Strange days these have been. I was sick with a bad cold, and I don't get sick very often so it had been a long time since I'd experienced the feeling of having only one or two things sound good out of all possible things. In this case, that was pizza and video games, the indulgence of which brought great pleasure and an unexpected sense of efficacy.

I was just on the mend when the snow came, early and colder and deeper than anyone expected. It snowed a little overnight and stopped and then started again during the day.

Then, in the eerie quiet of the daylight snowfall, a man murdered another with a hatchet just a few blocks from where I live. There were witnesses, many of them children and neighbors. All of us walk by there most days of the week. It's the main path to everywhere.

They had never met. The man with the hatchet was delusional and mistook our neighbor for something he wasn't. The police said that the victim, our neighbor, was attacked so swiftly that he didn't have time to begin a defense. He suffered twenty blows to the head.

I met him once. He liked to sit in the alley smoking and he greeted me as I passed. I can picture him, and I can't make sense of being and suddenly not being like that.

When the police apprehended the murderer, he had blood and bits of brain on him. He said he fled because he didn't think the police would understand his story.