Curse of Arachnaman

by Hayden Thorne

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  Torquere Press

  www.torquerepress.com

  Copyright ©2010 by Hayden Thorne

  First published in www.prizmbooks.com, 2010

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  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  * * * *

  Curse of Arachnaman

  by Hayden Thorne

  Chapter 1

  * * * *

  "I got you now, you vile fiend! Take that!” came the enraged shout. The voice, clear and young and vibrant, echoed through the dingy tunnels. A series of little popping sounds followed, like balloons exploding. Actually, they were balloons popping.

  "Vile fiend?"

  "I know. I amaze myself sometimes. Oh, oops. Sorry. My bad."

  "That helium monster was mine!"

  "Sorry. I got carried away."

  I sighed and shifted my weight because both of my arms had fallen asleep. It was uncomfortable as hell, lying on that cold floor, tied up and stretched out over old rail tracks. Or, rather, broken concrete bearing marks where old rail tracks used to be. At least the surface wasn't too bad against my body.

  What was worse was that my glasses kept inching down my nose because of the fact that, hello, I was lying on my side, completely helpless. The old subway tunnels were cold, with chilly blasts coming in through cracks and wherever else they managed to squeeze through. What sucked even more was that every once in a while, I'd get a whiff of something like Eau de Sewer, which made my stomach turn. I hoped that one of the superheroes would get to me soon before I threw up. That would be a real mess, seeing as how I was also gagged and couldn't manage anything more than a whimpering little “mmphrgh” every ten seconds. Oh, yeah, did I mention that I was also tied up? Like, both hands bound behind my back and both feet practically fused at the ankles?

  Did I also mention that I had only about three minutes left before the train would come around to run me over because, well, trains always threaten innocent kidnap victims of big, bad supervillains? I said “three minutes” because that was what the battered old alarm clock pretty much showed me the last time I looked at it as it stood a couple of feet away from my head.

  Charming.

  Another series of popping sounds broke through the hollow calm of the tunnels.

  "Aha! I got you now, you—"

  "Stop. You already said that."

  "Help me out here. I'm running out of virtuous things to say."

  "Just yell and sound really pissed off. That's enough."

  "Magnifiman always has the cool lines. I think we should come up with our own."

  I strained my eyes to catch the time. Did it say two minutes now? Jeebus. What a craptastic time for my glasses to shift and force me to use my one-step-up-from-blindness eyesight to check how much in danger I really was.

  "Mmphrgh! Mmphrghghhhh!” I squirmed in my bonds and tried to make as much noise as possible—as much noise as one could manage, anyway, with nothing but clothing against concrete to go by. If I'd had a titanium skull, I'd have started whacking my head against the ground to gain someone's attention, but I wasn't that lucky in my gene pool, so...

  "Ha! Take that! And that! And that! Want more? Do you? Fine! Eat this! And this! And this!"

  "Mine!"

  "Mine! Ha!"

  "Whoa, did you just try to singe my boobs?"

  "Sorry, Freddie. You were in the way. Mine!"

  It sounded like a Chinese New Year parade somewhere in the subway tunnels. All I could hear was a really fast succession of pops, sort of like firecrackers. The superheroes were mad as hell. They finally kicked up their game. It was about damn time, too.

  "Where is he? Do you see him?” The voices were much louder now. I could even hear distinct movement, but I still couldn't figure out where because the acoustics were pretty weird down there. If anything, they sounded a little creepy, being disembodied voices that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

  "No. Maybe he's in here."

  "How much time do we have?"

  I glanced at the clock. By that time, my glasses had completely fallen off my face and lain there, one temple crushed under the weight of my head. Great. I was dead.

  Brrrrriiiinnnnggggggg! The clock rattled from the force of its alarm. It was one of those cartoon clocks with the dorky happy face that jumped and danced around as it rang, and you squealed and threw soggy cereal at the TV while soaking your diapers. Yeah, like that. It was also so old and sad that I actually pinched my eyes shut and shrank away from it because I figured that it was this close to exploding from all that force.

