ten minutes

I've always said that I'm not afraid of death. Only how I was going to die -- I did not want it to hurt or be violent. Perhaps curiosity. The notion that I no longer have to deal with the day in day out of "does the casting director or cute man across the room like me?" and paying bills. Growing old, dealing with the grey hairs and wrinkles and the creaking and cracking of bones that some of us get rewarded with after decades of living inside our bodies.

I missed by ten minutes someone being attacked/mugged. It didn't go well, and there was a blood curdling scream. In ten minutes a woman got beaten then stabbed. As I approached the building, there were several cops around along with the building security and several neighbors huddled amongst themselves according to clique.

As I rode the elevator, I realized there was blood spatter on the elevator walls and drops of blood on the floor. I pointed them out to T and T was horrified. I wanted to distance myself, as if it were an episode of CSI, blood spatter, blood drops. I imagined the woman was not attacked on her floor but in the elevator. How others heard the screams from so many floors up kind of surprised me.

I've seen a person killed in front of me. You think at first that you are watching an episode or something on television. Your brain tells you this is not real. You don't want to think or believe it is real. I advised T that someone has to clean down the elevator. T recoiled. Me, not so much. The danger had passed. This was just what was left. The worst part had been taken away, taken off or removed.

Maybe it will come to me full force later. I don't know. I just know there were some lookee-loos, but I want to know, who came immediately to help, not to be nosy?