Leaving the park we are directly confronted with the crowdedness of this lively city. Broad pavements filled with people that don’t dare to say hi. We see people walking through the recurring parts of their daily circle. Lives filled with a routine that can only be broken by tragedy. A tragedy like the one we will be confronted with in less than ten minutes.
The people whom you see walking towards us will only hear about it tonight. They will be shocked about what has happened. But they will also be disappointed by the fact that they missed it by just a few minutes. They will text, call, flip channels and check the internet for some connection to the drama, but they won’t have the pure warmth of the tragedy experienced by those who are walking in the same direction as we are going.
The people who follow our path will be completely taken out of their regular routine. They will start speaking to random strangers. Some of them will even start hugging each other. It’s the beauty that comes out of horror. In some way you could wonder why we’re not more welcoming towards the tragedies in our lives. We do everything to get them out, even though they are the events that can bring us the true connections we so strongly long for.
Focussing on the end of this road you can see a mid-sized department store. On the seventh floor it has a big open terrace on which you have an amazing view over the park we just visited. It has a well visited coffee bar that is renowned for its lack of service and quality.
At this moment one of the many customers of that bar just threw his chair to the floor. Full of anger he is shouting in the direction of his wife whom he was sharing his table with. We don’t see it, we don’t hear it, but I know it is happening. Something the wife will say in a moment or two will make the man throw their baby over the railing. The people on the terrace will be emotionally crushed. An innocent passer-by on the pavement below the department store will also be crushed, although not in an emotional sense.
We have about two minutes left; the baby will be dropped from the spot above the right ‘S’ in ‘ORSONS’, the name of the department store. She will fall directly passing the round shaped sunshades and wil hit the passerby just in front of the side door on the right. A few meters to the left of the main entrance you can see a man in a green Superman shirt. He’s walking happily with a big smile on his face and will be the accidental victim of the baby murderer.
Let’s position ourselves here. The perfect point to see the drop as well as the splash without feeling the drops and the splashes. Five more seconds to go. Three, two, one, and… Wait that’s not the baby.
I’m sorry, I didn’t plan on making this an anticlimax, but apparently it’s an adult man who is falling from the seventh floor; the father himself? I don’t know why they didn’t inform me beforehand.
An artificially bronzed man is falling down in what almost feels like half a slow motion. The railing of the terrace on the seventh floor is instantly filled up by people who are probably in some sort of sensational panic. It looks like the green shirted guy knows something is coming. Screams sound from different directions. But before he can even look up he gets crushed to the ground by the man that was just thrown down.
Bystanders are splashed by the blood that is scattered around; a horrendous sight that evokes a diverse mix of completely dissimilar reactions from the people who were just walking around with their minds focused on nothing specifically interesting.
“Whooo,” an eight year old boy shouts out just a little bit too enthusiastically; directly getting slapped by his father who is standing there in a sickened shock. Two ladies start crying hysterically and around eight to ten people already took out their mobile phones to record this event. They all seem to be realising that there is no point in calling the emergency line at this moment. Chaos is all around while people try their best to get a glimpse of the road kill. And yes the first mutual strangers start hugging each other.
Even though it’s more messy than normal, I must say that the tragedy feels less intense than when it’s the baby who’s being dropped. Normally the woman with the curly pink hair and the blood covered legs, whom you can see walking back to the main entrance, is crying out a loud ‘Why God!?’ while raising her hands to the sky. Now she just looks pale and disgusted because of the blood that has covered her.
Behind the pink girl, in the door opening of the main entrance a big man appears wearing a black leather trenchcoat. He walks down the stairs holding a baby to his chest with his left hand. It’s almost as if he is looking at us. The baby is calm. Could this be the baby that would have been thrown from the terrace? Did the big man just change the unchangeable? With long steps the man crosses the street towards our viewpoint. Almost as if he knows we’re here.