A Game Of Cat & Spider // Peter Parker

Prologue

"Oh dear, I hope I haven't offended you."

The woman in the chair jerked awake at the sound of that voice. The voice which was silky smooth and layered with rich velvet. It was sure, mature, confident, and held the lilt of a child's teasing and amusement. The woman was trying to find a word which described it perfectly in a word- it didn't take a genius to figure out that it was a transparent attempt to distract herself from the inevitable.

Then it clicked.

Her kidnapper was fucking purring.

Of course she was; she was the Wildcat.

Squinting against the blinding light that shone down on her, the woman squinted into the darkness, seeing the female silhouette lean nonchalantly against the door frame, a stark contrast to the woman, whose muscles are tensing up against the rope fiber and the uncomfortable chair.

"Why don't you come now instead of hiding in the shadows like a coward?" the woman snapped, before her defiance was washed away by terror, almost astounded by her cheek.

The woman could almost see her kidnapper arch an eyebrow.

"What's the fun in showing my face?" the playful words were as sharp as a double-edged sword, and the figure surprisingly did take a few steps forward; just enough for the woman to see the haunted and shadowy features.

The Wildcat's eyes were hypnotising; a siren calling out for sailors lost at sea. Her eyes curiously did resemble a cat's, with her thinner-than-average and slightly slanted pupils. Her eyes were clearly a remarkable hazel, with the lighting adding splashes of olive green onto her irises.

"By the way," and the woman yelped, feeling a dagger whiz past her and land into the wall behind with a solid 'thunk'- but not before the dagger nicked her ear. She could feel the blood dripping down in an agonisingly slow pace, and the woman's panicky gaze met the Wildcat's unflinching one.

"I think if anyone's a coward here, it's you."

Shivering, goosebumps popping up and crawling across her skin, the woman watched, transfixed with fear, as the Wildcat took another dagger and calmly played with it, tossing it up and catching it as it fell down, and sent it flying up again. The silver blade was doing cartwheels in the air, but the woman was more focused on the Wildcat's eyes, which were tornadoes of green and hazel, which were zeroing into her as if unlocking the secrets of her mind and soul. 

"I have a daughter."

The Wildcat yawned obviously. "Please. As if I haven't heard that excuse a thousand times."

Then she paused. Taking a step forward, she bent forward and grinned. "Actually, let's play a game. I'm going to give you five chances to come up with a decent enough excuse to convince me to let you go."

"Really."

"Really!" the Wildcat giggled, stepping back into the shadows.

The woman swallowed, racking her brains. "Uh... If you kill me, my children will be orphans-"

"Incorrect. Your children will have no parents, yes, but they will go to live with their aunts Cherry and Hannah, whom you've neglected due to their sexualities."

"I- I can give you money if you let me go?"

The Wildcat sneered. "I don't need material wealth."

The woman tried two more times with no success. Trembling, the woman admitted. "You shouldn't kill me... because I'm afraid to die."

A beat.

"Touching," the killer admitted, playing with the knife once more. "It's a good excuse..."

The woman screamed as the knife suddenly landed in her shoulder, digging in deep.

"Just... not quite good enough," she concluded, walking towards the woman, who came to the sickening realisation that this whole 'excuse' thing was just another game to the Wildcat.

Now that the killer in question was out in the open, the woman couldn't look at her. She closed her eyes, refusing to acknowledge her predicament, wishing her soul would just float up and leave the Wildcat a dead body. Instead, she shot upright, a yell emerging from her lips, which the Wildcat was calmly sewing up. The Wildcat forced the woman's lips shut and took out one earphone. "Interrupt my music again and I'll torture you in a much more painful manner."

Whimpering, the woman bit her tongue, trying to to open her mouth and cause herself more pain. The knife was still lodged in her shoulder and the skin around it seem to throb. She was aware of how easily the needle went in and out of her skin, and felt dots of blood emerge occasionally, which the Wildcat forcefully dabbed away. The pain, the humiliation, the terror was overwhelming, and the woman wanted to cheer when the Wildcat finally announced that she was done, almost forgetting that she had to die.

The Wildcat approached with a nozzle. "This is a special concoction I made myself. I major in chemistry, see, and managed to mix a handle of corrosive acids together. In dummy terms, I means that when I spray this up your nostril, the poison is pretty much gonna dissolve your insides to the point where you'll die, but not to the extreme of you becoming a puddle. Fun, right?"

And before the woman could react, the Wildcat had sprayed the acid into her nose, and the woman could feel it burning its way down, consuming flesh and burning her insides. She trashed around, attempting to scream, which just put her in more misery and torture. The strings firmly clasping her lips shut and the poison seeping in and destroying her cells caused her unimaginable pain, which was further amplified when the Wildcat watched for a few seconds, before slowly dragging out the knife in the woman's shoulder. The woman felt that she had been dragged to the heart of Hell itself, trapped with Satan, who retreated into the shadows, humming along to music and giggling occasionally at her victim.

The last thing the woman saw before she passed out from pain was the Wildcat's mischievous and malicious face, tauntingly tossing the bloody dagger up and down.