It was a cold afternoon, and although this was not the first time he had ever been in a church, it was his first funeral. Everything about it was offsetting: he had not seen so much stained glass in other churches, nor as many little figurines of a woman and her baby.

Nor was that all, he was not familiar with the service for the dead. It would have been hard for him to read, since he was only six, but much of the service was in a strange language.

But that was not the worst of it. Everywhere he looked people, mostly old people, scowled at him, showing by their body language his contempt towards him. His uncle had told them not to speak, and he had indeed been very quiet. But he felt very much out of place, almost frightened. The new glasses he had gotten just a few days earlier did not help.

(Two) At one point his uncle took him to see the coffin. He had never seen a dead body before, and his first experience with a corpse did not help matters. The man inside was very old, in his late seventies, and although his eyes were closed his grim expression only chastised the little boy more.

As they took the body into the hearse the mourners got up to go to the cemetery. As it happened it was only a couple of blocks away. One of the things that most distressed the little boy was not the angry looks directed at him, but towards his uncle. Nobody treated his uncle that way, and he had never seen his uncle so meek and complaisant in consequence.

Then a woman saw him. The boy could not see her face, she was heavily veiled. She wore gloves and there was little the boy could tell about her appearance from the slim black dress she wore. Nor could he see the smile beneath her veil.

"So you must by Mary's little boy, aren't you."

[Three) With a sudden shock, Peter Parker woke up in his apartment, dressed only in his underwear. "Aaaah!"

After the Funeral

(Four) "What the hell…where am I…was that a dream…when is it…am I being buried?"

Peter took another look around the room. "Ok Peter, take a breath. That was some weird dream.

"Or was it a dream? That was very strange."

The clock indicated it was 7:15. Peter shivered and realized it was snowing outside.

He got up and started to dress. "Of course it's snowing outside. It's late November. I do actually own a pair of pajamas. I should start wearing them. Can't afford to get cold now, not with Aunt May so ill, you never know when you need to be in the best of health."

Almost dressed now, he noticed a photo of Mary Jane Watson. "And it's certainly not as if I had good reason now not to be wearing pajamas.

(Five) As it happened, today was one of the easier fights in Spider-Man's crime fighting career. He encountered the White Rabbit, never one of his most dangerous foes. To make things even easier the Carrollian character of crime realized too late that it was too cold for her skimpy costume and her attempted heist was interrupted by a bout of sneezing.

As Spider-Man easily parried her latest gadget, the other people in Peter Parker's life were living their own lives. J. Jonah Jameson was about to enter a meeting with some new financial backers. Gloria Grant was whispering to him. "Now you can't call him an idiot."

"But he is an idiot!" Jameson replied with some accuracy.

In Boston, Mary Jane Watson was having a meeting in Boston with one of her aunt Anna's doctors. "I'm afraid there's not much progress with any of these experimental Alzheimer's treatments. All I can suggest is that you may be able to slow the decline by moving back to New York and having her among familiar people and things."

Norman Osborn was attending a dinner party and trying to appear polite and not deadly bored. Looking around he noticed two little girls playing with dolls apart from the guests. The host had a taste for classic Broadway musicals, playing the soundtrack to Camelot.

(Six) Spider-Man was swinging by a couple of cops. He was carrying the White Rabbit, who was still sneezing, and was quite trapped in his webbing. "Hey! Guess who I caught red-handed carrying several pounds of very cut diamonds?" He tied her to a lamppost and swung away.

The White Rabbit was very shamefaced. She tried to put on her most penitent look, which was rather difficult since she was covered in face paint. "You two wouldn't be interested in a bribe?"

Meanwhile Betty Brant was expertly combining her position as an experienced journalist with her new one as a working mother, as she was getting her new baby son to eat his day's share of pureed fruit. "Good boy, good boy," she said. "At last!" she thought.

Across town Joe Robertson was listening to his son chatter about his second marriage. Decades of experience in journalistic tact and professionalism hid, to a limited extent, his extreme wariness about that marriage. His daughter-in-law was after all not only the daughter of Robertson's long-time enemy, the criminal Tombstone, but was a costumed super-villain herself, now known as the second Beetle.

And in the Shield helicarrier, Eugene "Flash" Thompson was receiving a medical report. "The Venom symbiote is in remission. It won't manifest in your body unless you consciously summon it."

