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The streets were finally quiet. No more buzzing, no more screaming, no more looks and accusations. He was able to finally breathe without anybody judging the way the air entered his lungs and left it. His senses didn’t spike up anymore at corners, hearing snaps and clicks from paparazzi, instead people barreled past him without a glance. Especially in this weather? This close to Christmas, nobody gave a damn, either trying to get away from the cold or scouring store after store for the perfect present.
He didn’t have to worry when somebody was talking to the phone while going past him, reporting him, sneering at him, unwelcomed comments. “Look its him!” “You won’t believe who I just walked past.” “Just saw him, can you believe it? That he did that.” “Fucker, he doesn’t know shit.” “I’ll get you a picture.” It was as if someone pulled a switch (someone did).
It felt weird the first time he went outside. For the past week everybody’s attention had been on him, positive or not, trying to take him apart, see inside his brain, find more and more and more and more and now… nothing. He didn’t even capture the attention of a six-year-old child walking down the street. Nobody observed him and the low humming at the back of his neck that had been pestering him ever since Mysterio…. Beck, was gone. Warning him since the day he had seen his face on every smart device existing in New York, on the globe. The day he was accused of murder. His hairs would have stood up at every glance thrown his away, at every whisper said behind his back and presence in a 3 feet radius.
The world had become the definition of danger, because that’s what everything kept screaming at him. His sense, his mind, his rationality, intrusive thoughts, the repetitive taps against his desk, his leg bouncing off the floor, the clicking of his pen, the clock on the wall, the creaks of the chair of the person beside him, in front of him, behind him. That’s what the water leaking down three halls told him. The hurried steps at his sight, the way people would part around him, the way people looked at him, the way people looked at it, looked at them, how people spoke to him, how people didn’t spoke to him.
It didn’t matter how many times MJ said they would be fine. When they got a second to themselves and they would burn the imagine of each other into their brains each time, one detail at a time. The corners of her mouth, the wrinkles around her eyes when she laughed, the warmth of her hands, the different shades of brown in her eyes. He would do it again and again and again, holding onto what little hope they’ve had, because the buzz at the base of his neck would growl danger, danger and anxiety would flow. Fear of someone ripping her away.
It didn’t matter outside their little bubble, not because it didn’t matter to him, but because it didn’t matter to everybody else. The world had already decided for them how he was seen in other people’s eyes. He had been deemed the outcast. Somebody you shouldn’t affiliate with, that you shouldn’t be seen with. A scapegoat. Shoulders bumping in the hallways wasn’t just that simple anymore, it was an accusation, a pointed finger. Teachers had stopped praising him in class, didn’t smile in approvement anymore, they stopped being a teacher for him altogether.
Spider-Man had swallowed him up, ripped his original identity away. The public wanted to see Spider-Man not him, not a student or a teen, but a vigilante, an article’s heading, today’s news, yesterday’s failure.
Not even his dear aunt May had been able to stop the buzzing around his head. Once her arms had been a refugee, a place he could run to hide from his problems for a fleeting second, where he felt safe and warm. However now he couldn’t do that anymore, he couldn’t disconnect the embrace from the person, he couldn’t call it a refugee, because it was May, his May. Hugs became laced with desperation and fear, a little bit more with every day that passed, because it wasn’t a place anymore, it wasn’t warmth and safety, but May who could ripped away. Another loved one who could disappear.
Her laughs and jokes, became things he could miss, things he could have to learn to live without. Like the bad food and the late take-outs. Her honesty and advice. Her strength. Her support. The hugs and the pats, questionable movies and weird documentaries. The space beside him on the couch. Her tangled hair in the morning and the pointed looks. Like her exasperated sighs, accompanied by a “Peter…” and calls around the house. Her searches for her glasses when they were clearly on top of her head. Her love. His mom.
Everything stopped. Everything became quiet. But no matter how quiet he couldn’t sleep tonight, so he didn’t. He paced his room fifty different times, measured its length in steps, meters, inches, centimeters. Did every geometry problem he remembered in his head four times. He whispered to the ceiling the periodic table, every theory he learned. Any piece of information he knew he spit out and when he wasn’t left with any, he would start counting the pieces of wood in the vinyl on the floor, the minutes between the sounds he heard from the outside in the middle of the night.
Counted everything he owned. Said the name of every object, in English and in Spanish and when he ran out of things to do, to count he would start again and again till the clock hit 05:03 and he couldn’t stand the suffocated air in the room anymore, couldn’t bear just laying still.
The streets weren’t empty, with people already leaving for their jobs, coming back from them, but not enough to fill the sidewalk or the roads, not nearly enough. The air was cold outside, cold inside his lungs. He started running, allowing himself this moment. He hadn’t been able to run before… without getting swarmed or yelled at. But now he could, he could. He started laughing, almost maniacally, because he could.
Things went back to before. To before when he could run away from Flash and his bullies, to before when he could run from his simple responsibilities, to when he could run from his thoughts. He became a nobody just like before. But before Peter Parker was a nobody. Peter Parker was the nobody, now he was simply nobody. The mystery of him disappeared along with him, along with everything he was. Everything that defined Peter Parker had been erased, so Peter Parker naturally became nothing. He was nothing. No one, and nobodies didn’t have rules or things to keep them back.
So, he ran away.
He ran away from the ratty apartment and the creaks of his mattress.
He ran away from the books and clothes from his unopened boxes.
He ran away from the dirty walls of the halls.
He ran away from MJ’s workplace.
He ran away from MJ’s voice, face and questions.
He ran away from his promise to her.
He ran away from the forgotten destruction.
He ran away from having to live without their presence, their laughs, their habits, their little splendid details.
He ran away from May’s still eyes, her pale face and neck. From the dust in her hair and from her blood on his hands. He ran away from his pleads to stop it, to drop the act. He ran away from his tears and grief. He ran away from the pain of the bullet imbedding itself in his shoulder as he cradled her face. From the pain of the bullet that was still there.
He ran from his attempts to fix it, to fix it, to fix it, to fix it.
He ran and he ran. He ran away from everything. He ran away from himself, from his identity, from his emotions that had been buried deep inside his chest and lungs. He ran till he burned on the inside, because he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe since a long time ago. He stopped breathing the moment May did.
So, he ran hoping he would burn entirely, hoping he could burn every last bit of oxygen in his body, so that he could stop this desperate attempt at surviving that wasn’t even his. May’s words echoed and shoved air down his lungs. “With great power comes great responsibility.” How was it that she forced him to live, but started the flame that burned him at the same time? He didn’t want to, so with the air she gave him he screamed himself raw.