The pictures don’t say enough, there is blood splattered on the walls, there are holes through the windows and marrow on the floor, they are gruesome, but they are not enough. It is the smell that lingers, that which struck us most upon entering that house, that smell, like meat left for weeks in an unplugged freezer, these were human remains, it is the unmistakable stench of death.

It is oddly quiet in the community, despite the bustling traffic on its exterior, unsupervised children play games on the concrete and I wonder for a moment if this is the right place, then we draw closer. There are easily more than one hundred tiny bullet holes in the tin window on the top floor, but from a distance, on the outside the house looks like any other on its scheme, a two-storey wedged in between other two-stories. Inside it is a slaughterhouse, like something out of a movie I had never wanted to see, and I feel the temperature fall as I step inside out of the stifling Tivoli heat. Complete and total disarray, like a storm had blown through.

Sunday dinner remains seasoned and uncooked on the kitchen sink, and the flies watch as their larvae wriggle to life. There are pictures strewn all over the upstairs floor not far from the front page of The Outlook; even the dresser, the bedroom closet, a Styrofoam box has bullet holes, life has been interrupted here. The bloody, bullet-holed pillow sitting on top of what I assume had once been used as a dining table screams that this was no small effort – had they stripped him here, the one whose blooded, tattered jeans remain?

To the people sipping wine from the assumed safety of their balconies, Sunday, January 13, 2008 would have been another day in Tivoli Gardens – the community is known after all for being Jamaica’s biggest garrison and five people dying there would be neither a surprise nor a concern to one who believes the place to be seething with decadence and crime, but things were quiet here before they came.

Mere meters away from the scene, separated only by a fence is the Edward Seaga Sports Complex and a batch of young boys have gathered in a circle on what looks to me like a basketball court while an older man stands giving instruction. They and others like them in Jamaica’s inner cities must have the strength of lions to be able to remain productive in an environment that does not foster such things as productivity, in a country that believes them to be a failure before giving the chance to succeed.

In Jamaica, we generally have what I call ‘crowd conversations’; everyone speaks at the same time, yet everyone is heard, and for a grassroots community such as this, the crowd is a single entity, a common identity is shared here and most often the mystery becomes clear when you turn a listening ear. But I can only tell you what I saw two days after the shooting. The bullet holes nearly blanket the walls of the house; there is a trail of blood leading from a splash on the wall through to the back of the house where they say the bodies were dragged out and transported to the morgue, smudges behind the fridge that look like they had come from a gripping hand and the stove they had moved to clear the way for their transport is covered in the same.

No matter how we spin this it looks like a massacre; one like too many others in Jamaica’s recent history.

Then the crowd speaks, we are all human and subject to biases, but this is what was heard. There is a woman, sitting out in front of the gate leading to the house, a baby bouncing about in her lap. She tells me she doesn’t like to relive it, then of how he cried that day, and how she begged for both their lives, holding him naked in her arms, crying “He has asthma” and how they had tried to push her in with the rest, in the room upstairs. They did not care the child was there.

The old woman, in the house next door, her sheets are burnt from where the teargas canister fell. Others say the rain fell heavier as the bullets sprayed from the helicopter above. There was one lucky enough to hear her brother die, on the phone. He told her he was cold. They beat her with a piece of board for defending his life and then handcuffed her and took her to the hospital for treatment.

They told me they celebrated, took pictures posing with the bodies, proud of their feat. Many have lost their allegiance to their government, they feel deeper disenfranchised, and I am not the only one worried about retaliation.

On a Thursday Night in the middle of the concrete jungle, the Lions come out to play. Already notorious for its garrison politics, this particular downtown community cements its reputation by adding brute sport to its list of attributes. Unyielding to outside authority, its proud residents are often misunderstood by outsiders who fear what they don’t understand. As a population detached and growing larger each week the anticipation is thick in the air as we witness an incredibly entertaining release.

The crowd that surrounds is jovial, boisterous and dense and since we’re late it takes great effort to penetrate this barrier. It’s a privilege to stand close; everybody wants to see what’s going on. It’s ‘Thursday Night at the Fights’- street brawling in its most organized form; a makeshift ring constructed of two ropes held in place by feeble pieces of wood, lodged not too securely in the ground and a couple of nearby lampposts.

There’s no pretense here. No one bothers about things as trivial as mouthguards or doctors or even a bell. Many are dressed in rags and bear a slight resemblance to guttersnipes. To others, these are the dregs of society. Anyone brave enough (or drunk enough) to step inside must be prepared to take a beating; the crowd doesn’t react well to boring fights. So when two boys calling themselves ‘Tall Man’ and ‘Tupac’, (neither looking a day over twelve) knock fists to start their fight, little Tupac stares up at the other with a lust for blood in his eyes.

Their style of fighting is a combination of traditional boxing and raw street-fighting. Fists are flung without mercy, covered with nothing more than thin bag-training gloves, each blow connecting with a reverberating thud as the commentator echoes “Boop!-Bap!-Boop!” provoking the crowd to roars of laughter. But this only whets their appetite, they want blood.

Though the tall one has the advantage of height he is reluctant to use it, and the smaller is angrier with each blow he receives, eyes bloodshot and filled with tears he lunges at the other.

Dizzy from the impact and only about five minutes into the fight Tall Man asks for water. It’s all he can ask for, all he can get. If he falls there’s no doctor by the ringside or any cars that could transport him to one. Many taxi’s aren’t caught here this close to midnight.

More cackles from the pack as they tease the boy for his weakness and during these water breaks, the DJ plays some tunes to keep the crowd bubbly.

