Sooo, i just totally realized all the typos in the one before this one XD and i'm not really much on the latter chapter but this one is better i promise. lol i also realized that i have a tendency to randomly switch tenses but oh well, lol, tell me if i reallyreally need to fix something if it's just killing you.

FYI

JONATHON IS NOT DR. MANHATTAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

lol so that no one gets that mixed up

anyway. review and thanks

no stealing

lol

3

Well, what the fuck now.

I groaned and fell backwards onto the creaking metal spring mattress half expecting it to collapse in on itself under my weight. No telling how old it was. Maybe it was the one that they put Lincoln on after he was shot down, it's old enough. I would have preferred to be shot again to having to go to Eddie's funeral. The ratty hotel I'm in smells bad. Like cat piss and sex. I frown again, I've never frowned this much in my life and I'm starting to think that my face may get stuck in the position. With my frown on my face I stare at the ceiling and glare at the noises of people fucking upstairs. I let my mind wander back to my Lincoln thought and I move gingerly on the spring bed into the lying position I'd seen him pictured in so many times thinking…I don't know what I'm thinking. Maybe lying like that, the way he did when he died I can get some weird connection to him, feel what he felt…

"Well this is just pathetic."

I sit up and the bed screams at my harsh movement and I actually smack it and tell it to shut up.

"Am I really sitting in bed trying to feel connected to a dead President…and telling a bed to shut up…maybe I really am insane."

I look around the room and sigh heavily, this guy is going down. Whoever did this has to pay. Ed wasn't the best person in the world, if anything he was extremely high on the list of people who probably deserved a good ass kicking. But what he showed on the outside and the man that was crumbling under the pressure on the inside were two different people, and the latter was the one that no one ever got to see. I saw that Eddie once. After my mom died. He was beside himself and he blamed himself for her death, blamed himself that he'd been off gallivanting in a mask when she'd asked him to help her take care of me after Jonathon left her for the last time. He blamed himself, and yet he never stopped. He was like a drug addict. The image I remember is like a panel out of a comic book. The crushed hero holding the dying woman as she reaches up and removes the mask from his face. That is how my mother died. In the arms of a Comedian.

She reached the punch line of life at the age of 37 and died of cancer. Colon cancer. She was a lovely person, large tawni eyes, long strawberry blonde hair, short and thin. She had a sense of humor but an odd fear of clowns and I fondly remember her screaming and hitting Ed with a pan one time when he snuck up behind her in his old costume. Some days I wish that I still believed in God. Some days I look out the window at the maggots that are crawling through their pathetic lives and I wish I still had the sense to blame it on a higher being's sense of humor and then I wonder how I got to be so cynical. I'm not usually an angry person, I'm very friendly, and I can get along with most anyone. I just see things in a darker view of life. Not to mention the predisposition for referring to other people I don't know as numerous species of bugs. The boards of the floor under my feet protest and complain as I cross the room and toss my bag on to Lincoln's bed and scrounge around for some new clothes. My trench coat, which is carefully folded on an oddly placed rocking chair in the corner of the room was my father's, though he died not long after I was born, in a house fire trying to save a kid. The kid got out, my dad did not. I peel away my dirty shirt from the day along with my pants and old underwear and pull out my 'costume.' The top was a special leather made by the Doc. A vest-top leotard with an O-shaped zipper running up the center of it stopping higher up on my throat, the zipper of the leotard going down and ending right below my naval thought it couldn't be seen under a thin but strong leather tanktop. Ed bitched me out all the time for not getting a full body one because I always preferred a half destroyed pair of jeans instead. The special leather that Jon made was extremely easy to move in and felt like you were wearing nothing, which is why I told him I needed the jeans, I needed to feel like I had some form of clothing on. Two black pieces of the leather also adorned my forearms, in case I had to shield my face my arms wouldn't get butchered. It wasn't completely bullet proof but did a pretty damn good job against knives. Before slipping on my jeans I clip a thin knife holster around my left thigh and venture to my coat. Reaching into the right hand pocket I pull them out but stop when a white something flutters to the floor. My fortune. I pick it up and stare at it for a moment and set it back down where I had lain out my knife collection. Yanking the jeans from the bag I look at them and almost shake my hand at how demolished they were. ¾ of my legs could be seen through the holes and rips but and down the legs, luckily somehow the ass was still intact and because so much was missing I could easily reach the knives without having to wear the holster on the outside of the jeans. My shoes come next, I remember Sally and Lori always wearing heels when they went out, I didn't and still don't know how. Then again I also remember when I let Lori wear my boots once and she could barely walk. Since then I'd upgraded from my old boots with new Converse like shoes that aren't as heavy or loud when I walk and lace up to my knee. They're also a lot easier to move in.

