Look 'bad luck' up in the dictionary. Go on. We'll wait. See there? That picture of an awkward college student tripping over his own feet? That's Peter Parker. He's majoring in chemical engineering, and by some stroke of (you guessed it) bad luck, t...
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The merciless scent of flowers was so heavy at the funeral plots that it hung like mist on the cold air. Peter closed his eyes and listened as people circle the cemetery, making hollow apologies for the loss of the Connors'. The words were quiet; as if his ear was pressed against a wall, listening for some great truth. Or he was underwater, the world submerged. He imagined the tombstones dunking and bobbing, floating and sinking in the sea, one hopeless piece at a time.
The coffins had already been lowered, two large and one small. The only consolation to be found was that they were all buried together...at least, that's what everyone was saying, but that didn't really soothe Peter's sorrow. Nothing ever would, he'd lost enough people to know that. The Connors' would die over and over again for the rest of his life. Grief lasted forever. It never went away; it became a part of him, step for step, breath for breath.
The mourners started to dissipate after an hour or so, they were mainly co-workers and neighbours but no close family. Peter stayed until the sun started to disappear behind a large mausoleum, and the tears had dried against his cheeks. He couldn't suppress the feeling that all this death was his fault, after all, he had helped Curtis create the serum in the first place.
Unable to bare looking at the flowers and letters offered into the graves, Peter shuffled through the sea of tombstones; some old, some new, and others vandalised to the point of illegibility. He stopped at a grave with fresh flowers resting against the dirt. Aunt May must have visited recently.
"Uncle Ben..." Peter sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets and taking a deep breath to steady his voice, "Sorry I haven't visited in a while."
The wind blew against Peter's face, it chilled his skin and stole it's colour. His tired eyes wandered towards a distant hill, right on the other side of the cemetery...where Gwen was buried.
"I keep coming back here. No matter how hard I try someone gets hurt and I... I'm sick of losing people." Peter sniffled, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his shirt and looking back towards his uncle's tombstone. "I miss you so much. I'd give anything to have one more minute with you. Just one more."
"I'm sorry, Pete," Annabelle's voice shook him out of his distraction and forced his eyes away from Ben's grave.
"Sorry for what? Their death? Or for stopping me from saving Curtis?" Peter replied bitterly.
"You wouldn't have reached him in time anyway...it was too late."
"You don't know that," Peter folded his arms over his chest and tried, desperately, to keep his voice in check, "I could have tried."
"And then what?" Annabelle sighed, stepping beside him and following his gaze back to the tombstone. "He killed his own family. He ate them, Pete. Making him live with that... it's cruel. I know he was your friend, but he made his choice. We needed to respect it."
