Freak Like Me

By

Santanico

Seven: Abandon

Before we were married - before we were dating, even - Peter and I went for a ride on a rollercoaster.

It wasn't just me, of course. Back then, we held each other at a careful arm's length, a respectful distance. He was that cute little brunette fella Gwen was going steady with; I was that giggly redhead his aunt's friend had introduced him to. Not much more. Maybe a little less.

So, along for the ride - Gwen, of course. Gwen, who made being pretty and classy and charming look so effortless that I would laugh louder, make funnier jokes, wear sexier clothes, in an attempt to cover up that strange sense of hopelessness that engulfed me whenever she was near. She was so comfortable with herself, so at home in her own skin, that it made me nervous, and vaguely depressed. She had the nice home, the nice dad, the nice boyfriend. Being around her made me want to get loaded almost immediately.

And Harry. Harry Osborn, the kind of guy you immediately know it's a mistake to get involved with, and just as immediately know that you probably will. Fox-faced, too eager to smile, too quick to laugh, too insecure to believe in. His weakness radiated around him like an aura, made everyone feel sorry for him and embarrassed on his behalf. I don't know why I went out with him. Maybe because I sensed he'd fall apart without me, and maybe because I liked that about him.

The carnival was only in town for that one night; fireflies danced through the dark, warm air, followed us down the street towards Central Park, their flickering, fluttering light eventually eclipsed by the dazzling, dizzying luminescence of the Ferris wheel up ahead. There was a smell of cotton candy and popcorn and sawdust, thick in the air, and it almost hid the stench of pollution for that one glittering night. Harry grasped my hand in his sweaty paw, grasped it a little tighter when Peter was around.

It was Gwen, of course, who suggested we take a ride on the rollercoaster; and it was me, of course, who immediately agreed, shiny little happy MJ, up for any adventure, even though just one look at that behemoth, with its purple cars dipping down wooden slopes and rearing back up, made me want a drink something fierce. Tanked, I could've faced anything, maybe even enjoyed it. But if Gwen thought it would be fun, then so did I. No way was she gonna be the brave one.

Peter looked up, craning his neck skyward, and seemed to visibly blanch. "That's, uh. That's quite a height, there, Gwendy."

"Aw, c'mon, Petey!" I gushed, swatting him with my bag before his girlfriend had a chance to respond. "I like heights. Don't you like heights? Everybody loves heights. Right, Harry?"

"Oh, yeah," Harry agreed readily, running with it. "Heights. You gotta love heights."

"And you, Gwendy?" I asked, magnanimously addressing her at last. "Heights do anything for you?"

"Heights do a lot for me, yes," Gwen replied smoothly, entwining her arm with Peter's, resting her head on his shoulder. "They really just…do it for me. Heights."

Peter turned red; I turned away.

We bought tickets from the carney, climbed in, lowered the smeared metal bar down across our hips. Harry pressed up closer to me, close enough for me to smell the cologne he used to douse himself in – expensive and with a whiff of desperation, just like him. Gwen and Peter were on the other side, pressed together, a world away from us. I watched the crowd, the stars above, the boards below – everything except them.

With a grinding of gears, the carriage started to climb the tracks, inching up, slow as a cold heartbeat. I kept my eyes away from Harry's, even as they mutely pleaded with me to see them, to see him; I ooh'd and ahh'd ostentatiously, looking all around, into space, as we climbed higher, ever higher. And, you know, the strangest thing happened. As we raised ourselves above the city lights, above the treetops, it seemed that everything fell away, dropped to the ground below me. I forgot about Gwen and Peter and Harry; forgot about Mom and Dad; forgot Gayle and her kids, the kids I was meant to babysit that night. As the air became cooler, clearer, so did my mind, my heart. I was lighter than that air. I could almost have floated away on it.

We reached the pinnacle, and we teetered. There was a silence almost audible in and of itself, a kind of collective intake of breath. I was in the moment, completely; the only thing in my life that mattered was what would happen next, where this ride was going to take me, within the next few seconds.

And then the plunge.

A swoop downwards, and a scream tore from my throat, a whooping cry, my hair streaming behind my head and my eyes alternating between squeezing shut, to savor the feeling of it, and opening wide, to take in as much as I could. My whole body was whisked along, curling, dipping, soaring, and the wind sang in my ears. I could feel every drop of blood in my body, taste its metallic tang. Speeding down, down, into the dark, felt right in every conceivable way. If the trip to the top had been exhilarating, it was nothing compared to this endless, bottomless descent.

And even the way down had been a disappointment, or a source of terror, of anguish or pain – it's not as if there was anything I could've done to make it stop.

The bedroom door slams open, startling me awake; a fresh stab of pain in my side welcomes me back to the realm of consciousness. Initially confused by the fact that I am back in my parents' room, rather than on the couch, it takes me a second or two to recall that Mary Jane shifted me here last night to recuperate from my wounds.

Mary Jane, who is striding into the room, her tentacle grasping a miniature stack of newspapers. A cheerful grin is plastered across her face, incongruous against the bruises and scratches, but no less bright for being set against such a grim backdrop.

"Hey!" she greets me, throwing the papers down onto the end of the bed. "Did I wake you?"

I clear my throat, and ask "What time is it?", trying and failing to keep the exhausted moan out of my voice.

"Dunno. Maybe five, five-thirty AM? The sun's risen, anyway. I just thought you'd like to read the notices," she continues blithely, not waiting for a response. "Go over 'em together. You know."

She tosses herself down onto the bed, the jolt of it causing another painful twinge to shoot through my side. "Be careful!" I gasp.

Not listening, she snatches up a paper, pushes herself further up the bed to recline beside me, and starts to read. Over her shoulder, I catch sight of the headline, and read it aloud: "'SUPERMODEL TURNS SUPERVILLAIN'. It's elegantly understated, I'll give them that."

Mary Jane rolls her eyes. "Tch. Honestly. It's not even accurate, you know? I was never even close to being a supermodel."

"I think you'll find that the Bugle tends to value alliteration rather higher than accuracy," I comment, as I scan the article. I can't help but notice that the text is minimal – especially that devoted to the actual victims of last night's escapade – compared to the amount of space taken up by photographs of Mary Jane in action. It must be admitted that she looks striking, even in cheap black-and-white; eyes ablaze, hair swirling like Medusa's locks, tentacle a black, shimmering blur. There are next to no photos of me. No matter. Last night was her night, after all.

"Hey," she says suddenly, thumbing through the article, "It says here that nobody was actually killed last night. A whole lot of property damage, some injuries, but no deaths."

I raise an eyebrow. "Do you have a problem with that?"

"No, no. God, no. It's just…when you said you were going to take care of the guards…"

"Knocked out," I say quietly.

She props herself up on one arm, the better to watch my face, her own expression intent, curious. "How come? No offense, but you're not known for being all that compassionate."

I let that slide. "It was your first job. It didn't seem appropriate."

She laughs, skeptically. "Appropriate?"

"You had enough pressure to deal with without the idea of having blood on your hands this early in the game." I pause. Ever since we got home last night, this next question has been preying on my mind. I lay awake most of the evening, turning it over, examining it from all angles, trying to predict what kind of answer she could give. "But, Mary Jane…"

"Mmm?"

"There is one thing. I…" I clear my throat, try to clear my head. "About…Spider-Man, the incident last night with Spider-Man."

She probably doesn't think I notice, but she stills, ever so slightly, at the mention of his name. The light in her eyes seems to fade, to dim. "Yeah? What about him?" she asks briskly, looking back down at the paper.

"What would you have done if I hadn't been there to save you?"

She glances up, an expression I do not know how to read flitting through her eyes – surprise? Worry? Whatever it is, it vanishes; she laughs again, but there is a slight tremor within its light melodiousness. "Well, that's kind of a moot point, isn't it? You were there. I was lucky. We were lucky."

"Yes," I persist, "But if it had been you, alone? And don't believe that that will never happen, Mary Jane," I add, seeing her grimace in annoyance. "Not for a moment. As you saw for yourself – " I gesture in the direction of my stitches " – I am not impervious to injury. So. Again, I ask: if I had not been there, what would you have done?"

She looks back down, trains her eyes on the newsprint, grimly studies it, as though hoping it will reveal an answer. "What are you really asking me here, Otto?" she says softly.

Best just to say it, then. "Would you have killed him?"

Silence descends, soft and blanketing as velvet, upon the room. She does not look up, does not even seem to acknowledge the question that hangs in the air between us. Then:

"That's a little heavy for six in the morning," she murmurs, "Don't you think?"

I gaze at her, at the lowered top of her head. She does not, will not, look up at me. The silence stretches on, deepening, becoming close to unbearable. I decide to let the matter rest.

"It says here," I say, changing the subject with very little subtlety, "That Alessandra Georgiano now plans to take an extended trip to Paris, 'to recover from the emotional trauma of the attack'."

In a flash, my Mary Jane is back, head raised, eyes sparkling with wicked glee. "Oh, yeah, I bet," she says, laughing merrily. "Gonna be a while before that particular 'emotional trauma' fades away. You should've seen the look on her face when I first showed up last night - I thought she was gonna have a heart attack or something!" More raucous laughter. "Well, hell, she had it coming."

With a contented sigh, she jumps off the bed, sauntering over to the door, where she pauses, looking around over her shoulder. "I'll make breakfast, okay? You just stay in bed today, work on getting your strength back up. Waffles okay? I suck at cooking just about anything else, so please say yes."

I shrug, in an exaggerated attitude of helplessness. "It would seem I have little choice."

She smiles, turns to leave. As she does so, something occurs to me, and I call out "Mary Jane?"
She turns back, one eyebrow raised, head tilted, lips apart. The rays of sunlight stealing in through the curtains sink into the blackness of her hair, are absorbed by it; her bangs cast stringy shadows across her bright eyes, her pale skin. It hits me, then, what a delight, what a strange privilege, it is to be able to look at her, to watch her, here in my own home. Rightfully, she belongs to someone else, to that Parker creature. But, against all the odds, she is here. She is here, and she is with me.

Before the pause stretches on too long, into the realm of awkwardness, I remember what I wanted to ask. "How, exactly, did you manage to purchase this morning's papers without detection?"

"Oh, you know," she says casually. "Went down to the local newsstand, bought 'em off a vendor. Lots of people around, of course, but I don't think any of them would've recognised me, do you?"

I sit up, eyes widening in horror, before I realise that she is starting to dissolve into giggles.

"I filched them from the neighbors' front porch, Otto. I'm not an idiot." She rolls her eyes theatrically, and closes the door behind her.

I sit there a few moments more, listening to the sound of her feet padding down the stairs. It is only after I am certain that she is out of hearing range that I allow myself a quiet, relieved exhalation of laughter.

It's like coming home again.

Peter gazes around the Bugle offices, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket, unnoticed by the bustling throng of journalists and photographers and temps and gofers, the hivelike swarm of activity. He inhales the familiar scents of ink and cheap carpeting and coffee, as he walks the familiar route to Jameson's all-too-familiar office; not too many warm-and-fuzzy recollections to be found there, Peter thinks. "These pictures are all blurry. Well, we'll have to run 'em anyway, I suppose. But I can't pay you for them." "Stakeout assignment tonight, kiddo. Warehouse district. Oh, around midnight. Whaddaya mean, curfew? You call yourself a newsman?" "Yeah, they're okay, I guess, but can't you get a shot of that Spider-Thing looking more, I dunno…menacing?"

