy it would have been and how Morbius wished to have the man's blood splattered upon his own face and upon his shirt while the majority of it was processed by his peculiar and particular digestive tract and burnt in his system, transformed into fuel and new vampiric cells for the beast inside of him.
Morbius could see Spider-Man getting ready to try to web him, to ensnare Morbius as well, or even try to catch a hold of him for a brawl. But the weakened and Sluggish Spider-Man was still struggling with the untreated head injury that Morbius had glimpsed earlier. And he watched as Spider-Man wobbled on his feet. It seemed that he was about to say something but then with a moan he slumped forward to the ground. Spider-Man's last burst of adrenalin had faded. The epinephrine that had kept him going had been burnt and now the head injury and exhaustion had combined to render the hero utterly helpless, laying on the street with the indignity of a drunkard who had passed out.
Morbius willed himself to land on the ground. Once on terra firma he walked up to his usual enemy and knelt in front of Spider-man. He was so very hungry… So very hungry…
The heart was still beating and Spider-Man was still breathing. Those were both good signs. Morbius counted on Spider-Man's own healing abilities to aid him in his recovery. Morbius realized it would be so easy to end this. To no longer have to look over his shoulder or fear being returned to The Raft. He didn't even have to feed on Spider-Man. (Though the hunger was screaming for satisfaction, there was still the fleeing man). If he hurried he could catch him.
Morbius could just snap Spider-Man's neck. It would be so easy. He was unconscious, vulnerable. He would be free of his tormentor and enemy once and for all. And he yearned for fresh blood. Why did Spider-Man have to be so righteous? So moral? Why did Spider-Man have to save that man who had wanted him dead? Why had he fought on while hurt like that? Why did Spider-Man put the lives of others before himself? Why? Why?
"Are you still human?" The voice asked in Morbius's mind.
"Please stop asking that." Morbius said out loud with raw anguish.
"Dude, come on! It's a simple question, dummy." Ah, there was Becky's voice serving as his conscience, it had finally started to really feel and sound like her. And he missed her. He missed a lot of people, particularly those that made him feel like an actual person. And he wished one of those good souls was near to him now. "Well… are you?"
If he killed Spider-Man now he could not blame the thing in his blood demanding to be fed though it was silently screaming within him for satisfaction. He had already nearly done something terrible and routine for himself tonight to satisfy his master, his Hunger, as he knew he was its slave… But the choice was his and hungry as he was, reason was still with him enough so that he knew that if he killed Spider-Man now he would never really be able to justify it to himself no matter what lies he told himself.
3
In the alley where the fight started Morbius found the satchel of sticky webbing with the man's wallet and street clothes… In the Wallet was the identification card of Peter Parker with the man's home address neatly printed upon the laminated identification card.
4
When Peter Parker opened his eyes he found himself laying on his own bed in his own apartment. The clothes he had left in the alley were neatly folded on the chair next to the bed with his wallet on top of them. The Spider-Man mask (stained with blood) was tucked under the pile of street clothes as if to keep it out of sight of anyone who might unwittingly enter the bed room that should not have seen it.
Peter sat up quickly. That sudden movement was a mistake. Peter felt a rush of dizzy nausea at the sudden movement but it was nothing like it had been hours before. Peter could feel something heavy against his forehead. He reached up and was surprised to find, that to the side of his forehead, over the injury, was a soft, cotton bandage applied with medical tape, covering the gash on his forehead. When he looked beside himself, to his left, he saw a cold compress on the pillow beside him, as if it had fallen there fairly recently. Peter looked down at himself and noticed he had been tucked in his own blankets at chin-level but now the warm comforter blanket lay rumbled at his lap.
Everything was so foggy. It was hard to tell what was dream and what was real.
A shadowy form watched Peter for a moment and then slipped away from the large French windows of the apartment bedroom. There was silent and solemn vow to never reveal a particular secret…
5
Sirens squealed down the street as one frightened and injured man was found running down the street and one terrified criminal was found webbed to a wall.
Jennifer Walters woke from a sound sleep, feeling like eyes were watching her. Her room's heavy curtains blotted out the early morning sunlight.
A weary figure was slouching in the corner of her bed room. "I am sorry to intrude but I… I was not sure… I should have knocked first… I am sorry."
When Jennifer's sleep fogged eyes managed to focus she could see clearly the figure of Michael Morbius, weary, and lost looking.
"Michael, it's not that I don't love being woken up via Buffy The Vampire Slayer scene reenactments but what's going on?" She tried to lighten the sudden tension with her usual snark but it did not quite feel appropriate at the moment somehow.
His gaze met hers and when he spoke his Greek accent lightly edged its way into his words. "Counselor… I didn't know where else to go… I am so very tired… Help me."
Morbius slumped into kind and merciful hands. Hands that were stronger than himself, hands that belonged to someone he trusted. Someone who would help him to control that terrible hunger inside of himself where his own will failed him. Someone he loved as he loved few others, as he loved Becky, as he loved Jack Russell, and as he had loved Emil. And in a strange sort of way even his greatest antagonist, Spider-Man.
And yes, Jennifer would help her old friend. She understood what he had been through and what he suffered. She had understood all those years ago when she had defended him in the court room and she understood now. She would help him. He was safe with her. He had come to her for help and she could not turn him away, she would never turn him away.
Morbius could not recall much else about that morning other than being carried to a soft sofa, carried in arms that made him feel as small and as fragile as a child despite his vampiric strength.
As Morbius started to slip into daytime sleep he muttered an answer to a question that Jennifer had not asked. And the word without context confused her slightly as she draped the light weight sheet over her exhausted friend.
"Yes…"
The yes was to a question that had finally been answered, an important question. A question more important than anything ever asked by anyone. His soul- the most important part of himself- was still human. And that is all that mattered. Yes, he was still human.
The End.