Kuroda paused for a moment, the fronts of his eyebrows twisted upwards; his face turned into this inseparable mess of static I couldn't make my way out of. Just like the being that had always stood close to me, yet it was the very thing I wanted to move far past from.
"How about something smaller, was there anything odd in what you saw?" The words echoed softly from his mouth
"There was a rope."
He didn't say anything, just paused to let me continue.
"A rope…out back, frozen."
"And, was it tied to anything?"
I only knew of little fragments spaced out between large intervals. It was like as I spoke a sudden wave of reminiscence would wash over me.
"Some bin that was outside."
"What was in the bin?"
"…That's the thing."
Suddenly my eyes were enlightened with a task, I looked down at my body, I moved my hands over whatever was stuck to my body and pulled it off.
Kuroda was saying something, I think he was in some kind of manic shock. He uselessly raised his hand to stop me.
I whipped my legs off of the bed; a mess of bandages taped in layers. My legs could do their job, so that was all that mattered.
My blanket uselessly frayed over to the side, I hopped out of the bed and then overcame a sense of numbness to my legs, not the type that made you fall down, but a type of numbness I was used to.
I put my hands over my head and scratched it, massaging it, I heard somewhere that helps you remember things better.
My legs moved on their own, pacing up and down the thin gap between the window and bed.
The cold metal stung against my bare hands like venom, this poison however sung the sweet lulls of reward; reward that cracked closer and closer with each slash.
I could almost hear the ringing, the jingling of not only one but two metal coins led each breath of exasperation to not be my last.
The cold steam rose out of my mouth, a relentless cry of agony, the truth I had come to subject upon myself reaped my mind with torment.
"It's stuck." I composed from the deep pits of loss. "The damned thing won't budge."
I dropped the crowbar and crouched in the field touched by man; dozens of footsteps left more than a dent in the snow.
"Damn it, like the day couldn't get any worse." He'd pulled down his scarf, scruffling down a smoke in his chattering, clenched teeth. I saw his eyes looking past the bin, like someone surveying his surroundings.
I wondered what was in some metal bin that was so unimportant it'd been tied down with some rope, rope that was tirelessly being chipped away at in the peak of the sudden winter uproar. Something so important to be needed on that day, yet disregarded enough to be left outside.
Had it been a simple mistake? The lot I worked for occasionally were the simple kind.
I knew to keep my wandering mind as just that, people who knew too much got themselves into ordeals they never wanted to be a part of.
But who was I to speak, I was the nosy type.
"Was there any sound coming from it, maybe a weight that was shifting around whenever you hit it? Anything like that?" Kuroda tapped his pen rhythmically against his notebook, looking up at me every other second to see if I'd really gone crazy.
"I mean, I could barely get the thing to budge." My voice was small, it trailed out like I was still in that other world.
He paused.
"You said it rattled though."
"What? I mean, it could've been anything, like a tool box of some sort, or something. I don't even know if that sound came from there."
"Then why is it so memorable to you? I mean, out of everything. The smoke, the boys unloading the crates, the men who were on the catwalk, the car catching on fire…"
It was my turn to pause, I stopped pacing and scrunched my eyebrows, not at him but at something else.
"It's not."
His eyebrows took a turn.
"You've brought it up like, five times, since we started this conversation."
"I'm just getting you a better…image of what happened that day."
No, that wasn't it. What was it?
His pen stopped tapping, he leaned back on his chair, then whipped right back up.
"What happened to that bin after the explosion?"
I answered after a couple of seconds. "I don't know."
Kuroda's voice dropped, his forearms were resting in his knees; his head resting in his hands. He wasn't threatening, he was something even worse, he was curious.
"When everything was happening, did Arlo go anywhere near it? That metal box?"