Peter Parker, in his early twenties, has only carried the mantle for around six years, finds himself in a cat-and-mouse chase with an ever-encroaching serial killer who is seemingly targeting only the lowest of scum in the city-criminals. Even so, t...
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Peter was in a staring match with a rack of crumpled magazines, entranced by the rhythmic hum of the blinking fluorescent lights. The disinterested desk lady's voice was the only sound to cut through his detachment.
"Uhhh, excuse me—Sir!?"
She toilsomely bellowed, the monotone woman breaking her apathy for just a moment. Peter blinked, realizing he'd been staring into space, offering her an awkward half-smile.
"Oh, shi— yeah, sorry about that, uhh..... it's gonna be under Benjamin Franklin Parker."
Peter dug into his pockets, padding himself up and down before producing a crumpled ticket. He handed the bright pink ticket to the lady behind the desk, her giving it an apathetic stare, before trailing off back into the mountain of papers on her desk. Her acrylic nails tapping on the counter as she began the slow process of sifting through the mountain of misplaced receipts and tickets, her focus being interrupted by anything even slightly more amusing as if the banal work demanded too much effort.
Peter sighed, leaning back onto the counter and taking a look around the small room. The sound of the dry cleaner's machinery turning on quickly caught his attention, the smell of the various chemicals used to clean the clothes staining the air with an unpleasantly strange odor.
The lady produced a receipt or that's what it looked like; a small paperclip folded it together. The lady then disappeared into the backroom leaving Peter to his own devices. As he waited the minutes felt like hours, the clock on the wall gave the passage of time a visual representation, which in his mind made it feel even longer. Somewhere in the recesses of the backroom, Uncle Ben's tuxedo hung encased in plastic waiting to be found. Peter's impatience was palpable, and he began tapping his ticket against his palm, attempting to distract himself from the seemingly endless five-minute wait.
An old-school CRT-TV straight from the early two-thousand caught his attention, lying comfortably in the top corner of the room, hung above a black vintage chair sprung up by a wall mount of the same era. Peter walked over and turned it on, the high-pitched whine sound brought about a wave of nostalgia followed by full-volume static causing Peter a different kind of nostalgia, he jumped to the noise before quickly turning down the volume. He sifted through the channels but almost all of them were very staticky. So Peter reached his arm to just behind the TV, lodging a paper clip from the moody ladies' ticket into it, the channels shooting to life after a few adjustments.
"Well, it's official; I've just become a certified TV repairman, call me and my paperclip anytime you need your channels unscrambled."
Peter's joke fell on deaf ears, him being the only person in the room. The colors on the TV were vibrant while an old kid's cartoons flashed across the screen. He couldn't help a nostalgic grin from forming on his face.
"Man, I loved this show as a kid."
He remarked, the smile never leaving his face.
"Sword of Omens, give me sight beyond sight; or something like that"
