The Spider

The Hawk shivered in the dark, under a thin blanket.

She was asleep, or she had been, anyway.

She began to wake up slowly to the sensation of someone gently caressing her hair. The Hawk's eyes snapped open at the intrusion, blinking in the darkness.

It was that strong woman, called herself the Fist. She had saved the Hawk out of nowhere, saved the Hawk from the Scorpion. The Fist had brought the Hawk back to this... place, wherever it was. Other people were here, the Hawk knew that. But she didn't know who they were. The Fist hadn't introduced her, saying it was important to rest, important to sleep, that all would be made clear later.

The Fist had taken the Hawk to a simple bed with a thin mattress. The Hawk was tired, and hurt. She went to sleep.

The Hawk's eyes flew open in a panic, darting left and right. The Fist pulled the Hawk closer to her incredibly powerful yet supple body, wrapping herself around the Hawk, still gently caressing the Hawk's flecked brown hair.

"Shh," the Fist whispered. "It's OK. It's OK."

"What- "

"It's OK. It's OK."

The Fist pulled the other woman close, holding the Hawk tight in a strong and not unpleasant clasp. The two pulled close together in the darkness, like spoons in a cupboard, the Fist gently stroking the other woman's hair, breathing into her ear.

"Where am I?" the Hawk whispered, eventually.

"We'll get into that later. The Master will tell you what you need to know. Please listen very carefully. I didn't use to listen, and I had a hard road. I hope you have an easier time of it than I did."

The Hawk said nothing. Who was this "Master"?

"So, what was the deal with you? You had some kind of mechanical wings? You could fly around and shit?"

"Yeah. I, uh... had some other stuff, some small explosives I could shoot out, but yeah. Mainly the wings."

"That's nice. I can fly, too. But I don't need any wings."

"Wow."

"Yeah. I don't know how I can do that. I've just always been able to. I'm stronger than anybody else, too. Remember that guy, the Scorpion?

He

was a real asshole, wasn't he? He was hurting you, and I just ripped him apart like he was cotton candy. Like he was cotton candy at the circus!"

The Fist laughed at her little joke, a nervous laugh, frightening. The sort of laugh that could change into something a lot uglier if it continued for too long. Luckily, it didn't.

"I'll take care of you," the Fist whispered in the dark.

The Hawk nodded, saying nothing.

The Fist bent down, looking directly into the Hawk's flecked brown eyes.

"Nothing can hurt me, either," the Fist confided, as if sharing a schoolgirl secret.

"That must be nice."

"Well, except the Master.

He

can hurt me. He hurts me a lot, actually. I used to hate it, now I kind of like it, I don't know."

"Is he going to hurt

me?

"

The Fist leaned down, putting her face closer to the other woman's.

"Give me a kiss. Go on. Just do it. Give me a kiss."

The Hawk felt the other woman's lips on her own, soft, a tongue probing into her mouth. After a few moments, the strong woman pulled her lips away.

"You're hesitant. I get it. Still a good kisser, though. A better kisser than my last boyfriend was, I'll say that. He was a real drip. I might track him down and kill him when I get the time."

"Why would you do that?" the Hawk asked loudly, alarmed.

"Oh, honey. Poor little clipped wings. There's going to be a

lot

of killing. One more here or there isn't going to make any difference whatsoever. You just want to make sure you are on the right side of it, is all."

The Hawk felt the woman's hand trailing down her belly, over her navel, pushing past the elastic of her panties, heading lower.

"Please," she whispered. "What are you doing?"

"Shh," the Fist said, putting her lips back on the other woman's. "You sure are a scrawny little thing, aren't you? I guess that helps you fly around on your little wings."

The Hawk gasped as she felt the Fist's fingers probe into her, gentle, pushing past the outer lips, rolling over her clitoris, probing deeper. The Fist began to slide her fingers in and out, revealing the wetness, cupping the little mound above.

The Hawk moaned slightly, part pleasure, part fear.

"That's a good girl," the Fist whispered, sliding her strong fingers in and out of the slender woman, maintaining pressure on the clitoris with the palm of her hand, rocking back and forth with the fingering. "You just relax, and cum for me. You be a good girl, and tomorrow I'll give you your broken wings, maybe you can fix them, and maybe we can fly around together sometime. Would you like that?"

