Disclaimer: I own none of the characters.
Author's Notes: I'm back! Yes, after an unfair wait for all of you, chapter three is here! It was capfaced who pointed it out to me… if I didn't post soon, you'd all eat me! So, here the drama continues… please note that the genre has been changed to 'humor/horror', as now, things get a bit… just read and find out! :)
Dedicated to Bumblebee-Queen. Your review made my day! Really, I was honored to get such a compliment.
"Blah." = Talking.
-Blah.- = Thought
Beware! – The Horror STILL Continues
To the passersby, the car idling by the curbside seemed perfectly ordinary. It sat there, the driver behind the wheel, nothing special. If only they had a spider sense…
Peter could feel it. He could feel his own fear and nervousness rolling off and into the air around him. He didn't know why. Why was he so worried about having lunch with Aunt May? For crying out loud, she'd raised him since he was four…
-What's wrong with me?- He asked himself in frustration.
With a slow hand, he reached up and turned off the car. And then, he opened the door.
And sat there.
Finally, taking a breath of air to boost his own courage, he got out of the car, shut the door and moved towards the café. And against his screaming spider sense, he went in…
~
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, a car was pulling up into the driveway of the house belonging to May Parker.
Harry stepped out cautiously, his eyes darting around. Even as he walked up the front steps, he was asking himself what he was doing here.
-Simple.- he said to himself. –You're here to help Peter figure out this problem.-
He reached the front door. For a moment, he simply stood there, staring at it. And then he grabbed the handle, opening the door.
Locked.
He looked at it curiously for a moment, before smacking his forehead. Of course it was locked! She was downtown! Mumbling curses to himself, he walked around to the back.
At the back door, there was a key under the mat. Harry felt like some kind of traitor as he retrieved it, after all the years of promising Aunt May he would never misuse it.
Once in the house, however, those guilty feelings vanished. They were overwhelmed by the sense of panic. He had the insane thought that Aunt May would spring out from behind a doorway and demand to know why he was in her house.
Wandering down the hall, he entered the kitchen…
~
Plastering a fake smile on his face, Peter greeted Aunt May.
"Hey Aunt May!" he said brightly, lathering on an enthusiasm he didn't feel.
"Peter!" she responded, hugging him.
It was the oddest thing, but he could have sworn he felt her pinch his ribs…
Pulling out of the embrace, she gave him a huge grin.
"I've already got us a table," she explained. "Now let's go sit down."
Once they were seated, Peter casually picked up a menu.
"Oh, don't worry, darling, I've already ordered for you." Aunt May informed him.
"Oh… okay…"
~
Moving over to the counter, Harry spotted a few cookbooks lying about. Picking one up, he flipped through it. He came to a recipe for grilled chicken breasts, and spotted a note in Aunt May's familiar handwriting. Penned in neatly beside the ingredients was the reminder,
- Works well with ribs.
Harry found this very odd, as the recipe didn't apply to ribs at all. Shrugging, he continued flipping through. At a recipe for pork chops, he found the message,
- Excellent for fingers.
Slamming the book shut with a yelp, Harry threw it back down onto the counter.
But after a moment, he began to reasons with himself.
-She probably meant chicken fingers… or something…-
Having found nothing interesting in the kitchen, Harry moved up the stairs…
~
Peter Parker had never seen a larger sandwich in his life.
That is, if you could call it a sandwich. It looked more to Peter like an explosion. Lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, roast beef, turkey, ham, everything, all piled between two enormous pieces of bread that could have each been a loaf by themselves. Peter was flabbergasted.
"Aunt May, what IS this?"
She looked up from her little salad.
"It's a sandwich." She said incredulously, as if she couldn't understand that Peter was asking that.
"Yes, I know it's a sandwich." Peter agreed. "But… what is it?"
"It's the super-sized special of the day."
"It's huge!"
"Well, yes, you are a growing boy!"
And she returned to picking at her salad as if nothing had happened. Picking up a knife and fork, Peter began a valiant attack on the sandwich of Goliath proportions.
~
Moving down the upper hall, Harry tried to be as quiet as possible. Which he realized was ridiculous, seeing as no one was home, nor would be for a few hours.
Nonetheless, he felt like a very important spy on a top-secret mission.
Easing quietly into Aunt May's room, his eyes searched every possible surface and crevice for anything suspicious. Nothing. Then, he spotted it.
A small, lavender book sat innocently on her nightstand.
A journal.
Tiptoeing over and feeling oh-so-naughty, he snatched the book and cracked it open, flipping to a random page. He read,
Dear Journal,
It appears as if Peter has been resisting my meals. If he keeps this stubbornness up much longer, he will never gain any more weight.
