Carnage in Queens

I authored this story to spread awareness of the rise of young black girls presumed missing in Chicago. I held from the Windy City yet grew up loving the characters created by Stanley Lieber, Jack Kirby, & Steve Ditko. I wish the Avengers could help with the state of the world now, so I will write.

New York, Queens, the home of one of the most beloved Avengers...Spider-Man! The teenage phenom was his alter ego, Peter Parker, as he walked down a street next to the Queens Bridge Project homes. He noticed a plethora of missing children posters on an abandoned truck. He walked up to it & thought this was insane. A girl was walking past at the same time & Peter asked, "Are all these recent?” The girl replied, "Yeah, why you care white boy?" rolled her eyes & kept walking. Peter understood her frustration. It was mostly the black & Hispanic neighborhoods Spider-Man would patrol & protect. The police &, dare he think, most of the superhero community look past low-income neighborhoods. Peter being poor himself could not look past them, no matter what adventures his life of Spider-Man took him. Fifteen girls. If the police cannot do anything about this madness, then I must so think Peter. The words of his late Uncle Ben haunt his soul to do his duties as our friendly neighborhood crime stopper. With great power comes great responsibilities.

Later that night, Spider-Man webslinged his way to the Queens Bridge Projects. He patrolled for about an hour before he heard a yell for help. Spider-Man jumped over two buildings & landed on a light post. He saw a man in a red hood running with a girl bound & gaged towards the water. Spider-Man extended his arm & shot a ball of web towards the would-be kidnapper. The villain tripped & dropped the young girl. Spider-Man jumped from the light post flipping towards the villain. As he lands, he shoots webbing all around the villain’s body. Spider-Man lands between the villain & the girl. Spider-Man quickly rips the red substance from around the girl's body & mouth. Spider-Man thought what is this crap & says, "No need to thank me just run!” The girl ran off towards the closet building in the Projects screaming, "Wow Spider-Man just saved me, Mom!” Spider-Man turns to the villain to see that the foe has busted out the webbing! His red hoodie morphs into a living sludge & attacks Spider-Man. Spider-Man dodges various tentacle-type arms springing from the villain's red hoodie. Spider-Man says, “If I didn’t know any better, I would say hey Cletus but know you prefer Carnage!". As the man in the red hoodie removed his hood, he then revealed was indeed Cletus Kasady. The deranged serial killer who has bonded with a Klyntars or symbiotes to become Carnage. Kasady laughs & says, "Spider-Man, oh I wanted to wait a little while longer to test my new strength but this will be a gas!" as he laughs the symbiote engulfs his body making him look like Spider-Man’s costume but always moving with little tentacles everywhere & black streaks throughout his body. A larger tentacle sprung from Carnage's chest & punched Spider-Man throwing him across the street through the basketball court hitting a wall so hard it left an imprint. Spider-Man fell almost lifeless to the ground. Carnage laughing walking towards Spider-Man & notices a figure watching on a roof. After focusing his vision & seeing who was on the roof, Carnage ran off. Carnage said, "See you guys soon" laughing as he jumped into the river. The figure jumped down off the roof in front of Spider-Man. He walks towards the fallen hero & pokes Spider-Man with a fancy red cane. The figure then says, "Get up little spider we have to climb up this spout". Spider-Man, dazed & confused, looks up & sees Daredevil holding his hand out.

Matt Murdock is a famous blind lawyer who looks out for the "little guy" by day. Once the night falls, Matt uses his gifts of extremely heightened senses & fighting skills to disrupt the criminal underworld. Matt becomes the vigilante known as the Devil of Hell's Kitchen by criminals & Daredevil (DD) by his peers. A couple of weeks before Spider-Man's encounter with Carnage, DD was patrolling the docks. He could hear a young heart beating rapidly & a heartbeat that was thumping as if it were two hearts in harmony. This puzzled DD & he pursued the irregular heartbeat. DD ran, flipped, & jumped to discover Carnage with a young black girl wrapped in one of his tentacles. The monster jumped from building to building and then landed on the pier. DD snuck up behind the creature & another tentacle emerged from Carnage's body & attacked DD. With ease, DD dodged the attacks. DD used his specialized cane as a grappling hook, he shot the weapon up towards a light pole to pull himself to higher ground. Once the weapon retracted it made a loud noise. DD sensed that sound hurt the creature. DD separated his cane & began to hit the two poles together. This vibration disrupted the symbiote & Carnage dropped the young girl. DD quickly jumped towards the girl, struck the two pieces of his cane again, picked her up the girl, & ran away. Once Carnage gathered himself from DD's attack, he noticed the hero & girl were gone & yelled in fury.