I hook the knives on and as a last second decision I shove the fortune into my jeans pocket and go to the window and put my jacket back into the chair. I had learned the night before that the door of the room doesn't lock from the outside so I have to use the window if I want my stuff to be remotely safe. Crouching down on the edge of the window I jump onto the fire escape on the adjacent building and jump to the ground startling a sleeping homeless man propped against a dumpster.

I snarl my lip up, this place is disgusting. It's pathetic when the people smell worse than the dumpsters. In all honesty I don't know where I'm going I just felt like walking and getting away from the dilapidated hotel. I pass a few prostitutes flashing their breasts and strutting themselves outside a bar and through all of my complaining and disgust I relish the ability to see the underbelly of the city in its rawest form. This is the true city, the un-sugarcoated, maskless side of town. I noticed back when I would follow The Comedian out he would always stray to this side of town. And at first I thought the logical thing, because that was where the crime was. But quickly I figured out the real reason, I figured out why the masked heros always appeared here, wandering the streets, patrolling the scum. This was truly the maskless area, this was the place where the most horrid, the sluts and the business men, the homeless and the politicians were all on the same level, the masked removed their masks and they were themselves in a place that they weren't afraid to be judged. The normal people you spoke to everyday put on their faces and suddenly they were their comic book hero doing what they most wanted to do. This was the American Dream. The freedom to do what you wanted, be who you wanted, and The Comedian knew that, he knew it and he turned himself into the American Dream, except everyone was too ignorant or in too much denial to recognize themselves when he appeared. Instead they attacked him, and in retrospect they were attacking what they all hated about themselves. Ed once stopped me when I was little, perhaps too young to actually understand at the time, but I remember it just the same. He took me in his arms and cradled me with that stupid grin. No cigar this time though he reeked of the sweet smell just the same. He said "Murph-oh." I hated that name, but now I'd give anything to hear him say it and sweep me up like he did then. "You only hate the parts of people that you see in yourself." He poked my nose and sent me on my way. Mom had sent him a glare but at the time I didn't really care and just laughed at the poke and scampered off to play. Another prostitute walks by me and I wonder what part of myself she represents. I wonder what part of me Rorschach represents. I cross the street. Not that I hate him par say…he does stink though…Glancing around I carefully smell my hair and sniff a little half paranoid that maybe I did stink from just sitting in that hotel room. Lavender wafts up into my nose and I sigh happily. That was a relief. But being around him made me want to throw up, or punch something, and I'm pretty sure neither of those were as a result of his smell…okay, maybe the throwing up one. But I couldn't quite place him, I'd seen him somewhere, but where I don't know…

I pass my sign wielding friend who is standing on under the entrance of an old movie theatre as rain starts down pouring. Jumping under the overhang I shiver a little and look at him looking at me.

"Hi…"

He doesn't answer just eyes me carefully like he's worried I'll do something to him.

"Nice weather."

He looks at me and one of his ginger eyebrows quirks lightly but still he says nothing and I nod my head. "Right, you don't talk." I sigh. "This is going to be a long night."