Stan Lee Presents…

A story by Dan Laurikietis

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Hello,

My name is Matthew Murdock. Feel free to call me Matt.

I am in my early thirties, an attorney by trade, single, practicing Irish Catholic, non-smoker. I live in the district of New York commonly known as Hell’s Kitchen. But, I assume you know all that already.

I suppose you’d like to know what I look like?

Sorry. Can’t help you there.

I haven’t seen myself since I was a kid.

And what a mischievous little tyke I was. What the NYPD would refer to as a “juvie” a juvenile delinquent. I ran with a bad crowd, getting into tussles, nothing major but I was no little angel. Until one day in a rare fit of selflessness and moral fortitude I pushed an old man out of the way of an oncoming truck, the payload of which just so happened to be carrying a radioactive isotope. And the stuff hit me.

Right in the face.

Seriously.

I keep going over it again and again in my head.

That stuff should have killed me.

It didn’t. Obviously.

As it was it merely robbed me of my sight. Curiously though, it gave me something infinitely more useful back in return.

My other senses function with superhuman sharpness and acuity.

I live in a world of eternal darkness, but I sense in other ways you cannot imagine. My sense of sound provides me with a kind of “radar sense” that detects sound waves, painting a picture for me as they bounce off objects. You’ve heard of seismic surveys right? Same principle!

Not long after my accident my father was murdered. My old man was a boxer, light heavy weight. You may have heard of him. “Battlin’ Jack Murdock” could have been champ. Twice. He was brutally murdered for refusing to take a dive in a fight that he should have known was rigged. Let that be a lesson to those who think that pride is the least deadly of sins.

I can still feel the welts and bumps all over his body on my fingertips. I can hear the last proud beats of his dying heart. I can smell his blood over the residue of cheap cologne and cigar smoke left behind by his killer.

In that moment my life was changed forever.

A made a silent vow to my father that I would take my new gifts and put them to good use. I would dedicate my life to the battle for justice. Not revenge. Justice.

I would clean up The Kitchen and keep it clean. I would throw myself headlong into my studies until I was the best damn lawyer in New York, America, the world. I would stick up for people who couldn’t stick up for themselves. I would give legal aid, free legal aid to those that needed to see justice done the most.

Later I learned the fallibility of the legal system, the ways that innocent people can be wrongfully imprisoned while guilty men walked free to brag of their conquests in seedy bars with other low lives.

Well, I had a solution to that too.

While I studied in academia tirelessly by day, the night brought an entirely different education. I met a man, a blind man, who taught me how to use my heightened senses as weapons. I did not find him, he found me. He taught me to turn adversity into advantage and instilled me with the spirit of a warrior. His name was Stick. He’s gone now.

After graduating from college I opened a trunk that had remained shut for years. It contained all my father’s stuff. His lucky yellow robe, his boxing gloves, boots, under gloves, the paraphernalia of a boxer. I worked all that night and the following day constructing a costume of yellow, black and red that would help me carve out a new identity that criminals would grow to fear. This character had a name, a name born in the playgrounds of my childhood. A name the other children used to taunt me with because I made a promise to my father never to solve my problems with my fists. A name that would go from being an ironic, derogatory insult to a badge of costume has changed over the years but the name remains...

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But let's get back to the here and now.

The here is the balcony of my brownstone and the now is 7:15 am. Every morning I like to stand here in my bathrobe and let the city talk to me. While I may lack in sight my senses of hearing and smell more than compensate, the deluge of sensory experience tapping me into the very life’s blood of Hell’s Kitchen.

The doughy smell of freshly baked bagels drifts up to me from Marty’s Deli a block away, accompanied by the aroma of a thousand dark roasted percolations.

Toasters all over the neighbourhood pop open with a satisfying ker-chak, an old-fashioned tea-kettle whistles urgently, eggs hiss and spit gleefully on griddles and frying pans. The gushing, trickling rivers of freshly squeezed oranges punctuate early morning chatter. Husbands kiss wives goodbye as they set off for work, children crunch greedily through boxed of cereal, scrambling for the free toy inside. A young couple decide to devote the morning to laying in each-other’s arms.

The distinct sounds and smells of the kitchen and all who live there in all mingle to form a chorus rather than a cacophony. The neighbourhood itself a tangible entity rises into my nose and ears to whisper,

“Good morning Matt”

Sure as hell beats a morning paper. It’s turning out to be a beautiful day too. The early morning sun pierces the dewy mists left over from the night and lightly brushes my cheek. The promise filled smell of spring dances playfully in my nostrils.

The aroma of a thousand steaming coffee pots becomes unbearable and I’m just about to get my own caffeine fix when the harsh chime of a broken window three blocks away snaps me out of my reverie. The subsequent din of the burglar alarm literally makes me wince. I try to fade it out and concentrate on the trajectory.

Sounds like Belsen’s Independent Jewellers on Bendis Avenue. A brazen act of daylight robbery.

Someone should have known better than to pull this in the Kitchen!

Scared, barked commands drift up to me.

The squeal of rubber on asphalt.

I’m wearing the entire costume except for the gloves and the mask before I know what’s happening. Pulling the heavy, complexly woven fabric over my face I train my hearing on the escaping getaway car.

They’re coming my way.

Good.

A cursory check of the area tells me that nobody’s looking my way. I’m safe to pounce.

Leaping over the rails I savour the feeling of the wind rushing past me as I fall toward the approaching vehicle.

Look lively you scum.

Here comes… Daredevil : The Man Without Fear

In

Schism / msihcS