Ahhh. So many memories.

Cautiously, he beats a tattoo on the door. "Yeah, what?" barks the voice from within. Without allowing himself a moment's hesitation, Peter twists the knob and enters.

Jameson is sitting behind his desk, looking over some proofs, not even displaying the courtesy of turning his eyes upward. Robbie Robertson, however, perched on the edge of Jonah's desk, lights up immediately. "Peter! Hey!"

Jameson glances up; his eyes widen, and he leaps to his feet, a wholly uncharacteristic beam of paternal affection spread across his face. "Well, I'll be goddamned – the prodigal son returns!" Moving swiftly out from behind his desk, he claps an arm around Peter's shoulders. "How you doing, Pete-boy?"

Peter clears his throat uncomfortably. "I think you kind of know the answer to that, Jonah."

"Of course, of course." Jameson nods his head, so very sympathetically. "This, uh, this difficulty with your wife. Women, hahn? What're you gonna do? Hey, Robbie," he calls, "Tell Betty to get a cup of coffee for Parker here, would –"

"Jonah, just save it," Peter snaps. No sleep last night. His eyes are so heavy they feel weighted down with blocks of iron, and his head is pounding like a pulse-rate. Even Jameson, never the most empathetic of men, notices the dark circles underneath his eyes, the faint traces of bruising around his jaw.

"Save what?"

"I know what you're doing, okay? You can't shine me, I worked for you for too long. And no matter how much you kiss up to me, there's no way in hell I'm granting you an interview, a statement, a photo pictorial, or even a pithy quote for the society column, about my wife. All right? Besides, politeness, courtesy and generosity of spirit really don't become you, JJ."

Jameson bites down on his cigar in irritation. "Oh, how I've missed having you around, Parker."

"What's the problem, Pete?" Robbie asks, recognising the many ways in which this situation could become combustible and seeking immediately to defuse it.

Peter glares balefully at Jameson. "Take a wild guess." He tosses the paper across the desk. Images of MJ, caught between columns of print, frozen in attitudes of rage and spite and malice, scatter across the polished wooden surface.

Jameson snorts. "Am I supposed to apologise for giving coverage to an important news item, Parker? In case you'd forgotten, that's kinda what we do here."

"There's a pretty big difference between 'coverage' and what you've written here, Jonah." Peter snatches the paper up and starts to read, his voice taking on an angry, hysterical pitch that he had practised keeping in check, earlier – apparently to no avail. "'The emergence of Mary Jane Watson as this city's latest supervillain cannot entirely be blamed upon the influence of Otto Octavius; as last night's senseless destruction made abundantly clear, the mad mannequin herself harbors a vicious and inexplicable grudge against the industry that gave her so much. Can there be any doubt that what we are dealing with is a being every bit as soulless and sociopathic as the man who aided and abetted her in her crime? In the opinion of this editor, justice cannot come swiftly or brutally enough for this modern-day Bonnie and Clyde.'"

"And here I thought you didn't read my column," Jameson remarks blandly.

Peter glowers. "This is a low, even for you, Jameson. You've met MJ. You liked her. You know damn well she isn't evil, or soulless, or sociopathic! I knew you'd stoop to anything to sell papers, but I at least thought –"

"Thought what, Parker?" thunders Jameson, losing what little patience he possesses. "That we'd all be willing to go easy on her, to look the other way, because she's married to you, or because she was nice once upon a time? Wake up, Parker, and quit your whining. Every one of these nutjobs used to be a nice person, until, oh, an alien symbiote came along and possessed them, or they stumbled into a wire and got some electrical powers, or a nuclear reactor blew up and welded a bunch of mechanical arms to their spine." Jameson throws his cigar down, angrily grinds it into the carpet. "Your girl isn't special in that regard, Pete. She's no different from the rest of them. Except for one thing, the one single thing that separates her from the rest of them – the camera loves her."

Peter blinks in disbelief. "What?"

Jameson shrugs. "She's photogenic as all hell. Comes with having been a model, I guess, but there it is. Why do you think we've plastered pictures of her all over the paper? From the second she showed up on that tape, people were fascinated by her. The lady's got star quality. Everybody loves a bad girl."

"You realise, Jonah, that since you no longer employ me, there's not much that's stopping me from punching your lights out right about now," Peter says, his voice a low growl.

Jameson shrugs. "Go ahead and try, kid. Doesn't change a thing. And you know, I'm not one for psychobabble, but if you ask me?" He leans forward, arms straight, leaning on the arms of Peter's chair, staring straight into the younger man's narrowed brown eyes. "You're not nearly as angry with me as you are with her, with Otto Octavius, and with yourself. You're pissed off about this whole situation, and who could blame you? But don't try and shoot the messenger, Parker. I'm just giving the public what it wants. And what it wants right now? Is your wife, the supervillain. Deal with it." Jameson straightens up, rearranges his tie with dignity, turns on his heel and leaves.

Robbie, who has been observing the exchange in silence, watches Jameson leave, then turns back to Peter, who slumps down in his seat, head down, energy lost. "He doesn't mean to be cruel, Parker," Robbie tries. "You know what Jonah's like, he's…" He trails off, noticing that Peter is not responding. He tries again: "You know, Peter, people do expect the Bugle to take a certain stance on the issues –"

A burble of despairing laughter. "Oh. She's an issue, now," comes the broken whisper.

Robbie falls silent, arms folded, watching Peter closely, unsure what to do, to say. "Are you okay, Peter?" he finally asks. "I mean, I know things are…things are rough. But are you okay?"

Peter looks up sharply; his red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes meet Robbie's. He jumps to his feet and, without another word, or even a look back, walks briskly out of the office.

When the tears finally come, he'll be damned if it happens in the office of J. Jonah Jameson.

I stand before the full-length mirror in the shadows of my parents' room, stripped to the waist, turning this way and that. No matter what angle I examine myself from, the scar she left is still visible.

Unfair to think of it as her doing, of course. That vile fashion designer was the one who really inflicted it upon me. But Mary Jane - Mary Jane was the one who left her mark upon my skin. This twisted, black mouth in my flesh, leprous lips sewn together with rough black thread. It's healing rather quickly, being absorbed into me at a frightening rate. Like her.

Astonishing, and unnerving, how easy it is to fall backwards into intimacy. How hard it is to remember what it was like to live in this house alone, not to hear her singing in the shower each morning, her tread on the stair, the delirious rise and broken fall of her voice. She has left her imprint on this house in the same way she has left her imprint on my body; wet towels that smell of flowers draped over the radiator, a pair of boots kicked off on the living room rug, a brassiere hanging on the bathroom's towel rack. This past week of being shut inside the house, waiting for my body to heal, has revealed to me these details, these minor, unremarkable details that I might otherwise never have noticed. I have never really cohabited with a woman before; such emblems of domesticity, the most usual thing in the world to other men, are wholly alien to me – yet not entirely unpleasant.

With Mary Alice, there was no time to get to know one another in this unglamorous way. The bloom never faded from our romance, because it was cut so pitifully, painfully short. I loved her, and I lost her, and then I lost her again, this time forever, to the twin ravening hounds of Sickness and Death.

And Stunner? Stunner was a fantasy. My fantasy, her fantasy. A dream within a dream. To imagine her cooking breakfast, or warbling songs in the shower, or leaving undergarments strewn around the bathroom, is laughable. How could a virtual reality creation ever be domestic? How could a fantasy survive in such a prosaic environment? She would have blown away, a wisp of stardust on the wind.

Doctor Trainer. Perhaps she bears the closest comparison. Loyal as a doberman, chaste as the moon. I strung her along, allowed her to serve me – for that was all she wanted from life – filled her with false hopes, unlikely dreams. She told me things I wanted to hear, and never demanded anything, even so much as a kiss, for her troubles. I gave her nothing. I shouldn't have been surprised to find that that was all she left me with, in the end.

The women of my life, then. At least, the women I remember. A short, lonely parade of fleeting beauty, of death and disappearance, of illusion and abandonment.

I had a dream, tonight. I suppose you could call it erotic in nature. In the dream, I was making love to a woman whose face and body kept changing, identity subsuming identity, countenance subsuming countenance. She had elements in her of both Mary Alice and Stunner, and the feel of her underneath me was as real as the mirror before me now. It should have been arousing, but there was nothing in the dream but a feeling of ineffable sadness; even as I possessed her, I knew I had lost her, and whatever I embraced was already gone.

I won't think about this. I refuse to think about this.

I glance at the glowing hands of the clock; it informs me that it is nearly a quarter past two in the morning, and yet, I don't feel in the least bit tired. Shrugging into a robe, my tentacles carry me softly down the stairs, into the living room.

Painted with shadows, she sleeps, amid rumpled sheets, on my couch. Her hair is a black stream, covering half of her face; I could almost delude myself into believing that she were that other black-haired Mary, Mary Alice, back from the dead and slumbering peacefully under my roof. But of course she isn't. I know that. I do.

I just wish I didn't have to remind myself of it, that's all.

I wander across the living room in the direction of the kitchen, stretch out a tentacle, set the kettle to boil. I lean back against the counter, uttering a sigh as I arch my neck back, run a hand through my hair.

"Hey."

I snap open my eyes, lower my head to peer through the gloom.

Mary Jane is sitting up on the couch, one leg tucked underneath her, the only sign of her recent repose her ruffled hair and slowly-blinking eyes.

"How're you feeling?" she asks.

For one confused moment, I think she is asking me about my dream; then, of course, I realise that she is actually referring to the bullet wound. "Quite well," I reply, my tentacles busying themselves behind me, turning off the kettle, grabbing a cup, pouring the steaming water. "At least, the pain seems to have faded."

"It always does," she says cryptically. She slides her fingers through her hair, lets it fall back around her shoulders, looks down at a pool of moonlight on the floor. "You're up kinda late," she says.

"As are you."

"Yeah, well." She shrugs. "I don't sleep very well, most nights." A pause. For a minute, I think she is about to invite me to sit beside her. It's not an altogether horrible idea. Stay up, together. Tea. Television. I used to do that, sometimes, with Mother, on the nights when she didn't want to sleep next to my father, the nights following particularly hideous arguments. We would sit in this very living room, huddled under a blanket, watching television until the sun came up and she would start breakfast, clattering pots and pans, her eyes darkened with fatigue.

No. It's not a horrible idea, at all. In fact, I hope she will ask me. I feel oddly shaky, and there is a warmth about her that I feel sure would be most beneficial right now.

But she doesn't ask me. This is what she says instead:

"Hey. I've got an idea. Let's go out."

I blink. "Now? Right now?"

"Yeah."

"It's almost two-thirty in the morning."

She gazes back at me, lazy and insouciant. "Yeah?"

"And…you're not tired?"

"Are you?"

We look at each other for a long, silent minute, my back and tentacles braced against the kitchen counter, she motionless on the couch.

"Did you have anywhere in particular in mind?" I ask.

