Man and Spider-Man

I took two tabs of E at a party in Wheeling. They were small, hard, and blue, and looked much like pills I have enjoyed before. They were not them. The little blues were liberally laced with coke or acid. We danced, Martha and I, and I felt an itch in my right hand. That’s where it started. I noticed webbing between my fingers, not a vestigial duck webbing, but like a spider’s web. Martha danced away, sucked into the crowd, as I hyperventilated. Little Moosie asked if I was OK. I fingered my palms, fat with an inflated gland and said, “Webs.”

The webbing splurged from my wrist, thick gray gobs almost hit Moosie’s shoulder. She sucked deep on a sour apple Blow Pop and let it rattle off her teeth. “Ha,” she chortled

I shot string after string, it hurt but kind of felt good like a burnt cherry on my wrist. I swung from the ceiling and felt the breeze lick my scalp. Thwip and swing. Thwip and swing. The weight of my entire body all on my right arm, both cracked my shoulder and burned my armpit. Then there was that moment of weightlessness, that moment with no web at the apex of the swing, just you and the air and the criminal elements below.

“Just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man,” I shouted.

I swung from wall to wall, clung for a second, the heavy bass of the techno beat vibrated my fingertips. Martha was deep in a crowd of Green Goblins, surrounded by rubber smiles and her red hair thrashed from side to side. A look of kidnapped joy on her face. Did she want the Goblins? Did she need the Goblins’ pumpkin bombs pressed up against her?

Before I could swing down and reign my spider fury, I noticed Moosie dancing like an Egyptian, all arms and hips, and arms and arms. Moosie wasn’t so much a moose, named for her thick hips and dark mascara, but an octopus with metallic tentacles. I squeezed and scurried through the first wave of tentacles, but the fourth hit my face hard. No Spider Sense sizzled, just stars and blackness. My nose was bleeding and I choked.

Doc Moosie said, “Sorry, I think I got you with my bangle… INSECT.”

We fought. I dodged, I ducked. We danced. I dodged, I ducked. Then we kissed. Doc Ock’s thick German lips were cold, but became tender. I could still taste the apple and failed fission experiment that left him a wreck of a man. Moosie’s tentacles wrapped around me, not hard clutches, but eight soft strokes, and my Spider Sense finally tingled up and down my body.

Martha shouted, “What the fuck!?”

There was blood on my chest and blood on Moosie’s large cleavage. I wanted to tell Martha about the ceiling and the webs. About great responsibilities. Instead I aimed my wrist, cross haired at her furrowed brow, and said, “Thwip, pwip, pwip.”

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