For now, this is a oneshot, but I may add subsequent entries if the proper inspiration strikes me. If any of you think of anything that might make a good entry, feel free to mention it when you review (hintity hint hint).

This story is dedicated to Lani, the only one of my group of close friends who is (almost) as obsessed with Watchmen as me. Lani, if you're reading this, I hope I've succeeded in brightening your day a little and keeping me in your memory a little longer. I'm gonna miss you.

Rorschach's Journal

1975

Don't know the date. Date doesn't matter. Three deaths, two murders, one birth. That's what matters.

Three, two, one. Like a ticking clock. Or maybe a timer. A countdown. Counting down what?

Maybe the end of the world. The Day of Reckoning. Sounds about right. Can't be counting down toward anything else. When a coin falls down a drain or a boulder rolls down a mountain or a bomb is dropped from the night sky, can't stop it. Only thing that stops it is when the coin is lost in the reeking sewers, when the boulder plows through a house, when the bomb swallows thousands in a fiery instant. World is a lost cause. No stopping the end. Three, two, one. The clock is ticking.

First death. First murder. Blair Roche. Six years old. Kidnapped by man claiming to be Gerald Grice, thought she was related to the Roche Chemical fortune. Different Roche. Father was low-class city bus driver. Kidnapper took her back to home, an abandoned dressmaker's shop. Full of sharp objects. Knives, hooks, and teeth of two hungry dogs.

Second death. Second murder. Walter Kovacs. Young, naive. Used my identity to fight criminals, wore my face, but let them live when he was done with them. Weak. Absurd to think we might be the same. Still, tracked the little girl to kidnapper's home. Admirable but useless. Saw what had happened. The piece of the girl's dress sitting in the furnace. The bloodspattered cutting board in the kitchen. The dogs fighting over a child's femur. Bloodless death for him, but no less a murder than the little girl's. Whimpered for the mother he'd never had. Closed his eyes. Never opened them again.

Third death. Doesn't count as murder. Said his name was Gerald Grice. Lied. Insects don't have names. Garbage can't beg for mercy as it's handcuffed to a furnace. Dirt holds no life to extinguish when it's consumed in fire.

Watched the old shop burn for an hour. Or maybe it was several hours. Or might have taken only minutes. Couldn't tell. Felt like days, by the way the planet was shifting beneath my feet.

Inhaled smoke for a few more minutes. Unless it was hours. Realized what the smell reminded me of. Birthday candles.

One birth. Me. Only a few hours old. Brought into the world by the death of Kovacs. Couldn't say whether closer to a phoenix or a zombie, but now alive nonetheless, when I had not been before. Opened Kovacs's eyes after he closed them for the last time. My eyes now.

Spent the first few hours of my life roaming the streets, searching the convenience stores. Had to pass through thirteen of them before I found what I was looking for. Ice-cold Coca-Cola, out of the commercials. Not in plastic bottles or aluminum cans. Green glass bottles that feel like ice melting in your hands. The way Coke was meant be drunk. Getting harder and harder to find. Soon there will be no place to buy them anymore. Clock is ticking. Three, two, one. Should go back and buy the rest before they're all gone. Must remember.

Bought birthday candles too. Using light from one of them to write this journal entry. Used up three-quarters of them writing the parts before this. Only three left now. Soon it will be two. Perhaps should have gotten cake too, but Coke is better.

World is locked in a downward spiral. It cannot be saved. Will reach the bottom soon. But until the day the apocalypse arrives someone must protect the good and punish the evil. Armageddon doesn't change that. Nothing can. More Walter Kovacses and Blair Roches in the world left unguarded or unavenged. More filth in the world left uncleaned.

So let the liberals sit high on their thrones of corpses. Let them decree and filibuster and tell me I can't do my duty. They will try, but can't stop me any more than stop the Day of Reckoning. Comes closer with every second, and we're all in its sights. Only one candle left now.

Three, two, one. The end is nigh. And I walk alongside it.

My name is Rorschach. Happy birthday to me.