4

A long blaring trumpet. Laughing. A crash.

She sits straight up. Bangs her head on the plastic pot of a dead plant in a hanging basket.

"Oh, goddamn it. Hecate. Fuckate. Ow."

The day was night and the night touches day.

She's slept for many long hours. Rubs sleepy, sandy eyes with clean palms. Creaks her back and shifts her feet out of the sink. Turns and climbs from the counter. Rotates the faucet handle and drinks and spits and drinks. Her stomach gurgles. She has to pee. She doesn't feel sick or disoriented anymore. Extremely hungry.

She opens cupboard doors until she finds a pantry with bags of expired potato chips and label-less cans of vegetables or beans or fruit. Possibly canned meat.

She pops a chip bag and eats the entire stale, salty contents. Thinks of finding a bathroom to piss and shower. Wants to rummage around for a good pair of shoes.

A loud trumpet blares in the distance. She stops moving and listens. Promulgates again but no. The rumble and the trumpet shouts like glass breaking through a high pitch filter. It's very close to the house this time. Thrump sounds. Too close to the house.

She wasn't dreaming when she heard such a blazon the last time. Was she? Was the mal'akh holding a sword or a trumpet?

Whining laughter accompanies, smiling within an audible white noise. Careful listening becomes realization. Louder white noise. An imprecate horde of what might've been.

The house thunders and shakes. Wood creaks and crunches. Concrete cracks apart.

She grabs her water bottles and a few bags of chips. Her flip flops. Runs to the bedroom. Fills her pink backpack with the contents in her hands. Drops her flip flops and shuffles her feet into their inadequacy.

The white noise becomes unbearable with each passing moment. Outside booms and something slams into the house like a bus or a dump truck. The foundation shakes. She witnesses shingles fall in front of the window and feels ceiling popcorn sprinkle onto her hair and shoulders. Climbs out of the vibrating window as the house shakes again. Drops to the cinderblocks and they topple. She tumbles into the sallow grass. Time's fed jumps up and sprints toward the alley from the backyard of the house.

The trumpet sounds like brass against her ears. She looks back with the taste of salt still in her mouth. The sun breaks through the horizon and she witnesses bedlam.

An elephant is crashing upon the bungalow with a naked horde of what might've been trying to eat it alive. They cling to its ribs and belly of gray crater crimson skin like primate wood ticks crawling and latching. They chew. Swallow. Shit. Repeat.

What might've been cover its back in the genderless fray and flay of spinal exposure. The beast insanely slams its behemoth body into the house again and again, trying to crush what might've been off its wounds. Some cling to its legs. Climbing. Biting. Wrenching. Swallowing. Some drop off to try and pull the newly ingested flesh back out through elbow deep anus. Some continue burying into the elephant's flesh.

One has its face beneath the surface of the skin, just around the belly. Its feet dangle close to the ground. Its fingers gouge like hammering nails.

The elephant thrashes and trumpet screams. Collapses a wall of the house. Cement and wood and brick topple inside and out, onto the grass. House and yard become piles of rubble. The behemoth paints every bit of the destruction with the gore morsel streaks of what might've been.

A water line breaks and gushes onto the riding horde. Blood washes away to be replaced by more blood.

The elephant turns its face toward the time's fed girl, eyes wide in the throes of extreme pain. Trumpets in her direction, like it's pleading for help. It quickly turns back upon the collapsing house, thrashing its body for relief.

Time's fed witnesses what might've been a man, armless and legless. Impaled through the chest by the long curve girth of the right tusk. Her eyes meet the eyes of what might've been, like a hearse tangled to the breaking leviathan.

The elephant's left tusk is snapped halfway. It's still useful for bludgeoning what might've been and it does. Bodies fly through the air as more climb to occupy a spot.

The one on the tusk rolls its eyes as it crashes into the ground and up onto the next wall of the house and back onto the ground. Again and again until it slides off as a thin, schnitzel type of pulp.

She spots a hyena nipping at the foot of what might've been a woman dangling from the elephant's leg by its mouth. The elephant grabs what might've been a woman with its devastatingly enormous trunk and anacondas her neck. Lifts and flings what might've been a woman into the side of the adjacent house. When she crashes upon the ground, the hyena whines and squeals and jumps. It buries its smiling face into her gore belly. Blood spurts as it feeds. Other hyenas join from the shadows and feast upon the septic flesh and bone. She witnesses the arms of what might've been a woman flail as a hyena stands over what might've been's face. The hyena jolts its teeth into brow and chews. What might've been a woman's skull audibly crunches.

The time's fed girl sprints into the dusty alley. Through an overgrown backyard and into another suburban street. Passes an on coming pack of chortling hyenas. Time's fed wide eye startles and urinates as she runs. They notice her, but don't attack. A giant hyena witnesses her in the eye to eye way and growl giggles.

The distant elephant trumpet screams continue. Crashing against another house, destroying another bungalow and those who might've been. She knows the action will and has attracted more of everything. Listeners. Feelers. Possibly whiffers.

She runs and runs and runs away from the onslaught. Slows when the volume of the event feels more like the past of her steps; like all memory eventually fades into the scars of the present.

"Goddam Hecate fuckate. I needed shoes."

Something explodes much further back than the houses. She pisses herself again. A ball of flame shoots upward and turns into black smoke in the sky.

Gas line? Hecate.

She looks around the suburb which she's hastily entered. A black white metal arrow sign meets her vision. It's bolted to a green, paint flaking, wooden pole in front of a small, narrow park. The arrow points to her left. The words Public Zoo are etched within the arrow.

The elephant continues to scream in the fading distance. Laughter is becoming like white noise. She looks right and takes her flip flops off. Holds them. Pulls her shorts and underwear down. Squats and pisses in the middle of the street.