Life Is Beautiful/University District/Sun March 31/12:33 pm: Officer Thompson was patrolling the Ave on a marked police bicycle when an unknown woman ran up to him and asked him to conduct a welfare check on an apartment just off the Ave. The tenant, she explained, had not left the apartment in seven or 10 days. Officer Thompson cycled to the apartment and knocked on the door. There was no response. "Using the manager's key," writes Officer Thompson, "we entered the apartment. The victim [a man in his early 20s] was inside, clearly deceased, with an obvious self-inflicted gunshot wound under his chin. The victim had left his computer on with a note on the screen that said: 'And the really funny thing is that I'm not really all that sad right now. I just... don't know/It seems like the natural thing to do. Y'know? (Are you supposed to put [a] question mark at the end of a rhetorical question?)'" At the bottom of the screen, the victim typed, "Life is so beautiful."
His Upper Right Trapezoid/Rainier Valley/Sun March 31/10:30 pm: Though Officer Proudfoot wrote this report, I have edited it (changed words, added a few literary references, and so on) to enhance the natural poetry of this otherwise very unpleasant incident.
"On arriving, I found a nine-year-old Latino male in the living room with a bullet wound to his upper right pectoral muscle. It exited his upper right trapezoid. The boy was conscious and crying. I spoke with the suspect [an 11-year-old friend of the victim, who was having an overnight] and asked what happened and where. He took me to the master bedroom in the back of the house, and said he and the victim went into the bedroom closet to find and play with a rifle that the victim had told him about.
"When found, the victim handed the suspect the rifle, and the suspect noticed that it had a plastic handle and this made him think the gun was not real. He pointed the fake weapon at his friend and crushed the trigger. Instantaneously, the victim started screaming and jumping and stumbled out of the master bedroom. The suspect dropped the rifle and followed the victim into the living room. He still thought the weapon was a toy, and his friend's agony a silly sham. In the living room, he found his friend on the floor, crying and gasping. The suspect knelt down, pulled the shirt off his friend, and found a real wound that was oozing life. He called 911."
This time around, fate was kind to the boy. The bullet did not hit and rupture a vital organ. Indeed, "When the slug penetrates/you feel a burning sensation/getting closer to God in a tight situation."--Mobb Deep
The Truth of the Matter/Queen Anne/Thurs March 28/10:30 pm: A frequent visitor of the Elks Lodge named Mike, who wore a baseball cap and brown boots, walked into the lodge's bar and, after ordering a drink, got into a random altercation with another visitor, whom we shall call "Cassius." At a heated point during the argument, Mike pulled out a silver pistol from his waistband and pointed it directly at Cassius' head. Mike cocked the hammer, and prepared to blast the living daylights out of Cassius. Cassius automatically swept the barrel from his face, and Mike returned the weapon into his waistband, and then left the Queen Anne Elks Lodge.
