The Horn Screamed

The horn screamed. It rang out like the last gasp of the Titanic; like the desperate wail of a mother as her child’s hand slipped out from hers in a crowd, death awaiting, a momentary lapse, a phone call, a misstep in a parking lot filled with holes and broken tarmac as a thousand cars circled, like buzzard’s eying lunch and careless in letting their hunger show. It reached in and shattered the still morning air, the peaceful feeling a carefully edited playlist on my iPod had crafted, wrenching away the fragile pocket of sanity, peeling back the scab that covered the wounds that had already healed slowly, leaving Reality, in all its twisted forms, perched over the steering wheel like some sadistic angel.

Knowing I was about to die and thinking that I might just be thinking, that this angel might actually save my life. Then flying off, or however the fuck angels get around, leaving nothing behind but bad dreams and one earbud, playing some demonic twist on “Closer to God”, as Trent Reznor peered out from the GPS disappointed by the manner in which his song was being used. Then fading back into the circuit boards as the airbag exploded with devilish certainty, and my head bounced off the headrest, and what little sense still lingering was sent scurrying into the afterlife.

I had witnessed death before; seen its glaring misshaped face staring at me; cloying, ill-tempered, humorless and alone, as it pried apart my fingers, the few left clinging to a surfboard snapped in two; smiling through rotted teeth, forked-tongue probing the fetid air that whirled around me, tasting the blood that seeped from the crack in my skull, seconds before I slipped casually into oblivion, six feet from the pier. Six miles from a home I had frequently found irksome, six stinking minutes from the soft yet distant caress of Syesha’s hand as she sent me into the waves and returned to the more pressing concerns hurled her way by an older man named Gus. Death loomed over me, slapping away the hands of swimmers pulling me up from beneath the water, stabbing sharpened fingers into my eyes so I could see nothing except its ghoulish face laughing; giving up only when I spat salt water into its face and found my own laughter within.

The large white airbag pushed my face deeper into the bone behind it, blinding me, forcing me to peer out from above the head that snapped to and fro, robbing me of the last breath I would take in this body; expelled in one shortened sigh as that goddamned horn filled the space with sound grating and unworldly, loud and unrelenting as all of Life’s chatter, an endless stream of interactive bullshit and “I am not listening” ran through me, downloading a thousand thoughts of what I had not yet had the chance to accomplish, of all the ideas I had not yet had the time to conceive of, of all the women I had not yet had the chance to know and break up with miserably and with regret.

I remained seated and aware, fused to the seat belt that held me prisoner in a small mid-ranged Kia, that I still owed money on and waited, patient in the knowledge, however brief and bereft of solace, that the other, nearsighted, dead from the neck up, amped on Red Bull and cough drops driver in his three ton pickup would suffer sleepless nights, cold sweats and endless nocturnal erections, as he replayed the senseless, pointless, careless demise of a decent man, that he and only he had caused.

I thought of my mother and home, of my father and his home with a second wife half his age, and that endless grin etched on his face. I thought of my sister and husband, flying in from Kansas on a red-eye, with him crabbing about lost time at work and what a thoroughly dead and worthless person I had been anyway, genetically deficient of anything worthwhile, spending a pointless life hopelessly sucking the marrow out of anyone within reach, in a feeble attempt at becoming a man. And of Cora Lee. The parrot I had rescued from a tree in MacArthur Park, who cursed eloquently and sang off-key songs by the Bee Gees.

Life rallied for a brief moment, pitched up, and fought tooth and claw, as the metal tore, the flesh gave way to muscle and bone, and the pain, subtle and almost pleasant at first, alighting on a body that had not experienced anything more emotional than a good pee in a long while, building unnecessarily, for I was already resigned to it being unyielding until the eyes teared up, the lips quivered, the scalp bristled with impending doom and the soul scampered out of the body, wishing to watch its former shell destroyed by this immovable object and that newly pimped irresistible force.

Then there was quiet. Like that moment in church when everyone’s head is down in deep thoughtful prayer and yours is up, watching, wondering what the hell is going through their minds. The quiet that precedes the slap; it was all there, the blinding light, the smells of gasoline, motor oil, melting brake pads, and human waste, housed in a once practical, now demolished metal box, that would soon be recycled along with my DNA to become a garish lunchbox or some cheap spatula fabricated outside Beijing. Quiet mixed with the slow motion antics of those horrified or sublimely fascinated by body parts twisted out of their normal pattern, eyes fixed and staring out windows at a world they had once dominated and now, were merely an unmoving part of, no more or less than a rock, a fake lawn or yesterday’s delivered pizza box.

Where was I and why was I not peering into the wreckage as I was prone to do; eyes transfixed, mind racing to incorporate the gory details of the latest victims into a morbid mental database of horrific statistics and bad taste visuals, stored over the course of a lifetime, I was once proud to call my own. Where were the involuntary heaves as the stench of life’s expiration filled my nostrils and sent my lunch hurling towards daylight, only to be held down by the sheer force of will and the survival imperative to not look like a fucking wuss? These simple pleasures would be no more, for I was dead and the dead no longer had the privilege or need to view the dead as a means of gauging the life that still remained within them.

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; pound the insipid metal piece of crap into extinction, and allow me 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 psyche 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 as I had once coveted Desdemona Allenby’s virginity, lo those eight years ago. Coveted and acquired with no post-coitus 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 into 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.

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 fighters, 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 to attributes like these again.

