Grim News

A gruesomely horrific and thankfully 
brief news item. Among the more 
mundane reports of robberies, 
malfeasance among politicians and 
business elites; love triangles gone 
murderously berserk and fatal traffic 
accidents. Are these news items, or 
do they qualify as urban gossip? Difficult,
sometimes, to distinguish. But this one 
is a breath-stopper, the kind that should 
keep the vulnerable off late-night streets, 
that should put a crimp in the spontaneity 
of trusting strangers, or, come to think 
of it, friends. Left on a stretch of 
municipal beachfront, a mutilated torso 
strapped to a dolly, its ravished presence 
prissily tarp-covered. Which did not 
stop a curious passerby walking the beach 
from poking and prodding and finally
lifting the tarp to reveal the horror it 
wrapped. Sans arms, sans legs, sans head, 
just the torso of some once-living, formerly 
breathing, thinking, feeling, reacting 
human being whose reactions failed the test.