In the dark void, Cindy heard the sobs and its echoes were the waves lapping against her body. It could have been the cries of anyone, but, somehow, deep within her, she knew it was her mother. She stared up. There was no light, no stars, not anything that gave any indication of her presence but she looked on.
She didn't know how she got to this place. She remembered the pain, the boulders that were the fists of her mother ramming into her body with the intent to kill. The mercilessness, the relentlessness. The ferocity. Then, Cindy was here. As though she had been here all along and had merely woken up from the dream that was the reality that she knew.
A chill swept over her, an icy breath billowing against her.
She gulped. She trembled. She looked over her shoulder.
Staring back at her was a black figure of harsh lines, a nightmarish scribble with blank white eyes gazing into her. It was decidedly male, a teen around her age. The sobs of her mother went on, and as she stared at the black figure a sinkhole appeared in her stomach and her blood ran cold.
The figure stepped forward and Cindy gasped and scurried away. Her body trembled and turned away defensively with a hunch. The figure stopped. Cindy starred on. She shuddered and scurried back more and her feet stepped on something sticky. She looked down and saw webs, large swaths like fibers of a muscle. Something, a notion in her mind like the spark of remembering, made her look back over her shoulder.
In the distance, something red. Small, something that appeared to be made of a cloth of some kind. It hovered in the air, where the webs became more abundant to the point of making mounds, lines of webbing stretching from one to another and where it replaced the dark ground of the void.
Cindy glanced back at the black figure.
It reached out.
She ran..
Her panting was loud in her ears as she trudged through the webs, kicking up her legs and tugging on them whenever one of them got stuck. She navigated through the webs, shifting, turning, and shimmying. She looked back and her heart sank and the air flew out of her when she saw the black figure following her. She doubled her effort, pushing through webbing and almost flailing her arms to help get momentum to move out of the webs faster.
The red cloth was getting bigger in sight, allowing her to see more of it in detail. Torn, tattered, it appeared to have been part of a jacket or hoodie of some kind. Yet with an image so ominous, Cindy felt a sense of safety growing the more she got closer to it. She looked back at the black figure and her panic soared - it was tearing through the webs with more relative ease. Now whimpering, straining her efforts, every exhale bordered on a cry.
Closer,
Closer,
Closer -
Safety and danger, raging waves crashing within her.
The air began to grow warmer. The red meant safety. As long as she got away from the black figure, Cindy didn't care about the possible dangers of the red cloth.
Warm,
Hot,
Festering -
She glanced back - the figure backed. It was reaching out through the thick webbing. Cindy heaved, a smile pulled her lips, and her whimpering developed into a laugh. It grew louder, shrill that every octave was a note of her growing glee despite nearing the quality of nails on a chalkboard. She stared on and laughed and laughed watching the black figure trying to wiggle and make their way through the webbing in vain.
Her laughing died down. She took a deep breath and turned to reach for the red cloth that barely hid the numerous beady black eyes. Heat exuded off the fleshy mass of stretched skin. Hairs in patches and tufts dotted its body here and there. Black pointed limbs protruded out of the skin, some not yet piercing it and merely stretching the skin farther to a sickening pitched tents. Warm breath puffed out of the accursed gaping mouth that was opened beyond human limits, teeth were still visible but they were few compared to the trembling protrusions that resemble mandibles.
Because Cindy was in mid-turn and her hand going down, she only had time to process what she was seeing before panic suddenly struck her so suddenly like a knife until her hand touched the thing.
Her eyes cracked open.
The world was blurry and the world refused to focus as she felt how heavy her body felt. Her head felt thick due to the bandages and the gauze in her mouth and her whole body felt sore. In particular, it felt as though someone had filled her head with cement. She tried to move her arm only to find it as heavy as lead with what felt like a splint. She grunted and groaned, trying to lift her head up.
"Cindy?" She recognized her father's voice.
"...Mmmurph?" Was all she could manage to utter.
Her eyelids were heavy, threatening to close again. She tried to blink and felt the temptation to keep them closed. She opened them, closed them. Open, closed - the world was starting to align itself into definitive shapes and lines, creating geometry. She blinked, squeezing her eyes.
"Cindy?" Her father said, "Can you hear me?"
Opening her eyes, she saw the face of her father, looking down at her, she smiled, "Heee Nad…"
Her father smiled and sighed in relief, "Cindy… Thank god… You've been out for a week."
Cindy blinked hearing this.
"You were lucky that Spider-man showed up when he did, otherwise things might have been worse." Her father said - and Cindy didn't show it but she was confused when he said this, did he know? "It was nice of your friends to make that suit for you, but it looks like those crooks that jumped you mistook you for the actual Spiderwoman."
