It was a perfectly normal day in Belleville: the clocks were ticking, the streets were bustling, the Smashing Pumpkins were on the radio, and Gerard Way was in the basement. He'd been there ever since he came home from school three hours ago, and now, he had a pencil and a sketchbook in his hands and a million ideas bouncing around in his head, too many for him to ever put on paper. He wrote down what he could, and he tried to sketch the vivid pictures in his head. Sometimes, his characters felt like they could burst through the pages and come to life at any moment.

Then again, Gerard wasn't sure that the comic he was working on would ever go anywhere. No matter how many hours he spent working at the local comic book shop, or how many overly long fan letters he sent to his favorite writers, or how many times his little brother asked for just one peek of what he was working on, Gerard was still fifteen. It wasn't like anyone was ever going to publish his work.

Someday, Gerard would be a hero, but today, he was just a boy.

Gerard's life was simple. During the week, he went to Belleville High School, a hellish place for a kid who couldn't swim, couldn't dance, and didn't know karate. Most of the time, he dragged himself from class to class. He sat in the back of the room, hardly learning anything as he tried his best not to fall asleep during lectures. As for his fellow students, he had a few friends, a few more enemies, and a lot of people that he didn't know and didn't want to know. He never went to football games or pep rallies, and he longed for the day when he could finally be free of cafeteria food and math homework.

After school, he always came straight home and retreated into the basement. Most days, he would work on his comic. Sometimes, he would dye his hair or experiment with his mother's makeup. He'd turn his music up loud, and he would stay there for hours on end. Sometimes, he forgot to eat, even after his mother had told him dozens of times that dinner was ready. Other times, he forgot to sleep, and he'd struggle to keep his eyes open the next day at school. He never regretted it though. He was proud of the progress that he had made on his comic, and he knew that it was all because of the time that he had spent in the basement, perfecting his art.

He spent his weekends in the comic book shop. He'd practically grown up there, so it wasn't much of a surprise when the owner hired him to run the cashier and make sure that all of the comics were in their right places. When Mikey wasn't busy hanging out with his friends, Gerard would drag him along, and he'd share some of his old favorites and new finds with his younger brother. Sometimes, they played Dungeons and Dragons together. Gerard always insisted on being the Dungeon Master, much to Mikey's chagrin.

Gerard's life wasn't perfect, but he got by. He rarely thought about what the future could hold, and when he did, he never thought beyond his high school graduation. For Gerard, the world consisted of school, the basement, and the comic book shop, and for now, that was enough.

That was how Gerard found himself in the basement, furiously writing a comic book, on what would turn out to be one of the strangest days of his life so far. He drew panel after panel, trying his best to ignore what was happening upstairs. Mikey had invited his friend Geoff over, and the two of them were playing video games, screaming at the top of their lungs every time they made it to the next level. Gerard tried his best to focus on his work, but it was impossible when Mikey and Geoff were making so much noise, so he decided to give them a taste of their own medicine.

Gerard searched through his CD collection, eventually selecting Gish, one of his favorite albums. He stuck the album in the CD player, and he turned the volume up as loud as it would go. Then, he went back to work. As Billy Corgan's voice drowned out all of the noise coming from upstairs, Gerard wrote page after page. His mind was racing, his hands were cramping, and his ears hurt, but it was worth it.

All of a sudden, Gerard heard a strange noise. He dropped his pencil and turned toward the source of noise, and he saw a figure standing at the top of the staircase leading to the basement. It was just his dad, presumably calling him for dinner or coming to complain about the noise. Gerard ignored him, but as the figure came closer, he realized that he was mistaken. Gerard's father wouldn't be caught dead in that jacket.

Finally, Gerard got a good view of the mysterious man. He appeared to be around forty, and he had shoulder length brown hair and a wispy mustache. He was wearing a plaid jacket over a T-shirt and cargo pants. He looked apprehensive, scared even, as he descended the staircase. It was the face that tipped Gerard off though. It was like looking into a mirror.

