Life begins and ends by the sight of your eyes.
Her life was contained in a duffel bag slung over her right shoulder. With every step the strap would pull and catch against old wounds, flexing pain up her spine along both bone and muscle. The sidewalk was stained - dirty and cracked, breaking endlessly under thousands of stalking feet, like hers, like others. On her eyes caught the alleyways, cast in umber even in the morning lights - caught the world move by. The city was filthy and worn, simple in its shades. Its hues were of black and of white and of little grey. Like a moth to flame it drew in her mind, drew it in tight and closed up the trap. The heartbeat of thousands echoed all around, ringing from the boarded up buildings and all the broken glass - and she was caught. Walking with the rhythm of the city under her heels, she discovered the beat and discovered her way. Surely, surely, she got the feel of the streets, of the races of rats underneath. She felt the smog coil lazily around her boots as she made her way. The sun had barely risen itself into the arms of the sky, chasing away the lingering shadows, and she watched - eyes clouded. She watched and waited and knew. There was something here worth seeing.
The bag hit the ground and she forced herself to sit down on the rusted bench, an island consumed by the sea of people starting to mill about. As the day dawned they seemed to appear from the brickwork, condense from the mist, hollow faced and dead eyed, smelling of night. The woman tilted her head at them, at their state, a state she had seen everywhere she had gone. Cities all had foundation, all had stakes in the night. That was when the monsters played games and spun their horrors. Her body still ached. Not from selling herself to others. Not from the lack of drugs in her system. Inside and out her form sang with its scars, where it had been beaten by these cities. Into submission? Yes - no. She could not yet say. The woman was tired, for once and her body had begun to show its wear. Not young anymore. She was making the transition into old. Her black hair had begun to show grey, to produce it in strands. The lines on her face had started to wear through the skin. Beaten and aged. It fit with the crowds around. It fit with the cityscape and with the feel all around. An old feeling of giving up. Yet she hadn't. Not yet. Maybe the city hadn't yet either.
A man stood on the corner with a sign hiked on his shoulder, proclaiming the end to the skies. The man held within him the pulse of the city, and she could not help but raise her head and look. Like so many others around him, he stood, but to her they parted around the street prophet like a sea, unseeing - blind to the man that looked like the rest. From this distance she could not see his face. The woman didn't have to. He was worn. His posture was rigid but tired. The clothes proclaimed the rest. The man was unremarkable. Yet it was he that signed her fate and crossed her life with the city. Inside of her something rose unwelcome to the surface, a strange kinship she suddenly felt with the world around her. Not him. Not her. To everyone in the city she felt strangely attached, as though they all danced like puppets on the same strings. Connected in a way that held not reason or sense, just sensation and a current that ran under the skin and through the blood.
She tore her dark eyes away from the scene and reached a gloved hand into her bag, producing her little bound book. Untying the string that held it shut, she traced her fingers over the cracking leather cover before turning it open to a reasonably blank page. Producing her pen from her coat pocket, she narrowed her focus in from the world and tried to keep things simple.
E. G. Harring's Notes
I found it. I hadn't expected it to happen here - this city seems quite like the others. It smells of bodies and pollution, people working and dying, just like everywhere else. Boston, Chicago - they all seem to be the same. New York City - what does it hold? I suppose I shall find out eventually. Answers always have a way of working themselves to me. I doubt anyone will notice my arrival, or my departure. What is one drop to the bucket? One more milling about thousands?
I like this place better than the last already. After all, no one here knows my name. Well, not yet, anyway. I am sure that I should go ahead and find work at one of the newspapers. I am trying to remember the name of the one that the last was connected to. If they know my work, they are more likely to be interested in taking my writing. I am going to need the money if I am going to be staying here awhile. I have no idea how much my current funds are going to last. Will continue to keep notes updated in case I forget. Again.
One to many concussions and all that jazz.
The woman tucked away her effects, fingering the strap of her bag that still lay sheltered at her feet. Plans wormed through her mind, landed and rearranged in alignment with time and for the moment she allowed herself to breathe. The mist coiled lazily in the air before shimmering into nothingness. Her dark eyes skimmed again off the buildings, off the people. The man proclaiming the end was nowhere in her sight, and she tilted her head, wondering. She wondered about nothing and everything before rising, returning her bag to its place, and headed off down the street with her hands in her pockets. The city thrummed on around her, sending it souls down upon her. She kept her head tilted to the skies, as though to embrace the clouded heavens, thinking. Always thinking. The woman would need to get somewhere to stay.
