Wow. Sorry about that long hiatus. Between vacations, term papers, work, and every other little annoying side track that seems to keep popping up along the way, I've been a little bit busy needless to say! Florida was great. Got a bit of a tan and I managed to sucker the parental units into taking me to Universal Studios…To anyone who hadn't been there, the Spider-man ride kicks major booty! Went on it three times and still couldn't get enough! Seriously best ride in the whole park!
Anyway, my writing's been slacking because of my latest project. For all those who liked "Down Came the Rain," hold onto your seats! A homemade, comic book version of the story is on the way! I don't like to brag, but I think you'll be pleasantly pleased with it. Preliminary sketches of the first chapter are halfway done and I can't wait to add color! Hehehehe I'm was so excited about it, I just had to let the cat out of the bag! So bare with me for a little while longer with my slow writing. I plan on working on it a lot over Christmas break and getting a website up just for it!
So enjoy what I wrote while I was sunning myself on a sandy beach down South several weeks ago as Spidey finds himself caught in a nightmarish hell and discovers his captors have found out something a little too personal about him for his liking….
Disclaimer: Usual stuff. Nothing new. Spidey's and all other characters still aren't mine.
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"Hello? Anybody there? Where am I?" Spiderman cried out into the black abyss of empty space that surrounded him. His words echoed in the distance then faded away into nothing. There came no answer as silence stung his ears in his call's wake.
Looking around, Spiderman saw nothing, only walls of pitch black nothingness. For a moment, he thought he might have been in some king of windowless room, but shifting his weight between his feet nervously, the wall crawler heard the faint grainy scuffle of sand underfoot. Through his mask, he could feel a warm, gentle breeze caress his face and whistle around his hooded head as though he were outside.
But if he was outside, why wasn't there any light? And why was it so eerily quiet? And how did he get wherever he was?
Was this some kind of trick orchestrated by the group of super powered psychopaths that he had just been fighting? The last thing he remembered was fighting them on the rooftop of the news station. The last few memories of his fight were fuzzy, fleeting images before they finally blurred away into obscurity.
Determined to figure out where he was, Spiderman shouted loudly into the lightless void of silence that had swallowed him. "Helloooooo! Is there anyone there?" he shouted again, becoming more nervous as his voice slowly died away in the distance.
Stillness hung heavily in the air as Spiderman waited breathlessly for a reply. After a moment of tense waiting, the masked superhero snorted in dismay. It looked like he was alone in that inky darkness.
'Now what do I do?' he wondered helplessly, straining his eyes to see anything through the darkness, 'I have to get back and stop the Sinister Six…err five, I guess…Who knows what they're up to right now…"
Turning to his right, the masked man shuffled several paces ahead, his one arm held out straight out in front of him like a shield to prevent himself from walking into anything blindly. It wasn't that he didn't really trust his spider-sense, but at that given moment, the young crime fighter didn't feel completely safe in that eerie black void of silence.
But before Spidey could get very far, a low masculine whisper suddenly hissed in his ear through the darkness, as though he was right beside the web swinger, "Where do you think you're going?"
Startled, Spiderman whipped around to face the mysterious presence, but he was met with only more inky gloom. His stomach knotted in dread as he realized his spider-sense hadn't alerted him to anyone hiding in the darkness. "Who's there?" Spidey squeaked out, his heart thundering in his chest with fear, "Where am I?"
"Poor little spider…" simpered the voice mockingly, "So far away from home, yet so close…"
"What do you mean?" Spiderman shouted into the endless track of twilight warily, "Who are you?"
"It isn't important who I am. What's important is who you are…" remarked the voice enigmatically. The voice sounded all around the blind wall crawler, like the speaker was everywhere but nowhere all at once.
"I know who I am," Spidey retorted tightly, becoming edgy by his mysterious host's line of riddles.
"No. You don't," insisted the faceless presence dangerously, cold malice tainting his voice, "And it's because of that, everyone and everything that's ever meant anything to you is now gone…"
"What are you talking about?" the young superhero demanded angrily, swinging his head from side to side in sweeping arches trying to pin point the mysterious man in the darkness.
"I'll show you,…hero" the voice snarled as the thick darkness slowly snaked away in oily wisps until they finally faded into nothingness to reveal a reddened sky overhead. Spiderman quickly realized he stood in the center of a wide city street, tall buildings lining the street on either side of him. But what he saw around him made his beating heart skip a beat.
The glow of raging fires flickered off the sides of the half demolished buildings that stood like gutted skeletons all around him. Almost all of the windows of the crumbling structures lay in broken shards at the bases like a carpet of glass. Huge chunks of concrete were missing from the buildings as though a devastating war had taken place there.