I never knew the Bugle offices could be so quiet.

Like a ghost town. Papers strewn over cramped wooden tables. Motivational posters and Far Side cartoons blu-tacked to the walls, peeling away like dried skin. Cold coffee mugs perched on desks, a couple with lipstick stains on the rim. I pick one up, fit my own lips over the imprint, try to imagine what it feels like to be the woman who works here, can't, and fling the mug aside.

Otto looks too big for this place, uncomfortable, his tentacles scraping the floors and ceiling. His shadow moves past the picture window, momentarily blocking the city lights beyond; he turns his head sharply, and the lights skitter across the lenses of his glasses. "You're certain you know where the safe is?"

"'Course I do," I scoff, picking up a broadsheet displaying a mockup of tomorrow's headline – nothing about me, oh ho, we'll see about that – shred it with Brenda's claws, and keep walking. "My husband used to work here. I used to come visit him all the time…" I trail off, images of Peter flashing into my brain, unwanted as police sirens. I shake my head, shake the images off into the darkness.

I think Otto looks a little perturbed, too, but he turns his face away and I can't tell if that's really the case. With a sudden motion, he sweeps one of his tentacles outwards, smashing to smithereens every desk, chair and sundry object that was unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity. "We may as well get started," he declares.

I grin, my pulse rate rising, my body remembering the fantastic high of the fashion show's destruction, how amazing it felt to be able to finally lash out like that. And I do it again, Brenda whipping around, diving through the air, and shattering one of the lighting panels overhead, snowflakes of glass raining down onto the floor. It's so juvenile to enjoy this. Petty vandalism, that's all it is. But the Daily Bugle is a petty publication, so it's not as if it deserves much more than that.

Besides, Otto looks like he's enjoying it. And that's really why I suggested we come here in the first place. Guy needs a little unpredictability, a little something spontaneous, to keep his spirits up. He looked kind of sad when I woke up tonight. Kind of lost. I didn't like to see him looking that way. Made me feel off-balance, unprotected. But now he seems okay again, so there's nothing to worry about, nothing to feel but the rush as we tear the world, everybody else's world, into tiny little pieces.

As our tentacles lash around us, sending pieces of office furniture and shredded papers flying in their wake, I clamber atop one of the few unscathed desks, face the security camera mounted in the corner of the wall, and deliver a little speech I've been rehearsing in my head for a while now. Grandstanding? Maybe. But, hey, I'm a professional actress. And a true professional never disappoints her public.

Her image translates well to black-and-white. Stark, lean, hungry. The single eye left uncovered by the patch, even bleached of color, burns like white flame into the grainy security-camera lens. You could go blind if you look at it too long.

"Hello, vultures," she begins, by way of greeting.

"Mary Jane Watson here, in case you'd forgotten me already. Otto Octavius is here, too, but he's a little too busy to make much of a statement right now, so I guess it's up to me to leave you all a little video valentine.

"Just wanted to let you know just how much I appreciated the coverage you gave me last Tuesday! Warmed my heart." The mockery seeps from her honeyed tones, poisoning the audio, a snake in the night. "Though I've gotta say, flattering as those pictures were, it was Jonah's little editorial that really caught my attention. I especially like the part about 'the inexplicable grudge I harbor against the industry that gave me so much'.

"Well, you're right, JJ. It did. It gave me a lot. A hell of a lot. I'm just doing my bit to pay it back, that's all. And since the Bugle, as a media outlet, is part of that industry, well – consider this my thank-you note."

An ear-shattering crash off-camera; Mary Jane twists around, a Cheshire-cat grin spreading across her face, before turning back to the camera. "Well, it appears Otto's found the safe. We'll just consider this our payment for your shameless exploitation of my image and call it a day, huh?" She winks. "Peace, kids."

A whiplike black blur speeds in front of the camera, the point of view of which erupts into a maelstrom of white static.

Jameson will discover this security tape placed neatly on his desk the next morning. It will be the only part of the Bugle headquarters that has been left intact.

Can you feel it? In the air? Whispering through your lungs, tingling in your limbs?

The shining chrome car has reached the top, the very top, of the raised wooden tracks. There's nothing up here. Nothing. Only air streaking past your cheek, tangling in your hair, and the stars up above, so bright and so close you could touch them, even if they'd only burn you to a cinder.

We've reached the top now. The climb has been arduous, unbearably steep and long and oh so slow. But we're here now. And if you want my advice, you'd better hold on tight. Because there's only one way to go from here. Only one direction to take, from this emptiness, this cool, clear emptiness we find here at the top.

We're heading down.

And we're heading down FAST! No time for regrets! No time for remorse! No time to feel anything, anything at all, other than the external stimuli that's pumping your heart, that's electrifying your brain! Your skin is on fire, your eyes are catherine wheels in your head, spinning around and around, trying to take it all in but not caring if you ever remember any of it, just so long as you feel it now, now, now. Don't think about the future. Don't think about the past. Don't think.

Just feel it.

Oh, feel it!

On Sunday – the day of sacred rest – we hit a plastic surgery clinic.

Not just any plastic surgery clinic, mind you. The Swanson Institute of Cosmetic Enhancement, to be precise. The most exclusive clinic in New York, a paen to the vanity of human wishes. Occupying the entirety of the fifteenth floor of a fashionable building in a fashionable neighborhood, it is a stark, slick, all-white series of offices, all white leather couches and flattering lighting and blown-up photographs of empty-eyed models.

It is a pleasure to lay waste to this revolting place. A pleasure to give myself up to its destruction, to leave thought and feeling behind.

Mary Jane and I have abandoned the subtle approach; half of the wall is missing by now, and most of the doctors and patients fled in terror, a mass of overprivileged humanity screaming and sobbing and packing themselves into already-crowded elevators. Amongst the assorted debris of bricks and plaster are wall charts, scalpels, article of discarded clothing, jewellery, all scattered across what remains of the shining white marble floor. An alarm is shrilly crying out in protest against our actions, but does nothing whatsoever to stop us.

Imagine the tableau: I, at the decimated wall safe, busily stuffing money into a sack (the monetary reward of this venture is of course beside the point, but given that currency is the only language people like our targets understand, it only makes sense to hit them where it will hurt most). Cowering behind the half-collapsed front desk several feet away, a little secretary, dressed in a white smock now grey with dust and grime, tears streaking down her pretty face and tangling in her chestnut hair.

And perched on the edge of the desk, gazing down upon her like a vast and beautiful bird of prey, her tentacle curled around her shoulders and apparently gazing down too – Mary Jane. Crouching on her haunches, arms resting casually on her knees, a cat playing with a mouse. The secretary seems to be trying to say something, but the tears are coming too thick, too fast. Mary Jane smiles gently, and her tentacle snakes down, strokes the secretary's hair, tucks a lock of it behind her ear; the girl's shrieks build in intensity.

"Now, honey," Mary Jane says soothingly. "If we were gonna hurt you, don't you think we'd have done that already?"

The girl, huge-eyed, swallows her hysterical sobs and tries to follow. You can almost feel her tiny mind struggling to comprehend.

"All I want from you," Mary Jane continues, her voice a sing-song, a lullaby, "Is for you to stay right here until we leave – which is gonna be soon, all right? And you just wait right here until the cops show up. And when they do, you tell them just who it was who broke into this place. You tell them it was Mary Jane Watson and Doctor Octopus – or you can reverse the billing," she continues smoothly, hearing me give an annoyed grunt at this. "And you tell them that this wasn't about the money. You tell them that this wasn't just about wanton destruction. You tell them that this is about beauty. This is about what happens when you worship beauty. This is about what happens when you put beauty up on a pedestal. And it's about what happens when that pedestal gets kicked right the hell over."

She flashes the terrified girl a bright smile. "Can you tell them that for me, honey? Okay?"

The girl's head jerks, up and down, convulsively. Mary Jane smiles again, and straightens up in one smooth motion, standing straight and tall upon the ruined desk. "Otto!" she calls over to me. "We done?"

I close the sack, grasp it firmly in the grip of one of my tentacles. "We're done," I reply.

Mary Jane looks back down at the secretary. "We're done," she says cheerfully, blows the girl a kiss, and leaps down.

"…Aided and abetted by her mentor, Otto 'Doctor Octopus' Octavius, Watson has launched an all-out war upon the fashion and beauty industry, and it is precisely this choice of target that has sparked unexpected controversy in academic circles. While the police continue their manhunt for the pair, it is the socio-political ramifications of Watson's actions and words that have exerted a particular fascination over the culture. Dolores, would you say that Watson's expressed grievances are, as has been suggested, aberrant? That is to say, psychologically speaking?"

"Hardly, Steven," the tall, gray-haired academic responds, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. "This sort of dissatisfaction is common – to a much less extreme extent, of course – in many former models, who suddenly find themselves too old, or too overweight, or otherwise undesirable, and therefore without work. There comes a point in their lives when they realise the hollowness of the industry for which they worked, the exploitation inherent in the lives they led –"

"Hollowness? Exploitation?" interrupts the modelling agent, her earrings flashing jade-green as she tosses her hair. "Oh, please. You're trying to turn Watson, and by extension all former models, into some sort of victims. Nobody puts a gun to these women's heads and forces them to get paid for looking pretty, you know, and anyone who goes into this business not knowing the risks deserves everything she gets."

"It's precisely your business' narrow definition of the term 'looking pretty' that results in actions like those of Mary Jane Watson's," snaps the academic.

"Oh ho! Oh ho! So, lemme get this straight – it's all society's fault that Watson is now an urban terrorist? It's all society's fault that she turned to crime? Here's a thought – maybe it's got something to do with Doctor Octopus. You know, the guy who put the tentacle in her back? The guy we all know is the one pulling her strings? Not such a feminist heroine when you think of her in those terms, is she? The adoring partner of a man whose body count is –" The agent turns to the serene-countenanced host, "What is it now, Steven? Somewhere in the seventies?"

"I am not saying that Otto Octavius is not a vicious murderer," states the academic. "I merely think that we ought to focus less on his involvement and more on what Watson is trying to say. There is no disputing the fact that Doctor Octopus has killed many people, and I agree, there's no excuse for that…"

"Change the channel," Mary Jane says abruptly.

I look up and around, surprised to see her there in the darkness, leaning over the back of the couch, the shadows and light of the television flittering across her face, through her eyes. "Up late again?"

"I told you, I don't sleep well." She walks around to the side of the couch, collapses beside me, legs flung over the arm, her head brushing my shoulder. "Change the channel, okay? This is boring."

Unusual; she generally likes to hear herself discussed in the media, absorbs the attention with childlike glee. Then I realise that the panel is still harping on about the subject of my crimes and misdemeanors, specifically that which involves loss of human life. I look down at Mary Jane, catch the trace of a furrow in her brow, and change the channel.

The image dissolves into black-and-white shadowplay; the soundtrack becomes a hiss of 1930s static. It takes me a moment to absorb the sight of rioting, torch-wielding villagers storming up a hill before I recognise the film: James Whale's Frankenstein. It's as good a distraction as anything else, so I put down the remote and watch in silence.