  "There! He's there!"

  "Damn! We're too late!"

  I rolled my eyes. The clock continued to ring, and it was driving me nuts. I squirmed to see if I could use my nose to nudge my glasses back on, but all I could manage to do was to dislodge them some more so that they lay tilted, with the free temple raised, and my right eye barely peeking through what bit of prescription lens it could get nearest to. I felt like a total loser dork.

  Within seconds, one of the tunnels at the other side of the old platform came alive with three superheroes. There was first a series of loud pops that seemed to follow the tunnel's length because the noise grew louder. I flinched when the tunnel's mouth vomited torn rubber as the last collections of balloons exploded in the heroes’ wake. In flew Miss Pyro, Calais, and Spirit Wire, bits of balloon carcasses floating and swirling around them like colorful rubber confetti. They spotted me lying helpless on the railway tracks. Then again, only a blind man would've missed me. A blind man who was also deaf, that is.

  "Who's gonna save him?” Spirit Wire asked.

  "Pfft. Why even ask?” Miss Pyro snorted. She gave Calais a nudge. I think. It was a little hard trying to catch details with eyesight that had long since gone to hell. “Go on, boyfriend."

  Calais took all of a fraction of a second—I've yet to learn how to gauge his speed—to appear beside me, taking the alarm clock and shutting it down. Then he worked on my bonds, leaving my gag for last because he wanted to sneak in a kiss. Which he did. Too bad I was too annoyed and cramped to respond, so I just made like a limp doll that made a face at him while he got all Romeo on me.

  "Hey, is this what they call the gay agenda?” Spirit Wire called. “Gay boys indoctrinating two innocent, uber-straight girls with dirty same-sex kissing?"

  "What, are you feeling a little gay yet? No? Okay, let me kiss him some more and see what happens,” Calais yelled back. I thought I heard Miss Pyro snort and giggle.

  When Calais pulled away, I fumbled for my glasses and put them back on. “I'd have been dead by the time you got to me, you know.” I grunted as I pushed myself up to a sitting position. “You
guys are thirty seconds late or something. You wouldn't have seen anything left of me by the time you got here. Blood and guts and severed body parts all over? That'd be me.” Story of my life, really.

  "Sorry,” Calais said, grimacing as he sat back on his heels and rubbed the back of his neck. “We kind of got tangled up in balloons back there. I mean, literally. The Sentries doubled the obstacle course, and they actually made helium monsters that were a real bitch to destroy."

  "Really? From what I heard, you were all going back and forth over cool, superhero things to say when you beat the crap out of a thug. Whatever happened to just blowing them away first and then impressing them with kickass sayings afterward? You know, like, destroy first, ask questions later?"

  He jerked his head in the girls’ direction. “Talk to them about it. I've always been cool with just a shout or a scream."

  "Sorry, Eric,” Spirit Wire said, waving at me and flashing me a sheepish little grin. “I guess I got carried away."

  "No kidding,” I grumbled, taking Calais’ hand as he stood up and helped me to my feet. “Where's Freddie?"

  All three superheroes fell silent for a moment and exchanged looks. Did they just misplace one of their own? I blinked. “You lost him? What happened? Did he turn himself into a brick wall or something? I hope he didn't transform into a helium monster that you just shot at back there, or you'd have a lot of explaining to do to the Sentries.” Besides, he was still working on turning himself into Joshua Bell because he found out about my fanboy infatuation with the man, and I'd be damned if I were to let the other heroes accidentally kill off Freddie without him getting around to achieving that first.

  Miss Pyro spun around and looked back in the direction of the tunnel through which they'd just come, resting her hands on her hips as she stared. “Hey, Freddie? Is that you?” she called out.