Unconsciously her fingers began to trace the scar on her lip, running over it as she looked for signs. Turning to walk down a different street she let her eyes run across the apartments, looking for places available to rent, weighing the cash in her jacket pocket. Her fingers picked at the skin of her lips, plucking it as she continued to search. There was no hurry, really, she had all day. Yet over her was a sense of expectation, like the world were holding its breath for something. The woman evaluated this feeling - this apprehension. Did it come from being in such an unfamiliar place? A place familiar in some senses yet alien in its layout, it streets. She had yet to know the rules and had already stumbled into the engagement. If she had been smart, she would have not left the last city in such a hurry, would have traveled here and let her eyes behold only at first. Instead she had dove right in without comprehending the depth.
Stupid mistake - she reflected. She hoped it would be the only one of the day.
There was a sign in the window of one of the buildings that caught her attention and snagged her mind. The smallest of smiles came to her lips and she crossed the threshold of the concrete steps and up to the barrier of the wooden door. Involuntarily, her mind checked the lock, noting its make and the wear around the edges. Someone had attempted to force it before and had obviously failed. She took hold of the doorknob and entered the building, stepping quietly into the foyer. The place smelled of cigarettes and nighttime activities, an unspoken code that all apartment buildings seemed to uphold no matter where she went. Tucking her hair away from her eyes and brushing the dust from her clothes, she moved down the hallway, eyes to the doors and stairs, until she found the Landlord's office. Her knuckles rapped sharply on the door.
"Whataya want?" A voice barked from behind, loud and grating to her ears.
"The sign said there was vacancy. Got a room for rent?"
"Yeah - Yeah. Hold on."
Her ears perked, listening as the other woman made her way across the unseen room, making quite a bit of noise behind the closed door. It was clear that her new landlord was not a master of stealth, and for some reason that calmed her. She did not like being taken by surprise. In her previous line of work surprise was considerably dangerous - deadly, even. When the door opened she was not surprised to see a woman older than she, wearing fitting clothes that seemed only a tad more conservative than what she had seen on the streetwalkers outside. For a moment the woman looked her over, taking her in as though she were going to deny any income that she could get. E let the corner of her mouth tilt upward into a non-threatening smile.
"Got the money?" The larger woman looked her up and down, scowling.
"How much?"
"Three hundred now for the deposit. One hundred every first of the month."
E tilted her head.
"Got mouths to feed." The woman continued, a brow arching. Of course she did.
Don't we all. "Hold a moment."
Her fingers fished the wallet from the inside of her pocket, feeling the woman's eyes as they sought to skin and steal. Tucked inside the leather were lines of crisp new bills - the money from her last paycheck she had collected. At least she would not have to pay rent at the old place. Sad, really. She had liked it there more than she ever would here. Hopefully there would be other things here that would overshadow this place. The woman did not want to spend her day shopping around - a place was a place, just as a bed was a bed. Without much more consideration, she unfolded the amount and placed it into the expecting hand of the woman before her, watching the light catch the talons of her nails, curling like the claw of a dragon, waiting to capture and take. E watched as the woman recounted the money carefully, slowly, each numeral passing across her eyes, fueled by the innate greed that she could see in all people. It was natural. Money was the driving force - the thing that made the world turn.
"Come with me." Still the landlord looked at her with cruel eyes, the eyes that everyone looked at her with nowadays. The line of her mouth was soft and speculating, judging, waiting for the harshness that always came - eventually. E felt a pang of guilt. She followed the large woman as she tracked up the complaining stairs. The building seemed to be sighing under its own great weight. "My name is Dolores Shairp - Ms. Shairp. As I said, rent is due the first of every month. Don't make too much noise and keep things clean and we won't have a problem. I can kick you out anytime I want - remember that."
The words were mute as they fell on the younger woman's ears, her eyes tracing the worn walls of the place, taking in the details that presented themselves. A sense of familiarity settled against her - that feeling that she had done this all before. So many places she had been started off as this, wore themselves thin even before she breathed a word. The people were ghosts and shadows wearing different skins, yet the same to the bone. Dolores was one of these ghosts, and E resisted the urge to look through her, to look through the wraith that was just another echo of the live that she led. Instead she sighed and continued to follow.