After a while, Mary Jane leans her head fully against my shoulder, her hair spilling down over the leather of my coat, as if in competition to see which is blacker, slicker. Involuntarily, my breath catches in my throat. Still keeping her eyes trained on the television, she shifts in her seat, her entire back leaning against my side now, her tentacle snaking around the back of the couch to rest on my chair-arm.

She doesn't move for a while after that, and I relax slightly. She is simply making herself comfortable. Probably too tired to realise the manner in which has invaded my space. Just her casual, unthinking way, most likely.

Another few minutes pass. And then I feel her fingers in my hair.

I jerk my head around to look down at her, my pulse quickening with something like indignation, something like nervousness. Something like that. "What do you think you're doing?" I snap.

She looks up at me through her eyelashes, not removing either her head from my shoulder or her fingers from my hair. "Just thinking," she says, her voice distant, almost somnambulistic. "Wondering…" She giggles. "Your hair."

"What about it?" I ask, my tones prickly, defensive.

"Why did you have it in that dorky bowl-cut for so long? I always wanted to ask."

I blink. Only she would come up with a question so thoroughly random, so deeply irrelevant.

Why I find myself dignifying it with a response, I'll probably never know. "My mother," I say quietly, "Used to cut it that way for me when I was young. It took me…a long time to change anything that reminded me of her."

Mary Jane is quiet. She strokes my hair again, winding her fingers through the length of it, idly, as though it is something unconnected to me. "It looks much better this way," she finally declares. "I like it better this way."

I am growing increasingly uncomfortable, aware that this touch is wrong, aware that her physical ease with me is wrong. Why is she touching me? And why doesn't it seem to mean anything, signify anything, to her? Doesn't she even think of me as a man?

Irritably, I push her hand away with a tentacle; she withdraws it, not visibly wounded by the rejection, just as unconcerned by that as she was by the touch itself. She watches, in silence, as Henry Frankenstein confronts his creature, torch in hand, roundly and openly rejecting his child.

"My dad was like that," she says, so softly that one could easily have missed it.

I don't know what to say. We've never discussed her past, not really, not in depth. I don't really know anything about her, and to be honest, I don't think it should matter. She left her past in ruins behind her – I left her past in ruins behind her; her life is here, and now, and with me alone. Nobody else could lay claim to this Mary Jane other than myself.

She is still talking, like one hypnotised, like a dying person giving their last confession. "He used to tell me I was dumb all the time. He was a writer, and a teacher, and he was smart. So I guess I sort of thought he must know…" She breaks off, shakes her head. "You don't want to know this," she mutters.

Several heartbeats of silence pass between us. When someone finally speaks, volunteers information, I am surprised to find that it is me. "Nothing I could do," my voice says, stiffly, strangled, so totally unused to such words, "Was ever good enough for my father."

And we are quiet again, the only sound the muted, underwater-noise of the television set. After a while, she stretches out her tentacle, snaps the device off, and we are plunged into a total vacuum of sound.

"How's the bullet wound?" she eventually asks, her voice flat, uninflected, too loud after such an extended absence of noise.

I clear my throat. "Fine. Almost fully healed by now."

"Good," she whispers, closes her eyes for a half-moment. "'Cause we need to pick up the pace, I think."

"Pick up the pace?" I ask, wilfully misunderstanding.

"Keep moving, Otto. We've got to keep moving. The past…it's something that chases after you. But you can escape it. If you move fast enough…"

"- Were injured in the process, but no serious casualties have been reported," smarms the news anchor. "This latest attack was, of course, in keeping with the duo's chosen theme: Margaretha's, on Fifth Avenue, one of the most exclusive and expensive boutiques on the upper west side. This latest attack on the world of high fashion has spawned yet more spirited debate over the figure at the center of the controversy. Mary Jane Watson: modern-day Robin Hood, or conscienceless supervillain?"

The scene cuts to a Hollywood backlot, flatteringly lit and angled, in such a way as to portray its subject, Timothy Hollander, as the cool, fascinating maverick artist he knows himself to be so well.

"Oh, she's an icon, for sure," Tim drawls, a cigarette dangling from his fingertips in what he probably imagines is a devil-may-care fashion, eyes hidden behind purple shades. "It was just that type of iconic quality I picked up on, the day I cast her in what is essentially the leading role of my upcoming film, Is This Desire? (which I'm finishing filming at the moment, by the way, for a January release). She had that kind of – of –" He gestures wildly with his cigarette, as if searching for words, as if this interview were not entirely rehearsed. " – Psychotic glamor about her that all the really memorable criminals of our time had. Billy the Kid had it, Bonnie and Clyde had it, the Green Goblin had it, and now Mary Jane Watson has it. She's completely insane, of course, totally and utterly bat(BLEEP), but I feel I understand her, you know? I felt it when we met. We communed. It was a meeting of the minds. I for one wouldn't hesitate to cast her again."

The scene cuts to a bustling city street, a series of rapid-fire, quick-cut interviews, slices of public opinion served in a palatable thirty-second format. "I think she's disgusting," sniffs an old lady. "Absolutely disgusting. A violent little thug. Let her rot in jail."

"I don't agree with the way she's doing it," one woman admits. "But I think what she has to say – I think she kind of has a point, with that."

"She's just a puppet," shrugs one twentysomething guy. "Everyone knows Doc Ock is making her do all this stuff. I can't hate her, but I can't, you know, support her either, because that'd be supporting him too."

"I don't care," says a young female student irritably, slinging her backpack over one shoulder. "Honestly, I think it's all just a publicity stunt she cooked up to, like, further her career. She was a model, you know? She just wants to stay famous, I think."

"MARY JANE WATSON RULES!" three teenage girls squeal, clad in identical red T-shirts, blue jeans and green trench coats, with identical dyed-black hair. "Wooo! We love you, MJ!" whoops one. "You rock!" cries another.

Peter sits, slumped on the couch, staring at the television in a kind of stupor, made up of equal parts despair and disbelief. There is no way, he thinks to himself, no way, that these people can possibly be talking about MJ. Not my MJ. They can't possibly have opinions on her. They can't possibly see her this way.

May Parker, from her station at the kitchen sink, glances around the corner, sees her nephew's lank posture, sees the incredulous look on his face. She bites her lip, turns back to the soapy dishes, rinses them under the cold tap. She probably shouldn't say anything. It isn't really her business, after all. Peter is dealing with this the best he can.

But she knows he really isn't. He can do better than this. Much better.

Sighing, she peels off the pink rubber gloves, throws them down beside the sink, and saunters into the living room, sitting down next to him, taking up the remote, and switching off the television. "I don't know what you're watching that garbage for," she comments mildly.

"To be honest? Neither do I," Peter admits. "Feels like all these people know her better than I do, now. But at the same time – it's like I'm the only one left who knows her at all." He shakes his head, trying to reorganise the thoughts that have swirled within it for so many weeks now; finally, he buries it in his hands.

"It's almost October now, you know," May says gently.

"Yeah?" comes the muffled reply.

"I…would have thought that you would have been able to catch up to her by now."

Peter looks up, eyeing her with some suspicion. "What do you mean?"
"Well…" May looks away, presses her soft, wrinkled hand against Peter's. "I don't mean to imply anything, Peter, but – if Mary Jane were any other villain, I mean to say if anybody else were doing the things she's doing now…you would have put a stop to it some time ago. Or at least tried to."

"Hey, I tried to stop her!" Peter protests, snatching his hand away. "I've still got the bruises to remember it by. She and Doc Ock practically polished that catwalk with my face."

May clucks her tongue in irritation; the boy is being deliberately obtuse now, and she knows it. "Are you honestly trying to convince me that after trying only once to capture her, you gave up on the effort entirely?"

Peter shifts in his seat. "No. I mean, it's not…that simple, exactly…" He falls silent. Then, roused again to defensiveness: "I mean, yeah, I know I should've been there to stop her from trashing all those places, and I tried, really I did. But I never made it there fast enough. She and Ock go in, steal stuff, tear the places apart and get out. Every time I arrived, she was already gone."

"Peter, that is an incredibly weak excuse," May replies sternly. "And it's beneath you to even try and convince me of it." She cups his chin in her hand, tilts his face, with its wounded brown eyes and lines of unceasing worry, towards her. "You're afraid," she says gently. "You're afraid to see her again, afraid of what she might do, what you might do. You're afraid to look in her eyes and see that all is lost. But, Peter, whether you believe me or not, I am here to tell you that all is not lost. Not by any means. Mary Jane could very, very easily have killed you that night – and she didn't."

"No," Peter says, and May is satisfied to see a dawning realisation behind his eyes. "You're right, no, she didn't."

"In fact," May continues, "She hasn't killed anyone." Her eyes narrow, the blue of the irises turning to steel. "And I can't imagine that Otto Octavius was behind that particular decision." She lets her hand fall into her lap, where her eyes follow it; she sighs again. "I accepted long ago that Otto was lost. To me. To the world. And what he has done to her is so monstrous that I have to wonder if he can even distinguish any more between acts of good and evil."

She looks up, back into Peter's eyes. "But Mary Jane isn't broken the way Otto is broken – not irretrievably, not yet. She's in fragments right now. She doesn't know who she is. But she can be put back together. She can find herself again, if there is someone willing to help her do that."

Peter bows his head. "I just don't…" he begins, then breaks off. "I just don't know if I'm strong enough, Aunt May," he whispers.

May reaches out, grasps his hand, tightly, letting him know she won't pull away. "Peter, you're the strongest person I think I've ever known."

Yesterday's job: a beauty spa uptown. Another notch on the belt. Another brick in the wall. Building up a real resume, here.

Funny how even rebellion ultimately falls into routine. How what was fun and exciting and life-affirming once, the first magical time, starts to feel like work, starts to wear on you. These jobs used to be my cheap thrill, but they're beginning to feel pretty expensive now that I'm getting used to them. That's the thing about whatever gets you high: you have to keep upping the dosage, have to stay high, on one continuous loop, or you crash down to earth like nothing else.

I've noticed, lately, that that's what I do after Otto and I pull off yet another incredibly daring heist job – only hours later, I just crash. In the daytime, when he's by my side and there's debris all around and people are screaming hosannas to my name, I feel like my body is singing, like I'm sizzling with heat lightning, like there's nothing in the web of nerves around my brain but pure adrenaline, shooting through my spine. There's nothing to equal that feeling. Nothing.

And there's nothing to equal this flatness I feel afterwards. There's nothing to equal the blackness I see when I wake up in the middle of the night, the blackness all around me, inside me. This emptiness. This nothingness. This hole in the heart of me.

Even the media coverage afterwards doesn't do it for me any more – just the same talking heads, who don't know me, who think they've figured me out, commentating on my every move. They say I'm an icon. That's odd. I thought that's what I was before Otto liberated me. I thought my iconic days were over. But everyone seems to know me better than I do.

I finally get out of bed around one AM. I can't remember if I slept at all or not. I have this feeling, like I dreamed something, but I don't know what it was, or even if I dreamed at all. The blankets are clustering around me, choking me. I kick them off, into the hot darkness, wondering why the hell the thermostat is turned up to such an insane degree. After getting up and checking it, though, I realise that it's just me.

