Nature and Science

There was a certain comfort to the complete blackness. No sound, no feeling, no registration nor realization of peril or pain. He wasn’t cold nor was he warm. For several moments, Otto believed he was dead, and death felt like being unborn; not dead, not alive, just… unborn.

Then he was dropped about five feet and everything came tumbling back with him to the ground.

Somebody said ‘Whoops!’ and Otto opened his eyes, blinking against the hard white sunlight that silhouetted the massive form to his side.

He was grabbed (grabbed!) back up and held by two arms, strong and warm, but he still couldn’t make out who was carrying, and dropping, him.

The blackness returned, sliding over Otto’s concern like a warm blanket.

Without a concept of time, he had no perception of when he next awoke from unconsciousness. He knew it was his second time fighting to stay in the world of the awake, and so he forced open his eyes to look and see. What he saw was something enormous and hairy, with no form and no features easily picked out through the fog of his mind. He tried to demand an explanation, a name, a purpose, but all that he managed to croak out was a hoarse syllable before he was readjusted in the thing’s arms and then easily slung over it’s shoulder like a sack of flour. Whatever it was, it was strong, and the blood rushed to Otto’s now dangling head.

Just as he decided to strive to keep his eyes open and remain awake, for surely then he would have his answers, the darkness swept over him like a tide of water. Once again, there was nothing but comfortable black.

The next time he awoke, Otto kept his eyes shut and tried to will himself back into the dark void where reality, and he, did not exist. Rudely, his senses began to return to him, starting with smell, and he found himself inhaling the scent of smoke. He listened, heard the crackling of wood and popping of sap, wondered what his vision would bring, and refused to look.

The cold shook him, harder and harder until his teeth chattered and he realized he wasn’t cold but freezing. Fear brought him to open his eyes and the light burned at his retinas until he couldn’t tell if his vision was blurred from the tears or the light itself. He raised a trembling hand to close his coat over his chest, discovering he was no longer wearing it. He was wearing nothing, save for a sleeping bag wrapped around him that was easily three sizes too small.

He tried to speak but, again, a dry and hoarse noise came out in place of his voice. He peered around, blinking and struggling to swallow his panic. A campfire burned nearby, and with some relief he spotted his clothes steaming near the flames, draped over tall sticks that had been jammed into the ground so that his garments could dry. His boots were too far to reach and, with some semblance of modesty, he wondered if walking around was a good idea in any capacity. Instinctively, with practised absent-mindedness, Otto made to have one of the actuators fetch him his jacket.

The panic was immediate. None of the arms responded to him. With no small amount of horror, Otto realized he was propped up on four heavy adamantium coils of dead weight. He feebly tried to lean forward but could barely manage to draw breath; his lungs hurt. Everything hurt.

Wake…wake up! His mind weakly commanded his tentacles, but there were no voices answering back.

There hadn’t been for… hours? Days? He had no idea as to how long it had been since the young Spider-Man had repaired the inhibitor chip, then teamed up with his Peter and the third Parker to try and fix, to fight, the insanities of the other men… Osborn, Conners, Marco, Dillon, where was everybody? Had the spell to send them home gone wrong? Had the wizard done something sinister, tricked them perhaps?

Otto’s fist clenched at the idea of Strange content to send them all back to their deaths, the wizard comfortable and apt at deceiving and misleading the young Parker. He was fine, now, Otto assured himself, alive and with his chip and sanity restored in golden light, but neither the boy nor his Parker were anywhere to be seen in the empty forest.

Where was he?

Eyes squinting through the sun, Otto again tried to see his surroundings.

He was lying, naked and freezing, in a sleeping bag meant for someone much smaller. A boiled wool overcoat, black and itchy, was rolled up under his back to give him a semblance of support as he was propped up in a sitting position. Beneath the bag and jacket was a nest of pine nettles and conifer boughs, someone’s attempt at making the bumpy slats he lay upon more comfortable. Around him, between thick hewn boles that made up the frame of the primal shelter, were thin walls made of woven alder coppice and more piles of nettled branches. Between the slats, he spied several half-empty plastic water jugs, and all around the trees that surrounded the odd little campsite were wooden boards screwed into the trees in sad imitations of a counter top, pots and pans with scratched and flaking teflon hanging beneath from rusted nails.

Otto squeezed his eyes shut, the tears brought forward by the straining light finally too much for him to handle. He breathed in, trying to calm himself. Wherever he was, someone had brought him there. Someone had thought to dry his clothes and at least attempt tucking him in.

Someone’s voice scared the daylights out of him when he finally heard them. He nearly jumped, some of the slats clacking in protest as he abruptly shifted.

“You’re not dead.”

Who knew such a turn of phrase could make his blood run so cold yet simultaneously fire up such a panic.

“Good. That’s good. Keep it up.”

They spoke quietly, each word sliding easily into the next, yet somehow their accent punctuated each syllable as if it were its own sentence. It was a woman’s voice, and as she rounded the corner of the shelter and Otto saw her for the first time, he was mildly unimpressed.

She was a bumpkin! He felt indignant, eyeing her buttoned up plaid shirt tucked into formless pants. Her boots were scuffed and well worn past their original colour, laces tied back into themselves before they could keep the folds closed. A wide-brimmed felt hat, black like the jacket beneath Otto’s back, with a low pinched crown covered her eyes and most of her face as she walked straight to the fire. A braided cord lanyard with several nooses full of squirrel necks was hooked around her belt loops, and Otto cringed involuntarily at the sight of the several dead rodents with droplets of blood staining the corners of their mouths.

