Chapter 3 – “To Forget Is to Sin”

  It started with a search.

  Simple. Clinical.

  I told myself it was for closure.

  A year after Peter's death, I began digging.

  I wanted the files.

  The medical records.

  Lab reports.

  Research logs from Oscorp’s Spider-991-X project.

  I told myself: “This is for remembrance.”

  But deep down, I wanted more than that.

  I wanted truth.

  To see the divinity again—etched in data, framed in x-rays, bound in code.

  But I found nothing.

  No public records.

  No pathology notes.

  Even the surveillance footage from the lab tour—gone.

  Scrubbed.

  Cleansed.

  Erased.

  Peter Parker did not die, according to the official records.

  He never even got bit.

  There was an accident, they said.

  A lab mishap.

  Radiation exposure.

  Coma.

  Nothing more.

  A cold obituary. A line in a file.

  Peter Parker: Deceased. Cause: Complications from unknown viral degeneration.

  There was no mention of the silk.

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  No mention of the eyes.

  No legs.

  No transcendence.

  They were trying to bury him.

  Not just his body—him.

  His memory. His metamorphosis.

  His message.

  And the world moved on.

  As if he had never become.

  It made me sick.

  Physically sick.

  My stomach would twist at night with an aching that wasn’t pain—something deeper.

  Hatred.

  How dare they forget him?

  How dare they reduce him to a line of ink on a sanitized page?

  How dare they rob the world of what he was?

  Memory is fragile.

  I realized that.

  I remembered Peter, yes.

  But each day, the details frayed just a little more.

  Was it six eyes or eight?

  Did his second set of limbs sprout from the spine, or the ribs?

  Did his voice click or hum in those final days?

  I didn’t know.

  And that terrified me.

  Because if I forgot, too—

  Then he would be truly gone.

  That’s when I found him.

  Dr. Harold Kesler.

  Lead geneticist at Oscorp’s Biotech Division.

  One of the first men on the scene when Peter collapsed.

  I followed him for weeks.

  Took notes. Watched his habits.

  He was careful. Nervous.

  As if haunted.

  He knew.

  He remembered.

  But he never spoke. Never shared. Never honored the miracle he witnessed.

  He drank.

  He gambled.

  He hit his wife.

  A sinful man.

  Unworthy of the knowledge he possessed.

  On a night when the moon was thin and pale as old parchment, I waited outside his home.

  I didn’t kill him out of rage.

  I wasn’t angry.

  I was reverent.

  I wanted to make it meaningful.

  I whispered Peter’s name before I slid the scalpel into Dr. Kesler’s throat.

  His blood came out thick. Slow.

  Like syrup.

  Like silk.

  I took his eyes.

  I needed them.

  For remembering.

  That was the first.

  The beginning of my offering.

  [End of Chapter 3]