"Here's your room." Ms. Shairp gestured at the door at the end of the hall, giving the other woman another glance that held a lingering bitterness. "Don't bother anyone." The key exchanged hands and the shapely woman began her descent again. The other was left to wonder why she had even bothered to make the ascent in the first place.
A sigh escaped managed to part her lips as she turned toward the door and fit the weathered key into the rusting lock. As with the rest of her surroundings it seemed as though it were ready at any moment to settle into dust, even as she twisted and bore her full weight against its tight hold. Sighing, she straightened herself and examined her situation again, testing the knob and the strength of the door. Placing a booted foot under the crack at the bottom, she lifted and turned the key, finally popping the door open and propelling it back into the room with a satisfying pop. Taking a deep breath, the woman righted the bag on her shoulder and stepped through to inspect the damage that would serve as her new home.
The air was a thin layer of grime, of accumulated dust that had gone too long settled. Furniture slouched around the room, broken beasts hidden under thin white sheets - like bodies waiting in a morgue. Despite the summer air breathing outside the brickwork, there was a chill to the air, a dampness that crept past her layers of clothes. She released her held breath, breathing in the scent of coffee grounds and dankness. Her hands reached out and took the key from its place, shutting the door behind her. The damage had indeed been done, and the situation would have to be handled as is. For the second time in the day the woman found herself cursing her own name, long after she eased her burdensome parcel off of her shoulders and let it sink to the floor in a billow of dust. Standing there, she felt young and foolish. The sensation brightened in her stomach and smarted across her face, tugging up her lips despite herself.
"Things will work out," she promised to herself, softly. "They usually do."
The woman did not allow herself to think of the last time that things had not worked out.
Again she allowed her eyes then to settle on the space that opened before her, the rooms that now were in her charge. Immediately she thought to move to the far window, passing through the empty door frame into the bedroom, wondering for a moment where the door had gone as she wrapped her fingers around the bottom of the window and lifted the pane. The summer air greeted both her and the untouched air with sparks and a hot tongue, lapping into the indoors as the woman took another harsh look at her surroundings. Whomever had last stayed in the place had left their furniture behind - she doubted that her landlord had thought for her charges enough to provide them with these comforts. She ran her long fingers along the bedside table absently, feeling the dust that coated all in sight. How long had the place stayed vacant? Below her feet she could hear the cries of the children reaching up to meet her. Not long if the mother had been able to provide for them. E shrugged out of her heavy overcoat and let it fall into the rocking chair opposite the bed.
The bed itself was small and well worn, the mattress hosting its characteristic stains. The table beside the bed was wooden, as was the ancient rocking chair. Along the wall was a tall and broad bookshelves, vacant save for a dated edition of a Bible that the woman doubted anyone nowadays had read. She passed back through the gaping maw of the bedroom door, touching the frame where a door had once hung. With sure hands the tenant began uncovering the crouched collection of furnishings, each sheet sending billows of grunge into the air. With each cough her ribs extended and pulsed with new pain, and eventually the woman was forced to take a seat on the aging couch, hands attempting to hold herself together as she hacked. The pain served as a reminder that she had not yet healed from her last excursion and was not yet well enough to tempt the venture again. Her fingers dug into her side, feeling the bones where they still lay mending, knowing the bruising that raked across her ribcage. Over the days they had faded from purple to yellow, but they remained - on the surface and below. She wondered how many pocketmarks her body could yet take.
Raising her hand to cover her eyes from the prevailing light, the thought of sleep came and went quietly weighed, but not tempting her from the waking world. The day was yet young and though she had not slept the previous night for her traveling, there would be many lonely hours later after the daylight faded - when the ache for activity would be sharp and ever present. For now she needed to see to her surroundings, count the remainder of her funds, finds places for what little possession she owned, and perhaps go out onto the streets to find a suitable company under which she could work. Already the prospect of this work settled like a wet cloth over her skin, pressing inward. Rising immediately, she shook herself of her laziness and ran a hand through her thick black hair, hanging in thick curls around her shoulders. Injuries and lack of sleep aside, there was nothing inhibiting her from making this as productive a day as any. Gathering the dusty sheets in her arms, she made way to the fire escape where she let them air under the watch of the sun. They still could be of use, after all.
