Thank you, Trent, for the feedback on this piece… and now, with our local spotlight, here’s a little boy we found on the street…
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International News Perspective: “This just in, a bomb has gone off in a busy market in some place we’ve never heard of. We do know that fourteen people lost their lives and nine others were injured. We’ll keep you updated on the terrible developments but now, with Sports, here’s Guy Cool.” “Thank you, Dandy. Today Billionaires A sold the rights of Millionaire B to the Billionaire C Conglomerate, and the only reason any of this is news is because we are paid to entertain you. So, thanks for making our job easy.”
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Local News Perspective: “The clean-up efforts continue in the aftermath of the Downtown Square bombing that occurred last week. Crews have already begun razing the buildings deemed unsafe and new plans are well underway to erect a monument to the lives that were lost. Authorities are still trying to determine which of the seven terrorist groups claiming responsibility are actually culpable for this mass tragedy, though one officer who requested anonymity told us it was likely an isolated attack by someone disenchanted by the struggles of their life. When pressed for clarification, the officer shrugged and said, ‘People can’t just commit suicide in their rooms anymore, they’ve got to make a spectacle of it.’ Terrorist attack or suicide…? We may never know the truth. Eye-witness videos continue to pour in from the abundance of people who happened to be filming in the square at the time, and those clips are all posted on our website. None of them have been edited, so be warned they can be quite graphic. And now, with Weather, here’s Blown Hair.” “Thank you, Beauty. Today there was weather and tomorrow we are expected to be treated with more of the same, but you would know that if you ever looked up from your screens to peer outside and, I don’t know, maybe go for a walk or something.”
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Impacted Family Perspective: The officer who has been assigned to us is very polite but he doesn’t know very much at all, and he probably never will. The people in the hospital are patient with our questions but they are tired and overworked and I can tell they wish we would go home so they could do their jobs without us hovering nearby. We’ve been living here for a month now, sleeping in shifts and showering in the bathroom sinks. We are all exhausted and want to go home too, but we can’t leave him. Misha shows some signs of improving, but he may never walk again even if he is gifted a prosthetic limb at some point in the future. The nerve damage in his back is too great, and the doctors don’t want to risk further damage by removing the shrapnel near his spine. They used bigger words than that, of course, but that’s basically what they were saying. Besides, he still wakes up screaming twice a night. The horrors he witnessed are more of a scar than where they stitched up his lost limb. We haven’t told Misha about Momma yet. He isn’t strong enough. I’m not sure Daddy and I are strong enough to keep this family from falling apart without her helping us along. I miss her. I had to leave Misha’s room yesterday before he asked why I was crying. I miss her fiercely and I don’t understand why she was killed. I don’t understand any of this… The talking heads from the local stations have been sniffing around for an interview but I refuse to turn my mother’s death into a sound bite for them. Not that you care, because this is a blog post, and I lost your attention 100 words ago. So, go then, seek your entertainment elsewhere.
