Blood oozed along grout paths in the tile, forming a network of red highways on the floor. The advancing red tide was beginning to dry at the edges but gravity still pulled the slow trickle toward the doorway. A steady drip dropped onto the sidewalk, forming an everwidening puddle on the stoop. As each new drop plummeted into the crimson depths, it caused a splash which misted the step above. 

     As I played yet another round of Twister to get across the body and through the doorway, he caught my eye. The little fella was about four years old, barefoot, with a dirty blue shorts and a red t-shirt. His eyes widened when he saw that I noticed him.  There he was, playing in the gray powdered sand, not forty feet from a dead man.  Where were his parents?

     I didn't bother to look. The courtyard was filled with the Flip-Flop Crowd. These people had stood in the hot sun for at least four hours, watching my every move.  It was evening now, and I was prime time television.  To me, watching blood dry was about as entertaining as watching paint dry, but it captured the imagination of this sea of dirty feet in sandals. So much so, that they brought their children. With babies on their hips, women shifted back and forth on weary feet, but refused to go inside to the air-conditioning, inside to cook dinner, inside to their own lives. For nothing on reality television was as entertaining as watching a sweaty woman play Twister over a dead neighbor. 

     I passed the little boy on one of my many trips back to the truck. He smiled and gave a tentative wave.  I waved back and his smile broadened all the way to his toes.  He was waiting as I walked back by.  Another smile. Another wave. More children crept closer. That's when I realized that I was a celebrity.  What bizarre world do we live in that a morbid game of Twister makes me a celebrity? And in what bizarre world to parents let their children stare at a bloody dead man?

     I gazed into his innocent face and wondered how much of this he understood. And as I saw the white sheet over a dead man reflected in his eyes, I wondered how children raised like this could possibly survive.