No words

What a surreal week it's been. Monday night I was hanging out with Ashley and Luke, watching Wheel of Fortune, when the news kept busting in to tell us of a mass killing that had happened on Lester Street — four adults and two kids were dead in a single house, and three kids were in critical condition at Le Bonheur. It was pretty awful stuff, even without knowing all the details.

Tuesday I came in to work and, of course, the Lester Street killings were the big story, even though we were still having trouble securing details from the police. It's always a little weird coming into work after a big story has broken. There's a lot of catching up to do, and not a lot of time.

Rumors abounded. That night, Kristin drove down from Nashville to help cover the story for the AP. We had drinks at the Deli and mused about the weirdness of the story and how, apparently, many neighbors had heard gunshots but, for a multitude of reasons, had thought better of reporting them. One of the rumors circulating was that one of the kids had been carried out of the house with a knife in his/her head. I scoffed at such rumor-mongering. And now we are being told that this actually was the case. Another surviving child had his/her fingertips cut off. Supposedly those kids laid in that house for hours and hours — maybe even a whole day — just waiting for help, waiting to die, who knows what. Just waiting.

I can't even wrap my mind around any of that.