Bang stories

CABLE CAR

A few years ago, I was on a Medellin Cable Car on my way up to a newly inaugurated library. As I was going up, at the height of La Communa 13 and its neighbourhood, I heard a dry but very elongated sound. Time was very… Deafening. They were death sounds. Eternal. Someone had fired a gun. I was immediately above where everything was happening. Naturally, I was very scared. I looked down and two men had just been shot. I saw everything and I remember that sound perfectly … the bullets, the screams… everything. It was horrible.

M.C.A. Medellin June 2012

DREAM PLANE

I was in a mall with my mom and my brother. For some reason we had got into a fight, so I left the shopping center and went out onto the street. At that moment I saw something fall from the sky. Without a sound the object just exploded. After a couple of seconds, I heard something that sounded like a loud military airplane flying very close to the ground. Immediately after this sound I saw the pieces from the explosion falling from the sky, accompanied by a beep sound that became more and more acute by the second. It started to blend with the screams of the people around me. I felt my ears were bursting. An even louder sound followed the chaos. It was as if many balloons were exploding next to my ear while a rock song played on giant speakers. The sound multiplied over and over. Then I woke up. To this day I still jump every time a plane flies over.

N.D.G. Bogota March 2019

BOMB

I remember when I was really young being at my sister’s birthday party. I got bored and went to my room to play with my video games. Suddenly, the whole building shook and I heard the sound of shattering glass. However, when I looked outside it wasn’t the windows of our house that had exploded. It had been those broken by a bomb put in the Nogal Country Club just a couple of blocks away from the house.

J.A.G. Bogota February 2003

COCA COLA

Once I was coming home from a party and I was holding a can of Coca Cola. I decided to open it outside our house and chug it quickly so I wouldn’t wake up my parents by drinking it inside. I threw the can away and entered the house. I didn’t allow for how much gas had accumulated in my stomach from drinking that Coca Cola so quickly and inevitably I let out an extremely loud burp. My father woke, up terrified from the noise, thinking it had been a bomb or someone had tried to break in.

Y.A. Bogota March 2000