Summary:
After Norman's death, Harry checks up on his father in the Osborn estate's basement..
Notes:
I had a very vivid dream this morning and had to jot this down. This is set in an alternate end of Spider-Man 2002, but I'm incorporating some comics and cartoon elements.
Story:
The metal door heaved and opened, letting a sliver of light cut into the dark room.
Harry took a step into the medical chamber, and watched his father breathe. Norman was knelt down on the concrete floor, winter red curls of hair covering his eyes, hooked up to the machine next to his bed. His body was naked, and the plastic tubes piercing his parchment skin pumped life in and out of his corpse-like body. With every haggard intake of breath, Norman’s shoulder blades rose from the vast rippling ocean of his ribcage, his vertebrae jutting like cliffside waves. And with every pained exhale, his large ribcage suddenly collapsed, crushing his lungs into a wet wheeze.
Leaving the doorway light, Harry slowly walked towards his hunched father. At this point, Norman was blind. But he could still hear, and he crawled towards the sound of Harry’s footsteps.
Harry lifted his father into his arms, caressing his back and feeling every brittle bone beneath his finger tips. Norman wrapped his arms around his son, desperately trying to get as close as possible to this source of warmth.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been around as often, Dad. We’ve got so many new investors, innovators, inventions for your company. It’s all for you, I promise it’s all for you, I promise I’ll make you proud.”
He brushed his father’s overgrown hair back to get a better look at his face. What once were deep auburn curls were now the color of salt and blood. Harry continued to carress his father's head, and rubbed his balding scalp. He looked down at his father's face. Norman’s eyes were milky white. Tears ran into his crow’s feet wrinkles, down his sunken cheeks, down the dry folds of his neck.
“You remember Liz? We have a baby now. Just born. A baby boy. Normie, he’s going to be our little guy. Ah, I don’t think we can bring him over to the estate, but maybe — I don’t know. Maybe later when he’s grown a little you can come over and see him — it’s a little hard to explain right now about grandpa — ah, but maybe when he’s older.”
Harry smiled into his father’s forehead, and kissed him lightly.
“Thanks for understanding.”
Harry picked his father up gingerly, and placed him back into the bed he fell from. He began the routine examination of his father as Norman’s breath continued to rattle.
His father’s current state was a far cry from the looming shadow of a man Harry remembered from his youth. That father had a dark suit with wide shoulders, a face constantly turned away from him, constantly shaking his head in disappointment whenever Harry shamefully handed him a report card. The Norman in front of Harry now was rake thin, eyebrows furrowed in need, staring into nothing. He was was shorter than he remembered. Harry’s hands examined Norman’s teeth and gums. What enamel was left was still there, and the gums were fairly pink. Then his hands traced Norman’s body. Thin wrists. Thin shoulders. Green bulging veins along his arms, worn out from use. Clavicles protruded, ribs heaved and jumped with every heartbeat, waist was thin and organless.
Harry’s hands traced the bumpy scarring coming down from Norman’s neck, down the bisection of his body. Nervous, Harry halted as he reached the endpoint at Norman’s groin. He quickly pulled his hand away before he touched his father’s private area. There was nothing left there. It was all warped tissue, burnt then reformed into new flesh. Even without his manhood, his father deserved respect all the same.
Norman’s cadaver hands grasped softly at Harry’s sleeve, a dull gray jacket borrowed from Norman’s own closet. As his son did his duty, Norman quietly called out his name. “Harry”.
All his father could say now was “Harry”. He had forgotten everything he learned in graduate school and board room meetings.
So his father mewled “Harry” as his son pressed down on his tongue with a thermometer, and wrote down his temperature.
“Harry," as his son put on sterile gloves, patted down the crook of Norman’s left arm with a cotton ball, then drew blood from a trembling vein.
“Harry,” as his son slowly spread his bony legs and wiped the gnarled limbs down. Harry cleaned the scar tissue where Norman’s genitals once were, then Norman’s anus.
“Harry,” as his son carefully inserted the catheter back into its rightful urethra hole, and Norman whimpered from the pain.
When he was done, Harry retrieved the purple pumpkin print blanket from the foot of the bed, and covered his father up to the shoulders. Then he stared at the mess of urine and vomit on the floor. Norman’s aging body was rejecting this machine’s forced life. He knew his father was tired of hating, bored of dying. Harry collapsed onto the bed. He bawled into the blanket covering his father’s heaving chest, creating a puddle of moisture from tears and snot and drool, just like when he was a child.
It wasn’t fair. Whoever tried to kill his father should have finished the job. Not left the CEO of Oscorp half dead in his office, split down the middle, organs carelessly spilling onto the floor like a common cattle carcass. They had pronounced his father dead when the paramedics arrived at the scene, but Harry knew better. He paid everyone off so he could keep his father’s body. He knew his father was still alive. And he could push the stomach and intestines and liver that were falling out of him back inside, and when he was inside he could reach up through his father’s ribcage and finally press his hand against his heart and feel that coal black organ throb just for him.
And Harry cried, knowing that by keeping his father alive as long as he had, with his father’s own money, he did this to him too.
He sat up again. He wiped his eyes and nose with the sleeve of his expensive suit jacket. He hovered over his father, and stared into those blind eyes.
He said “Dad”, and clasped his hands into Norman’s skeletal fingers. He kissed his father on the lips. His father’s lips parted, and the old man's hoarse voice responded: “Dah. Dahhh. Dahhhd.”
Harry pushed his tongue into his father’s open mouth, sinking into the shallow sea of his father’s body, and Norman reciprocated by weakly tightening his grip on Harry’s hands, aching for the feeling of warmth and wetness of another human being after years in this pitch black box, with nothing but the sound of the machine’s hums and beeps for companionship, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth as the heart monitor screamed faster and connected them together through the pulse of Norman’s tongue.
Harry closed the door behind him quietly. After some physical protest and whimpering from his fatber, Harry had managed to exhaust him and free himself from his father’s feeble grasp. With a few presses on the keypad, he locked Norman safe and sound in his room, and left once more.
As he walked out of the estate, he flipped open his cellphone. The light punctured the darkness of the front porch, illuminating his face. Harry reviewed his missed calls and texts from Liz. He would explain to her that he had another meeting. She’d understand. He was an Osborn after all. Osborns were important men. Osborns had responsibilities and duties to their name, a name that was more important to uphold than any other person’s needs.
In the limousine, Harry thumbed his lip. He closed his eyes to focus on the lingering taste of sweet copper.
He cherished the time he could finally spend with his father. After a childhood of Norman always being away on business trips or corporate duties, it was so good to finally have father-son bonding time. Just the two of them. No one could interrupt. Norman was finally the father he needed, and Harry was finally the father he wanted Norman to be.
Scrolling through his phone’s applications, he lingered on one of the many cameras he had installed in Norman’s room. Through the green night vision static he could see his father was now sleeping, his thin arms crossed over his blanket, resting on his rising and sinking chest. Every so often, Norman's body twitched in place, his milky white eyes glowing, still open in his sleep.
Harry sighed. It was a shame he couldn’t be there for his dad more often.
Harry motioned to the driver to take him back to his wife and son, away from the old Osborn estate and the bones buried within.
End Notes
The title is based on a Strapping Young Lad song, and the legendary Osborn 360 waves. Can't wait to see those waves in action in the new cartoon :D.