(A man has murdered his wife in a fit of rage after discovering her supposed infidelity. The following are three different views of the people and objects in the room by three different individuals.)
A five-year-old girl steps cautiously into the room. She picks her way around an overturned lamp near the door. There is a woman slumped over a brown coffee table in the center of the room. She is bleeding from somewhere in her hair, and it’s dripping down the sides of the table. A newspaper is in pieces all over the floor. There’s a big heavy-looking flashlight on the floor next to the table. It has gotten the woman’s blood on it. There’s a small table on the other side of the couch that’s been pushed over. The phone is lying on the floor, off the hook, and is making that beeping sound.
A man steps through the door to the room and immediately sees that the shade of the overturned lamp is severely dented. What’s left of the shattered bulb is sticking through the top of the ruined lampshade. He steps around the lamp, looking at the woman’s body. It’s slumped over a cheap-looking coffee table in the center of the room. The couch behind the body looks like it’s been shoved backward, possibly from a struggle. There are indentations in the carpet where the feet used to sit. The body is bleeding from what appears to be a skull fracture. The blood is running down the legs of the coffee table and pooling on the carpet. The man can see there are hairs under the woman’s fingernails. There are remnants of a newspaper scattered across the floor. There is also a large Mag-Lite flashlight lying in a pool of blood near the coffee table. It has longer pieces of hair and blood on the heavier end. The man looks to the other side of the couch and finds an overturned end table. The caller-id box is lying at the end of its cord on the floor. The phone, also on the floor, is off the hook and giving off its fast busy signal.
An omnipotent being glides slowly into the room, seeing what remains of a scene played out only minutes before. Here is the lamp that the husband knocked over in his rush to leave the room, not caring that it crashed to the floor and broke. Beyond is the body of the woman he swore to love and cherish years ago, now dead and bleeding in their apartment. She is still slumped over the coffee table where she fell when he struck her. The flashlight he used to club her in the head lies near the body, with no attempt at concealment. The newspaper she was reading when her husband came home was torn apart and thrown around the room when he snatched it from her. The couch is pushed several inches backward from where it usually sits. She shoved it with the backs of her legs while trying to fight him off. She scratched his ears and scalp in her attempt, and the hairs from his head are still under her fingernails. Behind the couch is the end table he knocked over in his fury. The phone is lying off the hook, where it fell with the end table. The caller-id box lies stretched out against its cord where he threw it as he yelled at her, after finding the numerous calls from the other man’s telephone number.
