Rorschach

Just remember my favourite bit from an Alan Moore comic, Rorschach explaining how he became Rorschach to the shrink. He’d found a house of a kidnapper who’d murdered a little girl. Handcuffed him then set the house on fire.

“Stood in street. Watched it burn. Imagined limbless felt torsos inside; breasts blackening; bellies smouldering, bursting into flame one by one.

Watched for an hour.

Nobody got out.

Stood in firelight, sweltering, blood stain on chest like map of violent new continent.

Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night.

Looked at sky through smoke, heavy with human fat and god was not there. The cold suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone.

Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later.

Born from oblivion, bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion.

There is nothing else.

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long.

No meaning save what we choose to impose.

This rudderless world in not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It in not god who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs.

It’s us.

Only us.

Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turnings it’s illusions to ice, shattering them.

Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world.

Was Rorschach.”