I open the door a crack, and slip out into the hallway. From the heat of the room I just left, it's like diving into a pool of ice water. Immediately, I'm fully awake, fully alert; there's no way I could sleep now. I wish I had someone to talk to, or just to be with. Otto's asleep, and it wouldn't be fair to wake him up; even if I did, it wouldn't help. He doesn't talk to me, not really. Sometimes I feel like our conversations just consist of bouncing words off each other; nothing ever seems to stick. It never seems to really add up to anything, even when I want it to, when I hope it will. Otto doesn't really know me, and I don't think he really wants to know me.

With Peter, it was different. I stop, close my eyes, as the memories rush back into my brain, as they always do in these early hours, when my defenses are down. The sad, dull ache in the pit of my stomach whenever I think about him is the sickness of memory, the pain of having someone so close under your skin you feel you could touch them, but knowing you can't.

Peter. Before all of this, before it all went rotten and died. Peter was there. In the middle of the night, in the earliest hours of the morning, and I could talk to him any time I needed to. We sat up in our bed, the goosedown covers bunched up all around us, his bare feet sticking out at the end of the quilt, and we'd talk. About everything, everything there ever was. And sometimes we'd not talk; sometimes we'd touch, the lightest of strokes, fingertips streaking along a jawbone, an arched neck, a halo of tangled hair, as the sunlight seeped into the room. Sometimes it led to quickening breaths, sweat, hungry mouths pressing and feeding on each other; but other times, it remained a ballet of touch, nothing more, just a fascination with each other, expressed through the fingertips, seeing each other through our senses, like those struck blind.

Oh God. I hurt. I hurt and I hurt and I hurt. Somebody make it stop. Find me a distraction. Make Otto wake up, strike the house with lightning, I don't care. I thought I killed this pain. I thought I made it die.

It is dead. It's just a memory. That's all. Only a memory of pain. I don't really feel this. I don't feel a thing.

Not a goddamn thing.

Calm. Placid. Sedated.

I'm fine. I'm good. I'm Mary Jane Watson, damn it. I'm a supervillain. And everything's fine. Brenda wraps herself around my waist, curls around my shoulders, pets my hair. I smile, and stroke her softly.

So. Here I am, walking after midnight. How very Patsy Cline of me. I sigh, lean against the cool wall, wrap my arms around my shoulders. The house is so quiet. I'm the only conscious person left in a cold, sleeping world.

Yeah. Okay, yeah. There's something to do. Something to kill a few hours before dawn. I'll go up to the roof, watch the lights in the distance; watch as the dark fingers of the night draw slowly away from the city, as the sunlight slides across the slick metal surfaces and the rest of the world wakes up. And when I go downstairs, Otto'll have breakfast ready, probably, and all the shadows will disappear, and I'll feel steady again.

I scan the ceiling for the trap-door leading to the attic; amongst the dust and cobwebs, I finally catch sight of the dangling rope. I stretch Brenda up, curl her claws around it, pull; the rickety wooden staircase descends from on high, and I climb up, slowly, quietly.

The attic. Cool and silent. A tiny little boxed-in rectangle of termite-eaten wood and dusty cardboard boxes, their shadows falling across the floorboards in the wake of the moonlight slithering through the grime-soaked window. I take a cautious step, noticing the tiny hurricanes of dust that fly up around my feet as they touch the creaking floor; I'm so absorbed in trying not to make a sound, in fact, that I don't notice the low, flat wooden box right in front of me until I slam my left shin right into it. The pain shoots up my leg and forces its way out through a loud and filthy curse, as I drop to the ground, clutching my leg and groaning. I look over at the culprit, glaring at the box as if it had intentionally hurt me – and I notice, then, that it's been knocked over on its side, its contents spilling out across the floor.

Nothing really that spectacular. Nothing of particular note. Not especially revealing of anything – like, it's not photos of Otto's ex-girlfriends or his old stuffed bear or anything like that.

Just some records. Large, bulky cardboard record sleeves, their colors faded with time, covered with a fine sheen of dust. They don't look like the kind of thing Otto would choose to listen to. I pick them up, examine the sleeves in the low light: female singers, mostly, torchy types. Eartha Kitt, Peggy Lee, Julie London. Lots of Julie London. I guess Mrs Octavius – because that's obviously who these belonged to – was a fan. The side of my mouth quirks into a smile; she and my mom probably would've gotten along.

Some of these records are really great, real dynamite stuff. I don't know what Otto's thinking, keeping them hoarded away up here in the attic, exposed to heat and cold and probably rats and things, too. I gaze at the cover photos, of the women, smiling and glamorous in that past-era-lounge-lizard kind of way, their hair and make-up immaculate, elegantly posed. I'm seized with a sudden desire to listen to these records, to fill up the silence before dawn with their sweet voices, voices of the past.

I look around, gambling on the probability of there being a record player up here too, and lo and behold, there is, shoved unceremoniously away in a corner, behind a bunch of empty cardboard boxes. I haul it out, blow the dust away from it; it's old, too, most likely as old as the records themselves, a big Victrola kind of thing, a gramophone, really, with the big brass horn and everything. I crank it up, slow at first, then fast, until the spinning black disc in the center achieves enough momentum to play me something. Fanning the record sleeves out in front of me with the hand not turning the lever, I pick one of the Julie Londons, slide it out, place it carefully on the turntable.

The crackle, the hiss of old music. And then, the slow dive. The smooth swell of a backing jazz band, and then the low, sweet, honey-husked voice, insinuating itself into the ear, rising and falling like warm ocean waves, soothing as a mother's lullaby, even as the words themselves whisper their quiet, resigned sadness. "It begins to tell, round midnight, round midnight. I do pretty well, 'til after sundown…"

I close my eyes, lay back on the floor, not caring about the dust or dirt, letting every note wash over me. My lips move in time to the music, whisper the words. "Darling, I need you; lately I find – you're out of my arms, I'm out of my mind…"

It's such a stupid thing, really. To let something as dumb and innocent as an old song slip past your defenses, past the ice wall. But I have to squeeze my eyes closed, anyhow, hold them tightly shut, wind my arms around my body, as if to keep everything contained, inside.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" a voice growls in the darkness.

My eyelids fly open; I struggle to sit up, regain my composure. Otto's head and shoulders face me through the trap-door; his eyes are hidden behind his glasses, but I can feel their blazing heat nevertheless. His voice is sharp, cold, a stab with an icicle.

"You have no right to be up here," he says, teeth clenched; his tentacles swarm up through the doorway, plant themselves firmly on the floorboards, haul him up in one smooth motion. I blink; I don't know if it's because I'm tired or what, but I honestly can't think why he might be angry with me. "I –" I begin, but he cuts me off.

"Do you imagine that everything in this house is your property, Mary Jane?" he asks, biting down on my name. "Do you imagine that because circumstance has brought us together that you have a right to all that is me, all that is mine?"

"I don't know –" I try.

He slams a tentacle down on the floor; the dust skitters and jumps, and so do I. "Those – are – my – mother's – records!" he thunders. "They were her property, not yours! You had no right – no right – " Another slam; despite myself, I cringe, hunching my limbs closer to my body " – To pry into my life in this way. What is up here in the attic is up here for a reason. If I had wanted to parade my memories before you, Mary Jane Watson, don't you think I would have done so long ago?!"

I've never, never seen him so angry with me before. Not even in the beginning, before we were – whatever we are now. The moonlight glints off his teeth, giving him a bestial aspect – fanged, carnivorous. He could kill me right now. I'm sure of it. He's killed people for less. Nervously, cowering, I stand up. "Otto…" I venture, my voice quavering. "I didn't mean to pry. I just, I was going to the roof, and I found –"

"What did you find, Mary Jane? Hmm? Something that was not yours to toy with, not yours to even touch. My mother's property is never to be touched by the likes of you."
And that's when I start to get pretty damn angry myself. "I didn't do anything wrong," I snap. "And what the hell is that supposed to mean? 'The likes of me'? Just what are 'the likes of me', exactly?"

"If this attic weren't so small, Mary Jane…" Otto growls dangerously; his tentacles extend silently through the gloom, and I feel them wind, threateningly, behind my back, ready to enfold me.

I decide to try and defuse the situation, try to placate him. "Otto," I say gamely, taking a few hesitant steps forward. "Look. If I did do something wrong here, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to – you know, offend you or anything like that, or disrespect your mom's memory. I hope you can…" I place my hand lightly on his arm.

Bad move, apparently. Otto snarls like a wildcat, and before I can blink, before I can think, a rush of air speeds past me and something shoves me away from him, sends me skidding across the floor. I look up, not injured, but in shock; Brenda curls herself around me protectively; Otto reels his tentacle back in, and the four of them writhe and lash angrily behind him.

"Stop that!" he barks. "Why must you do that, all the time? Why do you keep touching me like that?!"

Okay, now I'm lost. "A - all the…?" I try to make some sense of this.

"So insidious," he hisses. "Always finding ways to do that, excuses to…Pfah!" he waves a hand dismissively, turning away from me, folding his arms. "It isn't right," he mutters, "It isn't right."

I haul myself, shakily, to my feet, with considerable help from Brenda. I feel broken inside, shattered; I could cry, I feel sure I could, but no tears seem to come. "Otto," I start, haltingly. My voice fails; I hang my head, closing my eyes, trying to gather the pieces of myself together. Finally, there's nothing to say other than: "I wanted to feel closer to you." I don't even know if it's true or not.

Otto spins around, his face once again resembling the wrath of God. "Closer to me? You wanted to feel closer to me?" he bellows. "That, Mary Jane, is the biggest laugh of all. You will never be close to me, Mary Jane, because you are not willing to go where I go, to do what I do, to take that final, irreversible step. You are not willing to follow me into places that are not pretty, not glamorous, not all childish fun and games. You are not prepared to make the sacrifices that I do. You wish to feel closer to me, Mary Jane Watson? Then kill somebody!"

He flings this last at me, before swarming down the attic steps, slamming the door in his wake. I stand there, shaking, before my legs give way from underneath me and I land, roughly, on my ass, on the floor. I hear the faint slam of the front door downstairs, and know that he's gone. Even though I know what I want to do, I wait for what seems a long time until I'm certain the house has settled around me, until I'm sure he won't be back.

I get up, again, leaning on Brenda, my last line of support. I walk, zombified, over to the trap-door, pull it open, head downstairs. I've got the kitchen in my mind, the refrigerator, the bottle of champagne I saved all those weeks ago from the limousine, back when all this was fun. It's gone flat now, of course. The champagne, I mean. Flat, but it's still alcohol.

Right now, the alcohol is all that really matters.

The lights of the city swirl around me, the sound a textured miasma of car horns and babbling voices in my ears, but none of it touches me. High above the city, swarming across the rooftops, all I can feel is my own fury, white-hot, blinding.

How could she? How could she dare?

Those were my memories she was playing, listening to so idly, up in that attic. My memories, floating out of the old gramophone – my mother, standing at the kitchen stove or hanging out the washing on the line outside, singing those songs; or when she would hide in the attic from him, and take me with her, and we would crouch there in the dust with the record player turned down low, so that the silken voices were reduced to only a breath of sound. After she died, I moved them all up there so that those memories could never be disturbed, so that those records could never be played again, so that the feelings and images I attached to them would be preserved forever. (I slither down a cracked brick wall, into an alleyway.)