  "Yeah, it's me. Hold on. I'm coming,” Freddie yelled back, his voice echoing. Actually, it wasn't his real voice, but we all knew that it was him. He was in disguise, so he really sounded like, well, whatever his disguise happened to be. From where I stood, I guessed that he'd turned himself into a woman. I wasn't exactly sure why he'd choose to be a woman in the face of extreme violence and bloody murder, but I guessed that he must've decided to be a warrior princess or queen or something. A really butt-kicking female, that is.

  Soon we heard footsteps, which grew louder and louder. Then Freddie appeared from the shadows in full disguise.

  "Sorry, man, I panicked and shifted to the wrong mask and, uh, I kinda got stuck. Don't worry, I'm working my way out of it,” he said with a sheepish little chuckle as he stood before us all as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.

  We all gaped at him. Spirit Wire was the first one to find her voice. “Dude. How do you expect to fight an army of killing machines as Elvira? Scratch their eyes out with your nails?” She paused. “Hey, are those press-ons? They look pretty cool."

  Elvira-Freddie cleared her throat. Better to stick to the gender of the disguise and avoid letting the confusion mess me up any more than it already had. “I was practicing speed-masking. You know, switching disguises pretty fast? I've been getting better at it, but I think I switched too fast, too many times. I was doing pretty good as Lara Croft, but Miss Pyro tried to burn my boobs, so I tried to change fast to something else, and...” She shrugged and pointed at herself. “I guess if we were still fighting helium monsters out there, the chances of my boobs getting roasted by fireballs would've been higher with this disguise.” She glanced down to stare at her chest.

  "You short-circuited? Sort of like a computer freezing up when you open and close too many browser windows or something?” I asked. Calais turned to me.

  "How old is your computer?” he asked. He looked genuinely surprised behind his half-mask. I narrowed my eyes at him.

  "Not everyone can afford state-of-the-art technology, you know. Okay, the point is that you guys let me die, hypothetically and all that,” I said, turning back to them. “I heard you getting all worked up over catchphrases and all those things, while I lay there, all tied up and drooling behind my gag, breathing in sewer air and praying like hell that no mutant rats came out of their hidey-holes to eat me alive."

  "We were slowed down,” Calais admitted, glancing at the others. “We really need to work more on speed and efficiency when it comes to search and rescue missions."

  I raised my hand. “Question—can I be paid for my services as fake innocent victim? It's not that easy getting all tied up and left on dirty concrete, waiting for superheroes to come around and pretend like they're rescuing me."

  "Oh, think of it as your contribution to the greater good of Vintage City, Eric,” Miss Pyro chirped, flashing me a perky smile. “You know that we still need to work on our skills even after we advance in our powers."

  "Yeah, but....” I sighed and turned to stare helplessly at Calais, who gave me that look. I really can't describe it beyond “smoldering.” It was this hot, sexy stare that you can only achieve when wearing a superhero's half-mask. Goddamn, I wanted to do him right then and there. “Never mind. Feel free to tie me up and abuse me whenever you need to."

  "Cool. Thanks, Eric. You're a real sport."

  I looked back at Miss Pyro. “Real sport, my ass. I was talking to Calais about getting tied up and abused. As for being everyone's practice victim, I demand a written contract with all kinds of clauses that make sure I'm taken care of. I mean, can I at least have some kind of cushion to lie down on? And why do I have to be tied up and gagged every time?"

  "Because I enjoy doing it,” Calais murmured, his smile kooky and lopsided. Oh, baby.

  My face warmed up. “Dayum. Dress the guy in super-tight spandex, and he morphs from sweet geek to animalistic sex machine. Okay, you're forgiven."

  Spirit Wire clucked. “Man, you're sure bitchy for an innocent victim."

  Everyone fell silent when a deep, familiar, very masculine voice spoke from out of the blue. “All right, everyone. That was pretty bad. You're letting yourselves get distracted by trivial things and the fact that this is only a search-and-rescue practice mission. When we regroup tonight, we'll have to go over details with Dr. Dibbs before we head on out to the mean streets of Vintage,” Magnifiman declared. His speech was fluid, his manner confident. He was simply Mr. Perfect, which I really didn't want to say in front of Calais because of the usual brotherly dynamics between them when in superhero mode. Heaven knew, Calais already put up with so much stuff about his older brother's intimidating list of virtues everywhere he turned.

