Chapter 7: Alleyway Expansion Crisis
The walk had become a trudge, a humiliating pilgrimage through the underbelly of Queens. Each block felt like a mile. Her body was a foreign landscape, a continent adrift on unsteady legs. The damp night air did nothing to cool the heat radiating from her skin, a furnace stoked from within. She could feel the babies shifting, a slow, tectonic roll that made her breath catch.
She paused in the mouth of a narrower alley, one hand braced against a dumpster, the cold metal a relief against her palm. Her chest ached with a deep, throbbing pressure. The soaked fabric of her ruined top was clammy against her skin. She just needed a moment. Just a second to breathe without the weight of the world watching.
A siren wailed in the distance, too far off to be for her. Another of the city’s endless emergencies. She closed her eyes, trying to tune it out, to focus on the simple mechanics of inhalation and exhalation.
That’s when the internal pressure changed.
It wasn’t a contraction. It was something else, a sudden, volcanic surge in her engorged breasts. The ache transformed into a sharp, needle-like urgency. Her eyes flew open.
“Oh, no. Not again. Not now.”
Her protest was pointless. Her body had long since stopped listening to her.
With a soft, internal click she felt more than heard, the let-down reflex triggered violently. It wasn’t a spray this time. It was a torrent.
Twin jets of milk shot from her breasts with enough force to tear the already compromised fabric. They hit the brick wall opposite with a wet, slapping sound, stark white against the faded graffiti. The streams arced, unwavering, painting a bizarre abstract stripe across the city’s canvas. She gasped, staggering back, but she couldn’t stop it. It was like a fire hose she had no valve for.
The relief was instantaneous and immense, a dizzying release of pressure that made her knees buckle. But the relief was short-lived.
As the last spurts dribbled down the wall, a deeper, more terrifying cramp seized her middle. It wasn’t the babies moving. It was the world around them expanding.
Her belly, already obscenely distended, gave a sudden, violent heave. A wet, internal pop echoed in her bones, a sensation of something giving way deep inside. The remaining seams of her Spider-Suit, the ones holding the central panel together over her stomach, split with a sound like ripped leather. The black spandex peeled apart, falling away in two loose flaps.
The exposed skin of her belly was stretched so tight it shone under the flickering neon. It lurched forward another several inches, the lower curve now brushing the front of her thighs. The weight of it, sudden and new, pulled her forward. She stumbled, her wide hips cracking sharply against the rough brick of the alley wall behind her.
The pain was a bright, white shock. It wasn’t the dull grind of before; it was a precise, brutal realignment. She felt the bones of her pelvis yield, shifting outward with a series of distinct, grinding clicks. She was pinned. The forward thrust of her belly and the backward press of her newly widened hips wedged her perfectly between the two brick walls of the narrow alley.
She couldn’t move forward. She couldn’t move back. She was caught in a stone and flesh vice.
Panic, cold and absolute, closed her throat. She was Spider-Woman. She’d fought guys in powered armor. She’d dodged bullets. And she was now utterly, completely immobilized by her own pregnant body in a grimy alley.
“Okay,” she whispered to the empty air, her voice shaking. “Okay, Gwen. Think. You’re a genius. You build web-shooters from scratch. Figure this out.”
She tried to twist. The brick scraped against her bare skin. A fresh, hot trickle of milk leaked down her ribs. She tried to lean back to get her center of gravity. Her pelvis screamed in protest, the bones grating.
Tears of frustration welled in her eyes. She blinked them back angrily. This was ridiculous. This was…
Her Spider-Sense, dormant through the exhausting walk, gave a faint, dull ping. Not danger. Proximity. She heard a shuffle, a soft footfall on the damp pavement.
A figure appeared at the open end of the alley, silhouetted by a distant streetlight. He was tall, lanky, clutching a brown paper bag. He froze, taking in the scene: the milk-splattered wall, the woman in the torn, bizarre black suit, wedged and enormous and glittering with sweat and tears under the neon.
They stared at each other.
“Uh,” the man said, his voice young and wary. “You… you stuck?”
Gwen let out a half-sob, half-laugh. “What was your first clue?”
He took a tentative step closer. “You need, like, an ambulance or something?”
“I need a crane,” she muttered, then sighed. “No. No ambulance. I’m just… taking a break.”
“In an alley? While you’re…?” He gestured vaguely at her midsection, his cheeks flushing.
“It’s a complicated pregnancy,” she said, the patented Gwen Stacy sarcasm returning as a defense mechanism. “Look, if you’re not going to help, just… keep walking. Please.”
He hesitated, shifting his weight. He wasn’t a threat, just some guy heading home. But he was a witness. Another person seeing her like this.
Then her eyes fell on the bag in his hand. A hardware store logo was printed on the side.
“What’s in the bag?” she asked, a desperate idea forming.
“Huh? Oh. Just some stuff. WD-40. Some epoxy. Fixing a chair.”
WD-40. Lubricant.
It was undignified. It was borderline insane. But it was physics.
“Can I borrow your WD-40?” she asked, the words surreal in her own ears.
The guy stared. “Seriously?”
“Do I look like I’m joking? Please. I’ll pay you for it.”
Shaking his head, he rustled in the bag, pulled out the familiar blue and yellow can, and took a few steps forward, holding it out at arm’s length as if she were a radioactive bear.
Gwen stretched her arm, her fingers just brushing the can. She hooked it, pulled it to her chest. She shook it, the ball bearing inside rattling.
“You might want to look away,” she said.
“Lady, after this, nothing’s gonna surprise me.”
She aimed the thin red straw at the point where her hip met the brick. She sprayed. The slick, oily smell filled the alley. She drenched the area, the fluid running down the brick and soaking into the torn fabric at her side. She shifted her weight.
Nothing.
She sprayed more, soaking the other side. Took a deep breath. Placed her hands against the opposite wall for leverage.
With a grinding, sucking sound, her hip slid free an inch. The relief was electric. She pushed again, her feet scrambling for purchase on the wet pavement. With a final, unceremonious shove, she popped loose, staggering forward into the open alley.
She caught herself on the dumpster, breathing hard. She turned and tossed the can back to the stunned man, who fumbled it.
“Thanks,” she said, already turning to continue her shuffling journey. Her suit was in tatters, her skin coated in a fine sheen of grease and city grime. But she was mobile.
“Hey,” the guy called after her. “You’re that Spider-Woman, aren’t you?”
Gwen didn’t stop. She didn’t look back.
“Not tonight,” she said to the darkness ahead, her voice a bare murmur. “Tonight, I’m just a woman trying to get home.”