(Seven) Peter was now at the clinic in Queens, helping Aunt May with yet another meeting. "So what do you have for us today, Dr. Yoo?" he asked the short stocky Korean-American doctor who was overseeing his aunt's treatment.

Just then an orderly came in with a laptop and set it up at the other end of the table that Peter and Aunt May were sitting at. Dr. Yoo helped the orderly and it was soon clear that they were setting up a Zoom chat.

"Just a moment," Dr. Yoo said confidently. And then, on the screen the face of a plump woman perhaps a decade younger than Aunt May.

"Anna!" Aunt May said happily. For indeed it was Anna May Watson back in Boston. Peter could say Mary Jane in the background as well as the elderly neurologist who was overseeing Anna's treatment.

"Yes, I thought it would be a good idea if we could have a chat," Dr. Yoo said.

"It's so good to see you," Aunt May said. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine," Anna Watson replied. There was something unpleasantly empty in her tone.

"And how has Boston been?"

(Eight) "It's been fine."

"Have you seen any of the sights?"

"No. No? No, I haven't." Peter saw Mary Jane wince, strongly suggesting that her aunt had seen a few sights but had already forgotten them.

The neurologist spoke up. "Mrs. Parker, perhaps it would best to concentrate on specific events. Wouldn't it be nice if you could talk about a decade ago?"

"Let's see. There was that time you went to Florida but you eventually came back to New York."

"Yes. I remember that.

"I can't say I liked Florida very much, in retrospect. Rather vulgar in the way everything has just been newly built. There's so little there with real history."

"I suppose so. I've only been there a couple of times."

"It's an odd feeling. It's so much better that I came back. You were with someone May, Nathan wasn't it?"

"Yes, that's right!"

"Used a cane, if I remember? Also had a beard, I believe."

Aunt May visibly winced, since it was all to clear that Anne Watson had confused the late Nathan Lubensky with Aunt May's late husband, J. Jonah Jameson's estranged father. "Actually Nathan couldn't walk very well. You remember him, he was clean-shaven."

"No, I really don't."

(Nine) As it happened the neurologist spoke up in Boston, making clear that this meeting was entirely for Anna's benefit, not for the Parkers'. "I believe we should concentrate on more specific events."

The rest of the meeting was very repetitive in a quite unpleasant manner. "Mary's sister. Gail wasn't it. No, Gayle with a y for some reason. Haven't seen in her years.

"You're working for Osborn, Peter? Now didn't Mary Jane know an Osborn?"

"Harry, Norman's son," Mary Jane said off screen. "He died recently."

"Did he? He couldn't have been that important.

"Your house, May. Something happened to it. No, it's still there.

"Oh right, there was Madeline. She must have remarried when she divorced Philip. She phoned me a couple of years ago. We talked about recipes."

Peter managed to see Mary Jane from another angle, and saw her repressing her tears, since her mother Madeline had died when she was still a teenager.

The neurologist stood up in Boston. "I think that's all for today. We've been speaking for an hour." Peter and May saw an orderly bundle Anna back to her room.

"Please, is there anything we can do to help?" Aunt May said with some desperation in her voice.

"I don't see any reason to discuss any of Mrs. Watson's private concerns with you," the neurologist coldly replied, as he ended the Zoom session.

(Ten) It was another day, and Peter had entered the clinic. Dr. Yoo met him near the admissions desk, with a cheerfulness he had already come to regret. "I have important news for you Mr. Parker. We've decided it would be best if your aunt stayed with us for the next few days."

Soon Dr. Yoo was taking Peter down a corridor. "Mrs. Parker will be sleeping in this room." Peter looked inside and saw an ordinary private hospital room, perhaps a bit smaller than usual, and darker than one might expect because this room had no windows.

Dr. Yoo then took Peter to one of the visiting rooms. Peter saw his aunt sitting and talking with some of her other elderly acquaintances. "It's such a shame about Anna," one of them said.

"Peter, it's so good to see you," Aunt May said as Peter bent down to kiss her.

"Your aunt made a list of things she'll need for the next few days. If you could go get them…" Dr. Yoo explained.

"Of course, no problem."

Soon Peter was leaving Aunt May's house, carrying a small suitcase. "Let's see, the bus will take me back to the clinic in about…"

(Eleven) Just then, Peter felt his spider-sense. And then an instant later he didn't. "Now that was a bit odd," he thought. "I don't see anybody unusual. Was someone villainous just passing by?" Peter noticed the bus he needed and ran to the stop. "Well, if it's important, I'm sure it'll make its presence known soon enough."

