For the record: I didn't start to believe in demons until, oh, about six hours ago, which is when I saw my very first one.

Yeah, demons. Or at least a demon. Just the one. You'll never guess where I saw it, too.

Go on, guess.

Give up? All right, I'll tell you: Manhattan. Can you believe it? At a clothing store, of all places, right there on 41st Street between Fifth and the Avenue of the Americas. At Infrastructure, fourth floor, the dressing room behind and to the left of the elevator: Men's Casualwear. He's a pretty nice guy, too, once you get past the weird exterior.

Hey, don't look at me like that; I'm not making this up.

See, MJ and I both ditched final bell to go to Infrastructure, which is the coolest place for kids to get clothes anywhere in the city. I've got this date on Saturday with Gwen and MJ insisted that I needed to update my wardrobe if I was going to make any sort of good impression on her, though I've probably got a snowball's chance in Miami of getting anywhere with Gwen. The Bugle had finally gotten around to cutting me a cheque for the last batch of pics, so I actually had a little money to sp--

What?

Oh, the Bugle. Yeah, I work in the shadow of New York's finest journalists. (Mainly because the Daily Bugle offices are located in a smaller building next door to the New York Times headquarters.) It's nothing special, as jobs go; I do the web site only because the Editor-in-Chief is too cheap to hire someone with a college degree and experience. So I get minimum wage and a nifty-sounding job (a big status symbol when you're fifteen) and J. Jonah Jameson gets a working web presence at about a tenth the going rate.

I'm not completely pathetic when it comes to the Bugle, though: when I really need cash, I can usually convince the Boss to buy a picture or two and since main hobby is photography I've usually got stacks of the things just sitting around. The more bizarre the picture, the better the chance of getting paid for it. The Bugle has very little inhibitions when it comes to, say, taste. Would you believe Jameson pays fifty bucks for pictures of Spider-Man? Man, if he only knew...

So, anyway, I had money in my pocket, MJ at my side, and a pile of really cool-looking jeans in my arms.

"Go on," MJ told me. "I'll be right out here. Don't come out until you find an outfit that looks good, okay?"

I nodded as best I could and trooped into the dressing room. For a Wednesday afternoon, the place was pretty busy. As I said, the place caters to teenagers but it seemed like there was an awful lot of them moving around. Either a lot (and I mean a lot) of people had skipped their last class or these guys were from out of town, because I shouldn't have had any problem getting a in which to change.

Well, I did. Have a problem, that is. Eight stalls and almost every one was in use. Except for one at the far end, I noticed. Unbelievable. I'd never seen this place this full at this time of day.

I made my way toward that stall with difficulty; I wasn't kidding when I said I had a pile of clothes in my hand. In fact, I almost ran into this one girl when she came out of the changing room too quickly.

"Oh!" Why do girls always say that when they're surprised? "I'm sorry," she went on in a very thick Southern accent, "I didn't see you there."

I peeked over the top of the clothing pile and smiled. "No problem! Happens all the time," I said, which sounds stupid now that I think about it. Then we started doing this weird dance around each other. For whatever reason, and I never did get around to asking, she tried to get past me without touching me and somehow succeeded. Given the narrow width of the dressing room hallway, it shouldn't have happened, but it did. Too bad, really - she looked kind of hot in a sort of gothic sense, right down to the bleached white hair that framed her face.

...yeah, I know, I know. The demon. Get on to the demon.

So I managed to slip into a changing room and started trying on the clothes MJ had picked out for me. I finally settled on a pair of blue-and-black jeans, a green tye-died shirt and a blue-and-black striped button-down to top it all off. Aunt May says I inherited my dad's poor taste in clothing and has the photographs to prove it; this is why MJ usually makes me go shopping with her rather than on my own. It's safer on the eyes.

I'd just finished getting dressed again when someone screamed out on the sales floor, sounding for all the world as though she was being hacked to death by ninjas holding a grudge against her. That's usually my cue to save the day, so I shrugged out my clothing (again) and prepared to go to the rescue.

Huh? What do you...ah, uh, yeah. In case I didn't mention it before, I'm sort of Spider-Man.

All right, all right, don't get excited. I said, I'm Spider-Man. It's no biggie, okay?

Where was I? Anyway, the scream cleared the hallway which means I should have just been able to, you know, go running out to save the damsel in distress. Or so I thought anyway. Someone must have hit the shelving on the way out, because the entire unit came down and blocked the doors of the individual dressing stalls.