Shadows ran their fingers along the sidewalks and up the fronts of the buildings as though vines, threatening to drag the unsuspecting between the cracks and into the world that lay unseen. Hands promptly placed in her pockets and her head tilted purposefully down, the woman lulled the night into a false sense of security that would allow her to make it home alive. Even under the cover of the streetlights it could not be considered safe for a woman to be out alone, no matter how much she sought naught to make herself a target. The air snapped like sparks from an invisible wire, pulled taunt in preparation for the first victim of the night to fall into the bluntly-placed trap. On she passed by the alleyways promising by the memories they carried, twisting from the shadows and trying desperately to stay in the lights and out of the reaching hands. They were there, pressing from the shade, waiting for their chance to reach and grab, to steal her from the life that she still led. E held her head tilted to the ground and moved slow as though she had no place to be. Experience, she whispered back to the armed city. The advantage was not lost on fate.
Many times had the woman escaped being preyed upon by simply pretending that she was not, in fact, prey. This did not mean that she held her head with the air of a predator or stalked the shadows like they. Nay. Instead the woman shambled in her rags and clothing mismatched and worn, moved with the air that there was nowhere to be and none to wait on her bones, that she had no stake in this world at all. The bag in her hand could contain anything - booze or liquor most likely. Those who watched wanted little to do with a beggar woman who had already had too much to drink. Her hood concealed the remaining glimmers of her youth and many still were too distracted by the fresh meat parading on display - the woman who sold and could likewise be stolen - rather than pay attention to the hunched form slouching past. Yes, E had played their games and knew what to expect, though it made something sick twist in her stomach that she had to play along to start. Before here she would dress in her best and remove these vermin one by one, wipe their smiles and their grins - take away the sharpness of their knifes. That was before and this was in the now. Her wounds still pulled fresh at the thought.
No incident then occurred and she reached the looming shadow of her apartment complex with the flesh still fixed to bone. Not a moment after she had passed through the doors did the facade then drop, becoming herself once again, transforming from beggar to woman. Shaking the anchors of night from her shoulders she moved up the stairs, conscious of the voices rising from behind the door of her landlady. Voices that mixed and crescendoed in the cries of children that shattered when their mother spoke. E flinched back from the sound, the harsh words falling muffled on her own ears as she snaked up the stairs and away from thin walls. The upper levels were silent, the doors hooded and quiet - closed as she passed. A glance was spared for each in turn, the feeling of misery thick with its occupants. The floor that was her own was sparsely lit, the other door on the landing silent as it had ever been - noiseless as she gave it a look before moving past. She passed through the final threshold and breathed a breath of ease in knowing that she had made it to her new home.
Collected in her arms where the shambles of her previous life, the only keystones that never failed to transfer from one rising to the next - her writings. Finding a place interested was not the issue - she had found it easily enough. The only barrier thereof was the concept of the privacy and care in which all of her professional matters had to then be held. The writer E.G Harring was a person of great privacy, all knew. Yet the extent of this privacy could only be tangibly held with those she considered her employers. Never could it pass their lips of where she stayed or the secret that she held close to her heart - right on her skin. The thought never occurred to them until their eyes beheld that the writer that they had in their graces for so long was not...male. It was a matter of utmost professionalism that all had to withhold, should they want a word or breath of her writing. A female who wrote on the topics that she did would not be taken as seriously or words be held with as much weight. Sexism had yet to disappear, and still weighed on her like some great unspeakable blemish - made her sigh under its weight. People discredited her for being...female. Therefore, her gender was moved out of the spotlight, out of the point. Those who employed her referred to her only in name - E.G Harring. Those who read assumed what they may. Never did a word pass a single pair of lips. This was the agreement that was reached that afternoon - the agreement that had kept her from coming back to the apartment at a decent hour.
