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| Issue #4 April 2004 |
"Behind the Lies" Written by Groble |
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Her voice cut through him like a knife; it had only been a couple of weeks since they had last been together. But now, as he spoke to her on the phone, it felt like an eternity and you could tell that he would have given anything to hold her once more.
“Peter? Are you okay? It’s been so long, I was starting to worry,” her voice was filled with concern, a sound he’d heard so many times before as Spider-man, returning from a long nights patrolling the streets before collapsing into the loving arms of his wife as Peter Parker.
“Yeah I’m okay MJ.” He lied, his whole side hurt. Bruises covered his face and from the look of the odd shape pushing out from his chest, it was clear that he had broken another rib. It wasn’t the first time and it probably wasn’t going to be the last. He tenderly pushed it roughly back into place and hoped it would fix itself.
“Are you sure? No ones heard from you in days.”
“Yeah I’m sure, I’ve been better, but…”
“You’ve been a hell of a lot worse?” she’d heard this one before, and no matter how many times he said it, neither of them believed it. Peter leaned down to grab the remote off the floor. His whole body screamed; his skin seemed too tight for the mess of broken bones inside making it hard for him to stretch. He managed to retrieve the remote and collapsed onto his bed, their bed.
“To be honest, I’ve been a hell of a lot better MJ. I miss you.” He hit standby and the screen came to life, he began flicking through the channels. He longed so much to find nothing because that meant that all was right with the city. But there it was, his luck had held true and a special bulletin was currently interrupting most of the shows across all the major networks.
“I miss you too tiger, but you have to understand, I can’t be with you now. We need our own space.” According to the bulletin, The Rhino and Shocker had been out again causing trouble over at the central bank, nothing unusual there but as he began to count his blessing the report got worse. “Hostages!”
“Peter you still there?”
“Sorry MJ but I’m going to have to cut this short.”
“Duty calls?”
“Sorry.”
“I love you.”
“I’ll call you,” with that he placed the phone back on the receiver and turned back to the TV, turning the volume up to drown out the sounds of the city. The report showed images of the bank job, pretty standard stuff. He stood up to find his costume, which still lay in a pile on the floor soaked in blood and slightly tattered from his previous meeting with the Rhino and Shocker.
“Damn, I forgot to tell MJ I loved her,” he said out loud as he pulled his badly singed mask back over his bruised face. His sides ached and his muscles burnt but there was nothing he could do; not when there were innocents involved. He couldn’t put his own comfort above the lives of ordinary people. This was his curse, while normal people sat around watching Sky One and the Discovery Channel, he was out dragging his beaten carcass around the streets of Manhattan, simply because some messed up chain of events had given him powers beyond the dreams of most people.
With his costume back on and already sticking to his skin he prepared to climb out the window when the sounds of the report caused him to stop once more. “…Arriving on the scene as we speak is the masked vigilante known as The Black Cat, yet another pitched battle is being fought on the roof of this building, which has seen more conflicts than most of it’s employees would care to remember…and what’s this now the black cat is down? Yes it would seem that the combined force of these two super villains was just too much for her this time...”
He ran back into the room and stood in front of the TV. Felicia was no match for those two in their current state. Somehow he needed to get to her, but they were on the other side of the city and by the time he swung the length of the city to reach them it would be all over. He could do little but stand and watch the screen, as the live video feed showed his friend and ally being beaten down and dragged off, but where too? This was a new tactic for both the Rhino and Shocker, they were clearly working for someone else but who? He had no way of finding out who they were working for or where they had gone. Or did He? Speed Demon was still in police custody and would be until his court hearing tomorrow; even with his enhanced speed spider-man could easily beat some information out of Sanders while he was safely locked behind bars. With this in mind he leapt out of the window of Peter Parkers apartment and swung off into the welcoming night as Spider-man.
*************
The apartment was empty and dark, the TV left on by Spider-man’s sudden exit cast moving blue shadows all around the walls. The ringing of the phone, which was swiftly answered by the machine, broke the stillness. “Spider, It’s Felicia. I don’t know what’s going on but that person at the bank wasn’t me. Peter? Are you there? I hope you don’t go doing anything stupid. If you’re there pick up?” she hung up and the apartment was left quite once more. The noise of the TV drifted off out the open window into the chill October night, as storm clouds began to gather over head, coating the city in a gray murk while the first drops began to fall.