The Dude they pried from the driver’s seat, airbag embedded in his ear, seemed intent, no, desperate to point out that I was at fault, and though a busted jaw and sideways grin prevented him from articulating what had happened, his single-digit salute in the direction of my crumpled Kia, seemed sufficient to convey to all around, that he was not the cause of this mishap. That fault, though far be it for him to lay blame on someone whose body had a steering column piercing his chest, lay elsewhere and everyone should be so informed.

It seems my friend was as ill-amused as I, and shook his head slowly from side to side as if to note, that this fellow, this dude who rides a red pickup with a large-breasted woman, would be on his list of souls to procure in the not too distant future. Amen to that.

But where did all of this leave me? I felt lost, eerily misplaced, and tossed aside in a universe I had just been an active participant. Here I “stood”, bereft of impulse or anticipation of what might come next, for in truth, I was no more. How could nothing feel, or no one think? How was I to contemplate my existence when there was no point of reference, no maps, no bloody policeman standing on the corner in white gloves and hat, gesturing this way and that, directing traffic towards the hereafter; or a booth, bannered in broad strokes and gold leaf claiming, “Guide to the Afterlife.”

The clamor of broken metal, hydraulics, and idle chatter about death and its inherent inconvenience faded as the participants in my final moment returned to their lives, their families, and their continued existence, leaving behind nothing more than stained pavement, yellow tape, and discarded Starbuck cups and brown paper bags. I watched and felt hollow inside, like a bone sucked clean of its marrow and tossed aside for compost. I cried but felt no tears. Wept inside the mind that was still mine to possess and grieved for a life, a silly one at times, often apologetic and frequently dysfunctional as it was, but mine, and god damn it, I missed it already.

I turned savagely and unleashed a kick at the head of the “man” that had shadowed me since the first millisecond of death and missed pathetically. Gone, moved or otherwise displaced, I unleashed nothing more than my own frustration at empty airspace, and lost the unnatural balance that kept me propped up, fifty feet above the ground; falling now, crashing more than not, into on and around the spot where my beloved Kia had once been. I assumed pain and the crunching of bone and felt nauseous before anything actually occurred. Then the realization of immortality struck; that loose fitting of concepts that one talks about in church-like whispers while watching the parade of sinners move toward the altar with hands clasped and mouths already beginning to open. Struck cold and hard and somewhere just north of the groin, leaving me breathless and excited and in a state of complete exhaustion; limbs sagging by my side, eyes wide and tear-filled, hope escaping from me like air from a lifeless balloon – where the fuck was I and why was this ugly son of a bitch still watching me? He looked haggard and old like it was my fault that he was up late and in need of sleep. Yet his eyes had changed. They no longer stared at me with empty indifference, a Budweiser poster glued to the inside of a liquor store door. Something had changed.

Who are you?

He moved away uneasily, perhaps wary of personal comments and interactions with his intended victim. He stopped no more than six inches from two ladies still talking about the accident and unaware that a creature of a different and diverse dimension was hovering millimeters away; close enough to smell the fragrance on her neck, to see the sunlight shimmering off her eyelashes, to be tormented by the warmth of flesh it could touch but never have, want but never need. He looked at me as if I should know and understand the depth of his torment, when all I could think of, was who would get my clothes, money, and long list of Star War collectibles, cataloged and stored in my Aunt Rosie’s garage. Who would mourn for me when news of my demise would spread, slowly at first and then rapidly through a list of six or seven people who might actually give a shit about my passing; that might actually grieve?

Who are you?

The ladies took their last look and parted. He, who had not yet been named, lingered in their wake, breathing deep the scent of their lives and returning his gaze to me as if to say, it is time. As if I would know what he meant and immediately fall in line. Little did he know, or maybe he did, I was not ready to leave, or relinquish my life and pass on to the next, having zero knowledge of what that meant or if I could change my mind.

This is fucked.

I kick at a cup with all my might and lifted it all of three inches, into what must have been a stiff headwind for it fell back, exactly into the same spot. Albeit on its side and not standing straight up as it had been before. So was this a harbinger of things to come? A glimpse at a world of impotent frustration and endless near misses, where nothing would be, as it seemed.

My friend said nothing but I heard him loud and clear.

Stop fucking reading more into this than there was. It was just an accident. It wasn’t your “time” or your destiny. The Dude was more interested in Daisy’s boobs than good driving and there it is.

A simple logical explanation of life and death was not what I was after. I wanted some deeply religious, truly philosophical statement about why lives interact in such violent ways. Why do people give lip service to peace and equanimity and then drive drunk or drugged and play grab ass on Ventura Boulevard on a Sunday morning? Provide me with a reason for having one’s life snatched like an apple off a fruit stand. I wanted fucking answers.

There isn’t one.

The last policeman on the scene walked out of the Starbucks with a vente Iced Frappuccino in his hand and eyed the scene of the accident one more time before getting into his car. It drove off without incident or anything cinematic and I was left “standing” in the middle of the street, watching the taillights blink once, then twice, as it turned off and headed for the 134 Freeway.

There must be.

A stray dog was licking what was left of an Iced Caramel Macchiato on the sidewalk and came toward me sniffing anything and everything between it and me. It stopped inches from my feet and looked up into my eyes, tail wagging, nose twitching, recognition registered somewhere within. It began to lift its leg and stopped, changed its mind, and walked away. I felt relieved by that simple act of kindness; renewed you might say that not all things were meant to go awry.

I joined my friend and we left the scene. The stained pavement, the yellow tape, and the few remaining cups, now being swept up by Jenny and placed into a plastic bag. Life would go on, somehow, somewhere, just not in my Kia Sportage.