Part Three
Peter slid the pictures onto Jameson's desk. "I think this will make up for what I missed while away." He said confidently. He had spent most of the morning before school jumping from roof to roof taking pictures of himself as Spider-Man.
"You think?" JJ asked sarcastically staring at the images skeptically, "These are horrible."
"What?" Peter inquired surprised at the stingy business man's response. "They're better than anything else in the papers by leaps and bounds!"
JJ shrugged, "Yeah, but I know what you're capable of." He smiled, "This is a walk in the park for you kid. I want shots of Spider-Man and some other freak battling it out." He laughed, "Hey, one without his mask would be nice. It's just not good enough."
Peter sighed, "They used to be good enough."
"Yeah well that was before my best photographers went up and vanished. First you went and then Brock decided to copy you."
"Eddie left?" Peter said curiously.
JJ nodded, "Yeah and without word too. Oh, that reminds me your pay's been docked for the days you were out." He turned away from the high school student and stabbed at the typewriter keys in the corner of his office.
Peter rolled his eyes; things were back to normal at the Bugle as far as he was concerned. "Are you going to use the pictures at least?"
"I guess." JJ said irately, "I don't have anything else to work with. They should go well with the bounty that I'm offering in next week's edition."
"Whu-wait, did you say bounty!" Peter asked urgently, "As in reward money? For Spider-Man?" Every question was louder than the last creating a comical result that brought a grin to owner's face.
Jameson laughed, "Yep, five thousand for Spider-Man. Sales have been dropping so I figure it'll be a nice publicity stunt and if somebody actually gets that wall-crawling freak it'll be that much better."
"But Spider-Man hasn't done anything?" Peter begged.
"Well, what about all those murders back when he was dressed in black?" JJ retorted, "He killed plenty of people then. Am I right?"
Peter's stomach felt as if it had just had the wind knocked out of it. The blow was mighty, forcing all resolve in him out and nearly bringing him to his knees. "I…I don't know."
"That's exactly my point." JJ replied declaring victory all at once, "It's not like there's more than one arachnid running around in this city. Witnesses put our Spider-Man in black at every crime scene." He grinned widely, "It'll sell millions and get us out of the red for the quarter."
The photographer stepped back stunned. The room seemed to be spinning around and he barely made it towards the door.
"Thanks for the photos, Parker." JJ took a moment away from work and waved heartily at the young man, "Welcome back."
Without a word, he exited, feeling the world crashing down.
Peter pulled the old newspapers out from the shelf in the New York City Library. He was supposed to be home finishing up work he had for Chemistry, but the storm in his mind had brought him here. He was in a secluded part of the library, alone from prying eyes. The papers had been distributed during the time that he had been under the influence of the suit.
With trembling hands he grabbed the paper on the top and read the headlines. It showed the wreckage of the three downed helicopters, a foreshadowing of the carnage to come.
The next paper had the image of a body lying on the street outside a club. An artist rendering showcased the culprit. A man covered in black with an arachnid symbol on his chest. Peter dropped the paper suddenly and backed up against the wall.
He felt like he was being watched by the dead. They cast their gaze on him and cursed him. Peter gulped, "Get control of yourself; It wasn't your fault." He told himself returning to the table.
Peter pulled the newspaper on the bottom out. The death count had been up to twenty-nine. He ran over to a nearby garbage can and vomited into it. Peter returned to the table, feeling lost, confused but compelled to gaze upon the slaughter he had committed.
The next shot looked like it had barely made it past the editor. Much of the image had been blurred out. What he could see disgusted him. Mangled bodies lie on the floor of a bank. Bodies ripped apart until they unrecognizable. It had been a massacre, a testament to brutality.
Peter threw the images from his sight. Not because of the horror they displayed but because of something deeper. He was terrified not of seeing what he had done, but because in the darkest part of his soul he liked it.
In the darkness of the night, Spider-Man sat, perched on the ledge of a stony old building overlooking the city cast in the twilight colors all around him. Peter breathed deeply trying to expunge the thoughts that seeped into his mind.
He had liked it, for all of his heroics, on some level he had derived a sick enjoyment of killing everything that stumbled onto his path of death. Peter looked out the white lenses of his mask at a bird flying past the ledge gazing oddly at him.
Was he that different from the suit? Peter could only hope. It had been part of him for days, invading his every thought and feeling. Despite his best wishes it had left an imprint on him that he couldn't ignore.
The suit had changed him. The Peter Parker that emerged from that ordeal was not the same that went in. There was a new dimension to him that he hid well enough but it was always there.
Now it was trying to emerge. Peter suddenly felt afraid, as if this ledge was all he had left and leaving would finalize his demise. He could see people flooding the streets below marking the end of another work day.
He realized it was time to get ready for his dinner with Gwen. Peter fired a web-line that connected with the building across the street. Why did some part of him still want to connect with her? Peter was beginning to lose sight of his own identity. One day he was going to look into a mirror and see a stranger staring back, he was sure of it.
Then the wall of the building split open without warning, like a wound being inflicted in the frame of the building, spitting stone and rubble out in all directions. A flash of black came forth and grappled Peter throwing them both off the building wildly.
"Wha-Who are you!" He screamed instinctively trying to break from the fiend's grip. He managed to stare into the beast's face. "What in the name of God?"
They came crashing down on the terrace of an adjacent building shattering the tiles on the floor. Peter stumbled away from the monster growling quietly staring at him with its cold white eyes, so much like his own. "It can't be you." He said stubbornly, "You can't be here."
"We are." The monster screamed back furiously, "Like a bastard child we've returned to collect what is ours. The symbiote you expelled and left to die, for that girl, now thrives!" It giggled, sending chills down Peter's spine, "Face us, Spider-Man, face your creation, see what you're negligence has given rise to. We are Venom!"