*************
It had begun to rain as he made his way across the city, so when Spider-man finally arrived at the holding cells he was cold, wet, and even more determined to get Felicia’s location out of speed demon by force. His sodden costume clung to his drenched frame, as he swung headlong into the driving rain that beat down on his face eroding away what little strength he had left. Lightning ripped across the tormented night sky as spidey leapt silently over the outer fence of the holding cell yard and landed softly in think mire on the other side. The guards were minimal to say the least and the terrible weather would have driven even the most committed guard inside where the warm glow of the security screens would keep him company. As the sky fell dark once more he made his way quickly and quietly over the yard and to the gray stonewall on the other side.
A security camera blocked his way but it was quickly dealt with by a single spray from his web shooters, the fluid hit then lens and spread, effortlessly obscuring any images that would have alerted the guards, in this weather no one would be eager to check out the fault, and by the time the weather eased of his web fluid would be long gone and him along with it. Turning to check the way was clear he clambered onto the wet stonework and began to effortlessly crawl from window to window, like a spider checking it’s web for the fly that struggled to get free, as the jaws of death slowly bore down upon it.
Bingo! There he was asleep on his bunk, one quick web line and a sharp snag and he was pressed up against the cold metal bars, the driving rain stinging his face, while the fierce gales blew his hair into his eyes, obscuring his view through the window.
“Who’s there?” the lightning ripped through the clouds once more, revealing the mask of his midnight attacker soaked through with rainwater to the point where he could almost make out his features snarling back through the bars, the mask he had seen so many times before, was now a deep dark red, pulled tightly across Spider-mans face. Each muscle could be seen as the fabric of the costume constricted around his highly toned arms, whose hands now grasped at the bars in the window.
“What the hell? Spider-man? What do you want? What the hell are you doing here?”
“Don’t play stupid with me Sanders. But then again that’s always been your role in the big wide world, hasn’t it?”
“What are you going on about?”
“Well you’ve never been known for your brains, have you?”
“That’s good coming from the psycho sitting outside in the rain.” The rainwater had begun to run off the two figures standing locked together in the window, and now pooled on the floor inside the cell.
“I still managed to catch you didn’t I? And where were your friends then, Sander? Just tell me what I want to know and I’ll let you get back to your sweet dreams.”
“Screw you spidey, I ain’t telling ya where they are.” His face split into a wicked grin.
“Look at you playing the big man while you’re safely behind bars. How about I come in there and beat that smile off your ugly mug?”
“There ain’t nothing you can do to me in here Spider-man.” He pushed himself off the wall, but as he did a thin muscular arm shot inside grasping him by the wrist and wrenching his arm though the bars.
“Nice Plan James pity it relies on you being inside.” Spider-man pushed himself up off the wall pulling Speed demon with him so that his arm edged painfully out of the gap between the bars, and his face rubbed against the cold steel bars of the window. The raindrops bounced viciously of spider-mans arched back as he pushed off from the wall, and wrenched the arm still further through small gap in the bars.
“Get off me you freak,” screamed sanders as his shoulder contorted and slid through the bars, the rain making them slippery enough to allow the limb to be pulled through even more and then bent at increasingly unnatural angles
“How far do you think I can pull until it snaps off? Just give me the address Sanders,” Spiderman sneered as he bent the arm up until it started to crack.
“OK! They’re on Canal street warehouse 17. Now get the hell off my arm.”
“See was it really that hard?” he wrenched the arm upwards once more until he heard a sickly crack and the limb went limp. “You might want to get that seen to.”
He dropped to the floor and headed off at a sprint across the yard, droplets of water and mud spraying up from his feet and mixing with the torrent that already bounced erratically of his streamlined physique, before leaping up into the welcoming Manhattan skyline and swinging off into the storm.
Meanwhile inside the cell James Sanders staggered over to his bunk where he reached under his mattress with his good arm and pulled out a radio-mic. “Guess you were right boss, the spider is now playing in our web.” He gingerly touched his shoulder, which now protruded at an un-humanly angle before staggering to the other side of his cell.
“GUUUUARDDDDSSS!!!” he screamed before sliding to the floor in a pool of rainwater that now mixed with his own blood, which dripped from his limp fingers only to splash on the cold cell floor.
*************
Well, there it is, my first issue, I really hope you all enjoyed it and it wasn’t too much of an upheaval from the previous writer, who I would like to thank very much for giving me a great starting point. You guys better tune in next time when the trap closes in on Spider-man and Peter Parker’s world caves in around him. Behind the lies continues next month only on Altered Visions***
