The Horn Screamed

Fiction|Horror|Fantasy … Part II

Part One

Part Two

The horn, the muted sounds of curiosity, concern and consternation that yet another accident had despoiled the intersection, filling the adjacent lawns with the detritus of life’s little errors in judgment, permeated the surrounding space. The horn, that I would have given my life all over again to extinguish it; pound that insipid metal piece of crap into extinction and allow myself the subtle peace of mind I had intended to acquire on my aborted trip to Starbucks.

I waited. It’s not as if one plans such an incident and knows instinctively what to do and how to react to life being forcibly expelled from one’s body, slammed into the next or nearest dimension, as memories cascade like server failure and instant digital death. I waited. Confused, profoundly confused, anxious and ungainly, as my “body” seemed unwilling or unable to move in any one direction or obey the simplest commands — like hands in fucking pocket, or stop crying. How was I to know that I would weep, be able to shed a tear while staring at the body that was supposed to handle these tasks and yet could not, would not ever do it again.

It was only then, when that god accursed horn was finally disconnected and the piercing, mind-numbing, pushing one’s eyes out from within the skull wail ceased, did I realize how close I had actually come to that double latte. The baristas lined the sidewalk outside in some bizarre conga line homage to Desi Arnaz and stared at the carnage, with a look of disdain and disbelief, staring at me as if I had intentionally ruined their afternoon and entered into their collective consciousness this strange and unrelenting visual that would haunt them through summer. Like I had a choice; like I caused Dr. Death in the red pickup to reach for a phone or a cigarette or the crotch of the girl seated next to him and lured him and his ride into the front grill of my Kia Sportage, knowing with all the certainty that this Life can sustain, that I was doing it just to-piss-him-off.

I reached, that is moved or intended to move, or intended to propel this “body” to the first barista, “Jenny” if I was reading her nameplate correctly, and tell her exactly what all of this meant. That there was, a sudden loss of revenue due to “death outside”, was the least of my fucking worries; that the dip in sales of glazed donuts and organic blueberry oat bars paled in significance to the fact that I was no more, that I was deceased, demised, departed and otherwise dismissed from Life’s roll call, all because I wanted a double latte on a Sunday morning.

In Life’s little Tet e Tet with good versus evil or young versus old, I was reluctantly the bystander in this miasma of malfeasance. I was wronged, besotted and buggered by the ugly foul-smelling gent that hovered ten degrees to my starboard side and watched with anxious anticipation, no doubt coveting my soul like I had once coveted Desdemona Allenby’s virginity, lo those eight years ago. Coveted and acquired with no post-coital sense or understanding of the consequences of my act or the insincerity of my pitch that brought about the end to what she had prized so highly and I had sought so energetically.

Taken and used without the slightest insight in the magnitude of the gift she had bestowed upon me; lost in the euphoria of ejaculation and the languor that lasted, oh those two and one-half minutes. Now, through the wreckage of my half-paid fully insured vehicle, the image of Desdemona’s soft and supple lips, green eyes and long black hair, filled my heart, my mind, my ever dwindling moments on this earth, with regret and recrimination for I had wasted, as only an idiot of monumental proportions can do, an opportunity to propel myself into the next level of Man; instead choosing the path most traveled and succumbing to be like so many others, a pig.

… blaring in demonic synchronicity, dual sirens that tore the fabric of what was left of my soul, rending it further, towards some unknown and unappreciated end.

It seemed that my thoughts, the inner sanctum sanctorum of my mind was as transparent as the now shattered windshield of my car, and the “man” waiting quietly by my side, concurred with every thought, agreed with every sentiment and if, my eyes were not deceiving me, shed the same number of tears for Desdemona. Karma had apparently driven an eight-inch spike through the center of my skull and attached a post-it on the end of it, shouting to the world, that here lies a moron. He smiled.

As the air itself finally subsided into a less turbulent facsimile of what was just moments ago, a Hurricane Katrina of the spiritual plane, there appeared on the horizon two large red denizens of some disturbed madmen’s dream, vehicles hurdling towards the death and destruction that one American and One Korean made car had wrought, blaring in demonic synchronicity dual sirens that tore the fabric of what was left of my soul, rending it further, towards some unknown and unappreciated end. My “hands” instinctively rose to cover my ears but for naught, for the sound at 100 decibels and climbing drove through the center of what I can only call my “skull” and cleaved the orb in two, evenly, irretrievably, sending what was left of my psyche into hiding in some remote part of a giant palm tree, fourth in a line of fifty giant palms lining the street, planted no doubt by some phallic obsessed city planner eighty years before such things would be deemed un-PC.

There “it” clung to bark and berry, viewing the chaos that unfolded with detached and unreasonable hatred, for the fire fighter’s, in their zeal for life and preservation, first chose to extract, with the gaping “Jaws of Life” the miscreant behind the wheel of the pickup truck. There I watch concurrently as “Daisy Duke” was eased from beneath her seat belt, her blouse strategically torqued from top to bottom, revealing, what no doubt was, the direct and indisputable cause of my death, the finest pair of breasts these “eyes” had ever seen.

Again, the “Man” that stalked the last moments of my existence on Earth, nodded in concert, smiled with gratuitous abandon, aloft in a tree, without visible signs of support, “communicating” clearly through some means or manner that though these were indeed some of the finest features of womanhood he had ever witnessed, they were not, however, the best. And there he left it; refusing it seems to expound any further, leaving me with the devastating notion that I would never bear witness on attributes like these again.

Joe Luca is writer and editor for ILLUMINATION and a published author and writer of children’s stories, short fiction, non-fiction articles, screenplays and poetry. Publications include Child’s Life, Children’s Playmate and others. There are some other articles below — have a read. And thank you for stopping by.