Like red crystal rain, the storefront window shattered. The crowd around the remains of the man lying amongst mannequins and clothes dispersed quickly.

The first occurence had caused an uproar in the city. But as the weeks passed by, and more and more people met their violent end hanging halfway through a shop window, people started to become jaded. Mangled, sliced up corpses was now a normal sight.

Walking down the main street, boarded up shops all around me, my mind playing my own losses in a loop. Our daugher, sweet, innocent Evelyn. She only got to experience five meager years, before she plunged herself headlong through our french doors. And my wife. I had found Susans body in the bathroom. Painting the tiles with her blood, our shower cabinet smashed to pieces.

The feeling of losing the two things I loved the most should have broken me mentally. But I couldnt muster much sadness. Like a cloud of indifferenece had descended down on the city, it affected me, and apparantly the other citizens. They who gathered around the new victims, but for each day passing, had gone from panic, to a short stops where nods of acknowledgement just said, “there goes another.”

Continuing my walk, I caught a glimpse of myself in a car window. Tears running down my cheeks. Was I crying?

Another car window showed my reflection, face contorted in anger. Why were I showing these feelings? In my soul, I felt nothing. I just kept walking.

Passing the grand hotel, the revolving doors gave my chopped images of myself laughing. Hysterically. But my soul was still numb. Reaching up to my face, my mouth was closed. But why were my image still laughing? Grinning madly? Laughter, laughter, laughter. Tears, anger, laughter. Standing, watching, the revolving doors, a slideshow of my emotions. My body took control, the urge to get my humanity back overwhelming. Legs out of my control, I ran headfirst for the door.