Midnight In the Marvel Universe

The Wanderer

Alberta, Canada.

Robert Frost once wrote a poem called, "the road not taken." I'm not a big reader. In fact, a lot of the time, I'd rather read the newest hustlers magazine than a poem written by some old fart.

But this poem, it always stuck out to me. It's about a guy who finds himself, for whatever reason, in the middle of the forest with two different paths in front of him.

One path is full of footprints and smashed plants and has been walked through many times. The other, is overgrown and barely visible, a path that many people don't take.

The poem goes on with this asshole in the middle of the woods taking the road less traveled by and how it's made all the difference.

If you were to ask me what I thought of the poem a couple years ago, I'd say it was a load of horse shit. Really? A road not taken? Like taking a road no one's taken is gonna change your life? Give me a fucking break.

Now, however, I've started thinking about that poem more and more. Thinking about what it really means as I walk by one highway and back road after another.

I've been on the road for over a year now. Started in New York and slowly made my way across the country, hopping over the border every now and then.

Right now, I'm in the middle of the woods. No road. No path. Just me, the moon lighting my way through the snow covered woods and my thoughts.

It's been like that for the past few days now, ever since I crossed the border into Canada. Walking through these woods, feet crunching in the snow, it reminds of me of the old days.

Of my past. Or, at least, what I can remember of my past.

The thing is, my memory is like an unfinished puzzle, full of holes and unsolvable images that I just can't find the right pieces for.

I don't remember my first birthday.

I can't recall my parents or any of siblings.

I don't know my real birth name either.

My first real memory is waking up in a lab, surrounded by a bunch of quacks in lab coats, poking me with needles.

Those quacks were trying to make a weapon. A weapon they thought they could get from.

I managed to escape and ruin their chances of getting that perfect weapon of theirs. But it lost me the opportunity of regaining my past.

It also left me with a curse. An everlasting pain that I can never get rid of.

And eternal life.

Ever since I escaped that lab, I tried, time and time again, to end it. To let myself rest forever.

And yet, no matter what I try, whether it's as simple as a knife to the heart or as complex as letting a train run me over, I only have brief moments of death–a glimmer of the world beyond–before my wounds heal and I'm pulled back into a world I so desperately wanted to leave.

This slowly devolved into one endless cycle: wake up, drink till I passed out, wake up again, try to die.

For years, this was all I could do. Wake up. Drink. Die. Wake. Drink. Die.

One day after another, my life would be spent, walking the country from one end to another. Thinking I was a freak.

A monster.

And more than anything, alone.

And then one day, I found myself in a bar, halfway to being drunk out of my mind, when this old guy just pops up next to me. Out of nowhere.