Stunner would never have dared. She would have known, instinctively, that there are some things sacred even to me. Even though I've never explained what Mother meant to me to Mary Jane – only mentioned her, briefly, that one time on the couch – she should know. She should be able to…to sense it. Or at least had intelligence enough not to presume that we are to share everything in that house. (My tentacles carry me out, down the deserted stretch of street ahead, and into a curving concrete tunnel. Close to the station; I can hear the trains howling, distantly, at the back of my mind.)

This constant invasion of my space – it maddens me. I meant what I said to her, about the manner in which she is forever touching me. It's one thing to ride on my back, when necessity dictates such an action, or to stitch up a gaping wound in my side; it's another thing to believe she has the right to bestow caresses, uninvited and unnerving, whenever she sees fit. She doesn't know what those caresses do to me. Or perhaps she does.

She needs to be careful. She seems to believe she has me on a leash, that I'm tame now, some sort of pet. Not so, my girl. Not so. I made you what you are. You don't own me. I determine the boundaries between us, not you.

And, do you know, I didn't even realise that I wanted her to kill until the words had been spoken aloud. The more I reflect upon it, however, the truer I see that it is. She should be prepared to kill for me. She should care at least that much. It isn't an unreasonable expectation. It's practically an insult that she hasn't done it yet, hasn't even attempted it yet; it's as if there's a part of her, some secret part, that she is withholding from me, that she won't share, and I cannot have that. To look at her, into those eyes, and know that she hasn't surrendered everything to me, that she has erected a dividing line between us – the thought drives me to distraction. No, I will not stand for that. She must kill for me.

I would kill for her

"You know, Ockie, it must be said – moonlight becomes you."

…And the opportunity to do so may have already arrived.

Slowly, I turn, look up to the curving roof of the tunnel, that hated voice prickling my skin, shooting along my spine. There, amongst the faded gangland graffiti, the blue and the red. Crouched upside-down like the repellent little insect he truly is, gazing down upon me with white, impudent eyes – Spider-Man.

A growl slithers up through my throat, a guttural sound without verbal equivalent; I thrash a tentacle in his direction, lashing out as hard as I possibly can, but am rewarded only with the crack of concrete, as he dances effortlessly away. I am not in the mood for this. I'm tired, angry, unfocused. Crushing him would be a delight, but not this evening.

He raises his arms above his head, makes a T-shape with his hands. "Whoa, whoa. Time out. I came here to talk."

My tentacles writhe, on the defensive, as if I would ever drop such a stance around him. "You and I have nothing to talk about."

"Oh, see, I think we do." He drops down to the ground, several metres away from me – clever boy, don't get too close. "We never really talk anymore, Otto. What with all the hubbub of the last few months, it never seems to be just you and me. I figured we needed some 'alone time'. Some guy talk." He lowers his head, gazes at me in what I assume is meant to be a significant manner. "Without the lady around."
I tense. Mary Jane. This is about Mary Jane.

"I'll assume that silence means I should go on?" He saunters a little closer, hands behind his back. "Okay, then. To cut directly to the chase, I'm prepared to make you an offer. A definite one-time-only deal." He lowers his arms to his sides, narrows his eyes. "Send Mary Jane Watson home, safe and unharmed, and I won't beat the holy hell out of you when the time comes to send you back to the looney bin."

Involuntarily, a touch hysterically, I begin to laugh. "I thought we'd settled this long ago? The night of the fashion show. I thought she'd made her decision quite clear, Spider-Man. She chose me. Not you."

"Oh, yeah, I'd accept that. If I believed it really was her decision. Which I don't. Not for a second."

"I couldn't care less what you believe, boy," I snarl, turning around, determined not to continue this idiotic conversation any longer.

"You really think she deserves the kind of life you can give her?"

I stop, look back around. A slow burn of rising anger, returning for the second time this night, kindles inside me.

"She still has a chance, Otto," he goes on, his tone now, amusingly enough, almost a plea. "She hasn't seriously hurt anyone yet. If you're at all concerned with her welfare – and I'm sort of banking on the idea that you are, in your half-baked kind of way – you'll give her up to the police. They'll go easy on her. I'll see to it that she –"

I feel my lips curling back, into an animal snarl. "You," I say slowly, "Are asking me to betray her."

He shakes his head. "No, I –"

"You want me to sell her out. Is that it?"

So strange, the way a mood is mutable. Only minutes ago, I was cursing her name, cursing the day I met her. Now, the very thought of going against her, of giving her up to this repellent little cretin, whips me into a blind fury. As if he could ever hope to understand her. As if he could ever show her the things I've shown her, about the world, about herself. He wants to put her back, safe and sound, into her cosy little boxed-in life. He wants to take her away from me.

"You miserable, miserable, miserable little toad," I hiss. "The very fact that you would even approach me with such an offer is an insult to both her and me. You don't know us – either of us. If you did, you would realise that she doesn't want your kind of life. And even if she did – I would never, ever, surrender her to you."

I shoot my tentacles out, making an infuriated grab for him, but once again, he skitters away, onto the tunnel wall. As he crawls towards the edge of the tunnel, vanishing into the night, his voice echoes behind him, backwards into my head.

"Trust me, Doc. I won't be making that offer again. That was the last warning, right there. Next time I see you – or her – I'll do whatever I have to."

I spot her, sitting there, hunched and lonely, long before I actually alight on the roof of my house.

She doesn't seem to acknowledge my presence; merely stares out over the back yard, across the sky, at the faraway buildings, the faint glimmer of lights. Her hair is streaming in the fierce wind, whips and lashes her face, delicate as a sliver of pearl in the darkness. She is huddled beside the chimney, her limbs folded in upon themselves to preserve what little warmth there is; she is motionless for a long time, and then I see her tentacle raise a clear bottle to her lips, and she takes a long pull off its slender neck. I catch the scent of alcohol on the wind, and frown.

"You know you're not supposed to be drinking," I say reproachfully.

She looks up, her eyes bleary, unfocused, and it is immediately apparent that she is drunk. "What?"

"I wished for you to keep your mind sharp. Unclouded." I move to stand beside her; she makes no effort to rise, simply turns her gaze back out towards the city, and takes another swig from the bottle.

A long silence. I sigh, and sit down beside her, following her fixed stare. "We shouldn't be arguing, you and I," I begin, my voice uncharacteristically faltering. "We aren't each other's enemy. Not when we have real enemies we need to focus on fighting," I add, scowling, as the memory of the evening's encounter with the arachnid flashes across my mind.

Mary Jane snorts with laughter. "I guess that's all I'm gonna get by way of an apology, huh?"

This presumption on her part irks me. "You will not receive an apology because I do not owe you one. I'm not here to indulge your finer feelings."

"No, there's nobody around to do that, is there," she says thickly, taking another gulp from the bottle.

I could easily take the champagne from her, throw it away, but I don't. Instead, I simply watch her, observe her in the calm and peaceful hush before the dawn. She seems very young all of a sudden, a thing easily bruised, easily wounded; and, unbidden, my mind returns to Spider-Man's words. Something about how she still has a chance. Something about the kind of life I can give her.

My eyes flick down to the tentacle, weaving unsteadily over the tiles of the roof, as intoxicated as she. That's the kind of life I can give her, the kind of life a deformity can bestow. I wonder if she drank like this before I came along. I wonder if she knew the terrible highs and lows, the jagged peaks and endless descents, of existence before I showed them to her. And I wonder, very briefly, whether or not it is a good thing that she knows them now.

Behind my glasses, I close my eyes tightly, turn away from her. I will not, I will not, I will not allow Spider-Man, of all people, to plant a seed of doubt in my mind. I don't subscribe to his vision of reality, as he does not subscribe to mine; but she has made her choice. She has. And so what if the circumstances under which she made it were not ideal; so what if she was exhausted, and anguished, and frightened? Under what other circumstances, I ask you, does one make the decisions that determine one's life?

I've made her life better, richer by far.

I haven't destroyed her.

"Mary Jane," I say slowly, my eyes closed, my mind formulating the words at the same time as my mouth, "You don't have to kill anyone if you don't want to. It was…" I swallow. "It was unfair of me to demand that of you."

The words hang in the cold air, uncomfortable and awkward. I wonder if perhaps she did not hear. Then she shakes her head.

"No. No, it's okay, Otto. It's okay. You were right." She hugs her knees to her chest, stares down at her feet. "I've been gutless my whole life," she says, her voice low, oddly deep. "Everyone always knew it. I tried to look strong, but nobody was ever convinced. My dad knew. He saw it. He saw I was just a, a…" She waves her hand "Just a cream puff, so he didn't need to…he didn't need to try not to tread on me. But I can be strong now. I can. I can do it. I can do…what you said I should do."

I shiver; the wind is beginning to bite, turn even colder. It will rain again soon. "Do you want to go in?" I enquire.

She shakes her head again. "No." She lies back, stretches her body out beside me, feline in the gloom. "Look at the stars," she says dreamily. "They're so close up here. Right up here, at the highest peak. You could reach up and touch them if you didn't know they burned."

I settle back, leaning on my elbows, watching the night skies. "The Big Dipper," I say automatically, recounting the names of these stars, these stars I watched so often from my windows in the house below us. "Ursa Minor. Ursa Major. Orion."

"The Milky Way," she joins in, so unexpectedly I cut myself off, glance across at her. "Sirius. Betelgeuse. Regulus. Andromeda." She laughs, looks over at me, and I detect a hint of challenge in her eyes. "My husband," she explains. "Science teacher. He knew all the names of the stars, all the constellations." She looks back up. "He used to say he'd discover a new constellation some day, one with only three stars in the sky. One of them would be him. One of them would be me. One of them would be our little girl."

I sit up. I stare at her, my eyes wide. My heart seems to freeze in my chest, forcing the blood back through my veins. "Your…" My voice fails. I give it another try. "You have a child?"

Mary Jane is very, very quiet. Deathly quiet. For a very long time.

"No," she finally says, and her voice is the softest thing I have ever heard, softer than the rain, than the wind. "No, I don't." She closes her eyes. "She was a little girl," she whispers. "She was so beautiful. All the while I carried her inside me, I could feel her as she took her shape, and I could feel that she was beautiful. You wouldn't think, would you, that you could feel beauty? But you can.

"And we argued over what to name her. Good-natured arguing. But he won. We named her after his aunt. We called her May. My choice was Brenda. I think it's a good name. Brenda.

"And…she was gone. When I woke up, because I was so tired, because there was so much pushing and breathing and pain…they told me she was gone. I held her for only a moment, and then she was just not there. It was over. Gone. Gone away."

And more silence. The words have evaporated inside my mouth. My whole body feels numb. I don't know what to say to her. I look at her, try to imagine her pregnant, try to imagine her with a baby, a dead baby. "I have always," I say, my voice thick and slow, painfully formal, "Had the greatest respect for mothers. I imagine you would have been wonderful."

She shrugs, languidly. "We'll never know now."

