Suicide in Singapore

I didn’t sleep well last night, woke up at 3:00,
had a hard time getting back to sleep,
eventually took a melatonin around 4:00. Lots
of tossing and turning.
   Then this morning, about 7:45, I heard
somebody knocking at my door, ringing my bell,
ding dong ding dong knock knock knock but
I'm exhausted, I'm thinking it's my neighbor
downstairs or maybe the paperboy, I don't
really know who it is, so I ignore it.
   About a half hour later, when I'm awake,
knocking again. I look out the peephole, some
guy is standing there. “Yes?”
   He says: “I'm with the newspaper. I'd like to
ask you some questions.” I throw some pants
on and open the door.
   I say: “Are you with The Straits Times?”
   “No, I'm with Zaobao." That's the Chinese
newspaper. "Can you tell me anything about
the suicide?”
   “Suicide?”
   “Yeah, somebody jumped off the railing right
by your door. Did you hear anything, or see
anything?”
   I say, “Uh, no.”
   I go to the rail and 25 flights down is a
corpse with a cover draped over it. A small
splotchy blood stain about 30cm in diameter is
next to it. Cops all over, caution tape up
everywhere.
   I don't have any info for the reporter, so he
leaves. When I leave for work, I avoid looking at
the body. I am kind of shook up all day.
   I think a lot about this person. Wonder if it is
somebody who lives in my block of flats. Track
back to the time he actually took the leap. It
had to be around 7:15, a half hour before the
first knock on my door. People are streaming in
and out of the building at that time, going to
work or taking their kids to day care. Lucky this
person didn't take somebody with him. Who
found the body? Did the cats that live
downstairs...
   By the time I get back home, everything is all
cleaned up. Someone even came out there in
the afternoon and filled in the sidewalk cracks
with fresh cement.
   Back upstairs, I look over the side again. A
concrete lip juts out downward at a 45-degree
angle just below the rail, and I notice there are
some finger skid marks on it. Like somebody
slid on the lip before falling, as if trying to keep
from falling?
   Then something strange. I'm trying to
remember if I heard somebody screaming. I'm
not sure if this real, or maybe an aural
hallucination brought on by a trick of memory
mixed with sleep, but I almost feel like, now that
I think about it, I heard a high-pitched
screaming, then somebody yelling, and it woke
me long enough to register “What the hell was
that?” before I fell immediately back into the
haze.
   I'm going to have one of the Chinese
speakers on my block talk to the old lady who
lives across the hall and see if she heard
anything. If she did, I'm going to the cops and
tell them what I think I might have heard. If she
didn't, I'm chalking it up to an overactive
imagination. Maybe I should do that anyway.
   My next door neighbor tells me my apartment
block is known as a suicide block. Three people
have jumped from my building in the past three
years. It's popular because it's so tall.
   Nobody is surprised, he says, when a suicide
occurs here, especially in August because this
is hungry ghost month, and there are a bunch
of ghosts running around possessing people
and making them do terrible things.
   I found out later the suicide was a man, 25,
who lived with his parents in the building across
the street. He got married six months ago.
Nobody knows why he jumped.
   Later that night, I'm watching an NYPD Blue
rerun. Some guy in the show has offed himself
with a gun in a bathtub. In one of the most
hilarious things I've ever seen on TV, the guy
who plays the Chief, the actor James McDaniel,
comes in and discovers the dead guy. There's
blood everywhere and the brains are literally
splattered against the wall. Then the Chief puts
two fingers against the dead guy's carotid
artery and checks for a pulse! What a riot!“
Geez, look at all the blood and brains. Wonder
if he's dead? Better check.”
   I swear. I must have laughed for five minutes.