Arachnid Boy
Jared Owens walked the halls of his High school more confident now than he ever had before. For a normal high school freshman, the first day of school can be an overwhelming experience, but Jared never felt more alive. Fellow freshmen stared in disbelief and even some upperclassmen gave him a second glance as he strutted his way to his assigned locker. He understood their confusion, at the end of eight grade, Jared was just a short chubby nerd with glasses and few friends. Jared got a few compliments as he shoved stuff randomly into his locker, a habit that even a life altering event couldn’t change.
His summer break had started off normally, his parents went on a research trip for a month and a half and had left him with his oldest cousin, who was quite a bit older than him. His parents shared a special relationship with their nephew because he was a fairly smart researcher like themselves and had hoped that it would keep himself out of trouble and improve his studies during his stay. It wasn’t that Jared was a sub par student, he just lacked the same passion that his parents had. Little did Jared know that his cousin had scored a military contract to research the effects of radiation on specific insects and arachnids from around the world. While Jared thought this was slightly amusing, he was more interested in gaming online with his friends.
Late one night while Jared was playing a popular first person shooter game online, he made a misplay which caused him to not only lose the match, but his temper as well, and he busted a spider enclosure that had been placed in the living room with a flying controller. His cousin had assured him that whatever tests he had done to the spiders had proved ineffective and the spiders were safe to be out there. So Jared quickly tried to clean up the mess before his cousin woke up and was quickly bit by one of the spiders in the enclosure. He thought nothing of it as he brushed the spider off and finished cleaning his mess. Jared woke up feeling stronger and leaner. He got out of bed and realized that not only had he lost a little weight, but he had grown a couple of inches. Day by day he grew a little more and lost more weight till he looked like one of the jocks on the football team. He even had to stop wearing his glasses because they hurt his eyes. Fortunately for Jared, his parents' trip took a little longer than expected, which helped him to convince his parents that his sudden change was all due to exercise, eating right, and puberty.
Jared had also discovered he had superhuman powers as well; He could climb up walls, had near superhuman strength, could heal quicker (which he found out the hard way), and could leap long distances. To his disappointment, he could not shoot webbing out of his wrist. All this he had to hide from everybody, save his cousin who was not believing a single one of his lies, but who also agreed to keep this a secret. Only once or twice did it occur to him to use his powers for good, there were super villains and super heroes in the world, but very few things ever happened in his city. He mostly thought about how he could finally impress the senior girls and take vengeance on his bully.
The bell rang signaling the students to get to their first class and Jared closed his locker and started navigating his way through the crowd of students to get to his first class. They had made it past the roll call and were listening to the teacher give her lecture on what to expect from her class this year when he heard a strange buzzing sound in his ear, which was quickly followed by the emergency sirens in the hallways.
“That's odd, I don’t remember any fire drills scheduled for today. Out in the hall class, hurry up” said the teacher. Jared followed his fellow students out of the classroom as the buzzing sound in his head grew more annoying.
As soon as they made it to the hallway, other teachers were directing students to make their way down in the basement and into the safe room, claiming an emergency in downtown was to blame. Suddenly Jared knew what the buzzing sound in his ear must mean and quickly found a way to sneak into the bathroom amidst the commotion and removed a police radio from his backpack he had stolen earlier this last summer. It was udder chaos over the radio waves as gunfire and loud crashing noises could be heard while the police called for whatever back up they could send. It was then that Jared knew he had to do something.
He quickly pulled a ragged homemade costume out of his backpack that was made of mostly spandex and some rejected carbon fiber molds his cousin had made, combined with a set of goggles to help protect his eyes and conceal his identity. It looked ridiculous. Jared snuck out one of the bathroom windows and started super hopping his way toward downtown. ‘Why couldn’t the spider that bit him be something cooler than a radioactive jumping spider’ Jared always thought to himself as he leaped through the skies.