No more words. Nothing left to say, really. She sits up; her tentacle tosses the champagne bottle into the air, and as it tumbles through space, the tentacle swishes to one side, smashing it. The eruption of glass fills the air, like glittering shards of the night itself, sharp-edge diamonds, falling silently down to the grass below. We watch it fall, then, with a sigh, she hauls herself to her feet, brushing off her jeans.

"I've decided," she says quietly. "Who it's gonna be. You know Timothy Hollander? That jerk-off film-maker? The one on that show the other night, talking trash about me, and how he and I have a connection and all that crap? It'll be him. He's famous. Make a big splash. The media'll love it."

Slightly unsteady on her feet, she saunters across the roof, towards the trap-door leading down into the attic. Something seizes me, seizes hold of my heart, as I watch her go; impulsively, I call out: "Mary Jane?"

Halfway down the stairs, she stops, looks over her shoulder with half-lidded eyes. "Yeah?"

I pause. I had something to say. There was something I felt she should hear, a phrase, a word, a magic incantation, some perfect arrangement of syllables that would make everything all right. But I've forgotten it now. If I ever knew it to begin with. "No." I shake my head. "Never mind."

She stands there, perfectly still, and she looks at me with tired and unreadable green eyes, the wind blowing the strands of hair across her face, a shining black veil. At last, she says, ever so quietly, "You know something, Otto? As far as I'm concerned, everyone can go to Hell except you and me."

She turns away, and vanishes down the stairs, leaving me alone to face the approaching dawn.

Sweat, soaking my skin, and I'm shaking like a junkie. My hands are a blur, they're trembling so hard. My head, still pounding with the hangover – oh, I should've waited another day for this, another day or more – is strangely light; must be the air up here, so high, in this beautiful, lush green garden.

The smell of roses, thick in my nostrils. I feel so far away. So far away from the smashed lights, the wrecked sound equipment, the spools of brown celluloid draped all around the bushes, the pages of script scattered to the winds, the weaselly little man on his knees in front of me, my tentacle wrapped firm and tight around his throat, sobbing what may well be his last breath.

I tilt my head to one side, close my eyes, let the wind catch my hair, lift it around my shoulders, ripple around my face. "A roof garden," I say, my voice far away in my own ears. "Pretty. The script must've undergone some revisions since I read it. I don't remember a scene in a roof garden back when I was Bethany." I open my eyes, and my face feels rigid, hard, frozen in place. "Do you think I'd still be a good Bethany, Tim? Or am I ugly enough for Donna now?"

Tim can't reply, not sensibly; his whole body is shuddering, seizing up with fear. "Oh God oh God oh God I'm sorry I'm sorry I don't know what I didn't mean please oh Jesus oh Mary Jane please no please no please no…"

"Shut up," I say harshly. "No talking."

This should – rightfully should - be my most perfect moment.

I waited all day. Slept maybe three hours back home, snuck out of the house before Otto was even awake. I knew he'd want to come with me, come and see for himself just what kind of a job I would do. The thought of having him along, watching, judging, was more than I could bear. I thought about leaving him a note, but eventually I did nothing; just left, as soundlessly as I could.

It seemed to me that the city was quiet today, much quieter than New York has any right to be; I imagined it, a dead city, its heartbeat stilled forever, the gritty concrete and the shining skyscrapers abandoned, the cars motionless in the street. My feet sloshed in the murky puddles of rainwater. The sky was a clear blue. I clung to the back alleys, even managed to scale a couple of walls, just to see if I could, then dropped back down again, killing time, killing time.

The production schedule Tim had given me, lifetimes ago, was still there in my bag; I'd fished it out back home, studied it, the locations, the times. Not that I was planning anything. It had to be today. And it had to be swift. And it had to be soon.

Took the fire-escape stairs. A long, long haul; my shirt and jeans were soaked through by the time I made it up to the roof. A big building, an expensive building – nowhere but the best for Timothy Hollander.

Slipped through that door, found myself in the open air, in bright blue space, surrounded by green. Neatly trimmed trees in clay pots, bushes, flowers, a riot of flowers, and cast and crew everywhere, running back and forth, styrofoam cups of coffee in chapped hands, fixing lights, tweaking boom mikes. My movieland dream. Lights and cameras and white canvas chairs with the stars' names on the back, all in a garden of roses.

I wrapped my coat around myself, felt Brenda encircle my waist underneath it. I watched through hooded eyes, from under the brim of an ill-fitting hat; and I saw him, chattering away, laughing, giving direction, to two girls. Young. Younger than me. One was pale, brunette, dowdy, or a Hollywood director's idea of dowdy; wire-framed glasses and a gray cardigan. Donna, presumably.

And Bethany.

She looked just like me. Smaller, younger, but just like me. Can't be more than eighteen. Her red hair gleamed, whipped in the wind; she rubbed the goosebumps on her arms with elegant hands. It was an out-of-body experience, watching this girl, the one who could have been me; like watching myself, at a distance, from some alternate dimension, some parallel life.

I stayed there all day, until the sun began to set. I watched them do take after take, ensconced behind a rose bush, unseen, unheard. I heard her recite the lines that should have been mine, the five lines that almost came from my mouth. She flubs them occasionally, probably distracted by the cold, and looks embarrassed. Cute little thing. Innocent little girl.

And then it's done. Cut and print. That's a wrap for today, people. And equipment is packed up, lights are switched off, tarpaulins are drawn over the props and tech stuff they'll need for tomorrow. Everyone troops downstairs, or to the elevator. Tim's the last one left. Last man standing.

I got his attention by smashing out one of the lights – not with Brenda, but with my own balled-up fist. The pain shot down my arm, woke me up a little, though not enough, not enough. He spun around, his eyes enormous, and I knocked him off his feet, to the petal-strewn ground, before he even had a chance to try and run. I held him down with my booted foot, keeping my eyes fixed on him as Brenda lashed around crazily, smashing the lights, tearing up the cameras, wasting all the money he'd raised to commit his dream to celluloid. I studied him, every part of his face, every square inch of skin, and I committed it to memory; I noted the sweat running down his temple, the grains of coke at his nostril, the delicate red veins running through the white of his eyes.

And now here we are. Here I am, really, because I'm alone here. I'm out somewhere in space, floating away from my body; it's Brenda who's doing all the work, Brenda's who's wrapped around his throat. I can feel the bones in the back of his neck through her slim black body, can feel his trembling like a message coming down a telegraph wire. He keeps trying to speak, to plead for his life. I don't want to hear this.

"Oh please. Oh please. Won't tell. Won't tell anyone. You can't, you c-c-can't c-c-c-c –"

"Stop talking!" I snarl. The bones in my head feel as if they're going to collapse, leave my head a caved-in, hollowed-out gourd. Just tighten the tentacle, MJ. Just wait for the snap. It's so easy.

His eyes won't leave me. They'll fall back in his head soon. I just have to wait. Just have to hold on. Stay strong. Stay focused, MJ. Stay focused…

"Please," he croaks, shutting his eyes, tears leaking out from their corners.

I shut my own eyes again, feel the world spin around me, hurtling off its axis. So high up here. My head, my head. I have to do this. I have to do this. I…I…

Brenda goes slack. Draws away from his reddened, chafed throat, curls back around to me, leaves him gasping, clutching his neck.

I stand there a while, watching him, my whole body numb and cold. "Go," I whisper. "Run away."
He sits there, still gasping for air, looking up at me through terrified, bloodshot eyes.

"RUN AWAY!" I scream, and finally he does. The door clangs shut behind him with a metallic reverb, echoing across the skies.

I sink to my knees, amongst the leaves and petals and broken glass. Blood seeps through the knees of my jeans, but I can't care. I can't even think. Light winks off a copper-colored glass, over on the catering table – somebody's bottle of Southern Comfort, left behind by a crew member.

Brenda shoots out and snatches it off the table.

Getting dark now. The city lights should be coming on soon. But out the attic window, I don't see anything but darkness.

The liquor bottle is on the floor, the last few drops of it soaked into the dust. I should be drunk, but I'm not. I'd feel better if I were drunk. I'd feel nothing if I were drunk. Which is always better.

I was so close. He was such easy prey, and so deserving, such a slimy little maggot, no one would miss him. He squirmed in my grip like the worm he was. Is. And will forever be, now that I spared his life.

It won't change him. He won't magically become a better person because of this. No, he'll be all over the television again, talking about his terrifying ordeal at the hands of Mary Jane Watson. Great publicity for the new film. Hell, he should be paying me.

I can't face Otto. I can't look him in the eye and let him see the weakness in me, the cowardice. I've failed him. I'll lose him. He'll chalk me up, just another failed experiment, failed to live up to his expectations, and he'll throw me away like everyone else did.

I tuck my legs up close to my chest, hug my knees, rest my head on them as I stare out the window. This is the descent. This is the spiral. No way but down from here on in. And I'm clawing, clawing at the sides of nothingness, screaming silently for something real to hang on to, something I can use to slow the downfall.

I'm destabilising. Coming apart. In this beautiful new life that was chosen for me, this new world where I'm an invincible supervillain, held in awe and fear, I'm falling to pieces, or maybe just plain falling. I should be able to be happy now, should have left pain far behind me on the road to God-Knows-Where. But I haven't. It's still here. It still seeps through the cracks, crawls into my brain, whispers in my blood. Every part of me hurts, every single part. And I need someone to hold on to the fragments of me, keep them together. Someone needs to need me. I can't, I can't, I can't do this alone, not any more. There has to be something better. There has to be.

Otherwise, there's nothing at all.

Dinner.

We sit at the long wooden dining table, across from each other, eating in silence. Mary Jane merely toys with her food, her eyes trained upon me with the intensity of a panther. I avoid her gaze for the most part, watching my plate as if it is inordinately fascinating, acutely uncomfortable and not knowing why. There's a tremor in the air tonight, a thickness, like the vibrations of oncoming heat lightning; somewhere a storm is brewing.

I know she didn't do it. Couldn't do it. And she knows that I know, and is waiting for me to ask. She will not volunteer anything. She hasn't said a word to me all day, in fact, from the moment I woke up to discover her gone, to the hour I called her downstairs for supper. Just sits, and watches. With those green eyes that scald like boiling water.

Something is brewing this evening, crackling between us, electrifying every casual gesture; I feel it shivering along my tentacles, up my spine, through my nerve-endings: something wicked this way comes.

The clock ticks the minutes away, the loudest sound in the room, the house. After three minutes exactly have ticked past, I dare to glance up, to meet her calm, unnatural gaze. She has given up all pretence of eating now, and sits, motionless, staring back at me, hands placed elegantly upon the tablecloth, either side of her plate. An expression of eerie serenity rests upon her countenance, her eyelids drooping, chin raised. One of her arms, I notice, is lacerated, streams of dried blood that she has not bothered to clean up still marring her perfect skin.

I have to ask. I must know. Ease into it slowly, negotiating with a wild animal. I clear my throat, place my knife and fork carefully down, crossed, upon the plate, look up, and ask: "What happened to your arm?"

Slowly, she casts her eyes down to look at the limb, as if only now realising that it is wounded at all. She looks back up, just as leisurely, her eyes connecting with mine, holding them in an unbreakable lock. "An accident," she says, her voice low, almost a purr. "A mistake."