The Hawk didn't say anything, her eyes wide, looking up at the incredibly powerful woman who was quickly bringing her to orgasm. Her hips began to rock back and forth with the fingering, her lips cracked open slightly.

"I'd like that," she whispered.

The Fist leaned in, shoving her tongue past the Hawk's lips, the Hawk kissing back and sucking on the tongue. The Fist heard the other woman begin to keen, felt the hips bucking stronger against her hand, and knew the other woman was cumming.

Good girl, the Fist thought. You'll do just fine around here.

******************************

Anna heard the crunching of boots on the sand behind her. She could feel the eyes boring into the back of her head.

She looked all around, saw nothing but black sand, black jagged rock, sweeping up enormous hills, bursting into peaks and draining into valleys. A vicious red sun cracked across an alien and hostile sky above.

The woman behind her pushed Anna on the shoulder, making her stumble in the sand.

"Just keep walking, bitch," the Fist said lowly.

"Right."

"You don't want to fuck around out here. Don't get any ideas. You try to run, I'll catch you. Maybe not in time, though. There's things out here that you can't even imagine, things that will grab you and make you glad when you finally get to actually die."

Anna said nothing.

"You think you are so smart, don't you? You know what I hope? You know what I hope when this is all over?"

"Let me guess- you hope that you get to hurt me or kill me or something. Is that it? I mean, you've been saying that since I've known you. Don't you have anything else to talk about?"

The Fist spat into the black sand behind Anna.

"Fuck you."

"I mean, I get it. You were a superheroine, now you are...

this.

Whatever. That's got to be awful, but it doesn't mean you have to be so fucking

boring

about it."

Anna spun around, jabbing her finger into the larger woman's chest.

"When the time comes?" Anna hissed, poking her fingertip into the startled woman's breasts. "When the time comes, you fucking bitch, I'll beat you

again.

I beat you once, made you cry so bad that you tried to kill yourself. You couldn't even do

that

right, and here we fucking are, you a dumb slave bitch to an evil man. You don't scare me. I beat you once, I'll beat you again. But do me a favor- in the meantime? Can you just shut the fuck

up?

"

The Fist glared down at the defiant smaller woman.

"If your Master didn't have use for me, he'd have already let you kill me. But he does, so you can't. Right? We all know where we stand. So just quit boring the fuck out of me with your stupid threats all the time and show me what the fuck you need to show me."

The Fist glared. For a second, Anna thought that she was going to hit her.

Finally, she lifted her arm, extending a single finger. Anna turned, and squinted in the bright and harsh light. In the distance, she could see a building of some kind.

Overhead, the two women heard an inhuman shriek split the silence.

"We should probably hurry, little Spider," the Fist hissed.

******************************

The Hawk watched the red line cut across the stone wall of the dwelling. She saw a set of slender hands with incredibly long fingers split the wall open, red bursting light erupting from the hole.

The Detective stepped through, into the living room of the domicile. The Hawk gasped looking at him, and shrank back towards the wall, terrified.

His elongated head bobbed around on his thin neck, looking, black eyes blinking in the dim light. Finally, his gaze locked upon the slender woman cowering against the wall.

"Ah, the Hawk," he said, his voice a gravelly and cold rumble. "Don't be scared."

She pulled herself into a tighter ball.

He stretched out to close to his full height, his head bowed by the ceiling. His long arm shot out, and he grabbed a chair. He pulled it over to where the Hawk tried to hide herself behind her arms, and he contorted his long and thin body into the chair, spreading his legs wide to accommodate his great height.

He looked down at her.

"You are crying," he said. "You are scared. That's OK. You won't be scared for long."

He reached out with his long arms, his grotesque and long fingers reaching out towards her. She slapped his hands away, weakly, whimpering and pushing herself back towards the wall as hard as she could.

It was no use. He seized her in one quick motion, like a praying mantis striking at a fly. He took both sides of her head in his hands, wrapping his fingers around her entirely. The Detective turned her upward to face him, pulling her to her knees, looking deep into her eyes.

His eyes were black. Jets of red cut across them. She was terrified, her lips quivering as he forced her to look him in the face.

"I was surprised when the Fist brought you back here," he said quietly. "I didn't tell her to do that, you were simply incidental to what I needed to demonstrate to Anna."

