Member-only story
Last spring, a stranger got in a fistfight and almost died on the street, just below the window of my office.
He looked to be late forties, early fifties. Fat, but not obese. He had been frequenting the bar just a few doors down and gotten into a stupid conflict over nothing with a stranger, twenty to thirty years his junior, and they had taken it outside. It was around 10 in the evening and I was wasting my time browsing image boards.
The guy got knocked over and cracked his head on the sidewalk, knocking him out instantly. He could be a vegetable for all I know.
I was going mostly by audio cues until his wife started screaming. I live in a lively neighbourhood, and I don’t really take note of angry yelling any more. When I heard her, though, I got up and took a look, thinking I might do a little bit of civic duty and call an ambulance. It was a scream of absolute insanity, a deep beastly howl. A sound that betrays when someone has been forced outside their cognitive comfort zone.
The man was lying perfectly still, and the winner of the fight was being assailed by the grieving wife, backing off, walking out into the street. It looked like she was exceeding some invisible force, pushing him backwards, while he was simultaneously being pushed back against a force of gravity, trying to drag him back to the scene of the crime, quote unquote. A woman’s rage fighting, and beating, gravity.
The wife was drunk and furious, while he seemed comparatively sober, realising the gravity of the situation, wanting to either help out, or at the very least stick around for when the cops eventually showed up.
A few other bar patrons had followed them out, one was sitting crouched over at the body, another was on his phone, describing the scene to the emergency dispatcher.
I remember thinking how odd it was to sit in my window sill and watch someone having the worst day of their lives. You might say, well, Randy, you can’t know that, they might be hardy fellows, they might have suffered worse tragedies. They are old enough to have adult children, they could have gone through hells you cant even begin to imagine. And you’d be right. But I had to hope it was.
A few months ago one of my friends got jumped by a bunch of strangers. We’ll call him M. They…
