Read Curse of Arachnaman Online
Authors: Hayden Thorne
Eventually I picked up where I left off, wandering around again without any purpose or direction and feeling more and more bored by the minute. I stopped in front of a small electronic store, blandly staring at their computer display. They had a little group of used computer monitors and keyboards sitting on a display table in front of the shop door, and for one crazy moment, I toyed around with the idea that I might need a new used computer for my room.
Then all the computer screens suddenly flared to life, flashing a bright white, pulsing a few times, before growing dark again. Then text appeared across them, marching from end to end. Oh, great.
Bingo night's upon us!
they screamed at me in flashing colors.
I'll call you when Doomsday comes. Dude, I'm already breaking out in hives. Good to know that I get share the trauma with a buddy.
I'd been so bored out of my mind that I'd lost track of time. Apparently school was done for the day. I rolled my eyes and gave the computers the middle finger.
I might not be able to see you, but I can feel your vibes. Because, you know, I'm just a really sensitive young lady.
I gave Althea a double middle finger dose with both hands.
Smartass.
Oh, this was getting way fun. I could just
feel
her working hard to break right through the screens and push out her electricity-lights-colors-digital-whatthehellever hands, and strangle me. Were the computer monitors actually shaking from her efforts? Ha-ha! But she had to behave herself, obviously, so no one would know she'd possessed those things.
"Shouldn't you be hunting criminals or something, not harassing best friends over bingo night?” I said, exaggerating the way my mouth moved in case she couldn't hear me from those old monitors. One can never tell with these superheroes. I was also in the mood to annoy the living daylights out of her.
Yanno, when I said I can sense your vibes, I wasn't messing around. Stop making all those faces when you talk. You're so weird. And you know I can hear you.
"Wow. Pot and kettle,” I snorted.
A certain superhero wants me to tell you that if I catch you loitering around downtown at around this time, I have to play Mommy and tell you to haul your ass back home. It's too dangerous for you to be out here. So...haul your ass back home, mister. Or so help me, you're grounded for a month.
I made a face. “Quit babying me. God, you guys are worse than Mom."
Well, you're not supposed to go east of the main square. There's trouble brewing. That's why we're all out, and you really shouldn't be. Now scram. Or I'll have to use my power cables and play giant slingshot with you.
Aha—superhero action time. “I don't have plans of window-shopping in that direction. Lay off."
Dude. Watch your back.
"Oh, yeah, what're you gonna do? Take over someone's cell phone and ring me to death?” I snorted.
I said, watch your back!
I shook my head, chuckling. “Whatever, Horace,” I said, waving a hand at the computers and turning away.
"Watch out!” someone yelled.
I barely noticed something large and flying—more like tumbling crazily through the air as it dropped from the sky. It wasn't coming in my direction, but it was about to crush the area where the founder's statue was, which also included a bunch of benches packed with people enjoying the sunny afternoon.
"Oh no! Look out!"
"Run!"
It was all I could do to gasp and reflexively dive for cover, though there wasn't any cover for me to dive to. I just rolled over the ground in front of the electronics store and then balled myself on the pavement as I pressed against a wall. Around me people yelped and ran, most diving for cover.
"Oh, my God!"
I pinched my eyes shut and waited for a loud thud or a sickening crunch, but nothing happened. People still yelled and ran, and I heard a few trip and stumble, but whatever had been falling a few seconds ago didn't make any noise.
"What happened? What's going on?"
"Did you see that?"
"What? What is it?"
"I don't know!"
I opened my eyes and turned in the direction of the main square. It was a small sports car that had flown down on us. It was obviously picked up and then thrown from another point, but I didn't know who did it or how. Actually, I didn't care. What mattered at that moment was the fact that the car hadn't crushed anyone in the square. How could it?
A force field had formed above the area, a giant bubble that I could barely make out. It was a massive dome that cocooned the people who hung around the founder's statue, and resting on its highest part was the car. It lay on its side, not moving.
"Look!” someone called out, and the familiar whooshing sound reached my ears.