Later that evening Peter entered Aunt May's room, only to find her in her bed. "Aunt May, it's only seven o'clock. What's wrong?"

"It's the new dose of painkillers," Aunt May replied. "I have to take them at set times. But when I take the 8 PM dose, I'm too tired to stay awake. Then I sleep for twelve hours straight."

"That's a shame." Peter paused. "And how is the medication?"

"They're…tolerable." Obviously, Peter was going to stay for the next hour. What were they going to talk about?

"Peter, you must be doing something interesting with Norman Osborn and Oscorp?"

"Well, yes. I mean I haven't been doing anything for the last few weeks but…damn!"

"What?"

"I just remembered. I have this big non-disclosure agreement with Oscorp, so I can't actually talk to you about it."

"That's a pity." Peter thought to himself: "I really should be doing something more with my life than depending on Osborn's charity. I have a first-rate scientific mind. I can't abandon Osborn if he's about to genuinely change, but I could be doing…"

(Twelve) Aunt May interrupted his train of thought. "Have you been reading anything lately?"

"Uh, no. I've been too busy." "Thinking about you," he thought. Peter had been idly scrolling through his phone when he noticed something. "You might find this interesting."

"What is it?"

"There's a magazine called Sight and Sound and a couple of years ago they made a list of the greatest movies ever made."

"Did they? What was Number#1? Maybe I've seen it?"

"Let me see… No, you definitely have not seen this one. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles."

"I don't think I've even heard of it."

"No, it is a three-and-a-half-hour Belgian movie, combining the repetition of female domestic labor with part-time prosti…. Oh look, Citizen Kane is #3!"

"That I have seen. What else is there?"

"Let me see, what would you have seen. Imitation of Life is tied at #75."

"That's the one starring Lana Turner?"

"Uh yes."

"Because there's an earlier version starring Claudette Colbert. I remember seeing the newer one… Now that's odd."

"What is?"

"I have the strangest feeling that Imitation of Life was the last movie I saw in a movie theater with your uncle Ben before he was murdered. But the movie is so old, we would have to have seen it in a repertory theater and we didn't go to repertory theaters. May I see the list, Peter?"

Peter showed the list to her. "You know, we should take the trouble to see some of these movies," she said.

(Thirteen) And starting the next day they started watching some movies together in one of the patients' recreation rooms. First there was Spirited Away, which Aunt May liked. "That was very good, if very strange. To live in a world of ghosts, while at the same time working in a bathhouse."

The day after: Aunt May also liked Late Spring: "I'm surprised this movie isn't more popular. Granted that it's Japanese, you'd think people would respond to about a daughter agreeing that it's time to get married and leave her father."

The day after that: Another patient was dismissive of one of the movies on the list. "Portrait of a Lady on Fire? I don't think a movie about an 18th century lesbian love affair is appropriate."

"What's Satantango about?" Aunt May asked.

"Let me see," Peter replied. "Apparently it is a seven-hour black and white Hungarian film about the last days of an entropic collective farm whose members encounter a new corrupt capitalism."

"Gack!" Dr. Yoo interrupted. "That sounds absolutely lethal." Peter and Aunt May looked askance at her. "Oh sorry!"

A day later: Peter and Aunt May were looking at the closing credits of Barry Lyndon. "That was such a beautiful movie. Visually, I mean. But the people were so cold and cruel to each other." Aunt May said.

(Fourteen) And it was the day after that. Peter had arrived in the recreation room. "Today's movie, thanks to the New York Public Library System, is Ordet. Supposedly it is 'an austere parable on the power of faith…'" But just then Dr. Yoo appeared in the room. "I have good news!

"I've mentioned this when we began this round of treatments. But now I can say it is time to move Mrs. Parker to the Stoddard Center in downtown Manhattan. Now we can start our new revolutionary treatments!"

Later that evening, Peter and Aunt May were getting out of a taxi. The weather was cold. Peter opened the trunk and removed two suitcases with all the possessions Aunt May would need for her extended stay. "It's so tall," she said.

Indeed it was. It was twenty stories high. "It's basically the cutting edge of American medical treatment, which means it's basically the cutting edge of world medical treatment," Peter said. "The next few weeks will be tough, but there's good reason to believe that then you'll be as right as rain."

