Spider-Man and The Esper

69. A Hellish Nightmare

Head pounding...

Blood running cold...

Muscles aching...

Vision blurry...

This is what Spider-man feels while his upper body is binded by red symbiote webs as he lays on the cold hard ground.

His old enemy Cletus Kasady, also known as Carnage, has completely lost it this time.

First, the villain released every bad guy from prisons such as Ryker's Island and The Raft which led to a city-wide war in New York as the superheroes struggle to combat the raging super villains along with numerous escaped convicts. Then Carnage systematically bombed various landmarks such as The Statue of Liberty, Stark Tower, and even the Daily Bugle building.

Spider-man went after the man responsible for this massacre only to end up drugged and chained by his foe.

Now in a back alley, Carnage wore his Carnage suit without the mask as he stood over the web-slinger. His evil eyes glaring down at him.

"Now, Now, Michael. Be a little bit more presentable. After all, the drugs in your body are only supposed to interfere with your body, not your mind." Carnage grinned.

Spider-man struggles to move while trying to make words only for his speech to slur.

Carnage, however, accepted the attempt.

He crouches next to the wall-crawler.

"Look, I know that this must be very hard on you. It's hard on both of us! Do you have any idea how long I planned the perfect strategy of breaking every bad guy out of two prisons while coordinating to bomb the city's landmarks?" Carnage asked as he stood back up.

"I guess you wouldn't know since you never took the initiative to take a life, huh?"

Spider-man begins to feel the numbness of his body slowly fade until the point where he can barely move his fingers.

"C-C-C-Carn..." Spider-man mumbles

Carnage continued to talk.

"I guess you would never do that anyways. You and your adopted mother, Yuri Wantanabe, always followed the rules. Right to the end, I heard her shout it over the radio over and over..By the book! Bring him in by the book!" Carnage recited as he looked up to the dark sky filled with smoke.

"But when I finally got to her, she understood. I saw it in her face, in her eyes. Right before I tossed her into a crowd of sadistic serial killers, I mean." Carnage smiled as he laughed maniacally.

Spider-man's teeth clenched in anger as his chains made clinking noises of his weak movements.

"And not only Wantanabe, but your entire rogues gallery are pushing daisies with her. Doctor Octopus, Rhino, Vulture, Electro, Kraven, and countless more including Black Cat. All I had to do was get them all in one area and bomb the living stuffing outta them." Carnage explains.

Spider-man raises his head up as he manages to spit out one word.

"W-Why?" he asked almost in a whisper but Carnage still heard.