Magnifiman swooped down and picked up the car, flying away with it. I was sure that he'd be back within a few seconds. In the meantime, everyone stood around and gaped at the force field, none daring to move forward and inspect it. Those who were inside eyed it in shock, and they looked just as frozen as everyone else outside.
A low series of firecracker-like sounds broke through the confusion, but there weren't any signs of the Puppet's mannequins anywhere. I looked around, poised for flight. No, no one was around, shooting at people in the square. It could only mean that the noise came from the eastern part of the city, where Althea warned me against.
Another sound grew louder, a familiar one that always made me catch my breath in anticipation. I looked up in time to catch Calais and Miss Pyro sailing above us, following Magnifiman's trail. I loved the little flame bits that Miss Pyro always left in her wake. They marked her progress with tiny dancing little fires that eventually faded and left nothing but faint black smoke.
Then the force field slowly vanished, its near-invisible domed silhouette fading gradually till nothing was left. Pretty soon people were moving again, walking cautiously forward and reaching out to feel around. Apparently the force field was completely gone by then. Everyone started talking at the same time, voices raised in shock and amazement.
I looked around me and found nothing out of the ordinary. No one looked as though he or she was responsible for either the car-throwing or the force field.
I hurried back to the electronics store display table and knocked on one of the computer monitors. All the screens were black, occasionally crackling with white light.
"Althea!"
I told you to go home, didn't I? You're grounded for a month.
"Did you see that?” I asked.
No, but I knew what was coming. Why do you think I warned you? Heads up. I'm going offline—sort of. It's action time.
"I was talking about the force field, not the car, dummy!” I said, raising my voice and knocking on the computer monitor again. “Hey, are you still there? Can you hear me?” I kept knocking till my knuckles felt a little raw.
"Ahem."
I gave a start and looked around. A guy had walked up to me and probably heard me talking to a computer display. He stared at me with that familiar WTF look, his lower lip hanging open.
"What're you looking at?” I retorted, adjusting my bag and walking off. Man. Some people could be pretty weird.
I think my whole family spent the rest of the day glued to the TV. Even Mom didn't pitch a fit when Dad said that he needed to watch the news. We ended up carrying dinner trays to the living room, finding our favorite spots, and watching Bambi Bailey tell us how much Vintage City sucked because of its out-of-control supervillain problems, while looking like a Hollywood star on the red carpet.
Ms. Bailey, bless her, must've gotten some kind of flack from her bosses or something over her TV reporter glam thing. She'd toned down her outfits and recently had taken to more sedate business suits, which impressed me at first till that fateful moment a couple of nights ago, when the camera made the mistake of including her in the shot when it panned out for a wide-angle type of view of the crime scene. We all saw her wearing the shortest, tightest little skirt that could ever be worn by a woman. You know, the kind of micro-mini power suits that only prime time lawyers on TV could wear and make everyone believe that
all
professionals looked like that. Yeah, right.
How she managed to move around without getting arrested or psychologically knocked up was beyond me. I was sure, though, that after the news report, all the straight men in the city had to lie back, light cigarettes, and drawl, “Baby, I hope that was as good for you as it was for me."
It was also pretty clear that she didn't like the idea of dumping her jewelry, but it did shrink. At least she stopped wearing those mini chandeliers on her ears. Her makeup also went a little more neutral, which bummed me out because Liz and I were deprived our “Where's Waldo” moment regarding her forever-moving fake beauty mark.
I could only conclude that since her obvious femme-fatale thing hadn't enticed Magnifiman, she probably thought that there was something to being a little more, you know, subtle about physical beauty in snagging a man. In addition to getting chewed out by her boss, I suppose. Okay, maybe that thing about her super-short, super-tight skirt was one of those “maybe he's a leg man” types of siren call; props to her for using every trick in the book. Too bad she just didn't seem to be willing to admit that maybe Magnifiman was plain not interested in mixing business with pleasure. Or that he was so seriously stuck to his job that any attachment he might have to a woman would go up in flames within half a day.
