"It's up to you! New York! NEEEEEEEEW YOOOOOOOOORK!"
Spider-man finished the song much to the pigeon's relief. Tonight the web slinger was in an unusually good mood. Mary Jane had landed a rather juicy role and that put her in a good mood and when Mary Jane was in a good mood the world was a very nice place indeed. Even with bad guys to fight.
Remembering the bad guys, Spider-man looked down. Just in time to see a woman calmly walk out in front of a speeding taxi and sit down right in the middle of the road.
Down swung the man in red and black. On came the taxi, which seemed to refuse to slow down or stop. Quickly, Spider-man spun a web around the woman and swung back upwards, yanking her out of the path of the car, only the bottom of her tennies getting clipped.
Plopping her down on the sidewalk, Spider-man looked at her. She was young, late 20s, maybe early 30s, a bit on the chunky side but in a cute way. Dark blond hair curled about her face. She wasn't smiling, nor was she frowning. From her slightly slanted blue-green eyes to her naturally pink heart like lips she was an emotional blank.
"And, what, pray tell," she said in a voice as flat as the look on her face, "do you think you're doing?"
"Saving your life." Spider-man said, a bit miffed at her.
"Ah. Well, there was no need to bother. I'm trying to die, you know." She glanced down at the webbing still pinning her arms to her sides. "Do you mind?"
"Yes I mind!" Snapped the wall crawler. "You just admitted to attempting suicide. I'm not about to let you loose."
She raised her eyebrows, looking very bland. "If I explained why might you release me?"
"Maybe," Spider-man said, attaching a bit of extra webbing to her and slinging her onto his back. It was a good thing he had super human strength as well. "But you'll have to explain on the fly."
He expected screams. Fighting. However all he got was an emotionless explanation.
"I am incapable of feeling emotions. Hatred, anger, love, lust, I can't feel any of that. So I figured without emotion life isn't worth living." This was delivered so flatly that it couldn't even be described as cold. For coldness had emotion behind it.
Just then Spidy's spider-senses tingled. A second later he felt the weight slip from his back.
Twisting on the web he saw the woman plummeting down towards the streets below. A pocket
knife in her hand. Throwing another web, Spider-man swung after her, catching her just inches
from the top of a bus. Up onto a roof and keeping a hard grip on her arm.
"Now look here, Spock," he began.
"No, not Spock. Spock could feel emotions but chose to suppress them. I'm more like pre-movie Data. Incapable of feeling emotion." Here was where she should smile ironically, instead she just looked at Spider-man with that bland look. "Besides that, my name is Kim."
Rolling his eyes under his mask, Spider-man continued, "Whatever. Now look here, Kim. What you're doing is really selfish. Did you ever stop to think about those who love you?"
"No one loves me."
"Now that can't be true. Your parents..."
"Are dead. Never met them actually. They were killed days after my birth in a car crash. I was still in the hospital. They couldn't figure out why I didn't cry."
"Your friends then, I'm sure they love you."
"I don't have any friends, Spider-man. You have to be able to care about people to be able to
have friends." She was so bland, so without emotion that it was scary. "I cannot feel anything,
sir. About the only thing I'm suitable for is being a serial killer or a computer tech support
operator." There was an awkward pause. Well, awkward on Spidy's part. Not on Kim's for she
couldn't feel awkward either. "Have you ever been in love, Spider-man?"
"Yes."
"You're lucky then. I can't even experience respect, let alone love." She shrugged, though it looked forced, like if she wasn't sure she was suppose to shrug there. "I've decided that a life without emotion is worthless. Now if you'll excuse me."
During this discourse Spider-man had let go of his grip. Without warning Kim jumped off the edge of the building.
"Not again." Spider-man said, diving after her. Webbing trailing out behind him as he did his version of a bungee jump. Grabbing her halfway down the building and bouncing them back up to the roof. Then back down, putting her on the ground. Glaring at her through the mask. She may not be capable of emotions, but she was really getting on his nerves. He lifted a finger, all prepared to give her a huge lecture when the wailing of sirens distracted him. "I have to go. Do not kill yourself while I'm away."
"You wish me to do it in front of you?"
"I don't wish for you to do it at all!" He snapped before swinging off.
"What a strange fellow." Kim said. "Now if anyone needs a make over from Queer Eye it's him."
Slightly singed and smelling of smoke, Spider-man swung on. It was about 11:30 pm now. The fire having not be huge but there had been a few people trapped including a nearly 900 pound shut in. He had tried not to crack any fat jokes. It wasn't nice or right. Still, it didn't help Spidy's back any.
Now, however, he was watching a police sting. An undercover officer posing as a drug dealer.
Sometimes these things went wrong and Spider-man wanted to be there just incase.
