Spiderman 1 (12 page)

She'd heard him rant about it so much that she was able
to mouth it along with him. Standing at the stove, she
checked on water that was about to boil. Ben walked in be
hind her, tossing the burned out bulb into the garbage can.
Figuring her husband might as well make himself useful,
May said, "Hand me the bowl. The green one."

Ben picked up the requested kitchen implement and then went to the newspaper that was spread out on the table. He flipped to the classified section and shook his head dispiritedly. "Corporations firin' people left and right so they can
have a few billion more. What do they know about standing
on a stool, screwin' in a light bulb?"

Standing around in pitch-blackness was beginning to
sound preferable to listening to Ben carry on. "Ben, you'll
get another job somewhere."

"Well, let's see," Ben said with mock joviality, running his finger along the job notices. "Computer analyst, computer designer, computer engineer, computer ..." His point
made, he let out a melancholy sigh. "I'm sixty-eight years
old. I have to provide for my family."

She hated to see him this way. So dispirited, so frustrated.
Ben was of a generation that set a great deal of store by the
ability of a husband to keep a roof over his loved ones'
heads. The loss of his job had been an unmanning experi
ence for him. Granted he wasn't a young man anymore, but Ben had a natural ebullience that belied his advanced years. That was missing now, consumed by doubt and self-pity.

Turning the flame down under the pot, she stepped in be
hind him, embraced him, and kissed him on the cheek. "I
love you," she assured him. "And Peter loves you. You're the
most responsible man I've ever known. You've been down
and out before, but somehow we survive." Not wishing to
dwell too long on maudlin concerns, she stood up and said, "Where is Peter, anyway? He's late."

At that moment the front door opened and then slammed.
Ben quickly turned the newspaper to the comic strips and
called heartily, "Here he is!"

"Just in time for dinner," May said. The roast she was
making in the oven was already giving off pleasing cooked
smells that were filling the kitchen. She dropped some pota
toes to be boiled into the water on the stovetop.

"How was the field trip?"

May's back was to Peter, but when he didn't respond
promptly, she turned and glanced at him. She was taken
aback by his wan look. It seemed as if he could barely
stand up.

"Don't feel well
. . .
I wanna go to sleep," he moaned
softly.

She immediately wanted to start making a fuss over him but knew how that made him feel, and every time she did it
he'd complain she was overreacting. So, keeping a lid on her natural impulses, she instead said with just a touch of disap
pointment, "You won't have a bite?"

For some reason he gave her the oddest look when she
said that. Then he shrugged and, heading for the stairs, said in what sounded like a bleakly amused tone, "No thanks ...
had a bite ..."

"Did you get some good pictures, Peter?" asked Ben.

But Peter was already at the stairs, trudging as if he had lead weights attached to his ankles. "Gotta crash ... every
thing's fine." And with that, he vanished. Moments later they
heard the slamming of his bedroom door.

Ben, his own concerns forgotten, turned with a mystified
air toward May. "What's that all about?" he asked.

May was already moving toward the base of the stairs,
but trying to sound nonchalant, she said, "He's a teenager."

"He's depressed," said Ben.

"He's a teenager," she told him again, as if that was all the
explanation that could possibly be needed. And perhaps it
was.

Ben paused, considering her explanation, but then said
firmly, "I better go up."

May was even more firm. "Stay put," she ordered. "He'll
let us know if he needs help."

"Help," Peter whispered.

He had spoken so softly that his voice didn't carry be
yond the confines of his bedroom. It wasn't that he was
being macho or trying to tough it out. At that point, he really
didn't have the strength to get up any volume.

Peter had dropped to his knees in his bedroom, clutching
his abdomen in pain. "Help," he gasped again. Writhing in
agony, he looked at the spot where the spider had bitten him.
It was completely red and swollen.

He'd been an idiot, a total idiot. Trying to save Aunt May
and Uncle Ben a few bucks on a doctor, when he'd obviously
been poisoned by that . . . that stupid, stupid spider. Well,
enough was already way too much. He was going to stand
up, throw open the door, call down to Aunt May and Uncle Ben that he was sick and they should haul him immediately
to the ER while alerting the toxicology and animal venom
unit—presuming there were such things—that they were
going to have a major case on their hands.

At least, that was what his mind was telling his body he was about to do. His body, however, wasn't the least bit in
terested in cooperating. Instead, just when he thought it
couldn't hurt any more, it got worse. His legs curled up into

a fetal position, and sweat was pouring off his body like a
sumo wrestler working a Stairmaster. The carpet beneath his
head was soaked with perspiration, and he was shaking un
controllably, extreme heat and lethal chills taking turns
pounding through his system. His teeth were chattering, and if he'd been able to make it to a mirror, he would have seen that his eyes were sunken, his face the color of vanilla pud
ding.