Overturned cars lay piled high like discarded children's toys in the street. Rubble and twisted metal littered the cracked and battle scarred sidewalks. Off on the jagged horizon of the city skyline that burned brightly with unchecked fires, the speechless crime fighter saw pillars of thick black smoke billowing up towards the crimson sky.
Faint screams of terror of unseen people drifted on the smoky air, a mixture of sorrowful wails and baneful sobs that intensified the horrific scene of the massive holocaust that surrounded Spiderman. What had once been a city was now the smoldering aftermath of Armageddon.
Gasping a whistling breath of air into his lungs between clenched teeth, Spiderman whipped his head about in a state of shock, utterly appalled by the devastation around him. He stood in Manhattan, in a section of the city he was well acquainted with, but could barely recognize now. How long had he been out? He couldn't have been that long. How could Dr. Octopus, Venom, Electro, Mysterio, the Vulture, and his evil double have caused so much devastation in such a short amount of time?
"What happened here? Who did this?" the masked man sputtered in rage by the massive destruction, pivoting on his heels to encompass the full scope of the area.
All of a sudden, an evil laugh rang out; first starting in a low chuckle then raising in pitch until it began to drown out Spiderman's own thoughts. A cold shiver ran down the wall crawler's spine to the small of his back as the laughter was carried on the smoky wind that whistled through the devastated city streets.
"Who's there?" the young man screamed out over the insane laughter of sadistic mirth. The deep chuckles of evil glee faded away as the mischievous jokester chuckled from somewhere above, "I am."
Pin pointing the voice, Spidey's head snapped in the direction it had come. Behind the wall crawler to his right, one of the tall building that had once towered upwards to reach the sky lay snapped in half, its top ten stories snapped from the base several levels up from the ground floor. The crumbling remains of the top several stories hung downwards into the middle of the street, blocking anything from passing in that direction.
There, tinkering on all fours on the edge of the fallen section that angled downwards, Spiderman saw the outline of a brightly garbed man, the edges of his red and blue clothes glowing in the golden light cast by the raging fired that blazed nearby.
The twin tear drop shaped eyepieces of the man's crimson mask glimmered like two demonic eyes. It was Spidey's double, his identical twin.
"You!?" Spidey sputtered in shock.
"Do you like how I redid the place?" the double asked with a puff of pride down to the wall crawler, "I think it's a big improvement. I think may have to look into that "Trading Spaces" show."
The young superhero stood stunned, anger boiling in his chest as he again looked around at the war zone that had once been a city block. "How could you do something like this?" Spidey growled between gritted teeth up towards the figure perched on the collapsed building.
"Very easily. I hardly even broke a sweat," Spiderman replied nonchalantly as he stood straight and hopped down from the broken remains of the fallen architectural giant. Landing atop one of the few cars left in the street below that had not been toppled onto its side, Spiderman caught himself gracefully on the charred car roof. His thrown weight managed to shake loose a small shower of already shattered glass from the twisted remains of the windshield frame.
Settling back on his heels to crouch eyelevel with Spidey who stood a good fifteen feet away across the street, the double gave another evil chuckle with a cock of his head to the side.
Regaining his composure, Spidey called over jovially, "I saw your little television debut earlier today and wanted to know if I could get your autograph. I think it may be worth something soon, seeing as how I'm going to haul your little spandex hieni all the way to the state penitentiary. I'm sure with you new celebrity status, they'll find you a nice cell with a view." His skin crawled as he looked at his evil twin and continued, "So where're your buddies? I don't want Doc Ock and the rest of those circus rejects to let you take all the credit."
"You don't have to worry about them," Spiderman answered, "You're going to have you hands full with just me."
"We'll see about that, Sunshine," Spidey retorted, crouching down to spring up onto one of the huge chinks of concrete that had been violently separated by its original building and now lay half embedded in the cracked sidewalk. The crime fight was now on the same side of the street as his mirror image.
"Come and get me then, hero," he said cockily, snorting his pet name for the wall crawler tauntingly.
Springing from his spot on the concrete boulder, Spiderman flew through the air, his fist pulled back in a punch in an attack meant for his evil double. But before he got anywhere close enough to deal a blow to the other Spiderman, the web swinger suddenly froze in midair, his body hovering several feet above the ground as though held aloft by some unseen power. Struggling to move, Spidey tried to kick and flail his legs and arms wildly to move, but his efforts proved fruitless. His muscles were locked, his body paralyzed.
"What did you do?" Spidey cried in alarm as his body floated motionless above the city street.
Hopping down from the top of the car, Spiderman strided over to the helpless crime fighter arrogantly, his shoulders set back so that his muscular chest puffed out intimidatingly.
