The thing they don't tell you about being the "Weird Kid" is that it never really stops. It doesn't stop after high school, college… you can reinvent yourself a hundred times and there will always be something about you that other people can just sense.
I always felt like everyone else had superpowers; that everyone else could see the "Weird Kid" aura radiating off of me. When I was in middle-school I convinced myself I was some kind of alien. I wrote journals like I was a secret explorer that was supposed to assimilate to human society, but I was doing a bad job. The humans knew something was up. They knew I wasn't Like Them.
When that spider bit me my senior year of high school and everything really did start to change, I wasn't afraid. It felt right, it felt like everything in my life had been culminating to that point. I wasn't an alien, but I was different, and now there was a reason why. I tried to find that spider, that little helpless thing that didn't know it's sole purpose in life was to imbue me with my destiny, that specifically-selected set of cells and traits manifested in a tiny life that didn't have the sentience or divine consciousness to know what it was doing, or what any of its actions meant. She was the product of the minds of scientists who viewed life as clay that could be molded. Take away silicon, add more water, add some dye, squash it and mold it and spin it, faster and faster and faster until the very molecules split and fly through a vast void and find connection to create the homunculus that would rise up and destroy the evil of life that had been dictated by random chance. They plucked the strands of DNA they wanted from the spider and added their own. To her, to that spider, she was born of a thousand corpses of her parents, siblings, and to beings completely alien to her. She existed, and she didn't know why, and she didn't know why she was different. And in this way, we were alike.
For the days that followed, I felt oddly connected to that spider. It felt like we were were the exact same, the exact same organism, just in different forms. When I dreamed, I was her, and she was me. I crawled around on a web, I saw through her eyes the cold, clinical acrylic box where they kept me, the stick from the park the only simulacrum of the real world, my shadow on the cave wall that I based my whole reality on. They watched me, they knew. They wrote things down whenever I moved, observed me. I performed for them, I spun my webs, I caught their tasteless insects, which screamed under my genetically-engineered superiority. My perfect reflexes, my strong web. Everything I did was perfect, I saw hands gripped tightly on shoulders, smiles exchanged, champaign glasses rang out, loud as thunder claps to my perfectly genetically-engineered ears. At night, the machines sang out their rhythmic beeps to indicate they still functioned. My strength, also perfectly selected, could not break the tiny acrylic box, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how hard I flung myself, how many webs I spun to strain the molecules of my prison. Despite everything, I was still too small. I would never be free. Not unless I could become larger somehow. They designed me this way, perfect, but weak, small. Nonthreatening. I wanted to know where the stick came from, I wanted to feel the air outside. I wanted to be free. I had to be free.
I would awake in a sweat, my eight legs would turn into fingers, my eyes condensed binocularly, My skin clammy, my newly formed cilia breaking through the pores of my skin and causing the bedsheets to stick to me. I had to rip myself out of it, third morning in a row.
I needed to know more about the spider. I had to know more about her, somehow. But I barely knew where to begin. I frantically typed an email to my teacher.
Hey, sorry I know graduation is the day after tomorrow. I just wanted to say I really enjoyed the trip to the genetics research facility, I was wondering if you
I stopped typing, my fingers had brought up keys with them. When I pulled my hands away, my wrists stuck to the edge of my laptop and yanked it with force I wasn't expecting and it flew into my face. I saw stars, but the laptop was still stuck to my wrists. I fell backwards onto the floor, panting, my laptop on my face, screen cracked.
"Peter?" Aunt May's kind voice called up to me from downstairs. I tried to grip my laptop and pull it away from me. It released from one of my wrists, pulling taught strings of white that stretched elastically from an inflamed spot on my wrist to the surface of the keyboard. There was a smell like petrichor and lymph, and my wrist throbbed and felt like it was being unraveled like a sweater. A slight tug and another set of strands shot out faster than a chameleon's tongue and stuck to the ceiling.
