Less than three hours ago, a woman was shot and killed at Seven Corners, not too far from here. Too close for comfort, in fact.
I’ve been glued to the TV and phone since IKEA Boy called to make sure I was tucked in snugly at home while this was happening. I was grateful for the call and quickly alerted Wobin, Chris and Leslie about it. Particularly Wobin and my grandfather are going nuts over this. If nothing else good has come of our beltway sniper, it made some old friends, including Doug and Kristin, wander out of the woodwork to send along a hello call or message. It’s amazing how tragedy gives us that little wake-up call, that it could very well be us, or our loved ones, who become next on the so-very-random hit list.
And this time, it happened in a covered parking garage. Shit. That’s the one place where we were fooling ourselves into believing that we could be safe. Now, where can we go to hide? Nowhere. Absolutely fucking nowhere. We’re all sitting ducks.
I’m smoking like a fucking chimney (I was “clean” for two months, but it was really the damn X trips that made me crave cigarettes again, even though I haven’t rolled in weeks!). My nerves are just kaput over this sniper business, though. Not to mention, at least two other shootings have occurred but were deemed unrelated or just plain inconclusive. That ain’t right. Does that mean that someone else is out there, conducting their own side spree? And all this business about searching for a white or cream-colored Chevy Astro van … is it just a decoy while the “real” killer slides away, unnoticed, while all of us who saw the composites are looking for this van, which looked suspiciously like the one parked outside my office a few days ago? When will this madness end? And will the people I care about (including myself!) live to tell this story to our children?