Cindy looked away, making it seem like she was ashamed, while she was still waiting to get all the dots together so she could connect them.
"Rafferty, your friend - it's funny, she's a good kid while her other friend… Anyway, she had called me through your phone to tell me what had happened. Sorry to say but your suit's gone. From what I saw, it looked pretty good, too."
Cindy's face fell while she tried to figure out where it was that Rafferty had gotten involved. She remembered that she was fighting her mother in that abandoned station when her mother had become much more ferocious than before. She remembered the pain, the punches and kicks like rain. Then, vaguely, she felt that she was thrown into a wall and beyond it before everything went dark.
Could it be that Rafferty was into things that she kept hidden?
Why?
Rafferty was a nerd, in every sense of the word, and when it came to a model student she was the one that she thought of first. If it was Lola, that was where she could believe it. After all, Lola looked like nothing but trouble. Even if she behaved in school, there was no telling what someone like her would be doing outside of it.
Either way, this story must have been made up by Peter, as it sounds like he was the one who saved her. After all, he was the one she had called before her mother destroyed her visor. Big brother had saved her.
But then her thoughts drifted to her mother - what was it that made her go wild like that all of a sudden?
That was when her stomach cut through her thoughts in a loud roar, surprising her and her father. Cindy blushed whereas her father chuckled.
"Di' you ge'...?"
"Hang on," Her father reached out to her, but paused, "Open your mouth."
Cindy did, and it felt as though her jaw had turned into bricks, grinding against each other. Her father reached in with two fingers and pulled out the gauze soaked and slick with her saliva, so much so that there was a thick string that clung to it as her father pulled it away.
"Ooo… Oh! There's… little blood actually." He said, "This was probably put in to make sure the bleeding stopped - they made it sound like you were in worse shape. There any cuts still open in there?"
Cindy's tongue roamed her mouth, poking and prodding, feeling - she shook her head.
Albert then reached off to the side, out of her vision, and in his hands was a protein shake bottle.
He shook it, "The nurses explained that if you ever woke up while someone was visiting, you were to have this." He opened it and reached off to the side again to grab a straw and stuck it in.
He reached over for Cindy to take the straw into her mouth. She did, and she drank. Even though the flavor was just chocolate milk, having not eaten anything in the past week, it felt as though she was drinking a full-course meal, greedily drinking it. Then it was empty. Cindy blinked and hummed in surprise, she sucked on the straw only to hear a hollow suction sound coming from the bottle.
Her eyes snapped to her father,
Who chuckled.
"I told them that one bottle wasn't enough." He said.
A knock came at the door to her room.
"Ah!" Her father said, walking to the door, "That's probably him."
"Who?" Cindy said.
Her father opened the door and the face of another asian man peeked in. The first thing that Cindy thought when she saw his face was silly. Then when he walked in dressed in baggy clothes and cargo pants, slightly gruff with his stubble beard, a goofy smile on his lips, and his short oily hair - loser.
Cindy clicked her tongue unintentionally and eyed him wearily, "Um… Who are you?"
"Pfft! Wow!" The Loser-Man said, "You really are like your mother."
Cindy narrowed her eyes.
"I'm not surprised you don't remember me," The Loser-Man said, "We only met a few times before your Dad and Mom moved away out of the blue - I'm your uncle, Roy!"
"Uh…Huh…" Cindy drawled.
Roy merely nodded, and looked back at her father, "Uh-huh, see?" He pointed at Cindy, "Its like I'm seeing a double."
Cindy's narrowed eyes turned into a glare.
Roy had a messenger bag on him, and opening it he pulled out a six-pack of protein shakes. Cindy was feeling the pangs of hunger again and eyed them with intensity.
"Didn't know which one to get," Roy said, glancing at her father as he opened it, "So I just got the one that sounded tasty and nutritious."
"She'll pretty much take anything as long as it fills her stomach." Her father said.
"Dad." Cindy said.
"Like you're ole man, then." Roy said, shaking his head and smiling, he then looked at her father, "You leaving soon?"
Her father checked the time, "Right now, actually. I've been gone longer than I needed to be. I gotta get back to FEAST, Cindy. Roy's a bit much, but he's a good guy - I swear. Bye, Cindy."
"Bye, Dad."
The moment her father left the room, she grimaced knowing that she would have to share the room with Roy for the time being.
Ironically, seeing Cindy's look only made him chuckle yet again, "Y'know, your mother gave me that same look when we first met." He took a bottle from the pack, "Yeah… It's a… its a shame…"
"Sure." Although it was obvious that Cindy didn't like the look of this Roy guy, even though she was her uncle, she at least had the decency to respond to what he was saying.
Roy shook the protein shake bottle, opened it, then inserted the tear-off straw that came with the individual bottle.
