What it feels like to witness a murder scene

Blood everywhere. It’s almost as if his soul had drained out of the bullet holes that have scarred his whole body. When you see so much blood on the ground you start touching yourself, to check that you haven’t been wounded too, that your blood isn’t mixed up with his; you get into a psychotic state, you need to be sure there are no cuts on your body, maybe you’ve been shot yourself without realising it. You just don’t believe there could be so much blood in one person, you’re sure there can’t be so much in you. Even when you’ve checked that none of the blood is yours, you still can’t calm down: maybe you haven’t haemorrhaged, but you feel empty. You’ve become a haemorrhage yourself, your legs feel wobbly, your tongue is sticky, your hands have dissolved away into that thick pool of blood, you need someone to look into your eyes to check for anaemia. You need to stop a nurse and demand a transfusion, you need to have your stomach a bit less tight so you can eat a steak, if you could do that without throwing up. You have to close your eyes, and take care not to breathe. The smell of congealing blood has saturated the room, saturated even the whitewash, and it has a tang of rusty iron. You’ve got to get out, go outside, get into the fresh air before they chuck sawdust on the blood, because the mix of blood and sawdust produces a stench that will break down any resistance to vomiting.

Extract from who Gomorrah: Italy’s Other Mafia by Roberto Saviano, (translated by Virginia Jewiss