Spider-Man grabbed his head & said, "Anybody get a license plate on that truck?” DD pulled Spider-Man up to his feet pat him on the back & shook his head smiling. "Are you alright Peter?" DD asked. Spider-Man jokes, "SSSHHHH no real names unless we're on rooftops Double D". Spider-Man sees a crowd forming & people looking out their windows. DD senses this as well. Spider-Man grabs DD & webslings towards his home nearby. DD asks, “Where are we going?" Spider-Man says, "To my home, Aunt May should be asleep. If not, we'll have to be very very quiet while hunting symbiote". DD says, "So that was one of those aliens who's obsessed with you". Spider-Man lands on the roof of his home & says, "Yeah but I know their weakness". Spider-Man shoots a web onto the chimney & makes a rope leading down to his bedroom window. As Spider-Man crawls down the wall to his window DD says, "Yeah with loud sounds". DD then uses the rope to climb down to the window. Before Spider-Man entered the room he looked back at his friend surprised & said, "How you know that Matty?” DD smiled as he entered the window & said, "I encountered the creature weeks ago on the docks in Hell's Kitchen. I have been tracking him ever since. It seems like his base of operations is a small shipping tanker called Knull". Spider-Man thinks & says, "I have an old Goblin Bomb I took off Norman one fight to analyze his tech. I can repurpose it to make a vibrational frequency that will separate Kasady from the symbiote". DD shakes his head in agreement & says, "He has to be using the East River & the Hudson. How long before your little doohickey is finished? We don't want the trail to go cold". Spider-Man went into his closet grabbed the Green Goblin's weapon & sat at his table. This table took up most of the Spider-Man/Peter's room. It had a makeshift computer, mechanical lab, biology lab, & a pile of books on various subjects. A fitting scene for a genius personal space thought DD/Matt. In a couple of minutes, the device was ready to test. Pete put back on his mask & walked to the window. DD followed & they both climbed back up to the roof the same way they got down. Spider-Man then pressed the activating button on the device, tossed the Goblin Bomb high in the air, & looked at DD. The bomb slightly opened & let off a vibrational frequency so powerful DD could feel & hear it several hundred feet away. Spider-Man, with his ears covered, said, "Did it work?'. DD said yes it did Pete. Now let us get this son of bitch". Spider-Man says, "Woe woe woe let's not bring the man's mother into this". DD shakes his head while Spider-Man shoots a web towards the device to retrieve it. Once he gets the Goblin Bomb back in his hand, he presses the button to deactivate it. Spider-Man then grabs DD & they swing towards the East River.

They traveled along the East River until they got to the Brooklyn Bridge, where they spotted the tanker. Spider-Man threw DD towards the tanker. DD using his cane as a grappling hook again hooks onto the historic bridge & swings onto the tanker. Spider-Man jumps & lands on the tanker with ease. The two sneak around as DD uses his senses to track Carnage. DD leads the heroes to a room in the ship's lower levels. This room is littered with bones & candles everywhere. Spider-Man says, "Well this isn't creepy at all". As they walk deeper into the room there are dead bodies of young black girls everywhere. Some of the faces Spider-Man noticed from the abandoned truck from earlier. Spider-Man asked, "Can you feel if any of them are alive?" DD sadly looked at Spider-Man & shook his head no. Then two tentacles almost grab the pair of heroes. If not for Spidey's gift that alerts him to danger, things would have gone far worse than Spider-Man could have thought. Spidey pushed DD to his left & jumped toward the ceiling dodging Carnage's attack. Spider-Man screamed, "You're going down for this you monster". DD landed on a couple of corpses of children & was blinded with rage! DD screamed at the top of his lungs. As he dodges attacks from the creature's tentacles while still being on the ceiling, Spidey launches the device towards Carnage. The device disrupts the connection between the alien & Kasady. As the Klyntar & Kasady both scream in pain, Spider-Man shoots a web at Kasady’s chest, connecting, then throwing him across the room away from the alien. Spidey then sees an empty oil drum. Spidey grabs it, scoops the symbiote up with the drum, & uses his super strength to close the top of the drum like it was a loaf of bread. Meanwhile, DD walks up to Kasady & says (with tears falling from his eyes), "Why?” Kasady says, "Any brain would do. The Klyntars need certain chemicals that the brain admits to survive. I been snatching up those black girls for months now. No one cared. So why do you?" as he laughs. DD picked up a piece of metal that could puncture a human. DD holds it up as if he going to strike Kasady with it. Spider-Man sees this unfolding & shoots a web ball at DD's hand knocking the piece of metal down. DD screams, "Stay out of this kid. I got to finish this!" Spidey says, "I didn’t know you been taking lessons from Frank, Double D. Look this guy deserves much worse than what you were gonna do but you really want to live with that choice buddy?" DD grabs Kasady by the neck & lift him over his head. DD thinks & says, "They'll just lock him in a mental institution. Maybe even try to weaponize him. He has to die!” Spidey jumps next to DD & says, "Sorry buddy I can't let you do that". DD throws Kasady across the room into a metal wall leaving a dent & swings a punch at Spider-Man. DD says, "I'm sorry, kid". DD throws various combos of punches & kicks, but Spidey dodges them all. Spider-Man flips, lands on a wall, & then shoots his webbing across the room. As DD runs towards Spider-Man perched on the wall, Spidey retracts a huge metal bolt from the end of the webbing he just shot. This bolt hits DD in the head hard knocking him out. Spidey then finds a phone & calls S.H.E.I.L.D.! Spidey picks DD up & webs Kasady’s entire body. Spider-Man leaves just as S.H.E.I.L.D. arrives.

Spidey webslings onto a roof with DD on his back. Spidey leaves DD on a rooftop in Hell's Kitchen & swings home. As he climbed into his bed to get a little rest before school in the morning, Peter was deep in thought. Pete wonder if DD was right. He wondered why anybody hadn’t tried to help those girls. Peter heard Captain America's voice as if he were in the room with him. The Living Legend said in Peter’s head, "We do what we can, & what we can't do ourselves we strive to do together. Everything can't be fixed & everyone can't be saved but WE’ll die trying". Pete closed his eyes & fell asleep.

Meanwhile, on a roof in Hell's Kitchen, DD comes to & looks around. It was a note webbed to his chest. It read, "Hey Double D, I know what we saw was hard to see but persevere. Together we WILL make our world better. Love Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man". DD looked up at the sun rising & smiled saying, "Thanks kid"

THE END