Spiderman 1 (22 page)

Sighing, knowing that she wasn't going to disappear any
time soon, but not wanting to give in to the unspoken pres
sure to change channels, Ben said, "That's Bone Saw
McGraw."

"Oh. I wonder if that's his given name."

"No, May, his birth name was Bone Saw Liebowitz, but
he wanted to avoid possible anti-Semitism."

"My," she sniffed,
"'someone
is in a mood."

Bone Saw McGraw, possibly nee Liebowitz, was in the
process of dispatching an unfortunate-looking fellow
dressed in a clown suit. Bone Saw hurled the clown into the ropes, which sent him careening back into the middle of the
ring. For the coup de grace, Bone Saw then picked the clown
up bodily and tossed him into the stands.

The crowd went insane with enthusiasm as McGraw
roared with rage.

"How brutal," said May.

"It's rehearsed, May. It's ... it's like a big show," Ben assured her. "It's all fake."

It was obvious that someone in the audience concurred
with Ben, because a fan standing a couple of rows back from the ring shouted, "Hey, Bone Saw! You big fake! You suck!"
And he kept shouting it, over and over. The camera zoomed
in on him, the TV screen filling up with his sneering face.

Abruptly the contempt in his expression disappeared, to be replaced by panic Laurence Olivier wouldn't have been
able to fake on his best day. The TV camera whipped around
and focused on the infuriated Bone Saw as he lurched
toward the fan. People, trainers, the referee, a guy with earphones, were all trying to hold him back, and he was shak
ing them off as if they didn't exist.

The camera stayed with him as he caught the heckler,
who was just trying to make a break for it. Bone Saw swung
him around, leered with a distinct lack of sympathy into the heckler's face, and hit him just once. The heckler's nose be
came a geyser of blood and he let out a shriek as he col
lapsed to the floor.

Bone Saw then grabbed up the heckler's folding chair,
waved it over his head like a trophy, and bellowed into the
camera,
"Fake my ass!"
He turned and stormed back toward
the ring, pausing just long enough to notice that the fallen
clown was trying to crawl away. He smashed the folded chair
over the clown's head before climbing back into the ring.

Slowly Aunt May turned and fixed a gaze on a speechless
Uncle Ben.

"That man," she opined, "has some
serious
issues."

Hidden from view by a black scrim, which in turn hung behind a large curtain, Peter was trying not to panic.

He was starting to get a feeling for what it was like for the
Roman gladiators when they were about to be marched into
the center of the Coliseum. Hearing all those spectators howling for blood—their blood—would have undermined
the most experienced and confident of warriors. And Peter
didn't have a lot going for him in either category.

He heard the ring announcer shout, "Are you ready for
more?" And, when he apparently wasn't satisfied by the au
dience's shouts of bloodlust, he bellowed even louder, "I
said, are you ready for more?!"

The crowd gave him what he wanted.
"More, more,
more!"
they shouted, over and over, stomping their feet
rhythmically until the whole place was shaking. Peter started
to wonder if the arena was going to collapse, rendering this
entire harebrained stunt completely moot. He noticed a
monitor mounted nearby that had the ring on the screen.
Bone Saw was sitting on a stool in the corner, where he was being tended to by his bikini-clad ring maidens who were
collectively known as the Bonettes. They were sponging him
off, giving him water, massaging him.

He sat there with a smug expression on his face that re
minded Peter of Flash Thompson, and the fear within Peter
began to burn away, to be replaced by an overwhelming de
sire to smash that grin into the ground.

Bone Saw, apparently having had enough pampering,
rose and started flexing. The crowd went nuts. Peter rolled his eyes. "Bone Saw's ready!" the wrestler announced, his
voice so loud that it carried even over the barely controlled
pandemonium of the spectators. Then the image on the
screen changed, and the announcer reappeared.

"Will the next victim please enter the ring at this time!"
he called dramatically. Then he was gone again from the TV
monitor, and Peter realized it meant he was heading up the
ramp toward the curtain. He was, however, momentarily dis
tracted when he saw two girls on the screen, with breasts the
size of ham hocks. They—the girls, not the breasts—were
marching around the ring with a banner reading 3:00
for
$3000.

Then the announcer finished his trek and ended up stand
ing just outside the curtain as he continued, "If he can with
stand just three minutes in the cage with Bone Saw McGraw,
the sum of three thousand dollars will be paid to ..." Then
he peeked around the curtain, cupping his hand over the
mike for some momentary privacy, staring at Peter with

open skepticism. "The Human Spider? That's it? That's the best you got?"

Peter, already feeling uncomfortable, graduated to ridicu
lous. "Yeah."

