To Love a Spider

Chapter 2

Elizabeth was yanked to the ground. She wriggled onto her side, trying to see the figure going after her. She only got a glimpse.
It was terrifying.
A man was slowly walking towards her, not even trying to conceal his face. He looked like early-thirties and had blond hair. His face was handsome, but his features were contorted with violence.
He looked like he was about to kill someone.
Elizabeth let out a gasp, as the realization dawned on her.
She was about to die.
But Elizabeth had always been a fighter, whether it was at school where she stood up to bullies, or at home where she was a leader to her little siblings. As only a true survivor would, she vowed to herself right then and there, she would not go down without a fight.
Elizabeth shakily picked herself up and readied herself for another attack.
However, this guy was a pro and he had grabbed Elizabeth's wrist and twisted it behind her back before she had the chance to react. She flinched as she heard a crack and a sharp pain went up her arm.
Elizabeth cried out as another twist on the same arm followed. Blackspots were clouding her vision and the pain alone would have been enough to knock her out.
She kicked out and felt her foot collide with something heavy. She felt a sense of relief when the body on top of her pulled only a little bit away, though she knew she was far from being out of harm's way.
She looked up and the man grabbed a knife from his jacket. Elizabeth's fear was so strong that she couldn't even feel the pain in her left arm.
He swung at her and by some mere chance of luck, Elizabeth managed to grab his wrist and stop the knife from entering her throat. In all the confusion, Elizabeth noticed a small star tattooed on his left hand.
She flung out with her legs as the nausea overwhelmed her. Again, she felt her legs hit something.
This time the weight was lifted off of her and Elizabeth let out a groan of consolation.
"Are you alright?" a mystery voice asked.
She tried to look up but her vision was blurry. She caught glimpses of blue and red before she blacked out.

* * *

Elizabeth opened her eyes to find that she was a hospital room. She couldn't remember how she had gotten there, or what had happened to make her be in a hospital in the first place.
Then it hit her.
She had been attacked by a man that broke her left arm. Then saved, she thought, because how could she have survived the attack any other way?
The flashes of blue and red entered her mind and she remembered. There had been a blurry image of a spider on her rescuer's shirt, although the blurriness was probably a side effect of a concussion her hospital band proved she had.
The Spiderman.
The newspapers had been talking about it for weeks. What looked like a man dressed up in a spider costume saving people from horrors. Whether it was suicide, murder, kidnapping etc., he was always there in time to save the victim. But he was no normal person. He had webs that shot from his hands that allowed him to pretty much fly from building to building. Elizabeth suspected that he made the webs himself and the gadget that shot them from his wrist, but wasn't devoted enough to find out the logic behind them.
Elizabeth would have never imagined that he would be the one saving her.
Now, Elizabeth felt indebted to her hero and she hated feeling like she owed someone. He had saved her life, and Elizabeth was very grateful for that, but she would probably never see him again to at least tell him thank you.
The door to the room opened and her family walked in. Her parent's faces lit up when they saw that Elizabeth was awake. Her younger siblings' ran over to her hospital bed and jumped on top of her.
"Be careful," Her mother warned, "She just woke up."
"They're fine," Elizabeth answered and although her voice sounded croaky, there seemed to be no damage done to her throat or windpipes.
Elizabeth looked at her mom and was surprised to see that there were tears in her eyes. "Mom?" Elizabeth questioned.
"We were so worried." It was her father who spoke. "They didn't tell us what had happened until we got to the hospital."
Elizabeth felt awkward with their sudden concerns for her. It wasn't that she didn't think that they loved her, she knew they did, it was just that she didn't get a lot of attention with three younger siblings in the house.
"I'm fine." Elizabeth examined her hospital bracelet. "A couple scrapes and bruises, a broken arm and a mild concussion. It could have been much worse."
"You were lucky. You got to meet Spiderman," her little brother Alex said. He had been border-lined obsessed with Spiderman and had newspaper clippings pinned up on his bedroom wall of Spiderman saving people. Alex was sure that he would meet him one day and would be the first person to find out who it really was beneath that mask. Elizabeth was hoping it was just a faze he was going through. Fourteen was way too old to be marveling over superheroes.
"What did he look like? Was he nice? Was his suit more of a cobalt blue or Persian blue? Were you taller than him? How tall was he?"
As Elizabeth's siblings pummeled her with questions, Elizabeth was thinking of a different subject. Spiderman had saved her, it shouldn't be very complicated but before her Spiderman had saved people who the police were already on their way to. He caught the culprits before they had the chance to get to their victims.
With her it was different. It was as if he had just been in the area or if he had been tracking the criminal down before he got to Elizabeth. And if this was true it made Elizabeth think "Why?"