He made one final effort to stand, but it would have been impossible to tell by looking at him, because he didn't budge
from the floor. Instead he curled up even tighter, his arms
clutching around his legs, drawing his knees up to just under his chin. His eyes rolled up into the top of his head, and the
final jolt of pain was too overwhelming for him to handle.
With a final, low moan, he passed out dead away. Under his
lids, his eyes continued to flutter.

Tortured dreams cascaded through his mind, and
he was
climbing a strand of DNA, and suddenly the strand was
twisting around and back on him, and it broke down into strands of thin, gossamer consistency that were like fluttering threads from a spider's web. He struggled to break free of them, and then he saw a spider descending toward him,
except Flash's face was reflected in one of its eyes, and Mary
Jane's dad in another, and M. J. was standing to the side
with her friends, posing for pictures and laughing, and as
Peter screamed, his voice made no sound, no sound at
all . . . and there was a screeching in his head, like some
thing was trying to warn him of incredible danger.

And the spider was coming closer and closer, and it
seemed to be talking to him; he thought he could hear its
voice in his head . . . but most of what it was saying was in
comprehensible. Just two words echoed in his head . . .
great
power . . . great power
. . . all the things he'd wanted to do,
everything he'd ever wanted . . . popularity, and Mary Jane,
and wiping that smug look off Flash's face, all of it, his for

the taking, except he didn't want it, he just wanted to wake
up, wake up....

"Wake up! Peter, you'll be late for school!"

Peter snapped awake, blinking against the sunlight that
was pouring in through the window. For one delirious mo
ment, he thought that the sun had come out at night, and then
his mind settled down as he realized that, no, the night had
passed. And to his very great surprise, he had not woken up
dead.

Not only that, but the venom had obviously worked its
way through his system. He'd probably ... sweated it out
somehow.

"Peter," came Aunt May's voice a second time, and he heard her tentative footsteps on the stairs.

Peter's head snapped around as he saw that he'd more or less trashed his room in the throes of his pain and delirium.
Plus he was still wearing the clothes from the night before.
If Aunt May saw him like this, she'd probably panic and become convinced that he was desperately ill, just at the point
where he was feeling 100 percent better.

"I'm up! I'm up! I'm getting dressed!"

The steps paused, and then she said, sounding a bit re
lieved, "All right. Better move along."

"Right, right. Moving."

He stretched his legs tentatively. For a moment he felt
some tightness around the calves and, even more strange, a tingling around his toes. But those quickly disappeared and movement became unimpaired. He took several deep, ex
perimental breaths, and even took his own pulse. Everything
seemed fine.

And yet, it was a little odd. He felt as if he was a new in
habitant in his own body, learning his way around it like a
newborn.

He glanced over at the clock and saw that Aunt May had

been right: Time was wasting. Then he looked down and saw
that his glasses had fallen off, and felt mild surprise. With
his glasses on, his vision was 20/20, but without them,
things were a blur. Yet he'd been able to make out the digital
readout on the clock with no problem. He picked up his
glasses out of reflex and put them on his face as he stood ...

... and he knocked into a chair.

He staggered back, utterly confused, as the chair tumbled
around. Quickly he removed his glasses and looked down. Sure enough, there was the chair, big as life, perfectly clear
to his vision. But when he tentatively replaced his glasses on
his face, the chair blurred out as if he was looking through
the bottoms of a pair of soda bottles. On, off, on, off, he
tested the glasses repeatedly. There was no question about it:
Not only could he now see better with the glasses off, he
could see
perfectly
with the glasses off.

"Weird," he muttered.

He had completely soaked through the T-shirt he was wearing. Not even the standard teen tactic of sniffing the
armpits was going to salvage this one. He pulled the shirt off
over his head and, stripped to the waist, headed over to his
dresser, passing the full-length mirror on the wall.

Then he stepped back in front of the mirror, still bare-
chested, and gaped.

It wasn't his body. It was his head, all right, staring back
at him from the mirror, but somehow, for some reason, it
was sitting perched atop someone else's torso. It wasn't the
frame of a bodybuilder, not hugely overmuscled. But he was
definitely ripped. There was serious muscle definition, as if he'd been working out steadily for weeks on end. His stom
ach was hard and washboard flat, his gut in the muscle
cutout commonly referred to as a six-pack. His pectorals
weren't Schwarzenegger level, but they were impressive
nevertheless.