Or right now.

Had I left on time today I would have missed it altogether. I still don’t know what happened. The immediate aftermath was enough. Don’t know if he/she was hit by the truck or fell off the building but the body… still alive maybe? Did I imagine the arms moving? Did I imagine the mask of terror and the mouth moving with no sound coming out? The blood was real, and there was a lot of it. The crushed leg with the skin torn off… foot missing… was very real.

I’m shook.

Shaken.

Done.

It was very real.

I failed.

Weird thing is how random it was that I was on the scene. Left late for work and normally wouldn’t have been there at all. And the random shit anyway, that a truck and a body would happen to be at the same spot at the same time. This is why people believe in bullshit like fate. Bullshit like this person was simply meant to die, and that I was meant to be there when it happened to see it.

Ugh. This is the shit that feels like a test.

But the appendix… and not that his appendix and every other fucking part of him wasn’t spilled out onto the pavement, because it was, but the whole story at least insofar as what happened because I’m sure homeboy had a story just like we all do even if they’re fucking boring.

James Buzzell (from the news story) was 76 years old and lived on that block on 16th Street near 5th Avenue. He walked out of his building and went to cross the street and was probably looking down towards the far end of the block for oncoming traffic. Old people move so damn slowly. He was most likely looking for cars coming when he walked out into the street, and didn’t see the big ass box truck backing into the space and that big ass box truck sure as shit didn’t see Jimmy and it didn’t stop until it had backed every fucking wheel over him. From the looks of his legs he may have taken a spin around the drive shaft too, because at least one of them was stripped of skin. For a minute it looked to me like someone had thrown a skinned lamb in it’s entirety out into the street, but then I realized it was attached to a crushed up torso. James Buzzell was reaching around on the ground for something I guess he remembered he had in his hands but hadn’t realized yet he wouldn’t be needing anymore. He was saying words that nobody else could hear. Just hollering silently into space maybe for help getting up even though Jesus himself couldn’t have helped him up at that point. Fucking hell, Jimmy… what a way to go. You just forget to look both ways when you live in a town full of one way streets. Fucking hell. I’m sorry it had to be like this and not fer nuthin’ I wish to hell I had left the house on time so I didn’t have to witness your last moments.