Chapter Eleven – With A Little Help From My Friends
Meanwhile, downstairs, Chloe was making her way through the bottle of absinthe that Perry had pushed away earlier. If it wasn't bad enough that the real love of her life had just announced to the whole world (well, to her and Martha) that Lana was the girl he wanted, he'd then preceded to just look around the room, totally ignoring her. She'd tried to get his attention with a smile but he'd just looked straight right through her.
And then it got so much worse, as Clark rushed upstairs to be with his beloved Lana. As she heard the sounds coming from upstairs, she stuck her fingers in her ears and launched into song (although there was no music to accompany her, since this song wasn't as a result of the spell – Chloe just wanted to drown out the sound of Clark and Lana).
"They can romance all night. They can romance all night, and still he'll beg for more. She's gonna spread her –"
And then Chloe stopped singing, realizing that there was no longer any noise coming from upstairs. Even Clark's singing had stopped.
Suddenly a rain-soaked Pete Ross rushed in, carrying a box. "Where's Lana?" he gasped, still catching his breath after running across town (the numerous dancers on the roads having made driving impractical).
Chloe looked at him sadly. Poor Pete – he'd brought Lana a present. It looked like Chloe's heart wouldn't be the only one broken that day.
"It's too late," she said, tears welling up once more in her eyes.
"Too late," echoed Pete despairingly.
"Yeah. Clark got here first." Chloe paused for a moment, seeing the devastated look on Pete's face. "I'll spare you the grisly details."
Pete slumped down on a chair opposite Chloe and then the tears came. "It's all my fault. All my stupid fault."
Chloe got up, staggered over to where Pete was sitting, and gave him a hug. "Don't blame yourself, Pete. She's not worth it."
"How can you say that?" gulped an incredulous Pete.
"Hey, I'm the one who's had to put up with her moans and screams and banging on the walls for the last five minutes," replied Chloe, drinking from her bottle. "Talk about attention-seeking. For a while there I thought she'd never shut up. Had to shove my fingers in my ears."
Pete sat there in open-mouthed amazement, unable to believe what he was hearing. How could Chloe be so heartless?
Ignoring Pete, fuelled by absinthe, Chloe continued. "Pete, get over her. She's back with Clark now."
"Back with Clark?" echoed a confused Pete.
"Well of course," replied Chloe sarcastically. "What do you think I've been telling you? Clark and Lana are back together."
"That moaning and screaming was ..." started Pete.
"Of course it was. What else would it be?" asked Chloe.
"Thank goodness," said a relieved Pete, assuming that Clark must have lost the red ring somehow. "I thought … well, it doesn't matter anymore. Everything's okay."
"Maybe for you," moaned Chloe, taking another drink from her bottle. "But I'll never get over Clark. I keep drinking to forget. Only trouble is absinthe makes the heart grow fonder."
"Hey, Chloe," Pete said, prying the bottle from her fingers. "I think you've drunk enough."
"Nowhere near enough," she replied, snatching the bottle back. "It's bad enough that I had to put up with Clark singing a song from Annie, but, while he's ended up with Little Orphan Lana, tomorrow, thanks to this stupid music, I'm marrying Daddy Warbucks."
"You're marrying Lex?" Pete exclaimed in surprise (mainly because the last time he'd been in mental contact with her, via the spell, she was dancing with Lionel). On the other hand, a whirlwind romance followed by marriage wasn't exactly uncharacteristic of Lex.
"No, you've got my analogy all wrong," explained Chloe, with the occasional unslurred word. "I meant Lionel of course. Lex may be bald like Daddy Warbucks, but he's way too young to be him. He's more of a ... Charlie Brown."
Pete took away Chloe's bottle once more. "I think I better make you some black coffee."
Meanwhile Chloe was extrapolating her Lex/Charlie Brown comparison. "Hey, Pete, I guess that makes you the little red-haired girl that we never get to see. Lana's equivalent, intellectually at least, would be Woodstock. And now she's upstairs with Snoopy, only he's wearing sunglasses and calling himself Joe Cool."
"Good grief!" exclaimed Pete as he suddenly realized that Clark was still Kal.
And then there was what sounded like an explosion upstairs.
The next thing he knew, Pete Ross was running upstairs, clinging tightly to his box. As he got upstairs he looked through an open door to see rain pouring in through a large hole in the wall, and a floor covered with insects. As he rushed into the room, he felt a blow to his head and then everything went black.
Five minutes earlier, Lana had momentarily regained consciousness to see Clark still performing his song.
Tomorrow, tomorrow. I'll own ya, tomorrow. You're always my destiny.
She'd barely had a chance to register that Clark's head was covered with insects before lapsing back into unconsciousness.
Kal had started to notice the occasional insect appearing from the moment he started strangling Lana, and, as his song continued, the number of insects had grown. Of course, whatever high hopes these insects had, there was no way they could defeat him, and so he'd carried on singing. It didn't matter that the insects were swarming over his face. All that mattered was that his song reached its killer finish with him hitting that final high note, at the same time that Lana's life rushing before her eyes reached her parents' death scene, at the same time that Lana's neck made a satisfying snapping sound.
Despite the assorted ants and flies and bees and wasps and roaches and grasshoppers that had climbed onto his face - swarming into his mouth and nose, covering his eyes - he knew that he could still hold his breath for an awfully long time and that his X-ray vision meant that he wouldn't miss a moment of Lana's suffering.
Of course pride comes before a fall, and while Kal could hold his breath a long, long time, it was a lot easier if his lungs were full of air rather than insects. As he realized this, and not being sure how long the oxygen remaining in his blood could sustain him, he decided it would be best to just finish Lana Lang's life there and then, and so he squeezed hard.
Of course insects are a lot cleverer than people give them credit for, and, besides turning Clark's head into a home, they'd also deposited one of Lana's shrinking gas canisters in her hand. As she flickered in and out of consciousness she felt the familiar shape in her hand and managed to crush it in her fist, just as Clark was about to do the same to her.
As Kal felt Lana's neck disappear from his grasp, he looked around the bathroom for a trace of Lana, but, wherever she was, she was too small to see. This must be Insect Queen's doing, thought Kal. Twice she'd saved Lana Lang now, but no more.
"Insect Queen must die," he tried to announce, although the mouthful of insects made it impossible.
And then he started to feel a little light-headed. He had to get rid of the insects before he suffocated, and so took the most direct route out of The Talon - through the wall.
Lana saw Clark departing and resumed normal size, but then, hearing a rush of footsteps up the stairs, she feared that Clark was returning. Quickly she grabbed a piece of stone from the wall that Clark had shattered and hid behind the door. As the intruder rushed in she brought the stone down on his head.
"Pete?" she said, looking down at Pete Ross's still body. Beside him lay an open box containing a mutant-creating green rock. Lana stared in disbelief. Surely Pete wasn't going to attack her too? These days it looked like her only friends were the insects.
She picked up the rock and, after looking at it and remembering once more the fateful day when her parents had been hit by a larger version, she tossed it outside through the hole in the wall.
Outside The Talon, Kal had just finished vigorously shaking his head to remove all of the insects within. Now that his head was clear he thought that it might be quicker to just, in a flash of super-speed, kill Lana Lang rather than waste time trying to find Insect Queen. Unfortunately for Kal, just as he was preparing to put his thought into action, a green rock fell onto his head from out of the sky and rendered him unconscious.