"I can do anything here, little spider," Spiderman smirked in amusement at the sight of Spidey's body that hung in the air like some kind of balloon, "You're nothing but an amusing toy to me right now. Once I get tired of you, I'll get rid of you just like all my other play things."
"I won't let you get away with what you've done," the ensnarled superhero growled.
Peeling a handful of red spandex from off Spidey's chest above him, Spiderman pulled the web swinger's masked face down within an inch of his own and whispered in a low voice, "I already have…" Releasing his hold, Spidey bobbed back up to his original position where he levitated high above the ground, as though swimming free style.
"Do you want me to tell you why pretending to be something you're not is dangerous?" Spiderman asked as the burning city around them slowly faded away like smoke to be replaced by the endless black void from before.
"It's pointless to try and be a hero because you always end up failing in the end," the masked criminal said, his body still visible to Spidey in the darkness, clear as day, as though he was merely standing in front of a black backdrop.
Slowly circling the suspended man's body like a predator ready to deliver the final death blow, Spiderman continued, "You can never save everyone. It's beyond your control to even try. So why waste your time? It's so much easier to give into your primal desires and just take what you want. It's the only way to survive in this world. It's like what Darwin said, only the strong survive. I know deep down, you know I'm right. I asked you before if you knew who you were, and I'll tell you who you are. Deep down, under all those shallow layers of honor and responsibility that you hide behind, you're no better then me. You're just like me. I'm you and you're me. We're just two sides of the same coin."
"You're wrong!" the levitating crime fighter shouted, shaking his head fiercely from side to side in negation, "I'm nothing like you. I'm not a cold blooded killer who enjoys in death and destruction." He again struggled to escape from the power that held him effortlessly in the air.
"Poor little fool," Spiderman sighed, shaking his head sadly, "You're fighting your true self. You say you're not a killer, but what about Norman Osborn?" Spidey froze instantly at he mention of the name of the man he had once saw as a father figure. "Don't you remember the satisfaction that ran through your blood as he died right before your eyes, knowing that you were the one who had the power? You felt powerful, didn't you? And you liked it…"
"No! I hated myself for what happened. Mr. Osborn died, but it wasn't my fault. I tried to save him," Spiderman cried, remembering the horrible night he had defeated the Green Goblin.
"Is that how you try to rationalize what happened?" Spiderman asked in a cold whisper, "You're just fighting your true self- your darker self. Osborn's death was all your fault and your loved it. You could feel yourself screaming for more blood but you denied yourself anymore of those dark pleasures.:
"That's because I'm not a killer!" Spiderman shouted, angry tears now stinging the corners of his eyes.
"Yes you are," whispered the double, coming to stand in front of the hovering body, "And I'll help you remember who you really are…"
Taking several steps backwards, Spiderman stood at a distance looking at the suspended superhero, silently eyeing him through the silver bug like eyepieces of his mask as a smoky figure began to materialize into the form of a young woman with flaming red hair. Solidifying, Spidey recognized the apparition as Mary Jane Watson.
"MJ!" Spidey shouted to her as he strained his muscles desperately to move, "Get out of here! That's not me! Hurry! Run!" But his urgent pleas seemed to fall on deaf ears as the red head stared ahead as if in a trance, her green eyes a dim shadow of the characteristic soul piercing intensity.
"Now come over here and remember who you really are," ordered the masked killer as Spidey suddenly dropped from out of the air to crash to the ground below in a jumbled heap of limbs, "Stop denying who you really are…"
Slowly, the wall crawler pulled himself to his knees, then stood. Looking at his split image, Spidey felt his legs begin to move and cover the distance between himself and the other two.
'What's going on?' his thoughts thundered in his head, 'I can't stop! I can't control my body! It's like someone's controlling me!' Panic seized his heart as he came to stop in front of the entranced young woman he loved.
"Give into your darker self," whispered Spiderman in the controlled web swinger's ear as Spidey stared into Mary Jane's emerald eyes, "Just let go of all your pathetic morals and heroics. This is who you really are…"
'No,' the helpless superhero struggled to cry out loud as both hands slowly reached up from his sides to reach out for MJ's slender neck. 'No! I won't do this! I can't! I'm not like this! I'm not a killer! I'm not like him! Stop! Please stop!" he wanted to scream at the top of his lungs to stop as he felt his fingers graze MJ's neck.
But his gloved hands did not heed his pleas and slowly wrapped around the young woman's throat. As his grip unwillingly tightened on her neck, Mary Jane's eyes suddenly sprang to life as though she had just been startled out of a daydream. In the shimmering green pools of liquid, Spiderman saw the look that screamed out to him silently, 'Why are you doing this? What did I do?
