Rorschach's Journal, October 1st 1985.

The alleys stink of lust and terror. Fear erodes the good in this city away until only fear is comprehensible among the chaos.

Alone.

Policemen deal drugs. Companies sell their people away to the highest bidder. Flesh for sale. Our children are your dogs and whipping stools. Shadows are alive, creeping into human minds and corrupting, deteriorating, destroying.

Crime: Up.

Death: Up.

Rape: Up.

Human decency: Down.

The manholes shriek and shudder as blood is poured down their throats and they swallow. This city is a cannibal. But it's food is parasitic, and it eats its way right out again. Is consumed by the city. The cycle continues.

Must get to work. Become a whore for the system and it will be kind to you. Will never sink to that level again. The poster selling 'The Scent of Love' rapes my bedroom window from 20 feet away, plastered on the wall on a building nearby. Must remember to tear it down. Never remember. Been there for weeks now.

Now leave.

Tattered footsteps painted the canvas of the empty sidewalk, grey as a battlefield corpse. It was dark, the early morning just setting in as the dead yellow sun snuck across the ground, a bright cloak that only brought discomfort to the denizens that appeared out of gutters and live in their cubicles until the cloak retracted and they dipped back into their gutters again. The footsteps painted life into the dead sidewalk. More and more footsteps made their way from the dark into that warm blanket, and the street was soon full.

One of those pairs of footprints had a slow gait, contrasting greatly from the quicker, fleeting steps that splattered the ground nearby. These feet belonged to a person of a shorter stature, about 5'4", average body type, just a little bit overweight, but not so much that it would greatly show. High cheekbones; a pair of lips that drifted a millimeter off to the left disfigure the face with a distorted grace, a thin nose and Harlequin eyes above and between. Thick, curling almond hair was pulled back into a tight bun, a couple loose curls drifting like torn cloth behind the head.

She walked through the door to the burger joint, and tossed on her hat. Brygida's workday had started.

"Gimme a cheeseburger and a coke…" The 13th customer of the day said, a lit cigarette clenched in between his teeth.

Brygida said that it would cost him only a leg and an arm for such a meal: $3.75. She smiled the way she was supposed to smile: that nice, ear-to-ear smile, no teeth. Teeth can mean hostility, and you don't want your customers thinking that you're some rabid dog. The man handed over a couple of crumbled one-dollar bills. They looked like they had been recently in the thong of a stripper. But the woman paid that little fact no mind, and she straightened out the bills before placing them neatly into the compartment tailored for each specific bill.

"Break time." The manager said, patting Brygida on the back. She smiled and walked off, opening the back door to the ruddy old building. It was steeped in the smell of frying fat and genetically engineered tomatoes; or onions that didn't make you cry when cut. She walked through the median point in the doorframe, from greasy steam into smoggy streets. Taking a granola bar from her pocket, she watched the smoke rise from a fire a couple of blocks down.

Chaos wasn't abnormal for that city. An abnormal chaos would be something along the lines of everything going right for a day, and the Christian Conservatives would call it blessed while the rest called it the Apocalypse.

But none of this was on Brygida's mind as she rubbed her eye, some grease vapor having irritated her cornea. Shoving the remainder of the snack into her apron, she returned inside, unable to see through her right eye. In an instant, she was on the floor; ketchup stains a lovely new addition to her already hilariously ridiculous work uniform. Her manager sighed, "Go home. Take the day off."

She gladly did so. After changing out of her work clothes and washing the grease from her eye, she stopped at a telephone booth, she called a friend of hers, asking her if she wanted to do anything that day. The friend replied that she would love to, and that she needed to pick up a new dress for her sister anyway. They figured where they would meet, and hung up.

The Polish woman, otherwise known as Brygida Katarzyna, walked down Main Street, her heels clacking on the half painted canvas of the afternoon sidewalk. A silhouette of two people, with what looked like a missile head crashing into them as they held each other, loomed in the corner. Brygida always thought it was beautifully morbid. At least they had each other at the end.

She came upon the corner where her friend stood, Marja, a blond little thing with thin, long legs, a round face and a jovial smile. She hooked her arm with Brygida's and started twittering about her day and her older sister: a model with a very luxurious career. Marja had always reminded Brygida of her mother. A stick shaped older woman with a high-pitched voice and very spastic tendencies. Behind her back Brygida and her friends would call her Parrot. She had a sharp face, and enjoyed wearing colorful clothing: She had never gotten over the sixties and seventies. When she was a child, Brygida would always have a peace sign somewhere on her being, and her large green eyes done up with natural make up. She looked back at herself and had the impression that her mother just smeared dirt on her face.

Entering into the clothing shop, the two girls were overcome with the smell of lilacs smothered in strawberry jelly and painted over with the smell that the color pink would give off, if colors could have smells affixed to them. A primped up plush woman with large hips and a smile just as large and intimidating caught them at the door and started talking in her large New York accent. The woman pulled Marja away while Brigida was left to her own devices.

