Curse of Arachnaman by Hayden Thorne

to get foggier and foggier every time I went there. I could barely make out her silhouette as she waved a ladle above her head. “Haven't seen you in a while! I only see skinny boy here! What, no boyfriend with you tonight? You two not an item anymore or something? You real heartbreaker, huh? Tsk, tsk!"
    "Good evening,” Mom said as we stood before the food counter. “I've been busy with work, Mrs. Zhang. And, no, Eric's solo tonight. No boyfriend anywhere. It's a bit of a miracle, actually."
    Yeah, thanks, Mom. I glowered at the steaming trays of greasy food before me. I guessed adults forgot how it was, being sixteen and in a first relationship. Sometimes I thought that they were jealous because when a person was young, everything was pretty intense. You couldn't say that about adult romance. Older people were more, like, sly and conniving even when they flirted with each other. Then they jumped into bed and then woke up in the morning to realize that, hey, they had a spouse and children back home! So whom were they really in love with?
    Okay, so I'd just made all of that up. I was a little inspired because I was forced to watch some horrible, sappy-ass chick flick on TV while waiting for Mom to get ready for this trip to Uncle Chung's. Liz was watching, anyway, and I didn't have a choice. Then again, I supposed I'd rather suffer through some sappy chick flick than be dragged to the kiddie ice cream parlor by Scanlon Dorsey because he figured that spoiling me would earn him brownie points with Liz.
    "Special for today—buy two potstickers, get one egg roll free!” Mrs. Zhang said proudly, waving a hand before her face to dissipate the clouds that continued to roll between us. I still could barely see her in the fog. “Good treat for kid here. He needs bulk. If you let me keep him for a month, I'll make sure he eats everything I cook, and he goes home all fixed."
    "I don't want to be fixed,” I gasped. “Dude, are you kidding me? I'm not a stray animal!"
    "Eric, Mrs. Zhang's not a dude.” Mom leaned closer to Mrs. Zhang. “You're welcome to keep him for two months. Just make sure that he does his own laundry because, well, you know how teenage boys are."
    Whatever, Mom.
    Anyway, Mom finally got serious—though, frankly, I had a feeling that she'd been pretty serious about giving me up for two months—and ordered tonight's dinner. Before long we were walking back home, with Mom humming to herself while I struggled with the two plastic bags that Mrs. Zhang packed. My right wrist...holy cow, it felt like my whole hand was about to tear off its joint. I cursed under my breath the whole time, hoping pretty much that the next eventful moment that required a blow-by-blow entry in my journal wouldn't happen for at least another week.
    Along the way, we nearly got run over by a stolen car. We heard the tires screeching behind us, and Mom and I automatically jumped away from the edge of the sidewalk. I almost fell into a pile of trash cans that were old and battered, and they looked like they hadn't been emptied in a month. Even in the early evening hours, the whole thing was just gross. I didn't need to see all that accumulated crap in detail. Besides, I wasn't sure if it was a trick of the dying light, but I could've sworn those garbage heaps actually breathed .
    Mom grabbed hold of my left arm to steady me and to pull me closer to her while she froze, waiting for the car to fly by. It did, careening all over the place and nearly running over some drunk who was passed out and lying half on the sidewalk and half on the road.
    "Stop right there!” someone shouted from somewhere above us.
    A familiar shadowy figure flew down and landed several feet in front of the car, and it was like ballet. Magnifiman stood in classic superhero pose with legs apart and hands on hips, cape flapping jauntily behind him, which made me wonder if his superhero powers also came with his own breeze that made him look perfectly cinematic every