Looking into her terrified eyes, Spiderman's soul screamed for him to stop, to release his death grip on the chocking young woman. He could feel her desperate gasps of air fluttering under his grip. He could see MJ's cheeks and lips beginning to blue. But no matter how hard he commanded his body to stop, his grip only clamped down harder.
"Pe..ter…" MJ sobbed softly between gasping chocks, staring up into his eyes. Her fingernails dug into his hands as she struggled to pry his powerful hands from her throat. Spiderman watched helplessly as MJ's eyes slowly fluttered shut, her body sagging in hands towards the floor. Before she succumbed to death, shining in her eyes was the silent accusation of murder and betrayal.
As Spiderman looked down in horror, he could finally feel control returning to his body. Tears streamed down his cheeks under his mask as he immediately released Mary Jane, letting her lifeless body tumbled into a heap at his feet.
"MJ!" he screamed, collapsing to his knees beside her limp body. Cradling the still warm body against his chest and rocking her body gently as though in comfort, he pleaded in tear chocked sobs, "MJ! No. MJ, come back please. I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Please come back!" But he saw no sign of life anywhere in the beautiful girl. Overcome with grief and inconsolable remorse, Spiderman clutched Mary Jane's body tightly to him, his pitiful cries muffled as he wailed helplessly into her waves of copper hair.
"How pitiful…" remarked an icy voice behind the distraught web swinger, "After all that, you still won't accept the truth." Wheeling around, Spiderman saw his double standing nearby where he had stood watching the drama silently with perverse enjoyment.
"How could you!" Spiderman screamed between heaving sobs, still clutching MJ's limp body in his arms, "I loved her! How could you make me kill her?!"
"I didn't make you do anything," Spiderman said calmly, "This was all you. This is your true self. Stop fighting and become what you are."
"Shut up! Shut up, right now!" the grieving man screamed, "I'll make you pay for what you've done! You've gone too far!" Gently setting the dead girl's body on the ground beside him, Spiderman stood shakingly, his tear reddened eyes locked onto the murderous double.
For the first time in his life, Spiderman wanted to kill someone. He had never believed in killing for any reason, especially for revenge. But his outlook on things had changed in the matter of seconds. Now all he wanted was to strangle the life out of the other Spiderman just like he had made him strangle his one true love.
Leaping at the other man viciously, Spidey hammered the man's masked face with both fists as hard as he could, his rage directed into every blow. He could feel the anger and grief building inside him with each punch to Spiderman's hooded head. Giving no resistance to Spidey's brutal attack, the double seemed to hardly feel anything as he stood motionless like a statue. Whispering between each bone crushing blow to his face and body, he said, "See…This is who you really are…You're no different from me…We're the same…Do you feel the bloodlust rising in you?...The uncontrolled desire to kill?"
"Shut up!" the grief stricken man wailed as he relinquished his useless attack and stumbled backwards from his double. Falling to the ground, the wall crawler clawed at the sides of his head as though trying to rid the sound of Spiderman's voice from his ears, "I'm not like you! I'm not a killer! It's not true!"
"It is true. You saw for yourself how much you wanted to kill me just now. It won't be much longer before you accept the truth…" whispered Spiderman as he towered over the sobbing man in triumph.
"Stop it!" Spiderman cried, clamping his hands over his ears to drown out the hiss of his double's voice, "You're not real! This is some kind of nightmare. I remember I breathed in some of that smoke from that bomb Mysterio threw at me. This is just a hallucination! You aren't real!"
"Perhaps…But how sure are you that this isn't maybe a look into the future?" Spiderman riddled as slender silver strings began to materialize around the two, twisting and weaving themselves into a massive spider web, "How do you know this isn't really a prophetic dream? Or maybe a precursor of what I'm going to do?"
Spidey said nothing as the strands of silver webbing began to quickly snake around his body, the edges of the strands cutting into his skin and they constricted tight, ensnaring the spider in their network. Around the entrapped man, the black walls of darkness again faded away to the devastated cityscape of New York, all the buildings around the young superhero now raging towers of inferno.
Hot tongues of fire spewed out of the smashed remains of windows. Distant terrified screams carried on the smoky wind that whipped through the burning streets. Looking around Spiderman saw his double had disappeared, leaving him ensnared in the immobilizing hold of the spider webs as the wall of flames continued to burn around him.
"This is all a dream!" Spiderman shouted as he writhed against the strands of webbing that twined around his body, crushing him in their grip. "When I wake up, I'm going to stop you!" he called in promise into the empty street that had been turned into the fire and brimstones of hell, the red sky overhead now thick with black smoke, "You're not going to win! I won't let you! I'm going to stop you and the rest of the Sinister Six!"