Making an annoyed huffing sound, the announcer said,
"Nah. You gotta jazz it up a little." Then, without hesitation,
he started speaking into the mike again, continuing as if he hadn't left off."... the sum of three thousand dollars will be
paid to ..."

The curtain started to open. Peter took a deep breath,
steadying himself, trying to calm his pounding heart.

"... the terrifying . . . the deadly . . .
the amazing . . .
Spider-Man!"

The black scrim, which had been revealed by the curtain,
rose perfectly on cue, and Peter Parker didn't feel the least
bit terrifying, nor deadly, and certainly not amazing. When
the crowd's reaction combined laughter with . . . well . . .
more laughter . . . what he felt was still, quite simply, ridicu
lous.

Uncle Ben guffawed at the sight. "Big overture, little
show," he snorted.

Bone Saw's challenger apparently was nothing more than
some undersized idiot dressed in blue sweatpants, a red
sweatshirt with a spidery design on it, and ...

"What's that stretchy hat thing he's wearing?" asked Ben.
It looked like some sort of hooded garment, covering his neck, face, and head. Only his eyes and the bridge of his
nose were visible.

"It's a balaclava," May told him promptly. "You remem
ber. I gave Peter one for his fourteenth birthday. Looks a bit like that one, actually. Maybe his mother gave it to him."

"Well, she didn't do him any favors, that's for sure. 'My
mother dressed me funny.' There's a battle cry for you.
Humph.

Wrestlers who dress like teenagers. Pitiful. Pitiful. Gorgeous George, now
there
was a wrestler with fashion sense."

Aunt May looked at Ben with an arched eyebrow. "I'm starting to worry about you, Ben. I really am."

The challenger, meantime, didn't seem pleased with his
introduction. "That's 'The Human Spider,' " he said.

"Get out there, dipstick," said the ring announcer, who
apparently didn't realize the microphone was on.

The masked figure walked slowly toward the ring, look
ing right and left, clearly overwhelmed by what he was see
ing. The Bonettes were waiting for him on the ramp, like a
pack of hungry wolves. They mercilessly heckled him as he went, made as if they were feeling his muscles and yawning
while doing so. They taunted him and berated him, and as
they did so they egged on the crowd to join them, and the
crowd did so with gusto.

The clown contestant was wheeled by, and the camera's
microphone picked him up saying, "I can't feel my legs ...
I can't feel my legs ..."

"Oh, Ben, enough is enough. Turn this off. It's
grotesque."

"I know, I know, but . . . damn," and Ben shook his head,
"I can't help but feel sorry for the poor guy. Maybe I'm hop
ing a miracle will happen."

"What, that he'll have the sense to turn and run? I
wouldn't count on it," said May.

The challenger, meantime, had crawled into the ring with
McGraw and was looking around in bewilderment as the
chant "Cage! Cage! Cage!" arose from the crowd. Obvi
ously he didn't know what was about to happen. It made Ben
pity him all the more.

Abruptly, from overhead, a flat structure with metal bars
appeared. The challenger stepped back in surprise as the
cage dropped down around him and hit the padded floor of the ring with a muffled thump.

"Will the guards please lock the cage doors!" came the
voice of the ring announcer, and stagehands promptly
wrapped huge metal chains around the corners of the cage, locking the combatants in.

The challenger was yanking at the bars when Bone Saw,
who was standing in the middle of the ring, caught his at
tention. "Freak show!" bellowed Bone Saw, and the crowd roared its approval. "You're going nowhere! I've got you for
three minutes. Three minutes of playing with Bone Saw!"

Ben stared at the TV screen. "He's going to get his head
handed to him," he said, realizing the inevitable.

"It's horrible. Just horrible," said Aunt May. "Suicidal,
even. You have to wonder the kind of home life someone like
that would come from, to put himself into a situation where
he'll likely get himself killed. That costume, this insane
stunt . . . I'm telling you, Ben, this is a cry for help."

"Help," muttered Peter beneath his balaclava as he flat
tened himself against the bars. "What am I doing here?"

Bone Saw didn't waste any time. Maybe he just loved giving the crowd what it wanted. Maybe he had a hot date
and wanted to get out quickly. Whatever the reason, he came
in fast and hard, straight at Peter.

Peter leapt upward and Bone Saw crashed into the cage
wall with teeth-rattling force. He had been so confident that
Peter wouldn't be able to get out of the way that he had fully
committed himself to the charge. Consequently he hit the cage walls so hard that he actually bounced off and crum
bled to the ground. His vision swam and he had to shake off
the impact, even as he stared stupidly at the bars in a vaguely
accusatory fashion.