Those devices included hangers, high heel shoes and prying eyes. After looking around the dress section, Brygida looked for something less innocent to be interested in. She spotted a couple, a man and a woman, a baby on the woman's hip as the pair bickered in a whisper, but one could see the ferocity in their eyes and their curled lips and their clenched fists. Their tones weren't audible in the shrill ringing of hangers being pushed along racks, but the girl was certain that they were growling, like tiny dogs. They would both be hoarse by the end of their little trip. Meanwhile, the baby chewed on a tassel of the window curtain, blissfully unaware of his parents arguing. It was sad. Brygida couldn't help but think about what would happen to the kid.

Divorce.

Custody battle. Or adoption.

Messy room. Yelling. Perhaps a red cheek.

Cruel work. Horribly low pay.

Death.

Life has us trapped and suicide is a cop out. Brygida's eyes narrowed, not in hatred or because she was angry, but she had forgotten her glasses at home, and she was trying to see whom the boy looked like more: His mother or his father…

Definitely his father. Actually, he didn't look at all like his mother. Her only guess would be that he had an affair, and the real mother of the boy dropped the love child off at his door.

The woman squeezed the child's closed fist too tight and the little boy cried out in pain, but the woman didn't seem to pay any mind as she kept half yelling at the man.

"Excuse me…" Brygida said softly, tapping the woman on the shoulder. She turned around, a lump of dry, dark brown hair refusing it's natural pathway of whipping about her head, and instead staying glued to her head by pain of a pound of hairspray.

"Do you need something?" She replied, impatient.

"Perhaps I could take your little boy for a moment? You seem to be in the middle of something…" She looked at the man, who was in turn, looking at the tassel that his son decided to gum on.

"Sure. Whatever." The woman shoved the young boy into her arms and then placed her hands on her hips. Brygida looked at the little boy's fist. One of his nails had sliced into his palm, and he was tearing up fast. She walked away from the sighting couple and up to one of the desks, where a red head stood putting dresses on racks.

"I'm sorry, can you help me...?" She asked. The red head turned around, an un-amused look on his face. He walked up the counter, and stopped, as if waiting for what she was going to say next. Brygida shifted the child in her arms, and held out his hand with the cut on it.

"Bandage." The man reached under the desk and pulled out a box of band-aids. Brygida thanked him and unwrapped one of them with her teeth and fingers, placing the boy on the counter and pressing the band-aid onto his palm. She smiled at him, as he seemed to calm down, sniffling a little and rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands.

"Thank you." Brygida said, smiling at the man. He didn't smile back. Simply nodded and returned to what he was doing.

'What an odd person...' She thought. His expression hadn't changed once since she had first seen him. Most people would at least look like they felt bad for the kid, but he just... Stared on. She cooed to the little boy and brought him over the women's section. Luckily enough, Marja had been completely taken in by the large woman's charisma, and was looking at wedding dresses for the wedding that she never wanted to have in the first place.

Out of the corner of her eye, Brygida saw the fighting couple beginning to walk out of the store, and she rushed after them.

"Hey--!" She called, and the man stopped while the woman kept walking; she even turned the corner, 'round the block, disappearing from sight. The man's eyes widened slightly as Brygida stopped in front of him with his child.

"I believe this belongs to you." She said with a bittersweet smile. The man took the little boy with a quick 'Thank you', and walked after his wife. Brygida opened the door to the store, "I think I'm going to go home, Marja..."

"Alright..." The blond was completely hypnotized by the large woman. Brygida hoped that she didn't blow all her money on things that she would never use... She turned around and subsequently bumped into someone, her forehead colliding with his or her nose.

"Oh—I'm so sorry—" She said quickly, half way realized how often she had apologized that day...

"That was a nice thing you did." The person she ran into said. She looked up a little and then smiled, "Oh, hello, I didn't see you there."

"It's alright." The man said without a smile, "Did the man forget you had his kid?"

"Yes and no. He just forgot him completely, as did his wife." Brygida ran her fingers through a curl that had been shaken loose of her bun, "I'm not sure it was such a good idea now..."

The man set his sign on the ground, "World is ending soon anyway."

Brygida chuckled to herself, "Is the news in?"

"Yes. No news of impending doom. So sad that the world does not know."

"That's why you're here, right?"

The man looked at her, his intense stare never wavering from her face, and he answered with a simple, "Yes."

Brygida took this time to bow out, "I'll see you later, sir."

"Goodbye." The man walked off with his sign: "The End Is Nigh". The end was always "nigh". But that didn't mean it was any time soon. The word 'nigh' means 'near', and the definition of near was: "A short time away in the future". Well, the future is something that hasn't happened yet. If something were a short time away in the measurement of a time that hasn't happened yet, technically, it could happen at any time. He'd been there for as long as she could remember going to work, and she could only imagine how much longer he'd walked those same roads...

She found it fitting that he should wander the streets for eternity...