"Poor little fool…" boomed a massive voice as if God himself had descended into the bowels of hell to pass final judgment. The ensnarled crime fighter immediately recognized it as his double's voice, amplified to deafening levels. "You've had you chance, but you refused to join me. And now you'll die just like everyone else who stands up against me…"
"No! You won't win!" Spiderman cried out stubbornly as the thin strands of webbing constricted tighter around him. His breathing became labored as he struggled for air from behind the strangling strands that wrapped around his neck like a noose, "This isn't real! It's all a dream!"
But the last of his words faded away in his throat as the strands cut into his throat, blocking any air from reaching his oxygen starved lungs. The young man's eyes grew heavy as a thick shroud of darkness descended upon him, spiraling him out into space. Drifting away into the void, Spiderman felt his body falling, falling down into the darkness…
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A low roll of thunder slowly faded away into the distance outside as hard waves of rain continued to pound on the quiet building. The building was a tall, one story movie studio, once Quientin Beck's home base of operation for special effects and movie magic. And it was dark and had been abandoned years before the master illusionist had become the infamous Mysterio. Except for the sharp plinks of rain on the studio's roof, the low murmur of muffled voices was the only sound in the whole place.
Behind the heavy wooden door of one of the studio's many storage rooms, a shrill cry of disbelief rang out through the cavernous building, "What?! We finally caught this wall crawling criminal and you're having doubts? I say we go back home while he's still out. He's too dangerous to take any chances with, Octavius."
Huddled together amongst piles of long abandoned, dust covered movie props, stood five figures under a hanging light fixture whose light sputtered and threatened to be extinguish with every flash of lightening outside.
An alien battle cruiser, several three foot tall model skyscrapers, a life size animatronic alligator, a miniaturized replica of the pyramids of Giza, and at least five dozen huge, unmarked wooden crates were crammed in the small room, creating a strange backdrop for its even stranger occupants. A sixth figure lay unconscious on his back off on one side of the room on some kind of medieval torturing device. From behind the drugged man's scarlet mask, garbled groans sounded softly.
"I agree with you, my dear Electro, that Spiderman is too dangerous to take any chances with. And that is exactly the reason why we must determine if this if the Spiderman we came to this dimension for," rasped Dr. Octopus methodically, the overhead light of the studio's storage room gleaming brightly off his four slithering adamantium tentacles, "think of the repercussions if we accidentally took back this dimension's Spiderman and left out Spiderman here to reek havoc and total chaos! All because we were in too big of a hurry to ask the necessary questions!"
Max Dillon, the superpower fire cracker also known as Electro, crunched his face into a skeptical scowl. Agitated sparks of electricity flickered off his body as he crossed his arms in a huff and snorted, "But you saw him at the news station- We all did! He was there at the scene of the crime. How much more evidence do you need against him?!"
"I don't know…" broke in Mysterio thoughtfully, standing closely beside the drugged man in question, "I think I have to agree with Octavius. The Spiderman we fought earlier today seemed different…"
"That may be, but what about all those news clippings we found on Spiderman?" hissed Venom incredulously to the others, "Almost all of them portray Spiderman just like the one from our dimension. He's a menace that needs to be disposed of." Stalking over towards the unconscious wall crawler, the symbiote wearing photojournalist said coldly, "We think we should save everyone the trouble of hauling him back and just get rid of this pest right now…" Smiling a ghastly toothy grin, Venom licked his lips in anticipation of a feast as he came to stand over the prone web swinger.
"Hold up, Venom," warned Mysterio, moving to push himself between their unconscious captive and Venom, "If you didn't remember, all those clippings on Spiderman calling him a menace were written by the Daily Bugle. And we all know what kind of yellow journalism that tabloid churns out."
"What are you talking about?" growled the symbiote, his giant red tongue lashing the air.
"Com'mon! In our dimension, the Bugle portrays Spiderman as a hero no matter what he does!" Beck exclaimed, "I'm beginning to think Jonah Jameson interprets his own version of the truth no matter what dimension he's in."
"Okay…So newspapers thrown out on a technicality, there's still a lot of circumstantial evidence against the bug, " Electro pointed out with a slight nod of his head towards the drugged man laying motionless on the nearby rack that had been put into storage after the filming of some Arthurian movie several years before.
"Well, I don't care about circumstantial evidence," the aging Vulture growled suddenly from his perch on the edge of one of the many wooden crates shoved in the small room. Hopping down from his place as easily as a twenty year old, the bald old man slowly stalked towards Spiderman's prone body, "Don't you think it's time to unmask this freak, murderer or not? It's time to put an end to all this secrecy and find out who Spiderman really is."