  "Does that mean that we have to get together an hour early?” Miss Pyro asked.

  "Yes, Miss Pyro. It's necessary to clear things up before tackling our next mission. Are there any other questions?"

  I cleared my throat. “Yeah,” I replied, raising my voice. “Can I get paid for being the repeat victim in these practice runs? It's not easy, you know, getting tied up or stuffed inside something, while everyone figures out what catchphrases to use when destroying people."

  I stared at the old speakers that were mounted against one of the half-crumbling walls. The Sentries had set up several of those things up and down the subway tunnels for these practice missions, and Magnifiman and Dr. Dibbs always used them to communicate their observations of everyone's performance. There were cameras set up, too, that monitored the heroes’ progress, and I'm sure that behind the scenes, all kinds of fancy gizmos and gadgets were all at Magnifiman's disposal. I was never shown what went on behind the scenes, naturally, seeing as how it was all, you know, classified information and stuff like that.

  For a few seconds, Magnifiman was quiet. “Okay, are there any other questions?” he asked.

  I sighed, my shoulders drooping. “I'll have to take this up with my union,” I said. Of course, I just needed to form one.

  "Very well, then. We'll meet at the usual powwow time and place later. Oh, and Calais? Mom wants to know what you want for dinner, so be sure to give her a call ASAP. Magnifiman, over
and out.” Then the speakers went dead.

  Mom. Magnifiman said “Mom.” Well, wasn't that just the cutest thing ever? I glanced at Calais and grinned. He pointedly ignored me as he squared his shoulders back, lifting his chin, and pretty much did all he could to look extremely blase and macho about it. Yeah, every once in a while, there'd be this little slip between the two brothers about family-related matters, which always embarrassed Calais. It was sort of like when you showed up at your kid's school with a big, pink bouffant because you'd had an accident with your hair color the night before. Calais’ level of embarrassment tended to be somewhere in that part of the Teenage Humiliation Spectrum. So no matter what he did, putting on a show of manly indifference, the blush that always crept up from his neck onto his face always took the wind out of his sails. I guess it didn't help during that moment that everyone else was grinning at him.

  "Okay, everyone, you heard the man,” Spirit Wire said, finally. “Let's go and get ready for today's powwow.” She paused when her stomach let out this gurgling, bubbling sound. “Well, not until after we grab a bite to eat. I'm starving."

  "I haven't had pizza in a while,” Freddie, who'd transformed into Oscar the Grouch, said. He glanced down at his green, stumpy, shag carpet-like furry body, clucking and shaking his head. “Oh, Christ..."

  "I'm game,” Miss Pyro chirped. “We can go to my favorite unpopular pizzeria. It's not too far from here. We can all walk there. I promise, it's not froufrou."

  It was agreed, and so the little gang of superheroes changed back into their “normal” forms. Incidentally, it was always a good thing to be in the company of only one superhero during the transformation process because each of them had his or her own “poof-voila!” method, and when they all changed at the same time? It was like total brain meltdown. In fact, I'd call that my own personal psychedelic moment without the drugs.

  I had to pinch my eyes shut while flailing and crying out because Miss Pyro exploded in a blinding burst of fire, Calais melted into a pillar of swirling, twisting haze, Spirit Wire literally flickered black and white, sort of like a TV screen going crazy, and Freddie—who continued to escape Bambi Bailey's notice, so he still didn't have a superhero alias; he was the lucky one, I guess—"melted” from one form to another. Weird, but his transformation had evolved, from what I saw. Before, when the Trill was still alive, he just vanished behind a burst of white light, but I guess that with his powers gathering strength and complexity, his transformation method also morphed along with his, well, powers of morphing.