Gerard reached for the CD player and turned the volume down. He was about to ask the man who he was and what the hell he was doing in his house, but the mysterious man spoke first.

"Aw, fuck," he muttered. "I think I'm in the wrong year."

Now, Gerard was even more confused. "Who are you?" he asked.

"That's not important. I'm not supposed to be here anyways," the mysterious man answered dismissively before he started talking to himself again. "Why didn't the watch work? I swore I set it for the right year before I left..."

"Do you need any help?" Gerard asked.

"No, I'm alright. I'll have this all sorted out soon, and then I'll be on my way," the mysterious man said as he tinkered with his wristwatch. "Wait a second. Maybe I can salvage the situation." He paused and then looked straight at Gerard. "You don't know who Frank is, do you?"

Gerard thought about it for a second and then shook his head. "Never mind," the mysterious man said. "I should get going anyways."

Gerard had a million questions, but he didn't ask any of them. Even if he had, the mysterious man wouldn't have answered them, so he didn't see the point. Instead, he returned to his comic book while the mysterious man pressed a few more buttons on his watch. Then, Gerard watched him go back up the staircase. He swore that he saw him vanish into thin air before he reached the top.

The basement door opened again a few minutes later, and this time it really was Gerard's dad, telling him that dinner was ready. He reluctantly went upstairs, and as he ascended the staircase, he looked around for the mysterious man. However, Gerard couldn't find him anywhere, and as dinner went on, with Geoff and Mikey excitedly talking about some event happening at the middle school, he became increasingly convinced that he had made it all up. Maybe it was a weird dream, or maybe his parents were right and he was spending too much time on his comic. He was sure that the mysterious man, with his sudden disappearance and his strangely familiar face, wasn't real though. It just wasn't possible.

By the end of the week, Gerard had stopped thinking too hard about the mysterious man's visit. He had bigger problems on his hands, like getting his driver's permit, keeping his job at the comic book shop, and not failing his classes. He never told a soul about what had happened, not his parents, not his friends, not even his beloved little brother. Gerard never completely forgot about the mysterious man though, and sometimes, when the teacher's lecture was flying far over his head, he would find himself replaying the incident in his head. He knew that it hadn't really happened, but it felt so real.

The years went by, and Gerard grew up. He finished high school, and he got accepted to an art school in New York City. After graduation, he got a job at Cartoon Network. His family could not have been more proud of him. He thought that he was leaving his childhood behind and finally making something of himself, but he should have known right from the start you can't predict the end.

"You don't know who Frank is, do you?" the mysterious man had said, and Gerard sometimes found himself thinking back to those words in the years that followed his visit. Who was this Frank, and why was he so important? Gerard wished that he had an answer. At his high school graduation, he found himself flipping through the program, subconsciously searching for someone named Frank. In college, he took a class with Professor Frank, and although he liked Principles of Cartooning, he was pretty sure that the mysterious man wasn't talking about his art professor. Even Gerard's dating preferences soon became linguistic: there was Freya, Frankie, Francis, Fredrick, but never Frank.

"You clearly have a type," Mikey remarked when Gerard brought his latest girlfriend, Françoise, home to meet his family.

"No, I don't," Gerard insisted. "It's just a coincidence."

In the back of his head, he knew that wasn't quite true. He refused to admit that he was still thinking about a weird dream that he'd had when he was fifteen, that he was letting it have this much power over him. He told himself that he had to let it go.

Gerard and Françoise broke up, and two weeks later, the Twin Towers fell. Gerard watched the broken city sky from his cubicle, and he emerged from the tragedy with a new sort of creativity. He put all of the energy that he had once thrown into writing comic books into writing songs, and he took out the guitar that his grandmother had bought him out of the closet for the first time in years. He wondered what the mysterious man and the even more mysterious Frank would think if they could see him now.

Gerard spent almost ten years looking for Frank. In all that time, he never thought that Frank might find him first.