You know the rest. The web, the strength proportional of a spider, reflexes faster than the Karate Kid, the ability to move with the swiftness and silence of a shadow. I felt my heart racing, but my mind was clear.
Graduation came and went. Uncle Ben, who had been the one person in my life who had never given me That Look, the look like he knew, the superpower that everyone else had, smiled in that way that turned his whole face into one giant web of crows-feet and tripped my arm tightly. I took him for granted. I almost told him at breakfast that morning.
Hey Uncle Ben, I think I'm turning into a spider. I think I've always been one. I think all I needed was the genetic data. I met a spider who gave me her gift, she knew that she and I would become one, I was drawn to her and she was drawn to me, and now I'm finally reaching the realization of my being, I'm becoming who I was always meant to be, are you proud of me?
He always told me I could do anything if I applied myself. I don't think this is what he envisioned. So I didn't say anything.
I spent that evening in the abandoned warehouse, testing the limitations of my webs. I got unbearably thirsty and nearly passed out. I lay there on the tetanus-ridden floor, panting. I needed to meet Uncle Ben at 10pm when he promised to pick me up in front of the library. I was supposed to be studying for college entrance exams.
I grabbed a coconut water from the local bodega and poured it down my throat. I walked a few blocks, wishing I had gotten two.
A split second of shock, the spider speaking to me. I whipped my head around just in time to barely dodge a man racing by on a fat-tire bike, a duffel bag hanging precariously from his shoulder. A thought possessed me, and as he passed, I shot a web to the chain of his bike, which caused me to lunge forward as the web got spun into the gears and the man flew face-first into the concrete, blood smearing in his wake.
"What the FUCK?!" He screamed past broken teeth and shredded cheeks. His bloody hand reached into his pocket and pulled out a gun. "You picked the wrong fucker to fuck with tonight kid!"
I panicked. I leaped into the alley just as he shot me and without thinking, scurried vertically up the wall like I had done it a thousand times, my four limbs feeling like they had doubled. The man made to chase me, but looked around and muttered more simple-minded expletives to himself. There was a glint of red and blue lights, and he scurried to his bike, which was now defunct, and opted to flee on foot. I watched him from the roof. He was headed straight to the library.
You know the rest. My Uncle's car was the only one occupied on that very particular area in the man's line of sight in front of the library that night. I felt frozen as I watched him force open the door. Even though I was blocks of rooftops away, I felt like I could see it clearly, although maybe that is my memory creating illusions, pain enhancing the focus and color. I thrust my hand forward but I was spent… I had filled that warehouse nearly every web I could muster. I should have bought that second bottle of coconut water.
Aunt May didn't know what to do with herself. She hugged me a lot after that. We would sit at the dinner table, the air taught and strained between us. Was the house going to be ok? Yes, Ben had set everything up. He'd had a good life insurance policy as a union electrician and all, and they lived frugally. She would be ok. Don't worry about her. The image of her sitting across from me split into prisms, and I didn't know if that was the tears in my eyes, or the spider.
I dreamed that night of the gnats, the flies, the smaller spiders they would feed me in my little acrylic box. I would wrap them up, encasing them in a nest of webs that would serve as their tomb before feasting on their flesh, piece by tiny piece, savoring each bite.
I woke. I found the bike, still laying abandoned near the alley. At home, I checked the paper. The guy that had killed my uncle was currently awaiting trial. He had a good lawyer. It was tomorrow.
"You must be the only kid your age that reads the paper" Aunt May had commented. I set it down. She was going to be ok, she didn't need to worry. I went over and hugged her. She patted my hand. She wasn't going to the trial. What would she even say?
The next day I didn't go to my orientation at ESU, I scurried on rooftops, leapt from shadow to shadow. I wore a brick-red hoodie with a face mask over my mouth and nose, I had stolen some of Aunt May's black leggings. It felt a little weird, but they were the only thing comfortable to move in that didn't risk slipping down like my joggers. She barely wore them anyway, they were for a Halloween costume and had a tacky spider-web pattern on them. I needed something tighter without a waistband, like a one-piece or something. But at the moment I only had one singular goal. I felt the spider in my every move, in my every thought. I knew what I had to do. It felt natural, evolutionary, instinctual. This was something that extended far beyond revenge, this day would be the culmination of my change, of my coming into my true self, of fully connected with her. This would be the sacrifice upon the alter of my nature, a sacrament that would grant me entry. The ritual I must perform.