I want to look away. I want to get away, get up and leave the table, leave her here alone, for the foreboding feeling grows stronger with each passing minute. I don't, and I don't know why. "What kind of a mistake?"

"My kind," she says.

Quiet. I look down at the tablecloth, debate picking up the napkin just to have something to do with my hands.

"Don't look at the table." Her voice grates, harsh and guttural. "Look at me."

I don't, as a rule, respond well to commands. But somehow my own rules are forgotten, cast aside. I look up, meet her ferocious gaze once again.

"Ask me," she says.

I say nothing.

"Ask. Me," she growls.

Behind me, I feel my tentacles writhing, an involuntary movement, a nervous twitch. Yes. The time has come. The words must be spoken. I must ask her.

"Did you do it?" I ask.

But she isn't going to play that game. The look in her eyes tells me that she isn't going to play any kind of game. "Do what?" she asks, but doesn't ask; she won't say until I say.

So, I say. "Did you kill Tim Hollander?"

She sits there, silent, not a word escaping her lips, stiff as a doll, the only living part of her those eyes, those eyes. Then, slowly, her tentacle rises, cranes over her head, an elegant, graceful arch.

And she brings it down on the table.

With an almighty smash, it lands, and sweeps everything, the cutlery, the plates, the glasses, the tablecloth, onto the floor. I watch the china shatter, the glass come apart.

Her body is a slither, a motion unto itself, as she clambers up onto the table, onto her hands and knees, and crawls over to me. I know what's coming. My heart knows what's coming; it is hammering in my chest, beating itself over and over against the prison of my ribcage.

Mary Jane reaches me, after what seems a long moment of frozen time. She entwines her arms around my neck, and she plants on my mouth a bruising, punishing kiss. I can taste her saliva, salty as tears, in my mouth; her tongue pushes past my lips, burrows into the cavern of my own mouth, searching, insistent.

Her kiss sucks the breath from my lungs, the will from my soul. She could be kissing the bleeding surface of my heart, for my skin feels thin, transparent as tissue. Her poison seeps into my blood; all resistance is a pretense; a seismic explosion goes off inside my brain.

I didn't want her touching me before. I think I know why, now.

It has to be this way.

Have to have you. Have to know you're there. I need to feel you – you, because you're here, because you'll do – and know that there's someone clinging on to me, someone I can cling to.

Otto climbs onto the table, kneeling in front of me, not breaking the stranglehold embrace we have on each other. His hands search my body roughly, and I imagine them leaving marks on the skin, plunging inside me, squeezing my internal organs until they pulp. That's what I need. Someone inside. Someone to stave off the blackness.

You'll do, Otto. It's you, because it has to be you. It has to be somebody.

I hold her close to me, feel her breath on the side of my neck; her hair, her shining black hair, raven-black hair. Mary Alice's hair. If I close my eyes, she could be Mary Alice, could be the women I've loved. I won't have to lose them again. All pain and all loss, drowned in her.

I bury my face in that black hair, in my dream of her. Not Mary Jane any more. A dream. My dream of her. You are not the woman you think you are. Be the woman I need you to be. Be the woman I need to need.

His tentacles cage us all around, balancing him as we fall down to the surface of the table, him on top of me. The table is hard and cold, and it hurts my back, but that's all right. One of his tentacles stretches across, turns down the dimmer switch on the light fixture; the world is fading, fading into the edge of darkness. I wind my tentacle around his, and the two of them entwine, mated together like sea serpents. His glasses are crooked on the edge of his nose; I take them off, but he still won't look at me, won't look in my eyes. Oh, God, love me just a little, won't you?

"Mary…" he mutters, kissing the side of my neck, his breath hot and rasping in my ear; I can feel the long strands of his hair, trailing into my mouth, across my tongue.His tentacles snake up my body, start to fumble with my jeans, my T-shirt. We're clasped together in a death-lock, and my mind flashes back to that first night, the night alone on the catwalk, when we rolled over and over each other, punching and clawing and slashing at each other. It's like that now. That's all we're doing, damaging each other in a new way, a way we both seem to need.

I'm rapidly losing my clothing, but not rapidly enough; Otto, losing patience, growls through his heaving breaths, and tears the T-shirt up one side. I shrug it up, over my head, off. Soon now. Soon it will be done. Soon I'll have someone to be closer to.

I don't even think I need her, any more. All I know now is that I need, period, and that need is all. This skin under my fingertips, under my lips, the white skin of her stomach, is the physical incarnation of that need; desire made flesh. Everything I've lost, all the unhappiness, all the pain, it can all go away if this need is satisfied. It's the need for all that is now gone, and all that I know will one day be just as gone.

It hurts. Oh it hurts. Salve my wounds, lovely woman, whoever you are. Take this hurt away. And then give it to me anew.

Closer. Closer to you.

There are white bedclothes in my mind, pale sheets that I chose myself. And there's a tousled dark head next to mine, a slim body sensed rather than seen close to mine, and brown eyes drinking me in, every part of me. I knew what it meant to be beautiful, then, and not in the way everyone thinks. And because I was beautiful, so was he, so beautiful; his skin, beautiful, eyes, hair, mouth, hands, beauty, the whole definition, the form and the concept, of beauty.

And when I was underneath him, or atop him, and our sweat mingled, and I could feel the heat rising from us, so hot it could saturate the world, melt the tundras, boil the seas and warm the frozen-hearted; that, that was beauty. That was love. All was love. And gone, now. And gone.

Peter.

Now. It has to be now. No more waiting. I can't. I can't wait.

I tear my lips away from her shoulder, hold myself above her on straight arms, am on the edge of possessing her, of sating this pain, slaking this thirst.

I stop.

There are tears, streaming down her face, soaking into her hair. Her face is perfectly still, not a muscle moving, nothing to betray a thought or a feeling, carefully composed. Only those tears, coursing down her skin, quiet, unceasing.

The temperature suddenly drops, from boiling point to below zero, and, like ice-water, sanity flash-floods back into my mind. Suddenly I don't know where to look. I don't know what to do. I don't know. I don't know.

I pull myself away from her, off her. She doesn't get up, doesn't move, just lies there, like a broken thing. My tentacles carry me from the table, deposit me beside it, on my feet, on the ground. I brush my hair back from my face, open my mouth; I feel I should say something. Nothing comes out, and nor should it.

With a hand that feels like a piece of raw meat, I reach out, slide my glasses off the table, replace them on the bridge of my nose. I look back at her. Still she hasn't moved. Still she watches the ceiling. Still the tears, always the tears.

Something cracks inside my chest, crumbles, and I don't know why. I shut my eyes, listening to my breathing as it slows, and I turn, and I allow my tentacles to carry me upstairs, carry me away, from her, from what almost, so very nearly, occurred here.

The whole thing began and ended in less than five minutes.

I hear his door slam, upstairs, far away. As soon as it does, I let the noise escape from my throat, the strangled, tortured sound of the animal in pain that I am.

Half-naked, cold, my skin goosebumped, I lie there and I cry, I cry and cry and cry; I roll onto my side, cover my face with my hands, haul myself to my knees there in the middle of dining table, and my whole body heaves with the sobs, heaves until I am dry, retching, coughing and choking.

This pain will not stop. It will not go away. I can cry until there isn't a thing left in me, until I've cried every tear that I would have ever cried in the course of a lifetime. But the pain won't stop. It's here in my heart, like lead in my stomach; I lean over, bend double, clutch my belly, pregnant with pain. I wish I could dissolve, into loose muscle, into blood; all my components, coming apart, leaving nothing on this table but squirming, twitching organs, and dry, crackly skin. I ball my fist up, the fist of the wounded arm, strike the table once, twice, three four five times. Brenda winds herself around me, tries to hold me, give me a comfort that I will never feel.

What is wrong with me? Why, why, why am I like this? Why am I such a mess?

Someone has to be responsible for this. Someone made me this way. Once I was good, and pure, and troubled. Once I had no demons. Once I knew how to love. Once I was happy.

It wasn't Peter who stole that from me. I know that much. And it wasn't the fashion people, or my friends, or the media. It wasn't Tim Hollander, it wasn't Alessandra Georgiano, not Chloe Miles, none of them, none of them.

Who, then? God damn it to Hell, who? Who? WHO?

And then I know.

I raise myself up, slow, staring into the dark.

I know.

I know who is responsible.

I know who made me what I am.

It didn't happen.

That's what I have decided, after hours of pacing my room, sleepless, restless. My whole body is still shaking, thrown by the suddenness of it, the violence of it.

I was taken by surprise. That's all. She knew which buttons to press, knew my guard was down. All week, life has been off-kilter; this, in a way, was its natural endpoint. She sensed weakness, and, just as I trained her, went for the throat. Went for the heart.

Did I really want her that way? Do I really want her that way? She's a subject, a test subject, my theories made flesh. I've never thought about her in such a manner. I would never have attempted a seduction myself. Life with her isn't like life with Stunner, or even the limited life I had with Mary Alice. I never desired her. I never needed her. I could have taken her in the beginning, if that's what I'd wanted, but…

No. No. It didn't happen, that's all. That's true enough, really; in the end, nothing did happen. She stopped it, stopped it all, with her crying.

Why did she cry? She initiated it. It was all her fault, entirely her fault. She couldn't have been feeling regret, or any misguided loyalty to her husband – that life is behind her now, dead and gone.

Something I did wrong, then. Something I did.

But no, it didn't happen. It doesn't have to change us, change what we have. Ridiculous to let it interfere. I won't let it interfere, not with our plans, my plans. I am Otto Octavius – Doctor Octopus. I've faced worse crises than this and come out a winner.

I can face her.

I will face her.

We never have to discuss this. We never have to allude to this. In fact, I've decided that we absolutely will not, under any circumstances, bring this up again. Life will go on. And soon enough, we will both forget.

With this in mind, at two o'clock in the morning, I make my slow, measured way down the stairs.

She is sitting, huddled on the window-seat, knees drawn to her chest in that manner of hers I now know so well. It is raining again, always raining, it will never stop raining. The droplets catch the dull light, cast dappled shadows across her luminous face. She has dressed herself again; I catch sight of the tear I made in her T-shirt, and wince.

The silence, all around, like a cloth, studded with the gentle tap-tap-tap of the rain.

"Hi," she says, and I am profoundly, inordinately grateful that she has spoken first.

"Hello," I say back, voice hushed.

"Can't sleep?"
Numbly, I shake my head, every muscle tensed, on edge.

"Yeah, me neither," she says.

I begin to relax. I should have known she would reach the same conclusion as I; should have known that she would be rational enough to know that this incident does not have to alter anything between us. She is speaking perfectly normally, perfectly calmly. Nothing has changed. Nothing is different. We can go back to the way things were.

"You're…feeling all right?" I ask cautiously.

She dips her head to her shoulder, a sprightly, unaffected movement. "Yeah. 'Course. I'm fine."

She keeps her eyes trained on the night beyond the glass, fixed on the falling rain. Finally, she turns her head to me, her eyes casually heavy-lidded, her expression neutral.

"Hey," she says. "Guess what?

"I'm gonna kill my father."