Mark had always feared spiders. It was an irony not lost on him that the bite, the one that gifted him with impossible strength and the ability to cling to walls, had come from one. For weeks, he reveled in the power. But the city’s gratitude was fickle, and the nights grew longer.
It started subtly. The skittering in the walls wasn’t just rats. In the periphery of his heightened senses, he saw them—shadows with too many legs, scuttling just out of sight. He’d wake with a start, convinced silken threads were binding his limbs. His own webbing, once a tool of justice, now felt alien, a secretion from a body he no longer fully controlled.
One rain-slicked night, perched on a gargoyle, he saw his reflection in a office tower’s window. It wasn't his face staring back. A monstrous, multi-eyed visage, mandibles twitching, was superimposed over his own. He scrambled back, his heart a trapped bird. The city’s lights below blurred into a vast, sticky web, and he was not the hunter, but the fly.
The final horror came in the silence of his apartment. A single, fat spider descended on a glistening thread before him. It did not move. It simply watched. And in that tiny, black gaze, Mark saw the terrible truth. The power wasn’t a gift. It was an infestation. He wasn't becoming a hero. He was becoming a nest. His skin crawled with a million phantom legs, and for the first time, he prayed his web would fail, sending him crashing down to a final, merciful end.