The Crab Man Chapter 01
Eddie was hoping to see some fresh faces in the crowd but today was just going to be just like the others. Dead weight. No doctors, real estate attorneys and definitely not even a dentist. But he tried to shake it all off anyways. Technically AFTER ALL….they WERE his peeps.
Admission was only five bucks but Eddie knew deep down inside he couldn’t squeeze a penny more. He even knew that at least half of the crowd hadn’t paid the cover fee and found ways to sneak in. But did this non lucrative day on stage slow down a funny man like Eddie? No. In fact HECK no. He knew that as a comedian in Philly there would be much rumors about him smoking crack. None of it was true. None of it was even close to true for the only recreational drugs he did was a small amount of weed only once a year on New Year’s Eve. And no Eddie couldn’t possibly be dubbed a pott head as many of his close friends had figured out over time it was peer pressure that came with the territory of maintaining a social life.
Eddie’s mom of course knew that he was just naturally full of piss and vinegar and could never sit still in Church. It wasn’t until he reached his late 20s that he realized he had a knack for being a comedian. His homies on his basketball team liked to call him “Big E” but there were in fact some jealous Ivy League wannabes that insulted him with “Eddie Spaghetti”. Dorks. All of them Ivy League wanna be white boys. Eddie secretly laughed at those polo shirt dorks. Mostly because they had to study all that edumacation, get them six figure paying jobs, only for their spouses to end up sleeping with his homies on the side. Eddie’s friends proved that money didn’t mean anything when it came to relationships and sex. It was all about personality. And Philly? Yeah ALL the brotha and his brotha man was loaded with character.
There was a loud applause and Eddie knew that he had just wooed the crowd with yet another sex joke. It was always the sex jokes that got the crowd’s utmost attention. Sometimes he liked the booz hound crowd that drank too much because they were good for a laugh even if what he said wasn’t funny.
Then it happened….so suddenly….a cold chill entered from the back of the room. Goosebumps raced up and down Eddie’s spine and he found himself forced to curtail a good sex joke.
“So you know, she thought at first the man had an extra belly button”….Eddie stopped and gaped at the stranger in the back of the room. There was an eerie silence but the crowd didn’t seem to recognize it nor did they pay any attention to the mysterious white man in the black Draco Steampunk hat. A hat that could be potentially worth more then the aftermarket Honda’s that they rolled in with.
Eddie hemmed and hawed as he quickly reached in his back pocket for his red bandana for moments like this when he needed a good sweat catcher. The crowd knew him so well and was quite used to impasse moments like this but this was no impasse. Eddie was spooked by the sudden change of the ambience created by this stranger. This stranger with a straight face who remained adamant as to not crack so much as a smile.
The gaily crowd continued to pay no attention to the stranger quietly slinking his way to the back corner of the room nor did they have any interest in giving his unique face mask any quizzical looks. This was Philly after all and things here for the most part weren’t much different than New York. Eddie’s vision was superior and he kept his gaze fixated on the stranger’s black clothed face N-95 mask which
read two capitol letters “DB” on the left side. And on the other side? At first it looked like a big “W” but when Eddie squinted he realized it wasn’t the letter “W” but rather a Pterodactyl? Did those big nefarious dinosaur birds actually ever exist?
The goose bumps didn’t stop and there was something uneasy about “DB’s” idiosyncrasies that just gave Eddie the boogie man creeps. And what was “DB” supposed to even stand for? Dirty Bird?
Eddie didn’t feel comfortable telling another sex joke around a very serious looking stranger that had never been to one of his comedy shows. Instead he shifted his jokes towards politics knowing that his crowd at this point was drunk enough to pretty much laugh at anything.
He frantically took a long sip of his 32 oz Old English so he could stall for time to drum up a joke.
Ironically he thought of one.
“Hey ey! Like yo check it. They caught the vice president using the stair lift chair to get on the plane. They asked her if she was just trying to imitate Joe and she said no it was a super windy day and she wanted to be certain that her hands would be free to salute the soldiers and not tied up holding down her skirt.”
The comedian’s crowd laughed and Eddie felt his confidence boosting. He intentionally shifted his gaze towards the corner of the room in hopes of cracking a smile from the scary strange man in the hat. Nothing. Not even the slightest bit of mirth in those stoic deadpan eyes. Eddie was getting confused at the stranger’s demeanor. Why was he here if he had no intention of laughing. Why would this over dressed white guy be encroaching upon his hood? FBI? A brotha man in the crowd got warrants? It was a very good possibility.
Eddie wanted one good last look into the masked stranger’s eyes but to his dismay they were now blocked by what appeared to be a comic book?
He gently swiped away at his dreadlocks that had freed themselves so he could squint and get a better look at what the stranger was looking at.
It was in fact a Marvel Spider Man comic book but none like Eddie has ever seen before. Spider man certainly wouldn’t have an hour Glass shape like that nor had he known Spidey to have boobs. The lights from the overhead reflected from the comic book but Eddie was pretty sure he could make out the title on the magazine. It brought him yet another wave of chills as he had a special antipathy for spiders but the word “Spider” was spelled entirely differently. -Spyder Woman