Upstairs Neighbor || P. Parker

1. House of lost souls

This fic was created due to the sheer mediocoreness of the new Spidey movie.
I don't like Tom as Spidey and will always be an Andrew-girlie, but Marvel, you did it:
I'll correct everything that you did - in my opinion - wrong, here and now with this fic!
Let's focus more on a Spidey-Story and not on being a starter for doomsday, exchange hulk with the Lizard 🦎, make Jean, Peter and Frank a found Family - like the end bullshit of "You have me, Jean!", did suggest and get Spidey a freaking Black-Cat like character and tension, like he would have deserved!

I don't know if I'll continue this fic regularly - depends on how long the new movie will haunt me as a sleep paralysis demon.

Have fun.

And please feel free to correct any of my mistakes. English is not my first language.

🕷️

The hallway was always dark, most of the bulbs long since burned out. It used to be like that since Zoe moved in here two years ago, but she never minded the dark anyways. The old, worn down apartment complex in Queens had other advantages, heavily weighing up the fact the landlord didn't give a shit about maintaining the facility.

It was cheap, for example.

And calm - due to the lack of neighbors, thanks to a burst water pipe ten months ago and resulting severe water-damage in most of the surrounding apartments (thank whatever deity was out there, hers had been unscathed). Or thank spider man, whose fight with one of his gazillion villains had gotten a bit out of control and resulted in a ton of body mass being thrown through the outside wall and right into the central-water-supply, causing all of this mess (not for her, but for her former neighbors, who'd been more or less forced to move out, after their living rooms became indoor pools).

She never minded it. In fact, she internally even thanked the friendly neighborhood spider for getting rid of the old drunkard, Joe, who she caught more than once lingering out there in the hallway and trying to get a hold of her purse so he could buy more booze. Or David, who, despite being around her own age and seemingly friendly, had always tried to be just a bit too friendly with her, ignoring Zoe's multiple, sharp snapped demands, that she really didn't search for any connections and would rather have been left alone. Plus David used to have the extraordinary annoying habit of listening to hardcore metal music, drumming through the walls and long into New York's starless nights, keeping her awake with it on more than a few occasions.

Too bad his nasty speakers died about one week into Zoe's exams due to very mysterious circumstances... really, what a pity he couldn't afford to buy new ones for three months after that.

But now he was gone for good, together with Drunken-Joe and the couple that used to live one floor beneath her, who used to be enthralled into hour long screaming matches every second Sunday morning, leaving only herself and sweet, old Mrs. Wheeler, one floor beneath her, in the building.

The old, almost deaf lady, who sometimes asked Zoe to run a few errands for her or help her with some chores, and who always baked her the most delicious chocolate cookies as a little thank-you afterwards.

Zoe has never had a grandmother in her live, but sitting in Mrs. Wheelers living room, sweetness on her tongue and a warm, still molten chocolate-core running down her fingers she was almost able to imagine what it must feel like.

But maybe that was just wishful thinking. She and the old lady did not share more, than a good neighbors-relationship. Nothing she, or anybody else dreamt of, after sharing a few bright, binding moments, could change the fact, that Mrs. Wheeler, just like Zoe herself, just like everybody ever ending up as a resident of this building, was alone. None of the ones doomed to sooner or later strand in this rotten motel-California had any family left. That must have been the eternal curse of that building. Or lost souls just attracted each other, drawn to the light of pain and solitude, like moths to the unstable flickering, flame, that would sooner or later devour them.