"Excellent suggestion," Dr. Octopus said, flashing one of his once-in-a-blue-moon smiles that came across as naturally as a dog trying to tango, "The time has come to find out once and for all who this masked man really is!"
Hovering around the unconscious form, the five man stood looking down at Spiderman, seemingly hesitant to finally unveil their greatest mystery. Mustering his courage, Dr. Octopus reached one of his metal arms out towards Spiderman's head. Gently plucking a handful of Spiderman's scarlet mask between his tentacle's pincers, Octavius muttered almost philosophically, "Now we will know…"
Pulling back, Spiderman's red mask slowly slipped from off his head. As the mask came free, the gathered men exchanged mutters of disbelief at the sight they beheld. Eyes closed tightly almost in pain beneath a flatted mat of dark brown hair, the face of a young man meet his captor's disbelieving eyes.
"It's just a kid!" Mysterio exclaimed, his voice shrill from out of his helmet's microphones.
"Impossible!" Dr. Octopus spat, his mouth twisting into a scowl.
"This has to be a mistake," Electro muttered quietly to himself, shaking his head from side to side slowly, "How could a kid be Spiderman?"
"Disappointing isn't he?" Venom hissed, his oily looking symbiote skin shining an inky black in the flickering light overhead. He could feel his associates' inquiring eyes snap from the unmasked boy onto him.
"You mean you knew who Spiderman was all this time?" The Vulture demanded, his bulging yellowish eyes boring into Eddie Brock, "Why didn't you tell us this before? Do you know how many deaths we could have prevented had we known who Spiderman really was? We could have stopped this monster a long time ago!" true outrage dripped from Toomes' voice as he turned on Venom.
The unblinking white demonic eyes of Venom revealed nothing as he looked out onto the other men gathered around the unconscious wall crawler. Venom stood silently, remembering all he had suffered at the hands of Spiderman, how his secret of the web swinger's true identity had been his only upper hand against the insect's ruthless nature. But his true reason he couldn't reveal to the others…
"That is none of your business," he snapped into Toomes' face dangerously, warning the old man and the others to back off the subject. A tense moment passed as another low roll of thunder sounded outside.
Coughing loudly to break the tense silence, Electro stammered uneasily, "Well, we've seen his face, but who is Spiderman?"
Reluctantly breaking his death stare from the Vulture, Venom growled, "His name's Peter Parker. He's a student at ESU and is one of the Daily Bugle's photographers. He's the one that got me fired and ruined my life. He's the one that brought the symbiote and I together and made us Venom."
"A mere child…Spiderman! I still can't believe it," Octavius snarled as he paced from side to side restlessly as if too agitated to stand still for more then a few seconds, "Is there anything else you'd like to share with us?" he added sarcastically with a growl.
Venom glared openly at the scientist. Pulling his lips back from his mouthful of sharp teeth, he snarled, "If we were you, we'd suggest watching your tongue. Because if you're not careful, we'll rip it right out of your face and eat it!"
"Are you threatening me?!" Octavius exploded, raising up on his back two tentacles to tower over Venom, "Nobody threatens Dr. Otto Octavius!"
Backing away warily, the other super powered men gave the two enough of a berth to escape an immediate danger to their own persons. Behind Mysterio, Electro, and the Vulture, the drugged wall crawler's body twitched slightly as though he were in the middle of a vivid dream, unaware of the growing turmoil around him.
Hearing the unmasked boy issue a low moan, Mysterio glanced down at Spiderman who was beginning to slowly wake. Whipping around towards the two men glaring daggers at each other, the master of illusions ordered, "Will you two stop fighting! We have bigger problems right now. My hallucinogenic gas is starting to wear off. What are we going to do with him?"
Glancing between the scientist and the drugged wall crawler in momentary indecision of which of the two warranted his more immediate attention, Venom finally said, "Let us read his conscious. We can tell if he's the Spiderman we're looking for."
"Can you really do that?" Electro questioned curiously.
"Just move out of our way," Brock snipped as he shoved his muscular body to the head of Spiderman whose whole body shivered as though extremely cold or going through some kind of emotions distress. The young boy's face was pulled into an unconscious grimace, his eyes rapidly twitching under his eyelids in violent reaction to the vivid dreams conjured up by Mysterio's hallucinogenic pink mist.