True enough to the crowd’s judgment, the boy punks out after about two more rounds, retreating, in shame to the crowd amidst shouts of disappointment, he will have to answer to whomever forced him in there.

The mob grows restless, they’re hungry for another. In jumps a heavy-set female. She is missing a tooth or two. Apparently she has been here before; it’s a weekly tradition here, and people will gladly take a punch or two, as long as they can prove themselves the more merciless by the end of the fight.

The man on the mic sips his beer and calls for a contender. She is viciously intimidating, this beast of a woman, and although the crowd wants blood, none seem too willing to spill their own, until a pretty adolescent with nothing but skin on her bones steps into the ring. Though she is reputed to be quite an agitator the crowd objects with shouts of “murder!”

She is already wearing her gloves, her face is fixed with a stare that means that she is serious, and it is with a great amount of persuasion that she eventually yields to the wishes of the crowd. It is they who rule this arena. Easily, the girl would have shattered under the weight of the whale’s blow.

Out steps another, equally as intimidating as the one who awaits her; her arms covered in scars and her face bleached to its second layer of skin, there is an sinister grin across her face and the crowd screams in excitement, as she dares her opponent to cross her.

This promises to be a fun fight.

They strike each other with intense force and speed, and the pack must move with them, ducking out of the way because of their proximity to the ring, and when one person shifts, another slides into his space if it means having a better view, and when the crowd shifts again, one squeezes in friends. But in this crowd we are all one and we lean on each other for support, it is one big rollercoaster ride we all enjoy.

The contender smiles though the blows to her face have turned it purple and she is blinded by the hair extensions that keep falling over her face and she is being beaten as a consequence.

We are distracted for a moment as a fight breaks out in the middle of the crowd. Someone falls to the ground collapsing under the force of a punch, but no one really cares. If they wanted an audience they would step into the ring. There’s not much respect for those not brave enough to display their skill in front of the crowd.

Such distractions only last for only a moment.

A little boy has managed to sneak to the front while we are distracted and he is blocking the others from where he is standing. “Go roun’!” shouts an older youth whom he must obey. In this community everyone is everyone’s parent.

Without further delay it’s time for the real rumble. Lu, the reigning King of the ring looks to be about 6 feet tall and 300 pounds heavy. It is he we have come to see. The Dancehall music blares from the speakers as he teases the crowd by pretending to charge at people he could easily knock unconscious and we’re anxious to see him fight someone ominously known only as “Strength.”

After maybe fifteen minutes of the charade the crowd grows restless, the music cannot fool us any longer, we want to see him fight and we’re realizing that a worthy contender has yet to challenge him, Lu disappears with promises to return, but the music can hold us no longer.

The crowd disperses like ants escaping rain, the streets are empty. It’s as though noone was ever here; and seven days seems much too long to wait for another Thursday Night at the Fights.

Why hadn’t she listened to her mother? She should have been at home, her brother had been sick. But she loved the way the wind blew through her hair as she gripped his waist on the back of his motorcycle, and she resented the way her mother ordered her around.

Why should she? She knew these people well, came here all the time, they were cool people, they treated her like she belonged, always offered her a Guinness, always shared their weed. Tonight they wanted to make it official, make her one of them.

“Ya man da same bwai de wa did dis yu d’odda day, we have im up de fi deal wid di case.”

She had heard them say, those other girls, that he’d beaten them before, but he’d never beaten her, not before now, she did not want to shoot anyone, could not really hold a grudge, never wanted to ‘prove’ anything. So, she fell and he pounced on top of her, and the others had come in to haul him off her. Her neck was sore, eyes were blurry, but she could see a window, and it was big enough to climb through.

But he had seen, when she turned to look back, underneath the light-post, by the corner, he had seen, and he had come after her, it was her fault, she had not started off running.

Her asthma had not troubled her in years, she had forgotten the affliction, disoriented, she willed her legs to continue. She should have paid more attention to the roads they’d sped upon so often, her head in the clouds, she did not remember ever seeing a Police Station around, and in the darkness of the night she was blind anyway.

Her mother had told her stories of the Blackheart Man, he came in the dark to eat the hearts of capricious children, you could not see him, he was black as night, she did not fear him then.

At this moment, that organ tested its capacity, her veins in her arms pulsated as a sharp pang invaded the left side of her chest, she gripped her breast but kept on running. He had slowed his pace, but he was still coming, she knew what she had done, knew what lay ahead, he would not stop coming and she was getting tired, he knew that she was weak, lazy.

The only thing distinguishable in the distance, the only thing familiar was the cemetery that held the bones of her father, a place she had never visited. Now, she had to cross the swamp to get to it, it was dark, and the lights around it flickered frequently, on and off, and they stayed off much longer.

It was damp and repugnant, the moment she realized she’d lost a shoe, the swamp reeked of garbage and decay and she squirmed as something scurried across her bare foot. It was then she yelped and fell again, there she felt that longing to surrender, then she heard the confirmation, that the gun was loaded. With resistance, she pulled herself over the hump that separated the swamp from the graves, her clothes weighed heavy and the lights were off again.

She cut her hands on the barbed-wire that imprisoned her sanctuary, the blood trickled down her fingers and she wiped them on the tombstone of ‘Mary Gray 1975-1987’ and thought the colours blended well against its white surface, she may have known her once.

She could not see him, but she could hear his feet crunch the leaves that blanketed the ground, she lightened her steps to soften her sound. Remorse, shame, she felt for the first time, she could not find the one she searched for, the night was ominous, she had not been here before.

She heard him quicken as the lights flickered on, she looked to her right and it was barely visible, the name so worn it seemed he had been here longer than was true. She shed a tear as he gripped her hair, the lights went out as the sky ignited for a split-second, with a loud clap.