It was here that he saw a familiar figure. Heard a familiar voice. Inwardly he groaned.
"How much would it take for a non-user to overdose?" Kim was asking. "Well, as a dealer you should know these things. I'm trying to kill myself. Because I cannot feel emotion and figure life isn't worth living without emotion."
The undercover officer's responses were muted so even Spider-man couldn't pick them up. Add to that the fact that Kim's flat, emotionless voice was so blasted irritating to him, all the wall crawler could hear was her.
Spider-man watched as she got arrested. Sighing in relief. Well, now she'd get some help and maybe stop trying to kill herself. He swung away. He couldn't stick around watching this all night.
Spider-man didn't know if he'd ever get use to the towers not being there. Every time he came here in the past four years he expected them to be there. Even with the rubble removed the place looked like an open wound.
He was lost in thought when something caught his eye. "Oh no." He groaned. There was Kim,
staring as well. At least she hadn't attempted to kill herself yet. Quickly he moved down until he
joined her, landing lightly on his feet. "What are you doing out?"
"They couldn't lock me up. I'm not really insane." Still flat. Still emotionless. Maybe she was
telling the truth? "I'm on outpatient therapy but of course it won't do any good. I've tried it all.
Had all sorts of tests, I'm not a mutant, no X-Factor gene. Nothing wrong with my brain. I just
cannot feel." She nodded her head towards Ground Zero. "This is what convinced me. I saw this
happen and felt - nothing. Not fear, not anger, not sorrow. Nothing. I just watched it with a
clinical eye. I knew it was a horrible thing, but I could not feel it. All my life I've never felt
anything. I never felt sadness when my grandparents died. I never felt rage or disgust or anything
I should have felt when one of my foster parents molested me. I just never had a feeling ever."
"Perhaps it's for the best." Spider-man was grasping at straws. Thinking about what it would be like to never feel, to never know what it's like to love Mary Jane. To have no feelings for Aunt May. All the sorrow, all the anger in the world was worth it just to feel love.
She should've responded with anger or even laughter. Instead it was that same blandness. "How could it be for the best?" With that she stepped out towards an oncoming garbage truck.
Spidy yanked her back. "Could you at least be a little more creative?" Sighing in frustration he said, "Will you give me a chance to find out what's wrong with you? I know people."
"Alright. But if you can't fix me, you'll let me die. Agreed?"
"Agreed."
As they shook on it Spider-man felt his senses tingling. There was a scream and he grabbed Kim up and pulled her along. For the scream was nearby and there was no need to swing.
The alley they ran into was deathly quiet. Nothing. Not one sound. Not even rats. Spider-man's spider senses had stopped tingling. It was only his sharp eyesight that helped him find the source of the scream. The source was dead. A homeless woman, her hand clutching her left arm. Eyes wide and mouth slack in death. Spider-man took her non-existent pulse. Kim was calling 911.
"Odd," Kim said nearly two hours later as they said goodbye to the police and continued on. "By
all accounts it seems she just died of a heart attack, but I still keep thinking she was murdered.
That something killed her by fright."
"Well, if it was murder the autopsy will say so." Spider-man said. They arrived at their first stop.
A non-descript brownstone. He had called ahead, not that he wouldn't have been expected
anyway.
Dr. Strange was good about that.
There was another there too, of course, incase Strange found nothing. As Spider-man and Kim were shown to the main room where the examination would take place, Professor Xavier smiled at them.
Later that night Spider-man wouldn't be able to describe the scene. It was really a haze. Yet Kim sat there, blandly looking on. Not even taking interest in the proceedings though they were all about her. It was much easier to deal with Xavier probing her mind.
"There is nothing magical blocking her emotions." Dr. Strange said, looking confounded. "I can't find any reason at all she cannot feel."
"Nor can I find any mental block." Professor Xavier concluded. They were sitting at the kitchen table, sharing some tea. Only Kim wasn't in the room. She had been sent on to Reed Richard's place for medical examinations that she insisted would turn up nothing. "Which actually may be for the best. She has some memories which by rights should be very traumatic. If it wasn't for the fact I sense no emotions attached to any memories I would've thought they were the cause."
"Hope you don't mind that I let myself in." The man known as Mr. Fantastic said as he sat down,
his arms stretching out as he helped himself to some tea. "I just finished the exams. I can't find a
single thing wrong with her. No brain damage, no tumors. Not even a chemical imbalance. And
defiantly no X-Factor."
"A new kind of mutant, maybe?" Spider-man offered. "Some gene that hasn't been discovered yet?"
"No." Mr. Fantastic said, shaking his head. "It's more like - she has no soul."
"Only demons have no soul." Strange said. "And she is no demon. She's human."
"There are stranger things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio," Xavier countered, "then are dreamt of in your philosophy."