Setting the documents down on the low-slung coffee table, she tried to push them momentarily from her mind as she passed through the living room and through the door that led to the narrow kitchen. Rarely did she feel the need to drink coffee at this hour, but she knew that the first responses would need to be given to the journalists early the coming morning, meaning her work hours would swell to envelop half the night. Though she had washed the ancient coffee maker earlier that day, she still eyed it skeptically as she poured in the water and spooned out some grounds. Taking a seat on the counter, she waited to see if the thing would actually produce anything she could drink. The woman was glad that she had taken the coffee and the tea from her old place, as well as the few items she could be said to live upon. E did not eat much, truth be told, only what was necessary - a feeling she shared with sleep as well. She found that she wrote better on an empty stomach, anyway, for then she was not tempted with the sleep that her body seemed to so convinced it was deprived of.
From her place on the counter she viewed the small kitchen and allowed herself another small smile. The entire place was on the bridge of shambles, but there was a history here that she liked. Whoever had previously occupied the place had probably been elderly, she could smell the faintness of soap and moth balls - the characteristic scent of the aged. E hoped that whomever's place she had now taken was not buried six feet under or in an asylum. Perhaps a family had come to rescue them from the harsh realities of the slums. The woman doubted it, but she hoped. The conclusion was harmless, after all, because she could never know for certain. The dark of her eyes tracked the spitting pot, hissing at the fuss of making her a drink though it seemed to be doing so. She let out a breath of relief that she had not realized she had been holding. Coffee would make the night more bearable. E just hoped that she had enough sugar with her to make it drinkable.
After fixing herself a steaming cup of awakeness, she tracked back into the living room and picked up one of her journals from the coffee table. The woman had so many volumes of the same book, all worn and weathered, all made of the same supple cracked leather. The ones that now helped line her bookshelf in the room where personal, yet the few that fanned out across the wood of the table where professional. The one from her previous vocation was thick and stuffed fat with notes, envelopes, a ledger of what she had been paid for her works, bursting at the seams with her penmanship. The other was slimmer, not yet broken, and the only words that it boasted as of yet where her initials and the name of the company she had visited today. E was organized in her endeavors, all of them, and did not want the first step into her new employment to be on the wrong foot. Cradling her cup close, she breathed in the bitter bite and took a small sip before reaching out to pick up the opened envelope that contained her first written assignment. She knew it would be the hardest thing that she ever wrote for her work, as she needed to grab the attention of the readers to the point where they would be interested in continuing to hear what she had to say.
An introduction to her would already be contained within the paper - a few scant words about E.G Harring that would serve to curb most of the more curious eyes. Yet the woman behind the writer knew that this introduction would only be a title - the rest would have to be summed from her own pen. Her fingers scanned across the notes that were contained within her hands, the contract and details pushed aside. Instead she looked at the last of the collection, the topic that would begin her daytime career in New York City - vigilantism. Low and behold, the woman had to laugh at it, as she had expected something else. Yes she was not ignorant of the cities late night hosts and their activities, though she had only heard bits and snatches from when the topic had played upon other assignments. The topic rose within her many feelings, feelings that would be hard to restrain from leaking onto the paper. The hardest part, in reality, of this topic, would be constraining it to the knowledge of the writer and not the woman. Though personal experience burned in her mind with the hotness of a brand she could not give a word about her own late night excursions, the feel of bones breaking and lives tearing themselves apart. Not a breath could be spoken about the times she had fallen off of rooftops, thrown others into brick walls or painted the sidewalk with the lifeblood in their veins. The woman laughed with bitterness and with joy, her mending ribs making her breath hiss. From the table her pen and her ledger were retrieved and she began writing her own response.
Excerpt from Vigilantism in New York City - Masked and Unmasked Alike.
Crime hosts a wide array of masks and faces, hiding amongst the just as well as those who share the same skin as they. The shadow of a criminal appears in daylight just the same as a civilian, though at nighttime the former seems a touch more sinister. At night the vermin of the underworld swarm into the streets and the police force as trail enough keeping them contained to the lower-income regions of the city. An armored man with a gun on his hip hardly steps foot into these places and one must ask if he understands the struggle that goes on.
