When I was a kid, before the accident…I'd lay awake at night listening to the sirens. I liked to put stories to them. Trying to figure out what they were for, ambulance or cops, robbery or fire. I don't know, just a stupid game. But after I lost my sight, after my abilities developed, I realized how many sirens there actually were…how much this city suffered every single night.
No. I…I tried not to fight…to make my dad proud. To…to block it out. The sirens, the pain, the fear, all strangling Hell's Kitchen. For years, I buried my head and turned away. Then one night, right after we quit Landman & Zack…I heard it.
I called Child Services. Like you're supposed to. But the mom, she wouldn't believe it. Said it wasn't true. And the dad, he was smart. [scoffs] He made sure what he did, how he did it, didn't leave a mark. The law couldn't do anything to help that little girl. But I could. [Matt is shown beating said father senseless] He spent the next month in a hospital, eating through a straw. And I never slept better.
Man cannot be both savior and oppressor, light and shadow. One has to be sacrificed for the other. Choose and choose wisely. Or others shall choose for you.
I've been writing about crime in this city since before you were born. The only thing I know without a doubt is you don't get to be the man at the top without making enemies looking to tear you down to the ground.
I don't, but nothing drives people to the church faster than the thought of the Devil snapping at their heels. Maybe that was God's plan all along. Why He created him, allowed him to fall from grace to become a symbol to be feared warning to us all, to tread the path of the righteous.
I don't know how to pray. My father was not a religious man. My mother wanted to be -- I think, needed to be -- but she never quite found it within herself. I'd seen it in movies, watched it on television. I read it in books when I was a child. After I was sent away, I tried to mimic the words. The sentiment. But it was false. It was an imitation of faith. No... I can't pray for you. All I can do is make you a promise. One that not even God, if there is such a thing, can prevent me from keeping. The people that did this to you... They will suffer, Vanessa.
Huh. I find a few days, a week at most, is ample time to form an emotional response. Growing to love something is really simply forgetting slowly what you dislike about it. I'll be perfectly honest, the situation calls for it, I do not love this city. The crush of the unwashed garbage stacked on the sidewalk, the air that seems to adhere to your skin, the layer of filth you can never completely wash away.
It's a difficult thing, isn't it? Taking a life. Feeling the weight and responsibility of all the years the person you've murdered has lived—moments that they've cherished, the dreams that they've struggled towards—gone, because of you. I want you to know something. Something important that I've learned: that it gets easier the more you do it.
Well, I learned how to be one from you. I get lucky sometimes, sure. Land a story that makes a difference, like Union Allied. But most of the time, now, working for this paper... I might as well be wearing lipstick and a red dress.