"True." Strange conceded. "It could be entirely possible that she's something I haven't encountered before."
"Something none of us have." Richards said before slurping some tea.
Sighing, Spider-man pulled his mask back down and stood. "Well, thank you anyway. I've got to find some way to figure out what's wrong with her before daybreak, or she'll kill herself."
"Spider-man," Xavier said, "you're the one who promised not to interfere, but none of us have..."
"I'm starting to think she's right though," Spider-man's shoulders sagged, "life without emotions isn't worth living. Where is she anyway?"
"Right behind you, isn't that just so predictable?" Kim said. "There's been another one of those odd deaths." Her cellphone was in her hand. "I bothered the detective until he gave up the details. It seems a perfectly healthy jogger was frightened to death. Did you know there were 35 others who died in the same way in New York in the past 10 years? Seems to me there's a very odd serial killer on the loose, to kill 37 people by scaring them to death."
"Lovely. Just lovely." Spider-man groaned. "My life is suddenly a Stephen King novel."
It had taken quite a bit of reasoning to get to see the crime scene. The FBI had taken over,
having finally acknowledged something weird was going on. Even with his enhanced senses,
Spider-man could sense nothing. It was Kim who noticed anything odd. Having rolled up the
victim's sleeve, she pointed to a little red mark, like a bug bite. It was just a hair's breath above
where the hand had been clenching.
"Did the other victims have that?"
Calls went out. Records researched. Hours later after the body was gone the call came. All 37 people had a tiny bug bite just a little bit above their clutching hand.
"How could this go on for so long without the police or FBI realizing?" Spider-man grumbled later. Kim was once again webbed to his back. It made jumping difficult but since she didn't scream or struggle but lay there placidly, it wasn't too hard.
"Cover-up." Kim said simply. "When Richards was checking the test results I used his computer to hack into files. I found them hidden all over the place. I traced the cover-up back to a particular man. The one who's body we just saw."
"Why would he be covering this up?"
"I don't know, though I did find out something interesting. He had a son. Born the same day I was. He died in the same accident that killed my parents. Nice little three car pile up. Funny thing is, I've seen the crash site photos. There were only two cars involved."
"Wait? You're saying the jogger is involved with the killer?"
"He wasn't jogging." Kim was so bland, so emotionless, that it somehow made all this more terrifying. "The area was muddy, yet the bottoms of his shoes were clean. Also no bottle of water or even a wallet. He was killed at home and dumped in the park."
"Regular Sherlock Holmes, aren't you?"
"Just go right. Trust me. Something tells me we need to go right."
"A feeling?"
"Women's intuition."
"Alright, we've been following your intuition for over an hour now," Spider-man groused. "And nothing. We can't just keep this up all night."
They were paused in an alley. Kim standing a few feet below Spider-man who clung to the pollution coated wall. There was the usual garbage and at the end of the alley, a single homeless man, passed out from too much gin.
"When Xavier was in my head, he triggered something." Kim said, staring at the man sleeping in his own filth. No emotion flickered over her face. "It was when he came across the memories of my foster father."
"The one who molested you."
"It was more then that, Spider-man." Kim of course showed no flicker of emotion, her voice
didn't change. "My foster father ran a very lucrative child porn ring. My lack of emotion made
me very marketable to those pedophiles who prefer to think of their victims as less then human. I
didn't even really realize what he was doing to me was wrong until I saw one of my foster sisters
crying. He had told us all that he'd kill us if we told, but since I didn't have the ability to fear, I
told. He decided to fight. Took us all hostage. I saw three of my foster siblings die. He made me
watch, trying to get an emotion out of me. I couldn't feel a thing, but I knew he was evil. So
when he wasn't looking, I took a power cord from one of his cameras, and while he was bending
over to get a knife he dropped, I wrapped it around his neck from behind and pulled it real tight.
I was 10 years old, but I was able to catch him off guard, yank him back, then tie the cord so
tightly around his throat. So tight he couldn't get it off. Then I tied his hands together as he died.
I told him "I know you're an evil man" and then when I was sure he was dead I went and told the
police to come in. And never once did I cry, scream, or even laugh hysterically."
Nausea rolled over Spider-man, nausea and rage. If the pervert hadn't been dead Spider-man would've hunted the monster down and killed him himself. He was unable to respond to Kim's monologue.
"Well, anyway Xavier dug up those memories I - I felt something latch onto them. Xavier couldn't seem to find it, but I know it's there, I can still feel it. Like a leech. Yet somehow I can anticipate it's movement."
Spider-man's spider senses began to tingle, then go haywire. Jerking his head towards the mouth of the alley he saw a man. Or what should be a man. There was the form of a man, but he was transparent, like glass. He was so focused on the homeless man in front of him that he passed within a few inches of Kim and Spider-man without ever noticing them.