Her head began to buzz and hum where his hands gripped her, like a loud noise getting louder inside of her skull. It didn't hurt, but she pulled and pulled against the noise, against his grip, yelling over the noise, struggling uselessly.

If he heard her, she couldn't tell. Her vision began to cloud.

"Do you know Anna? I can't remember. It doesn't matter. You'll meet her soon enough. Just relax. That's it. Just relax and let me do what I have to do."

The Hawk opened her mouth wide, now silent, jaw slack. Her eyes clouded over, now looking blankly up at the black orbs bobbing above her face. The humming in her ears grew even louder, eclipsing everything else, shoving all thoughts aside. Her back stiffened uncontrollably. Her knees spread wider on the stone floor.

The Detective got to work.

******************************

The stench.

Anna stepped into the building, a long and low rectangular structure. It was dark inside, hot, even hotter than it was outside.

She fell to her knees at the terrible stench, retching, gagging. She vomited onto the simple wooden floor.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you," the Fist said, stepping past the kneeling woman. "It smells pretty bad here."

The Fist clicked on a power generator, the buzzing of the motor filled the air. She walked over to a succession of cheap lamps powered from the generator, turning each of them on one by one.

"What the fuck..." Anna said, getting to her feet, her eyes blinking as she took in the sight.

"Yeah, right?"

The building was a long and empty room, looking more like a kind of stable than anything else. But there were no horses here.

What

was

there was awful beyond comprehension.

In the center of the room was some kind of decaying creature, the size of a small whale, with black and metallic skin cracked open revealing the flesh and muscle underneath. This was the source of the stench.

Anna gagged, dry heaved.

But that wasn't the worst of it. All along the length of the dead creature, there were dozens of...

things

feeding on it, with mouths pressed firm to the decaying animal, sharp claws from slender arms sprouting from their long and narrow bodies, ripping into the rotting flesh. Anna could hear the tearing and gulping of the flash.

Each of the wriggling creatures had a long tail at the end of their bodies, with a single barb dripping with what had to be poison, whipping all around the room. The barbed tails would find the dead animal, plunging into it, ripping back out, whipping around some more.

"What is it?" Anna asked quietly, in a whisper.

"The dead thing? I don't know. Some kind of land whale or something- that's what I call them, anyway. Who knows? They eat these swarms of flies that buzz around on the steppes above. I kill one once in a while, haul it down here for the maggots."

A barbed tail lashed through the air, not too far from the women. Anna took a quick step back, scared of the lash. The Fist stood unmoving, surveying the scene, her hands on her hips.

"Or do you mean the maggots? They are what the press back home called 'Red Eyes'. This is some kind of larval stage, I guess. In not too long they'll molt, they'll grow their rear legs, the wings will form, and they'll split out of their cocoons. Once they do that, well... you know."

Anna thought she might be sick again.

"You OK, honey?" the Fist called back, mocking. "Here's another one of my boring little threats... I'd

love

to feed you to these things. I got stung by one a couple of times, it's awful. The worst feeling in the world, you hope you will die, but you don't die. I'm immune to their venom now, the Master took care of that once I became a good slave. But I don't think you are. I don't think he made

you

immune to it yet."

"Why?"

The Fist turned around and glared at the Spider.

"This is the

plan

, you dumb cunt. This is why the Master is helping you learn how to open up your stupid little windows between the worlds. The reason I don't get to kill you. Once these become adult Red Eyes, you are going to open hundreds of windows, and let these maggots through, all at once."

"I'm not going to do that."

"Sure you will. You'll be happy to. What you are going to do is let a thousand Red Eyes into our world, into the homes of every fucking criminal and gangster that has been plaguing the City for generations now. Every corrupt politician. Every cop that works for the scum instead of for the people."

"I'm not going to do that."

"You think you won't. I bet you

will.

The Master can open doors between the worlds, but nothing like what you can do. You'll release a fury so bad that it will seem like it has come from hell itself, and every thug in the City will be torn to shreds. You'll bring the Red Eyes back, and that will be that... well, almost."

"Almost?"

"The Master will inform the City that anytime anyone even thinks about committing a crime, they'll be dealt with in the same manner. Hunted down. Torn apart. Their very

souls

devoured."

"Oh my God."

"My Master spent years on the police force, watching the corruption, watching crime spread like a cancer. He's going to put an end to it, once and for all. You and me? We are going to help him."

