We hate it here. It smells of piss and shit, the scalp sweat of the old fart at the front desk with the bad eyes. It's too porcelain and crystal in here and makes us think about a forgotten world light years ago.

Light years. A nice clean word, yes.

We want to go out, the Frankie and Benny's around the corner. Can't. Too many lights, cops. Code Blue. But I like the steak and the smells!

Can't.

He gave Us ice cream once. It did not like it. Room service. Sandwiches and coffee. Yes sir. Thank you sir.

I stop trying to think of it as 'Sirs.'

A cockroach scuttles past Us, all moving legs and shiny brown coffee rock back.

I pick it up and throw it in It's mouth, and with my non mouth I chew. The cockroach tastes like grey. There is no audience, but We pretend there is one and that We are looking bad ass for them.

I wonder what he's doing right now. The Spider Parker. Is he thinking about Us? Is he upside down fucking that fat redhead with the toothpaste smile and thinking about the Goblin and the Octopus and the Electro and Us? Does it make him try harder, that we're not there?

The door knocks used to give Us headaches with the Spider Parker. It barely notices now.

Older fart on the other side, maybe his wife. That many wrinkles, maybe his husband. Coffee. And too many sandwiches.

Something about the roundness of the multiple layers under her gigantic left beetle eye. The way something pleads in the turgid supernova ichor depths. The puckered lip mutilated half whispers, thank yous and will that be alls, spoken too fast and gone too quickly like lightning.

He did look a mean old fart.

We shall kill him later. He has given Us a nice excuse. It says thank you and I take the tray. And she is gone except for the stench of old sofas and late night TV ozone.

Ann. Oh, Our Ann…

There is a bible in the dresser. We pick it up, savouring the touch of yellow. Turn few pages, drink the sweet cornfield rustle. The parable of the three talents. We never did get it even though I tried to explain. We needed to get it. We need to get it if We were going to be better than the Spider Parker…

Too quiet, I turn on the TV. The Tonight Show. Agh. Turn that shit off.

But I like Letterman.

We don't.

I used to pray to be on Letterman in church everyday.

Yes, and you would have farted and died there long ago and shrivelled like a fucking grape if not for Us you cancerous bowl tick and don't you ever,

ever,

Ever

Forget it

You

SICKENING

Neon needles in my head, freezes my brain like a comet, cuts off the taste of egg salad in my mouth. It turns it to gasoline just because We can. We could make me eat worms if I wanted to but It will not. I don't gag at the taste of the tongue in It's non mouth. It likes egg salad.

I turn back, Old Testament. We see the following and forget everything.

Honour thy mother and thy father.

My father died a year ago. We would not go to the funeral.

I could imagine how it would go though. Like those old Francisco Sundays. Kneeling in the pews, not daring to look at the pulpit, squinting in the crucifying sun, trying to remember it all, trying to behave for daddy, drinking the burning communion wine, remembering the taste all the way home in golden silence.

How much the chalice on the alter of our lady of innocents looked like the one all those years back home, how much, above all else, I wanted to cut out the after taste with a knife if not the ruin of my career, how incredible the power of living after shadow was, how like ice cream It tasted as it first went in…

And now I am poison. I have poisoned Us. I have drunk from the poison chalice.

Eddie, do you hate me?

Oh don't hate Us Edward my darling, don't hate Us, don't hate me, don'thATEME

Door knock.

"Mr Brock, this is sergeant (Don't hear it) of the New York City P--"

We reach through the door and crush his skull sorry her skull break partner like a scrap of toilet paper okay because the Spider Parker made me do it and bust through the wall lasers ice blue and missing our shoulders blind retards and crush a bus full of children that's okay too and run and up and roofs and stars and tunnels and crap and dark and WE ARE

At least the sandwich was nice.