Far more alarming, however, was the shotgun in her hand and the knife holstered on her hip.

The woman set the gun down on one of her makeshift counters and pulled the blade from its sheath. It was a thick handled thing with a metal edge Otto could see glint even through his strained eyes. She looked up at him and smiled, her eyes hidden behind circular sunglasses.

“I’m going to make us something to eat. Sit tight.”

With ruthless efficiency, she began to gut each squirrel with well rehearsed motions that clearly came from experience. Each squirrel took only a second or two and, as gruesome as it was, Otto couldn’t help but stare. He had to admit, when the pelts were cast to the side and the heads cut off, the tree rodents didn’t look quite so brutalized; they looked like meat. Just meat.

Then she skewered them on a sharpened stick and jammed the stick into the ground angled over the flames and Otto remembered they had been forest fuzzies not moments prior.

“Tastes like rabbit, if you’ve never had them before,” she said, a note of sympathy in her voice. She eyed him from behind her sunglasses, then sighed far too heavily for someone trying to seem patient. “Tastes like chicken, if you’ve never had rabbit before.”

Otto grunted and closed his eyes, trying very hard to go back to sleep so as to not think about the sizzling entrails on the fire. He’d had his fill of gore for a long time, and the thought of violence oddly made his back hurt.

He could feel her roll her eyes at him.

“Well, if you don’t eat, you won’t get your strength back. Two days is a long while to go without food. Not accounting for however long you were out here before I found you beside the river, anyway.”

Otto sputtered, trying to repeat what she had said but only managing to cough dryly. He heard her sigh and the crunch of her boots became louder as she made her way over to him.

“Here, have some tea.”

He held his hand out and she pressed a thermos into his weak grasp. He raised it to his lips, smelling pine, tasting the woods, but drank anyway because his throat was on fire and the tea was warm and by God he was thirsty.

He greedily guzzled it down, panting when he at last finished. Eyeing her sideways as she crouched beside the raised lean-to, he licked his lips and dared himself to try again.

“Two days?” Otto croaked. She arched a brow then slowly nodded at him. He swallowed, his throat sore and still parched.

“How-” he coughed, and she grabbed the thermos out of his hand before he could hand it to her. She went back to the fire, ladled liquid from a pot into the thermos, returned it to him. He tried to smile gratefully but barely managed a grimace. His nose crinkled, catching a whiff of a new scent over the tea, a smell that he did not like; she wreaked. Sweat, damp, like a high school gym change room or fever-soaked sheets. She smelt of wet dog and he had to swallow back his surprised gag, reminding himself he probably smelt very similar.

“How did I get out of the river?” he barely managed to ask, not drawing breath for fear of tasting the air.

“I imagine it has to do with those strange and incredulous appendages growing from your back. Rather sci-fi, though I’ve always preferred the horror genre myself.”

He stared at her, eyes watering in the light, unable to blink, unable to hide his building anxiety. Did she know who he was? Did she have anything to do with how he wound up in the woods rather than on the banks of the Hudson next to some flaming garbage pile?

“Where’s Parker?” he choked out before he could stop and think.

She shrugged, her brows furrowing.

“You were alone. Have your tea, get some more sleep. This is only a pitstop. We’ll pick up in the morning. I’ll wake you when dinner is ready.”

She raised herself back up and made to turn to the fire. Hastily, Otto tried to speak but his tongue and throat refused to let him. She glanced back at him, an expectant look on her face.

“I’m freezing,” Otto managed to spit out, eyeing her rolled up sleeves and bare arms. “How are you not freezing?”

One side of her mouth curled up into a thin smile.

“You were in the river. I was not. Some of us just have better instincts for survival.”

He swallowed his indignation down. Surely, she figured he hadn’t willingly dove into the water in late November.

“What’s your name?” he tried, opting for a simpler, more polite line of conversation.

She ignored him, tending to her squirrels and checking on the dryness of his clothes, and Otto was somewhat grateful she didn’t look at him again. He had so many questions and no strength to ask any of them.

Where was Peter, his Peter? Where was anyone, for that matter? Where the Hell was he, and why did she save him? Did she not know, not realize, who he was? Doctor Octopus, right in front of her, and she didn’t seem to have any inclination that she nursed a deranged villain? Of course, he knew he was no longer deranged, but no one else did save for the Parkers and the other men stolen from their realities.

She must know, Otto convinced himself. She must know and she knew he was broken, and that was the only reason she wasn’t terrified. She probably was taking him to a precinct, some yokel sheriff’s station where everybody in town knew everybody else’s name and gossip ran like wildfire.

Yet, how could she take him anywhere? He blinked at the realization that the woman was barely over five feet and maybe seven inches at best. She was strong, maybe, but he hadn’t seen her do anything impressive and thus there was no evidence to suggest she was somehow super powered like Parker or Osborn. How had she possibly managed to bring him anywhere over the course of two days, and furthermore seem completely nonchalant about moving on to somewhere else? He tried to spy tire marks in the snow, but there were none to be seen in the immediate area, at least from his vantage point. No vehicle, no sled, no wheelbarrow; how was she managing everything?

Impressive, he thought to himself. Highly suspicious. Don’t trust her, I-

His thought trailed off into empty silence. His children did not answer, or even stir. They lay behind him, drawn up and coiled as tightly as the woman had managed to arrange them, completely still.

In that moment, Otto felt incredibly alone. The crackling of the fire was not suitable company, and the woman was very good at pretending he wasn’t there. He sighed, looking down at the thermos in his hands. Clutching it to his chest, attempting to warm himself, Otto wasn’t sure if his eyes were still strained from the light or if he was crying.