Tim Howller is an old man now living with his granddaughter. After his granddaughter, Jill, watches the movie King Kong, Tim tells her that the story of King Kong is real and that he had actually witnessed the death of Kong. Tim recalls how he went with his family to see King Kong at a live theater when he was 13, in post-WWII Manhattan. During the show, Kong escaped and people panicked. The ape killed many people, kidnapped Ann Redman, and climbed to the top of the Empire State Building -- in the same manner as in the 1933 movie King Kong. When the Air Force was finally able to shoot King Kong down from the Empire State Building, he fell down to the street and died. As Tim tells the story of King Kong to Jill, he justifies Kong's actions by saying that he was neither bad nor good—he was simply an animal and acted according to his instincts. Jill departs and Tim sheds tears at a last memory of the day King Kong died: when Kong's body was finally carried out of the street, two naked bodies were revealed, crushed under Kong's weight. One was a random man and the other was his beautiful (and married) aunt, with whom a young Tim had been in love.