Going back a few entries, Harry read,
Dear Journal,
It's about time Ben died.
Harry almost dropped the book, but he managed to hold on.
-What the hell…?-
He read on,
Although I loved him as an excellent partner, and he kept money in the bank, if he'd gotten much older he would've gotten too tough and stringy to eat.
At that point, Harry did drop the book. Actually, he threw it across the room. It smacked against the wall and thudded to the floor. Shaking his head in disbelief, Harry stared at the journal as if it had just bitten him.
-This has to be a joke…-
A joke. Ha ha. Moving over to the book, he picked it up to read another entry,
Dear Journal,
I had a very tiring day today. While Peter was at school, I had to drive up to the morgue and pick up Ben's body. And there was the whole matter of putting the rocks in his coffin…
This time, Harry did not retrieve the book after he threw it aside…
~
An hour later, Peter was defeated.
The super-sized special of the day had won.
Yes, the first thing to beat the mighty Spider-Man was a sandwich. It sat there, unscathed, save the large dent in its' monstrous side.
"I'm stuffed…" Peter moaned.
He thought he saw a smirk cross Aunt May's face, but it was wiped away by an 'oh you silly boy' smile.
"Of course darling…" she cooed.
Looking back at the giant sandwich, Peter sighed. But a question popped into his mind, a question he'd been meaning to ask.
"Um, Aunt May…" he began awkwardly.
"Yes dear?"
Finally, he decided to just blurt it out.
"Why are you making me eat so much?"
She shook her head, speaking in a condescending tone.
"Oh Peter, I worry about you. You're so thin."
"Aunt May-" He protested, but she cut him off.
"Darling, you really should eat more."
Tingle.
His spider sense raced down his spine, rattling at the base of his skull in silent warning…
~
Tearing out of the bedroom, Harry pounded down the stairs. But he hadn't been in the house in a while, and he took a wrong turn. The door he thought led to the backyard deposited him in the garage. He was about to leave, when something caught his eye…
A large freezer.
It sat, unimposing, in one corner of the garage, unnoticeable at first. Harry advanced on it slowly, drawn to it somehow.
When he reached it, he paused. Then his hands flew forwards, almost with a will of their own, and tossed the lid upwards, opening it.
The freezer was full of items wrapped in tinfoil.
Trembling for a reason he didn't understand, Harry grabbed one on the top of the pile.
He knelt down, holding the thing in his lap. Cautiously, he began to undo the wrap.
-Why am I doing this so slowly…?-
Seeing no reason to put it off any longer, Harry tore the tinfoil all the way open.
A hand stared back at him.
"Oh my God…"
It wasn't just a hand. It was hand he'd seen a million times. A hand that had handed him cookies and tossed baseballs to him.
Looking at the tinfoil that had wrapped it, Harry read the label…
BEN – HAND
Throwing the grisly item away from his with a shrill scream, he jumped to his feet and looked back in the freezer. The labels told all…
BEN – ARM
BEN – FOOT
BEN – CALF
NORMAN – THIGH
-Norman…?-
"Oh… my… God…"
Twisting away from the horrific sight, Harry Osborn dropped to his knees and was violently ill.
~
His spider sense screaming, Peter jumped to his feet.
"Um, I gotta go…"
Aunt May looked up, her face showing that she was more than mildly disappointed.
"So soon? You hardly touched your food…"
Peter gave the King Kong Sandwich an apprehensive look. But his spider sense was like a siren… Get out of there, it howled.
Grabbing his jacket, Peter shrugged it on quickly.
"Sorry… maybe we could do this again… sometime…"
Tossing some money on the table for the bill, he whirled and hurried out of the restaurant.
Once he reached his car, he clambered inside and sat there for a moment, breathing deeply. His spider sense hadn't gone that bonkers since he was eating Thanksgiving dinner with Norman Osborn, unknowingly dining with his arch-nemesis. Come to think of it, back there in the restaurant he'd felt the same… the chilling sensation that danger was right under his nose, his potential demise lurking near…
Shaking it off, Peter jammed into the key into the ignition, turned on the engine, and headed home.
~
Staggering to his feet, Harry lurched out of the garage, back through the hall, had to put as much distance between him and that horrible freezer as possible…
Back into the car, turning it on…
And getting the hell out of there as fast as he could.
~
Aunt May arrived home moments later. Coming in the front door, her head cocked suddenly. Listening. Suddenly, and with unnatural speed for a woman her age, she bounded up the stairs and right into her bedroom.
Her eyes zeroed in on the journal still lying on the floor.
Seizing it in one wrinkled hand, she brought the lavender-bound spine of the book up to her nose.
Sniff. Sniff.
Her nostrils quivered.
And then, she recognized the scent…
~ To Be Continued…