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…