When a badge cannot be seen, who then should try and burn out the rats? Whenever the police are missing from the streets and their dogs are laying slumbering in stations, what keeps the vermin from climbing the walls and slaughtering those sleeping in their beds? Well, there are those who take the law into their own hands, the ones who hold the reins tightly on the snapping jaws of the underworld and keep them from biting too many hands. Some round up the rats and deposit them on the doorsteps of justice with hopes that their sentence with suit the crimes and others simply dispose of them in the back-alleys would dare take their chances or step foot. Everyone in the city raises their voices and declares this as wrong, but without these protectors, these few, what would the streets be like? Those who sit pampered in their upscale abodes need not worry their heads - mostly. When a criminal creeps through your window and seeks to take all that you have, would you rather be rescued by someone unseen in a mask - or not rescued at all? Blood cannot be weighed like dollars, but the value of life can be seen when one thinks about their own.
The idea of taking justice into ones own hands is far from a foreign concept, even before the stages of today and the acts that keep most hooded heros from the pages. Heros - I say, even if they kill. Most act as though police do not kill. There may be differences between an officer of the force and a vigilante dealing out justice with the brunt of their fists - but the goal should be the same. Vigilantes are not the villains hosted in Saturday morning cartoons, they are striving to make this city a better place to live - and who says that they are not?
My ears care not about controversy or stories that are a decade old, my eyes make no difference between on wearing a badge and one without. If more people cared, if more people tried to help those who are too weak to help themselves and stepped forward without cowering in the fear of their own lives, the city would become a better place. Why should only the police officers and the politicians be the ones to say who can and cannot give justice? Justice is justice, just as freedom is freedom. If freedom has its place in America's hearts, why cannot justice as well? Think little on the hands of justice and more on the future that is being paved.
-E. G Harring
The finished article lay in her hands, bare and prepared for whatever the editors of the newspaper wished to do with it the coming morning. With a glance to her watch she rose, stiffly, stretching the soreness from her arms and massaging her writing hand to free it from cramps. Without much thought her feet carried her to the bedroom, thinking with singularity toward the sleep that she had continued to push aside in thought of other activities. The woman made sure that the window was closed and locked, have retrieved the sheets from the fire escape earlier. They now lay spread over the grimy mattress in an attempt to make it somewhat suitable to her needs. Even through the clouded eyes of her drowsiness the woman gave a sharp look to what lay beyond the glass panes, the city that twisted around her like a grotesquery summoned from unreal nightmares. Sirens wailed somewhere in the distance, the screams of whatever corrupt system the streets had laid on this night. The darkness swelled behind her eyes as she lay her head down, but still her eyes were fixated on the window and what lay beyond.
Locked away in this cage of a room she wondered if anyone would come to rattle it. Dry anticipation coiled through the chambers of her stomach and she tried to swallow the hollow feel that came to her bones, the calling the resounded through her muscles. If they were to come through the window she could easily force them out onto the fire escape, through them down the side of the building and watch as they exploded across the welcoming cement. If through the door came, bursting the wood and lock right open then she would be on her feet in an instant, clear the room in another, leap into their surprised embrace and feel the bones of her hand crack against their cheeks - their face splitting open under her touch. Her hand fingered the scars along the tops of her hands, the hard calluses on her palms, the little nicks were knives had been caught in her flesh. She marveled at the bending of her crooked fingers were they had been broken and irresponsibly set. The smile that came to her face was one of expectation, the impatience that came with her wounds still healing. E could not will herself into the retirement that she had so previously thought this city held for her. A quiet life was not a life when the city screamed around her - needing help that none would heed. Its screams were her own and each gasping breath was a plea that she could not leave unanswered. The woman left her scarred hands fall onto her chest as she continued to watch the darkness play behind the window - her portal into the world that she could not yet join.
Soon - she promised, letting her eyes finally close. I will not be kept here forever.
The shaking intake of her breath soon calmed, her mind lashing out at the nightmares that lingered behind her closed lids. Fight, her brain told her, as she wrestled with the night. Inside of these dreams the world tasted of blood and of leather, the feel of the costume against her skin. Below her the city lay at her feet, whispering its last words into her mind.
Save us - the city cried, blood flowing from its tongue.
Yes - she replied, feeling the bodies crumple under her. I will.
Endlessly the night stretched on and the woman fought hard in her dreams.
Author's Note || Naturally, as much as one may wish, I do not own Watchmen or the concepts or characters thereof. I do, however, take credit for E and the words contained in this story. I thank you for the patience in reading and hope you have found something to enjoy.
Until next time, stay sane.