It doesn’t play out in slow motion. Life rarely does. There is no pause, rewind or fast-forward, no matter how badly you’d wish for them.
This isn’t one of those times, say, when you watch a movie with everything building up toward the moment where the world balances on the edge of violence and you, the viewer, have the space to take a deep breath before taking the plunge into the abyss.
This time, fury comes unexpected. No closed caption that punctuates the ominous music. No safety of couch and blanket to tuck under to weather it.
The storm erupts. Violence unannounced and uninvited. The hail of lead bullets blows by all too fast in its righteous (for some), misplaced (for most) fury, but it carves a passage that will be remembered by all the wrong people and for all the wrong reasons.
If anyone had the presence of mind to time the sequence, they’d see it lasted all but 11 seconds. In other words, not long at all. The space of three, four indrawn breaths. It’s a special kind of curse, life-altering moments happening in a blink of an eye but their memory haunting one forever.
Bullet marks dot the windows; they scorch the walls. Tables are overturned. Everything is shards of broken glass, broken dreams and dashed futures, and life’s precious blood leaking through feebly twitching fingers. The course of personal histories altered. There’s a latency between the trigger and chaos ensuing, when realization of the deed sets in, and the first cry punctures the silence and swirling dust. The sirens are even tardier in their arrival.
Before, in between, and forever after:
“Breathe.”
….
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