A barbed tail lashed out, cracking into the Fist, the stinger shattering into her rib cage.

An unholy shriek ripped out from the hurt maggot, and in the blink of an eye, the other maggots descended upon the hurt one, tearing into it, pulling it apart, devouring their own.

Anna stepped backwards, towards the door.

"I'm a super hero after all, aren't I, little Spider? I may not have any choice about what I do anymore, but I'm going to see something that the Power could never have dreamt of. I'm going to see crime come to a screeching halt, once and for all."

The Fist began to laugh, an insane cackling. Anna stumbled backwards out of the stable, breathing in the hot air. She began to run back to the domicile, the sound of the Fist's laughter bleeding into shrieking behind her.

******************************

Anna made her way to the heavy door of the domicile, throwing it open.

She stepped into the darkness of the windowless little structure that was not a home.

Anna closed the door quietly behind her, her chest heaving from the run in the heat and the horror of what she had seen- what she would be expected to do.

"I imagine you saw the larvae?"

Anna looked across the room, startled at the voice. She saw the Detective sitting on a simple wooden chair, his long legs spread wide. On the floor, at his feet, was the Hawk, Anna could see. The Detective had a hand on either side of her head, and was guiding the Hawk's unresisting mouth up and down on an enormous and erect cock.

"What are you doing to her?"

He shrugged.

"I guess I'm going to enslave her also," the Detective replied emotionlessly. "I didn't really plan on that, but I can't have a bunch of loose ends laying around everywhere. I suppose she might be useful in some way, so I'm starting the process of bending her to my will."

The Hawk continued to let him control her head as he forced her mouth to pleasure him. She continued mindlessly sucking, as if she hadn't heard a word he'd said- and maybe she hadn't.

"Besides," he went on. "There's a chance that I might have to make a slave out of

you,

Anna. I don't want to, and I don't think I'll have to once I explain what you need to know. I think you will join me willingly. But if I have to? I'll do it."

Anna stepped back towards the wall. She began to reach behind her, rubbing the wall with her hand, feeling it turn from rough stone into... smoothness. Glass. A window.

"The problem is, I'm not very good at actually making slaves out of people. I've only done it to the Fist, and you see how that turned out. What do you think of the Fist, Anna?"

"She's insane. You're a monster."

"She's a

mistake

. I was still a lot more human at that point than whatever it is I am now. I was guided by emotions a lot more. I was angry with her, and I was a lot harsher with her than I should have been. I went too fast and I broke her."

Anna said nothing, feeling the glass behind her, making it spread.

"If you want to kill the Fist, Anna, you can. When this is all over. Would you like to kill her? Do you want me to do it? Once you join me and we execute the plan, I won't really need her anymore. If you want her gone, she's gone, just like that."

He held up one of his awful hands and snapped his fingers. The Hawk kept sucking and slurping on the dick filling her mouth.

"Whatever you want, Anna. What I'm offering you is a partnership. Like what you did with the City Police all these years, only it's with me, someone who can actually

stop

crime once and for all- with your help. With your help, we'll make every criminal and thug regret everything they've ever done, once and for all. And that's it. I have no desire to hurt anyone innocent, I don't want money, I don't want power. I just want to fulfill all the reasons that made me become a cop in the first place, all that time ago. I probably won't even live on the old world anymore, I'll just sit here, watching. Waiting. Exploring and learning the Black World. I don't have any home back on earth anymore, if I ever did. I won't interfere with you, with your life with... what was her name, Heather?"

"Don't say her name."

"Anna, I have worked for too long for this not to happen. It

is

going to happen. It's cost me everything, my name, my life, my humanity. Whatever I have to do to you, or Heather, or to the poor Hawk here about ready to drink my cum and end up my slave forever, I'm going to do that. I can promise you."

"I'll stop you."

"You'll end up my slave, too. That's more cumbersome and I don't want to do it that way, but I

will

do it. Do you want to see how it will happen? Do you want to come watch the poor Hawk here drink from my dick and lose herself once and for all to my will? Because it can be you, just as easily, Anna."

He released his hands from the Hawk's head. As if released from a trap, the Hawk began to suck the enormous cock harder, faster, her breath becoming ragged as she lost herself. Anna could hear the Hawk begin to moan, and reach a crescendo, building up.