Aunt May replied with a wistful smile. "It's nice that you keep up a brave face Peter. But you know as well as I do that I'm only leaving this building in a coffin."

(Fifteen) Soon the two were on the fourteenth floor. "Ah, Mrs. Parker-Jameson," said a man who could only have been one of the leading doctors in the Center, or indeed in the country. "So good to see you. We've already arranged your room.

"Have you eaten dinner?"

"Not yet," Aunt May replied.

"I thought that might be the case and have already taken measures. You will be in room 1414."

Peter was following along with two suitcases, when his spider-sense went off. "What started that? It's not Aunt May's doctor."

It wasn't indeed. Peter quickly scanned the floor, seeing a Korean-American intern, three nurses chatting at a station who he assumed, correctly, were Italian-, Hispanic- and African-American. He saw a plump Jewish man in his early seventies dressed in a suit looking at his watch and walking to the elevators as visiting hours ended.

And in a corner he saw an unattended girl, maybe six or seven, with reddish/brown hair in a ponytail. "Romey" Stephanie Watson.

(Sixteen) Aunt May and Peter were in Room 1414 with the doctor. "It's quarter past eight," he said, "so you should be taking your medication along with your meal. Ah there it is." And the African American nurse Peter had seen earlier came in and placed it as a desk in front of Aunt May's bed. What struck Peter most about it was not the meal but the number of pills Aunt May was expected to eat.

Ten minutes for Aunt May to eat her dinner, another ten for her to brush her teeth and get to bed before the drugs kicked in. In another part of the floor Romey Watson was speaking out loud. "Where is he?"

"Right here!" Peter said angrily as he lifted "Romey" up with one hand and shoved her against a wall.

"All right, you're supposed to be imaginary. Since you're clearly not, what the hell are you doing here? It's bad enough what you did to Mary Jane! Why are you bothering my aunt?"

"Please! This has nothing to do with her. Or Watson. This is all about you."

"That does not improve matters. Look I've seen The Bad Seed and The Village of the Damned. So pretending to be an innocent little girl is not a plus. So what are you? Some kind of robot? A clone? A Skrull?"

"Worse." She paused. "Dire Wraith."

[Seventeen) Peter placed, or more accurately dropped "Stephanie" in a chair and sat in one close to her. They were in an obscure corner of the floor. "Yeah. I remember them. Not quite a decade ago. You were launching some kind of big invasion and that Indian billionaire Forge and that alien stopped them. What was that guy's name? Ram? Bom? Bam-Bom? Rum? No, that sounds more like Fidel Castro. Damn, the name's just on the tip of…"

"Look, just say Forge. I do not have a lot of time, and what I must tell you is very important."

"You're shape-shifting aliens, akin to the Skrulls. Except the Skrulls think you're murderous scum, and for once, everyone agrees with them. But Forge and whathisname had some giant neutralizer that shifted all of you to Limbo. What are you doing on this planet?"

"Well obviously, I wasn't on Earth when that happened. Actually it was kind of office politics, me and my faction were stuck near Alpha Centauri. There's a planet where the Grey Gargoyle enslaved the original inhabitants, and we were there waiting for further instructions."

"Why aren't you in Limbo now if you're on Earth?"

"Neutralization is a scientific process. Eventually one of our scientists found a counter-measure."

"So you're planning another invasion?"

"I swear to you that isn't the case."

"You're ruthless genocidal murderers. Why should I believe anything you say?"

(Eighteen) "I am trying to help you."

"By lying to me and the woman I love?" Another thought occurred to Peter. "I remember something. There's a Dire Wraith gender division of labor. The men were scientists, and the women were sorcerers. It was the sorcerers who oversaw the final invasion. And there's another thing. The sorcerers would inject people with a tentacle, kill them and assume their form. So who's the real little girl you killed?"

"Please, I haven't killed anyone. I mean not since the war."

"And what about your big brother? Who's he supposed to be? Your husband? Your boss? Some malevolent big Kahuna?"

"He's my son. Please, he doesn't know he's not human." "Romey" pulled out two things from her jeans pocket. The first was a piece of paper. "Look I know you don't believe me. And I'm running out of time. That paper tells you everything about the base we formed a few years in Schenectady. You can text the location to SHIELD and they'll find all my colleagues are dead and what I'm about to tell you is true."

Still scowling at the alien, Peter quickly alerted SHIELD anonymously. "Romey" put the second object down on the floor.