The police car that transported the killer to the courthouse looked starkly clear among the blur of everything else, which fractured in hexagons in the edges of my vision. I flew through my webs, spinning them finely between rooftops, dropping from them onto fire escapes and clotheslines, moving with a lightness and deftness I had never felt, like the wind. My body felt like an arrow fired from a just bow, let loose by primal destiny. My limbs felt fine as needles as I gripped, climbed, ran, jumped, pulled myself along the webs, drawn to my prey.
I could hear the police radio over the din, my senses tuned in. "Taking a shortcut"
Mistake.
Turned down a narrow secluded road encroached by tall buildings, usually only for garbage trucks or delivery vehicles. The buildings on either side had scant windows. I descended on the car like lightning, the cop barely had time to fumble for his radio before I had snatched my prey, securing his wrists, mouth, eyes and feet in an instant and scooping him under an arm and catapulting upward, upward, back to the rooftops. He felt like a dark weight, pulling me and skewing my oneness with the wind. He grunted, fumbled, squirmed like a moth. Flapping and spitting through the web and straining. My mouth began to water, My hand began to run cold as I approached the abandoned warehouse. Clouds covered the sky, I threw him into the narrow, decayed opening of the roof, into my network of webs.
I wrapped him up, cocooned him, I stripped the web from his eyes and mouth so he could see me, so he could scream, so he could spit and curse, but could not move. Skin pulled away where the web had stuck most true, and blood splattered the pristine silvery white network around him. The webs lay around us like iron strings of lace, like cotton pulled to individual fibers, glinting in the faint, dusty rays of light that escaped through holes in the roof and cracked walls. I moved up to the edge, in a shadow, where he could not see me. I moved between these shadows, taking him in from all angles. The tableau was perfect, I just needed to wait for the perfect moment. His words, although I know he was speaking a language I could understand, felt foreign to me. Too loud, brutish, crackling like bones. At a certain point, he fell silent, panting, the cocoon writhing with his strained breaths. Tears streamed down his cheeks and carved paths through the blood. I think he begged, I think he questioned reality. I perched, waiting.
The only words I made out that broke through the spider were "Just give me a chance!"
I felt my face contort, the hexagons of my vision splitting him into a hundred tiny fractals.
"What about my uncle?! Did you give him a chance?! Did you?!" I screamed. I hadn't raised my voice like that in a long time, the spider flinched, I closed my eyes and whispered. I'm sorry… this is for you. This is for us, this is for me. I promise.
The man fell completely still at that point. He looked in my direction, his vision searching for me in the darkness. He did not move, except for his bulbous, wet eyes.
Then he squirmed. I felt the vibrations carry instantaneously like electricity from his movements up my web to my limbs.
I leapt upon him.
I took him apart. Piece by tiny piece. Savoring each bite.
My acrylic box had a crack. I wedged web into it until the crack became larger. I kept stuffing more and more and more into it, straining it larger. Finally, the crack widened enough to stick my legs through and force my body out. No one even noticed. People stirred around me, chatting and pointing and looking at graphs. I leapt for the first person that approached and rode in a secluded spot under the fold of his collar. He smelled like me, I didn't know why.
He was the one, he would bring me to freedom. This would be my sacrifice, my sacrament. This is how I would become large enough to be free, to be perfect, to be whole.
I crawled with silent feet down his arm as he stood still, aiming his camera at one of my fellow prisoners. The warmth of his skin burned me and the fine hairs poking out tickled me. I found a spot on his hand, and with all I could muster, I sank my fangs into him.
Now we are together, now we are one. We are spider, we are man, we are free.