Rorschach's Journal.
January 6th, 1982.
Wake up to sky of sour milk, fat cats sucking from withered teats. Long day ahead. Best get started.
Face found where left, hidden in trash with other treasures. Frayed scarf flecked with blood, broken lighter with fluid, discarded hairpin, bank statements for further investigation. Broken lolly stick, old sneakers tied together by the laces, book of matches - one missing - empty pen casing. Half eaten kebab, mostly protected by moist wrapping. New Yorkers will waste anything. Food, words, time, potential. Achievement is unnecessary plaudit, all flash and thunder. Better the illusion of struggle. Pity is legal tender here.
Newborn babe slumbers in cot of Styrofoam and bubble-wrap, rare example of innocence. Pure, clean, dead. Best outcome. The city circles the drain with its own excretion, its sons and daughters groomed to exult in the stench. This one gets out with a clean sheet. Asian-American, perhaps Vietnamese. Korean? Hard to tell. Small features, squashed face. All babies look the same.
Smudge of lipstick on forehead. Goodnight kiss. Commit shade to memory. Blanket is old rag, untraceable, blotted with stains from doner meat. Box is interesting. New boombox, mildly expensive, unfamiliar brand. Also Asian? 'Fell' from back of lorry, sold cheap. This neighborhood is predictable, actions as revealing as women's dress. I already know where to start. Like sirens, the music calls me. I cover the child's face with the greasy paper.
Taking my breakfast, I exit the dumpster and leave the treasures behind. Time to take out the trash.
[Pump, pump, pump me up!]
Ready to take my exercise, the 'song' is apt. Blood stirs. Boom box is Asian brand from dumpster. This is right place. Music, too, becomes harbinger of our fate. Jungle music, full of drums and chanting, symbolizing our fall to primitive desires. The beat drowns out the knock of headboards, the forced squeals of pleasure from girls in the company of pigs. Sounds of despair, desperation and impotence. Cold comfort.
I stroll through the corridors unheeded, the smell of sweat thick in the air. Wallpaper peels like sun-burned flesh but darkness pervades, a thin veil for carnal acts. Lawyers, judges and politicians lay beyond these doors. Taxpayers money at work. At the end of the hall, I find the woman I'm looking for. She kneels at the foot of her bed, her pimp looming above her. His pistol - not a euphemism - hovers at crotch-level, the barrel pressed against her lips. It's a routine, designed to remind them of their place, keep them in line. She sucks gently on the cold steel.
Slanted eyes scrunched shut, she doesn't see me enter the room. The pimp has his back to me. I vomit on the inside of my face. This brothel, this sweat shop where orgasms are produced like branded shoes, it makes me sick. The pimp strokes the trigger, grinning, weapon cocked and loaded. Latent homosexual? Premature ejaculation? Not a priority.
I slam my leg into the backs of his knees and he falls to the ground. No use praying. The gun slops from her mouth, and she winces. Then she sees my face. Screams. There is resignation in the note. So many do not truly live, only exist. Scarcely that. I take his pistol, insert in mouth. With the gun like a chisel, my fist a hammer, I sculpt his face into a visage more pleasant. Not like mine, though the blood shifts like the ink spots. He crumples on the floor, a greasy paper, half eaten kebab.
This place. I'm reminded of the past, of Walter's childhood. I think of his Sylvia Kovacs, the parade of men in carnivalesque variety, monsters with two backs, the demons of dreams. The abuse after the screams had faded, before the screams began. Hazy now. Shake it off. Remember my own childhood. Two dog gnawing on a bone. Cleaver in hand.
The hooker sobs. Take blanket from inside pocket and wrap it around white-knuckled fists. In many ways, she saved her child. Saved from abuse. Saved from shame. Saved from cesspool of humanity. Still, there is good and there is evil. I will not compromise in this. I twist the blanket around her neck, and maneuver around her, pulling up, strangling her with the swaddling of her dead baby.
As I tie knot in rag, she loses consciousness. I let go and she breathes again. Unlike her child. Probably for the best. This city a flea-ridden dog, chewing on its own leg 'til blood seeps and mats its fur. Fleas can be removed. But taste for blood...