"A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound" Narrator

In “A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound” the second person narrator is also the main character. She is a dentist who lives alone in an unnamed and indistinguishable city. On New Year’s Day, the narrator is out on her patio hanging her laundry “barefoot in a nightgown” (3). Suddenly, her upstairs neighbor Menéndez’s dentures fall from above and crack in half. Just as the narrator is attempting to collect the pieces, Menéndez’s body comes “plummeting, breaking, dying on the blue tiles of [her] patio” (1). Because the narrator is shocked that her neighbor is not only lying dead before her, but has chosen to kill himself on her patio, she is immobilized for an indeterminate amount of time. She stands over the body, watching as Menéndez’s blood trickles closer and closer to her bare feet. Throughout this...