"That looks like an egg-timer."

"It is an egg-timer. And when the sand runs out, I will die and my body will turn into a pile of dust.

(Nineteen) "Look I know that you fear our species. I wish I could prove to you that individually we're not all that bad. I admit that's easier to prove for individual Skrulls and Kree than for us. As well as for the Shiar, except that they don't dream. And it's even true for the Badoon, except that their gender relations is basically a low level war, or for the Brood, who reproduce by laying their eggs in sentient creatures. I mean the only really evil aliens are the Z'Nox."

Peter was not sympathetic. "Time, as you say, is pressing."

"I mean the whole sorceress thing was a bit of an accident. We'd been expelled from the Andromeda Galaxy millions of years ago. The men did all the big stuff, we did the little jobs. Then some women half a millennium ago said we should get in touch with our mystical side. And the guys said 'Go ahead. Knock yourself out.'

"You've seen 'Gods' and 'Demons,' Although they often come different dimensions, they're all linked to this planet's biosphere. I think Thor is literally the son of Mother Earth and not the woman mentioned in Norse mythology."

"And so who are the Gods you worship?"

"I don't actually worship any of them. What happened is that we Wraiths about 400 years encountered a long-lost wandering ship that actually had all the information on all Galactus' feastings throughout Eternity. And what we girls found is that when Galactus eats a planet the biosphere is destroyed, but the Gods and Demons who formerly inhabited it still lived on, much weaker, but extremely angry at what happened.

"The boys found this ship was near both a couple of wormholes and a big black hole. They found of way of connecting to a whole host of ex Gods and we Girls found a way of making them all do our bidding while we set up a base in the Dark Nebula.

(Twenty) "Now this is where it gets hairy. Once we were defeated and Wraithworld ended up in Limbo, there were a whole host of angry Gods and Demons who had no interest in being pushed around by a handful of second-class Skrulls. They started attacking us. But they did it subtly. They'd start eliminating the cadre one by one. It wasn't clear what caused it, and by the time we realized who was attacking us, we didn't have the security clearance to realize which entity we were dealing with or the spells we needed to defeat them.

"The few of us who were left tried to make a break for it. We were already disguised as humans, and I was part of a team who went into the alternate universe you encountered. There were only four of us, and soon there were only two. That's when I met Wayeb.

"Wayeb was amused at my struggle. He actually finds morality endlessly amusing, and he decided to upset morality by confusing everyone's sense of cause and effect. It also amused him to protect me and Owen for a time. And he got me in contact with someone else."

"Who?"

"A Totem. Of one of your species. It offered me a deal. The Angry Gods wouldn't stop chasing me, and the longer they were in the vicinity of Earth the more danger they could do. But if I sacrificed my lifeforce, the Totem would help repel the Angry Gods and my son would be able to pass as human. In return I had to send you a message."

(Twenty-One) "What message?" But just then "Romey" spoke a few lines in an unknown language.

"Listen carefully. You wouldn't accept a token or a talisman because you wouldn't trust it. Three times your spider-sense will alert you to the Totem's mystical powers. The first time, it won't help you directly, but it will alert you to something that can. The second time, you will save the souls of two good men. And the third time, you will save the soul of a third good man. All this happens before the end of February."

"Wait a minute, what about your son?"

"Please, he thinks he's human. I did everything I could to keep him safe. He can't turn back into a Wraith at all."

"What if he grows up and gets married? What about any kids?"

"Not possible. Dire Wraiths can't breed with other sentient species without special scientific and mystical methods. And now he'll have no access to them."

"Hold on. I remember there was a Dire Wraith plot to take over the world's blood supply. What if he gives blood?"

"He won't have a proper blood type. And without actual magical spells, any blood will spoil before it could be used. Please, I swear to you I'm not lying."

Tears ran down "Romey's" face. Peter noted that his Spider-sense wasn't alerting him to anything.

(Twenty-Two) It was at that instant that the egg-timer ran out.

"Oh no," "Romey" gasped. And then her face contorted, giving a glimpse of her true age, a woman in her early forties. Then she seemed to disappear as her body turned almost into a cloud. And then there was nothing but a pile of dust on her chair.

Peter gasped at the sight. About thirty feet away, the African-American nurse, who had a name (Ella Grey) took out a cell-phone. Making sure she wasn't seen, she spoke into it. "It's started."