Something, like a single tazer line, shot from the glass-man's right hand. Piercing the homeless man's left arm. The victim clutched his arm and his eyes grew wide.
Launching two webs, wrapping them around the glass-man's arm and yanking it, pulling it back,
so the probe that had pierced the victim's arm was pulled free. The victim moaned and fainted,
but was obviously still alive.
"Why are bad guys' motives always so transparent?" Quipped the normally more witty webbed wonder. However Kim's story had thrown Spidy's wit creator off and that was the best he could do.
The glass-man growled and produced a knife, cutting the webbing free. He seemed less transparent now. There was a slight coloration now, though Spidy could still see right through him.
"Bug off!" Glass-man shouted, turning and running. He was fast.
Spider-man took off, forgetting Kim who checked on the homeless man, called 911, and then nonchalantly followed.
Meanwhile Spider-man was finding it hard to keep up with glass-man. The fellow was faster then Spidy thought. On top of that he was able to blend in at times and often backtracked. If not for his spidy sense, Spider-man would've long since lost him.
Up and down streets, alleys, it just kept going on and on. Then suddenly they were in a building.
Condemned. Spider-man made his way through the building carefully picking his way through it,
sometimes across the ceiling or a wall. His senses tingling. He knew there was danger but he
couldn't be sure if it was glass-man or the building's crumbling materials.
"Can't you let me feed in peace?" It was the glass-man. Whining in the darkness he so well blended into. "I'm so hungry."
"Your feeding kills people." Spider-man said, trying to locate the source of the voice.
"But I'm HUNGRY!"
Spider senses going wild, Spider-man felt a sharp pain in his left arm. He fell hard on the floor,
clutching his left arm. He felt something being pulled from him and he realized it was his every
happy emotion, every good memory. Pulled out of him. Leaving him with nothing but the bad.
Uncle Ben's murder. Gwen's death. Spider-man could smell the blood, hear the snap of bones.
Every bad guy he ever fought flooded his brain. And all Spider-man could feel was fear.
Crippling fear. Unescapable fear. The Green Goblin dropped Gwen over and over again. Mary
Jane was in trouble. Uncle Ben was laying on the ground, dead. The planes were going to crash
into the Towers!
Then suddenly it was over. Weakly he looked up as Kim held the probe that had pierced his arm between her fingers. She raised her eyebrows and turned towards glass-man. Then took the probe and shoved it into her left arm.
Spider-man pushed himself up. Watching. Kim did nothing. Just stood there staring at the glass-
man.
However the glass-man was afraid. He tried to pull his probe free but it wouldn't come. Panic
filled his transparent face as he seemed to grow smaller, less visible. "No! NO!" He shouted,
unable to pull free.
"He feeds on emotions, good ones, leaving nothing but sadness, anger, and mostly fear." Kim
said in her Spock-like voice. "He's not entirely human, but he's not a mutant. He's just an
experiment. Like I was. Isn't that right, Jeremy? Freaks created by science. Twins, born of
different mothers. We were test tube babies, did I forget to tell you that, Spider-man? Implanted
in women who had trouble getting pregnant. Neither woman knew that we weren't their seed,
however, but some genetically altered monster. Made to counter-act mutants, but we went
wrong. We were the mistakes. That's why Jeremy's mom had to die, and my parents." Kim's
voice suddenly cracked. Her face quivered and she started to cry. "Created by the man Jeremy
murdered! Why I still don't know."
Jeremy just screamed, seeming to shrink and melt at the same time. He tried so hard to preserve his life, yet he was sucked in through his feeding tube. Sucked into his sister's veins. As his last scream died, Kim began to laugh. Laugh, cry, and scream all at once. A lifetime of emotions filling her every pore, coming out all at once. Then she turned to Spider-man, an evil looking grin on her face. Teeth bared almost like fangs.
"Remember what I said? Only suitable to be tech support - or a serial killer." She laughed. It was a laugh that sent chills down Spider-man's spine. When she raised her right hand a little hole showed up in her palm. The end of the probe could be seen. Then, it just as suddenly closed over and Kim no longer smiled. Instead she looked sad. "Thank you, Spider-man." She said.
He was too weak to stop her. He tried but his webbing fizzled, completely out. No replacement
capsules. She stepped on a spot on the floor she knew was too weak to support her weight. Then,
she smiled, a real, honest to goodness smile. Just before the floor gave away and she plunged
down with a scream that sounded strangely like laughter. Joyous laughter.
When Spider-man was finally able to get down, he found her. Bones broken in many places. A
piece of pipe impaling her straight through the heart.
And in the filtered light of dawn, Spider-man found a look of utter peace and contentment on her
face.
...The End...