Luckily for me, this sort of thing doesn't present much of a challenge, though the tedium can be a problem; sometimes it seems as though I do nothing but save New York day after day after day. I simply hopped up, crawled up to the ceiling and started making my way (quickly) toward the door. I'd almost gotten to it when the ol' spider-sense went off like a Roman candle on the Fourth of July; then I heard this noise -- a kind of bamf-sounding thing -- and the demon appeared right next to my face. He (it was very obviously male since it was inexplicably dressed in pair of Speedo briefs and nothing else) turned toward to look at me in surprise and we stared at one another for a very long moment.

I forgot all about the screamer for the time being; being confronted with a creature right out of the less cheerful parts of the Bible is usually enough to get my attention and this guy fit the bill, right down to the acrid stench of brimstone on the air. It -- he, I mean -- looked just as shocked as I felt and his jaw hung open, revealing a mouthful of fangs. (Sharp, pointy teeth! Lots of them!) His entire body, as far as I could see, was covered in blue fur and that fur was bristling at me like he was a cat or something.

And he had a tail, too! Really!

Well, I'm not exactly equipped to deal with supernatural goonies, ghosties, and goblins (all right, most goblins; I can handle the green ones pretty well) so I wasn't sure how to proceed. They don't offer a class in Exorcism at Steinway High School. In fact, I'm pretty sure none of the schools in Queens offer that sort of thing. This wasn't looking good. I'm not even Catholic, but I stumbled though the Sign of the Cross anyway. Imagine my surprise when the demon did the same thing.

"Tell me I'm dreaming," I muttered to myself.

The creature blinked. "Wie heissen Sie!" Oh, great. Not only do I have to handle a demon (which I'm so not cut out for) but I don't even have the luxury of getting one that speaks English.

I tried again: "Where the heck are you from?"

"Bayville. Hey! I know you," he said, and I swear he sounded surprised. I was too: apparently he did speak English after all. "You're Spider-Man!"

Oh, great. My fame, such as it is, had spread to one of the lower hells. A blue, hairy devil was one thing, but this was starting to get strange. Before I could deny the charge and go slinking off into a corner to hide, he scurried down into the dressing stall on top of which he'd been perched. He rooted through a pile of clothing (which, given the sure-handed way he went about the task, looked suspiciously like it may have actually belonged to him) and came up a moment later with a pen and a notepad.

"Would you write for me, please, your signature?" I just gaped at him as he handed me the stuff and started getting dressed. The mask covered the idiotic look on my face, much to my relief, and I looked down at the paper.

"You want my signature - my autograph, I mean?"

Did I say strange? I was crouched on the ceiling holding a pen and paper belonging to the oddly-coloured demonic personality that was in the dressing stall below me pulling on a Spandex costume.

This was beyond strange. This was...what? Wacky? Bizarre?

I felt like I was having an acid flashback and I'd never done any acid before.

So anyway, the devil nodded vigorously at me. "Ja. Make it out to Nightcrawler, if you please," he said calmly, as though he cornered costumed heroes on a daily basis. What could I do?

To Nightcrawler -
Best wishes -
Your pal, Spider-Man

"You really from Bayville?" I asked. My voice decided to jump up and down on the octave trampoline in the middle of the sentence, which made me sound really lame.

"Ja," he told me with a nod.

"Not from Hell?"

"No."

"You don't hobnob with Beelzebub? Baal? Lord of the Flies, King o' Lies, that sort of thing?"

"Who?"

"Ever met a guy named Nick Scratch?"

"No," he said, shaking his head as he hopped up to stick to the wall next to me. "I'm with Charles Xavier." He reached out and took my wrist -- my spider-sense didn't tingle one bit, so I let him. I noticed he wore a broken watch for some reason, but didn't want to press him. The fangs, you know.

He grinned at me and for a brief second I thought he was going to chew on me. As in, for a meal. Instead, the world took wrenched underneath me and my stomach tried crawling up my nose, and we were suddenly back on the main selling floor -- just in time to see MJ get carried out the window by Norman Osbourne...again.

I realized I was still holding the notebook and so I passed it down to the demon, er, Nightcrawler. "Time to save the innocent," I said. I fired a web line around a ceiling beam and swung toward the window. "See you around, Grover!"

And then I made my usual exit, tracked down and nailed the Goblin -- again -- saved my girlfriend, and made it back home to Queens before Aunt May finished cooking her famous macaroni casserole.

But the highlight of my day was meeting that blue fella.

Oh. That reminds me. I ended up having to swing back by Infrastructure after going all Mike Tyson on the Osbourne to pick up my clothing and backpack, which was (by some miraculous twist of fate) still sitting in the dressing room stall where this whole thing had started.

When I went through my pockets just a few minutes ago, I found a business card for Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. There's an address (Bayville) and phone number and all the usual crap, but the important part was on the back:

Herr Spinnenmensch:
need n-e-thing? call me.
Nightcrawler

I looked at the scrawled message and at the number underneath.

Sometimes this hero business can be rewarding.

Cool.