"Today's incident is a clear warning sign,” she declared, looking all grim and subtly glam. She even furrowed her brows a little. “This new threat, this new supervillain, Arachnaman, is much more powerful than both the Shadow Puppet and the Deathtrap Debutantes combined. With an army of mechanical spiders he can unleash at any time, he can attack several locations at once, unlike the Shadow Puppet's killer mannequins, which are fewer, slower, and tend to move around in smaller groups."
Sergeant Vitus Bone of the Vintage City Police Department had been interviewed earlier, and the camera cut to that for a moment. “Our new threat so far—
cough!
—has attacked an arcade, an adult store—
hrrrum!
—a new age shop, and today, a German car dealer,” he said, sagging, pouchy cheeks trembling from his perpetual coughing fit. “He'd also destroyed four other different businesses and a Chinese apartment building. We're working with the superheroes in piecing together—
hrrrum!
—this latest puzzle."
"So do you think that there's a method to his madness, sir?” Ms. Bailey prodded. I thought I saw the way she eyed the good sergeant, like she was all worried about whether or not she was going to catch his disease. In fact, now that I think about it, she tended to lean away whenever she had to interview him.
"Yes, yes, there is.
Cough!
There's always a purpose for these madmen's attacks, Ms. Bailey—
cough!
—even if it's as simple as mindless vanity and an abnormal appetite for bling, like you see from the Deathtrap Debutantes."
Ms. Bailey leaned away a little more till it looked like she was suffering from some horribly debilitating back pain. I wanted to give her a cane for Christmas. “And what do you think is this new villain's purpose, sir?” She was beginning to grimace from the effort, too.
"Ah—
hrrrum!
—that's all classified information, Ms. Bailey.
Cough!
"
"Oh. And you don't think it's simply because this new threat is hopelessly repressed?"
The interview was terminated when Sergeant Bone gave Ms. Bailey this look, one that I frankly couldn't describe other than “Lay off the bong, lady."
The news then returned to the present live reporting. “We haven't had an opportunity to interview any of the superheroes..."
"Especially Magnifiman,” I muttered, stuffing my mouth with a roll.
"...especially Magnifiman,” Ms. Bailey reported, pausing for the smallest fraction of a second to steal a glance at the sky. “We've yet to find out what they've learned about—"
Ms. Bailey paused when a voice, most likely from the news crew, interrupted her reporting. She turned in surprise when a hand appeared from behind the camera. It held up a scrap of paper. She took it and read its contents, blinking and looking a little confused. But she was a seasoned professional and was able to compose herself in another second.
Looking straight at the camera, she said, “Apparently, we've just received a response via Twitter. This is regarding our earlier interview of Sergeant Bone.” She cleared her throat and read. “'We're like kicking your ass when we come back, bitches.’ That was, uh, @DeathDebs. You know who they are."
Another hand, or maybe the same one, appeared with another scrap of paper. Ms. Bailey sighed, tossed aside the Debutantes’ threatening tweet, and plucked out the new message. “This one says, ‘Ur hairstyle is like
so
2008.'” Ms. Bailey rolled her eyes and crumpled the note into a ball. “For Channel 3 News, this is Bambi Bailey reporting."
Even with school still in session and Peter being stuck doing superhero work part-time, I considered myself pretty damned lucky to be going steady with him. He didn't have to work-work, that is, because his parents wanted him to focus on school. Well, not until he turned eighteen, he told me, because he was determined to strike out on his own, though he was still tied to Vintage City as a superhero.
"I had all these plans for college and stuff, but I don't know,” he said one time, shrugging. “When life throws you a curveball..."
"Maybe your powers have an expiration date, and when that comes, we can just pack up and move away from this dump,” I offered, but he only laughed and then distracted me by unzipping my jeans.
I told him that I'd take any opportunity that came my way, so long as we were able to spend as much time together as possible. I also dug the fact that his future plans helped shape mine. I didn't want to think about how my parents would react to “I decided to stay put, and I'll think about college later on.” A PhD was too abstract a goal, anyway, for someone my age. I figured Mom and Dad would eventually come around to it, but in the meantime, best to just shut up and wait and hope that a local junior college would suffice. Okay, it seemed to work for Liz, so I didn't see anything wrong about my following in her footsteps.