Gathering closely around the shivering spandex clad body, the four super powered men looked at Venom expectantly who towered above Peter's head. Ignoring the spectators, Venom positioned both his hands to cup either side of the boy's head. Slowly, small wisps of black symbiote tendrils snaked off from the tips of his clawed fingers to seep onto the temples of Spiderman's head. Oozing across his forehead like thick oil, several strands of the symbiote wound their way down the sides of his head to wrap partially around his throat just above the collar of his Spiderman suit.
"Now everybody be quiet," directed the mind reader coldly, hunching over the drugged man's shivering body in concentration, "He may react violently. If he starts to wake up more or tries to move, hold him down. But don't touch the symbiote or we may accidentally read your minds too."
Stationing themselves around the twitching wall crawler, the other man prepared to react if need be. Barely seconds after Venom began the procedure, Spiderman's body suddenly spasmed, his neck and back arching violently, his arms and legs snapping straight out on the wooden rack. Crying out weakly, the boy writhed under his captor's iron grasps that slammed down to hold him in place.
"Watch out! He's strong even drugged," Toomes' called out as he pinned one of Spiderman's ankles flat on the table, straining his muscles to subdue their prisoner.
"I just hope he hurries up!" Dr. Octopus snarled under his breath as his four metal arms pinned down Spiderman's wrists and chest, "The insect is stronger then I would have expected under the circumstances." Beside the good doctor, Electro and Mysterio wrestled to keep the thrashing man from throwing himself right off the table he lay on.
"Hurry up, Venom! We can't hold him down forever!" Electro cried desperately, fighting to keep Spiderman's booted foot from kicking him right in the nose.
Hearing the urgent call, Eddie Brock quickly released his grip on Spiderman's memories. The vivid pictures still played within his mind's eye. Past memories of an old man laying bleeding from a gunshot wound and the daring rescue of a gorgeous red head from a death fall off the Oueensboro Bridge stood out as some of the clearest images. The rest were muddled and fuzzy as the faces of countless enemies and people flashed before his eyes. But the most haunting of the memories was a echoing voice that chanted a single phrase, "With great power comes great responsibility…" Something about those words told Venom that those fleeting words held more meaning to Spiderman then he could ever understand.
Entranced by these visions, Venom stood silent, staring out into space. Multiple symbiote tendrils still clung to the wall crawler's face, but the unmasked superhero had stopped his convulsions and now lay still beneath his captors crushing hands.
Releasing his metal tentacles from off the now motionless boy, Octavius turned towards venom and demanded coldly, "And?! What did you find out?"
Shaking his head slightly, Venom unwound the rest of the tendrils of symbiote flesh from off Peter's head and neck. Composing his thoughts, he sputtered, "It's…it's not the Spiderman we're looking for. This one's totally different from our Spiderman."
But before Venom's startling revelations could receive any initial reactions from the others, a mumbled groan sounded over the pounding of rain on the abandoned studio roof where the storm still raged outside. Looking down at the waking wall crawler, the five dimensional travelers saw the first flash of two brilliant blue irises peek out from behind the boy's half opened eyelids.
Blinking so slow the gathered men encircling him doubted him opening them again, the boy lay motionless as he groggily raised a hand to the side of his pounding head and let out another low moan. Wincing under the bright light that shined down mercilessly onto his face, Peter slurred incoherently, "No…Not like you…All a dream…" The boy's eyelids slid shut as his random mumbles faded away and he drifted off again.
Giving the boy one last questioning glance, the Vulture rasped doubtfully, "Are you sure about him, Venom?"
"Yes," answered Brock, a number of black symbiote tentacles slowly undulating in the air from off his massive shoulders, "We found no hint of evil intentions in his mind. He's no threat to us."
"What do we do with him then if he's not the Spiderman we need?" Max Dillon asked, directing his question to Dr. Octopus, the unofficial leader of the group.
"Let us wait and see…" the pudgy scientist said gruffly, staring at the unmasked superhero thoughtfully through his dark sunglasses, "If what Venom said is correct, then this Spiderman may still prove useful to us."
Meanwhile, on the medieval stretching rack, the last of the hallucinogenic gas was beginning to finally wear off. Cracking his gritty eyes open a slit, Peter again winced as he heard distant voices arguing loudly somewhere beyond the wall of blinding white light that shined down into his face. The voices were muffled and unintelligible to the boy as he began to slowly become aware of his surroundings. Stretching out his sore and tight muscles, Peter realized he lay on his back on something extremely hard and uncomfortable.
Gaining more control over his sluggish body, Spidey blinked back the bright light to allow his eyes to adjust. Around him, he could begin to make out some of the words of the conversation. Several times he thought he heard his name being said, but was unable to know for sure. Trying to focus his blurred vision, the young crime fighter stifled another moan.