It didn’t take him long to make it to downtown, but the cause of the chaos was visible from the other side of the city. A large creature that stood at least thirty feet tall and made of a combination of rock and other ground material had started destroying downtown, smashing in store fronts and tossing cars around like they were toys. Jared made his way close enough to see what was going on but stayed far enough back to avoid being part of the destruction. ‘How in the world am I going to stop something like this’ Jared thought to himself as he weighed his options. He quickly decided that if this thing really was made of organic ground material, that surely pulling it apart would slow its advance on the town.
So without a second thought, Jared leaped at the rock creatures head and immediately started tearing apart whatever he could get his hands on. The rock creature didn’t care for this apparently, and quickly swatted him off its back, sending Jared flying into a nearby store front with enough force to leave and indent in the block wall. Now Jared’s strength and healing were greater than that of a normal human, but that didn’t take away from the fact that hitting a wall that hard hurt pretty bad. As Jared laid there in the pile of rubble from the wall he just smashed into, the rest of the world started to spin. As the dizziness finally started to subside, Jared got back on his feet, only to realize that he was still quite sore from the impact. The only thing not hurting was his smart mouth, which he quickly put to work.
“Is that all you’ve got, you giant pile of rubble” Jared shouted and he gingerly made his way to the middle of the street. Apparently the rock creature had ears, because it turned around as soon as he said that. Jared failed to see the compact car in its left hand and after only a brief second the rock creature flung it with surprising accuracy and speed toward Jared. Fortunately Jared was able to jump out of the way just in time as the car impacted the roadway hard enough to leave a sizable divot in the asphalt before it took out a power pole. The rock creature also didn’t care for missing its target because it quickly gave up on whatever mission it was carrying out and started making its way back towards Jared.
“If it’s a fight you want, then come and get me” Jared said as he leaped into the air. Once again, his smart mouth wrote a check his body was unable to cash, because the rock giant shifted some of its mass to its right arm, lengthening it enough to reach Jared and smack him down to the ground. Before Jared could even judge the pain from the landing, the rock creature brought one of its giant feet down right on top of him, crushing him against the pavement. When the creature finally lifted it’s foot, it took one look at Jared and turned back towards it’s previous path of destruction.
Jared could barely breathe, barely move, and could barely think straight. Even with his superhuman strength, he could feel broken bones, including the femur on one of his legs and he was barely able to stand the pain. After what felt like forever, Jared gingerly pulled himself up on his elbows and watched as the rock creature continued to wreak havoc on the city. Suddenly something caught his eye. There was a large park towards the end of main street with a rather large and deep pond in the center, and the rock giant was just close enough to go for a swim. He looked back and saw that downed power line the compact car had taken out earlier and a plan started forming in his mind.
Jared slowly started to pull himself up, resting all his weight on the one leg that wasn’t broken as he fought off the dizziness that the pain was causing him. He carefully hopped over to the power line, grateful that he could do that on one leg, and grabbed a hold of the now dead power line and made a jump for the rock creature. Pain shot up through his body as he used both feet to land, but he fought through the pain and pushed off of the building to his left with his good foot across the street to the opposite building, turned around and repeated the process, creating a loop around the creature's legs. He was able to do this one more time before the creature noticed what he was doing and quickly brought down its left arm to try and squish him for good, but Jared was counting on this and managed to tangle its arm within the power line as he made another trip around its legs. The creature attempted this once again with its right arm, only to suffer the same entrapment as the left arm. A few more trips around the creature was all Jared needed before he jumped up and kicked the creature square in the back just hard enough for it to lose it’s balance and go head first into the pond.
Jared was not sure the power lines would hold it long enough, but after struggling for only a short while, the rock creature went still and quickly fell apart into its many separate pieces. Jared couldn’t believe his luck. He had just defeated his first bad guy.
What really happened: So this story is a little more epic than the rest. I have a little nephew who I believe has to be the toughest young boy I have ever met. This young boy has been kicked in the face by a horse and was just recently in a UTV accident which left him with a broken femur. After all of this, he is still one of the happiest little boys out there and is fighting through this like a champ. He also happens to be a big spider man fan, which really helped with the theme of this story.
