Anatomy of a Crime Scene...

Today was just like any other day, I slept in a little bit... woke up and saw that it was 1pm already... don't judge me, I was watching UFC 110 and it's hard to fall asleep after seeing one broken leg and 3 knockouts in one night...

I was hungrier than usual at this time of day and got dressed quickly. I have been living out of my office of late which is a unit in one of the many industrial buildings in Fotan. Before I left, I checked the weather report and it says it's 20 degrees outside. Stepping out onto the street I realized I had been lied to by the weather bureau again, it was 15 at best...

Everyday I wake up wishing the weather report would be at least close to reality and it never is... I was cold, hungry and I hurried into my local Cafe de Coral only to realize that they stopped serving lunch... I check my watch and saw that it was in fact 3pm, this tells me that the battery of the clock at the office must have run dry.

Carrying my club sandwich to go, I walked out onto the street and saw two police cars blocking the street. I approached the first police van and as I stepped towards the front of the van I saw that a green camping tent has been erected in the middle of the street. No one seems to be taking any notice of it, the cops were standing there, chatting like it was no big thing. As I walked closer to the tent I knew that I was stepping towards a crime scene... the tent was pretty big, in a rectangular shape... but it wasn't big enough to cover what they didn't want the pedestrians to see... I stopped facing the tent about 10 feet away and took off my headphones... I can hear the sound of blood dripping into the drain by my feet... As I looked up, there it was, a pool of blood seeping out from under the tent...

An old woman in front of me looked up to the adjacent building and right then an there watching her do that... my legs gave way... I tried to walk it off, trying to stay calm... this was the closest I have been to a dead body... It was very strange, because it seems like the old woman and I were the only ones who noticed what was going on... no one else on the street seems to be paying any attention to the massive pool of blood... At the time, the blood didn't look real to me, it was bright pink instead of red...

I walked home with my sandwich and sat down, I couldn't really bring myself to eat it, and I felt like I needed to call someone and tell them about it... the first person that came to mind was my mom so I dialed, she didn't answer... For half an hour, I saw flashes of the tent, the blood and the old woman looking up at the roof of the building... I wondered... was it a man or a woman... did he or she jump off the roof or was it a hit and run...?

I ate my sandwich and went to the gym where my parents lived and before I got onto the bike, my heart was already beating like mad, I tried to block out the image of the dripping blood from my mind, but it was all that I could think about... I went down to Shatin to have dinner with my sister and I told her the story pretty much the same way I described in the above text... she looked at me and the first thing she said was... "Oh... what a poor doggy..."

Hearing me describe the incident, she thought that I was talking about a dog being hit by a car... and right then and there... my sinuses cleared and I started laughing... It must have been a dog I thought, if it was a human body, the cops would have been interviewing people on the street, there would be CSIs there collecting evidence... instead of people going about their day, not giving a care in the world...

Dinner tonight was one of the best meals I ever tasted, it was as if a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders... the tension in my chest has gone away... I took the train back to Fotan and walked back towards my office... I was dreading going back to the "Crime Scene" all day, but by then I didn't really care... after all it was just a dog I told myself...

Coming out of the train station, I see the the tent and the cops were gone, there were no cars around so I walked onto the street and saw that the blood has been cleaned and cleared... that is when I saw a person sitting by the curb and one look at that person, my legs gave way again... there he or she was, sitting at the curb, expressionless, putting incense sticks into 5 tiny pots, lighting them one by one... I felt my heart sink into my stomach, I took one more look at those incense pots, I can see that there were flowers laying beside them...

It wasn't a dog after all... I got back to the office and I wanted to call my sister to tell her the truth... then I thought about it and realized, all those people walking by the crime scene today thought that it was probably a dog... for a moment there so did I... if I didn't decide to walk back to the scene tonight, I would probably go on thinking it was a dead dog rather than somebody's son... somebody's daughter or somebody's friend... All these people will be able to sleep tonight not knowing...

Whoever that was sitting by the curb lighting those incense stick, I really hope that he or she would be okay, I really wish the weather would be warmer tomorrow for their sake... because there is nothing worst than waking up the day after the death of a family member, walking out onto the street without a sweater and realize that you have been lied to once again... by the weather bureau...