"Can you hold it?" Roy asked.
Cindy winced as she tried moving her left arm. Although chugging the previous protein shake, converting it to energy in her body to help it heal, her body still felt sore and heavy. However, she made the effort to bring it to her chest. Roy set the protein shake in her hand, his own hovering close in case it fell. He removed himself once he saw Cindy managed to get a decent grip on it.
Cindy carefully craned her neck and began to drink, once the taste hit her tongue she sucked all of the shake like the breath of God moving the world's ocean. After a moment, that hollow suction sound returned.
"More." Cindy demanded, feeling the calorie-energy conversion pick up its legs; it was like her blood was flowing again.
Roy looked inside the bottle, making sure it was actually empty, before glancing at the remaining bottles in the pack, "Thirty if you drink three more - four out of the six altogether."
Cindy frowned, "I haven't eaten in a week and I'm, y'know, in the hospital?"
Roy merely arched a brow with a small smirk, "You saying you can't? Forty if you do 'em one after another."
Cindy narrowed her eyes.
Roy brought out his wallet and brought out two twenty dollar bills, wiggling them with his fingers.
She pursed her lip.
She paused.
She nodded her head for him to approach.
Roy grinned as he opened three bottles of protein shake - caps off, straws in, one two three on the nearby night stand, two in hand.
Cindy stared at the bottles in Roy's hands, "At the same time."
Roy arched his brow, before shrugging, bringing the bottles close, touching each other.
"Three," Roy counted, "Two. One. Go."
Gently, Roy shoved them close to Cindy's face and she focused on suction so as to drain both bottles at once, her eyes wide with intense concentration, a look that bordered on anger. She had trouble at first, uneven suction between the straws, unable to keep a tight seal around both straws. After a while, however, she found the strategy and drank them until they were empty.
The bottles went to the nightstand, and the third and final bottle was drained just as fast as the previous bottles. Soon, it felt as though a sweltering summer was sweeping over her body. She took a deep breath. She wiggled her fingers - no longer as heavy, but still stiff.
"Damn." Roy said, jangling the bottle and hearing on the straw, "Completely empty. This forty's your's - after you get out of the hospital."
Cindy rolled her eyes.
Roy chuckled as he went to his bag, "Y'know, you're kinda like your dad, in a way. He used to not back down from a challenge." He pulled out something from his bag with a toothy grin - a photo album. His finger's drummed against the cover in wave-like movements.
"Don't tell your dad, I showed you these." Roy said as he went to Cindy's side and opened the album.
It was the usual stuff -
Childhood days,
Family photos,
Relatives and friends.
He showed a photo of him and her father as kids, both of them doing kung-fu poses, "We really liked the martial arts stuff as kids. It was an obsession, really. Every day, we watched this movie we really liked until the tape wore out. Then begged our parents to get a new one."
He pointed out another photo. One that was obvious of Roy - in the small span of time that she has met and interacted with him today, Cindy could tell that the lean asian teen trying to pull off the pose of a muscle body builder was him. But Cindy couldn't place the other teen beside him in the photo. Staring straight at the camera, his stoic face was stern despite the sharpness in his face that molded his handsomeness. Lean as well but more muscular than the teen Roy. His straight posture made him taller than Roy by an inch or two. Both were shirtless and where Roy was posing, the other teen had his hands down, together, hand over fist. In fact, looking at him only, Cindy got the impression that he would fit in with the stereotypical martial arts heroes of the 80s.
"Who's this guy?" Cindy said, "A friend of you and Dad?"
Roy giggled, "That's your Dad."
Her mind stopped at once.
All thoughts wiped away.
Boot up, start, rewind.
She stared for a long moment, making Roy grin wider.
"...Who?"
"Your Dad." Roy insisted, "Albert Moon - your Dad. Out of the two of us, he was the most serious when it came to martial arts. But even though he had a passion for it, he also had a passion for the sciences."
"Is… that how he and… Mom, met?"
"Nope." Roy said, popping the 'p', "She ran away from home, ran into Albie, demanded that she stay with him, your Dad said no, and then they fought. As in, an actual fight. As weird as this is to say, your mom just kept getting back up. It happened long enough that I found them before the police did. Literally had to pull them out of the scene."
Cindy stared at Roy for a long moment.
"I don't believe you."
"I don't blame you."
He then flipped the album pages to point to a very particular photo of her father as a young man, somewhat blurry as he was in mid-spin kick that landed against what he assumed to be her mother's head as the young woman had her back turned to the photographer, presumably Roy himself. Her figure was frozen in the moment of her body turning at an awkward angle from the kick.
"HA!" Cindy blurted out, pointing at the picture with a wide open-mouthed smile.
Roy could only snicker.