Through the thick fog that clouded his head, Peter felt the lingering impression of a horrifying dream, its memory teetering just on the edge of his subconscious. Although the details had been for the most part lost, he still felt the vague remnants of some unnamable horror creeping along his spine. He vaguely remembered Mary Jane being there and someone else. And for reasons he couldn't quite remember, he knew something bad had happened to the young red head in his dream…The feeling was so unnerving that something had happened to MJ, he suddenly had the urge to just see her and make sure she was alright.
'Where am I?' he wondered groggily, managing to pull his throbbing head a few inches off the table he lay one. He felt his stomach churn as his head swum from vertigo. Swallowing the bitter taste of acidy bile from the back of his throat, Spiderman tried to muster the energy needed to sit up. But before he could pull himself up, several strong hands suddenly slammed down on his arms and legs, pinning him down against the hard wooden surface beneath him.
Startled, Spiderman immediately tensed. Squinting through the bright light that still bore down into his light sensitive eyes, he felt his heart stop beating as he looked up in shock at the faces of Venom, Dr. Octopus, Electro, Mysterio, and the Vulture.
"Oh, crap!" he wailed now totally awake as he strained his muscles to move. His struggles proved useless as the men surrounding him easily held his squirming body down. He was still too weak from the hallucinogenic gas to fight any of his captors let alone try to fend off all five at once. His stomach clenched in fear, thinking his end had come.
"Relax," Dr. Octopus directed sternly as his bowl haircut and sunglass totting head come into full view, "We'll let you up just as soon as you stop thrashing around."
"Why? So you guys can give me a ten second head start before you send the hunting party after me?" Spidey asked in a tight, fear strained voice despite his usual wisecracks. Freezing, the boy's eyes snapped open wide as he suddenly became aware of a cool draft of air chill his naked cheeks. Looking around in dread, he saw the world did not have the familiar milky cast of the eyepieces of his Spiderman mask. Panicked, he tried to immediately shield his face with his hands but found to his dismay, his captors still retained their immobilizing grip of him, hindering him from any such actions. Staring up like a deer caught in the headlight of an oncoming car he shrieked, "My mask!"
He felt the pit of his stomach seize up in sickness as the world seemed to crash down around him as he lay helpless at the mercy of his captors. It was over. They knew who he was. They knew. After killing him, they'd probably go after everyone he knew or had ever had any association with. Mary Jane. Aunt May. Who knew who else. All that mattered was that they knew. Oh God, they knew…
For a moment Spiderman thought they were going to kill him right there on the spot. But instead, Dr. Octopus gave a slight nod of his head to the others, motioning to them to release the restrained crime fighter. A crashing round of thunder sounded from outside as the costumed criminals surrounding Spiderman flickered in and out of sight in the sputtering light bulb that hung from above.
Immediately scooting away from his captors up to a sit on the far side of the table, Spidey quickly slid off from the corner of the medieval torturing device he had just been laying on. Forcing his weak and wobbly legs to support his body, the unmasked wall crawler stumbled backwards away from the group of his worst enemies. The room spun wildly as he willed himself to fight the lingering aftereffects of the drug Mysterio had used on him. Backing into the wall behind him unsteadily, he felt a cold chill creep up his spine as the other five men in the room slowly came around to form an enclosed semi-circle around him.
"So what happens now?" he asked, his eyes narrowed warily at the super villains that circled around him waiting for them to make the first move. If they attacked, even though he had only a fraction of a chance of escaping alive, Spiderman had already made up his mind that he was going to go down fighting.
"What happens now is up to you," Dr. Octopus replied, revealing nothing in his voice. He stood arms clasped behind his back, looking at the unmasked boy from behind his all concealing sunglasses, leaving Spiderman shivering under his unrelenting black gaze. Beside him on either side, Electro, Mysterio, Venom, and the Vulture stood silently, staring at the cornered superhero with unwavering glares.
"What's that suppose to mean?" he demanded, secretly wanting more than anything to have his mask back so he could hide the fear he was sure was written vividly across his face.
"I mean, it is your decision whether you decide to join us and work with us to stop your alternate-self…"
"My alternate-what?" Spidey muttered under his breath, staring at the scientist in subdued confusion. What was this psychotic mass murder talking about?
"It seems there are some explanations in order on both our sides," Octavius noted sternly with a grim frown pulled across his face, "It appears our friend here is not up to speed with our current situation…"
***********
So there you go! Next chapter for this story may be awhile seeing as how "Screams of the Spider" is now down to its final chapter…or two, I'm really not sure. But it needs working on no matter what. And then there's my little comic venture too. So don't forget to drop a review and let me know what you think of my comic version idea.
Signing out
-LAXgirl