HORUS?

By: Tristan White

On the outskirts of a perpetually deteriorating town, consisting of a single main road lined by general supply stores, an eatery or two, the town hall across the street from the bar, a church, and, if the locals are a bit more zealous, a Free Masons lodge, sitting in the back garden’s porch swing, drinking the habitual cup of coffee and making an attempt, with worthy effort, at a newspaper crossword puzzle, Simon felt a previously dormant, primal urge in his nerves to suddenly look up; his body felt dangerously vulnerable. He looked to the extent of his fence line and out over the downward sloping autumnal forest, interrupted frequently by a typical Southern-Appalachian neighborhood—a semi-paved road winding through an array of double-wides, shotgun houses, and ancestral homesteads that bear the signs of more than a century of rural humanity. But what was it he ascribed this feeling to? Within his home’s perimeter, at the site of his most frequent comfort, surrounded by developed civilization, he knew his body was secure from harm—yet why did his biology suddenly, involuntarily pull at his attention?

                “Hmph, must’ve been a sound or something of da other,” he thought, “probably just da wind in da pines.”

            Looking back to the puzzle, Simon attempted to erase a letter, but his grimy fingers fumbled and flipped the pencil on to the porch. With annoyance, he stooped to reach for the—

 Wwwfff DOOMPSKRAASH! …thud.

            After jumping like a startled street cat, Simon grabbed at his torso to still his breathing. Panicked, wide-eyed, and looking around wildly for the heavy object that nearly scalped him, his gaze settled. Simon’s mind didn’t quite know what to make of the image his eyes perceived. At first, Simon thought the damned neighborhood kids had thrown another dead stray cat over his fence; however, what he saw explained the inhume speed of the projectile that certainly could not have been produced by a scraggly trailer rat’s throw. Lying on its back stunned, with feathers ruffled in disarray, its long-taloned feet clenched as if it was restraining vulgarities, head tilted aside with an open mouth as if to curse, a large, sanguine hawk had ripped over at the moment of Simon’s reaching down, soaring skull first towards the house, knocking itself dead and taking the life of Simon’s new French-glass door with it to hell.

            Uncharacteristic of such a man, Simon’s initial thought was of the animal’s state; it was either dead or paralyzed and suffering. He looked at the stiff and flexing body of the raptor, pitying that such a grand and beautiful apex predator—after himself of course—should come to such a humiliating and pointless death. To have such an atmospheric life extinguished four feet above the ground by a threat that Mother Earth could never have warned it about; how unfair. Then he re-registered the murder scene that was the shattered remnants of his latest investment, funded by nine, eight-hour shifts at the Circle-K. Illiterate fury is what best describes the audial violence that spewed forth from Simon. No longer did he look down on the ruby corpse with mutual respect as a capable being; instead, only thoughts of pure disdain for such a petulant bird whose dimwittedness had ordered him to an hour of clean-up and an additional seventy-two-hour sentence of gas-station graveyard shifts.

                “Imma smear dis bird.”

            Approaching the bird nearly with mirth, Simon raised his boot, like an executioner’s axe, poised with the authority of death and th…

            Its eyes opened…

             Immobilized with shock, as a bird facing a spider, Simon’s consciousness was arrested by the stare of a predator used to having continents and kingdoms sweep under its wings since time immemorial. Simon fearfully observed that the insentient bird’s eyes burned with living fire; an intelligent dignity and proud sovereignty, vulnerable to no being, who held this biped looming over it in contempt for raising an appendage in violence towards it. His senses returning and paralysis receding, Simon meekly lowered his foot while stepping a half pace back, feeling his leg’s trembling, vibrating through the planks of his small porch.

            “Dis here hawk must think he some kinda gawd or something.” Simon mumbled with trepidation. “Way a minute—what’d dat word I couldn’ figure—five letters across—ends wid an ‘s’—an Egyptian bird gawd? Gawd a hawks? An ‘H’? Horus?”

            Oh Simon, common, simple man—how soft and daft a creature? For what other animal could bother with satiating curiosity in the midst of such obvious natural dominance and imminent extermination? Turning to reach for the newspaper, Simon never saw the raptor spin over and launch upwards with thrashing wings, talons swinging like a scythe.

WOOMPFWOOMPFWOOMPFWOOMPF,shhck… THUD—woompf woompf woompf woompf…

            Effortless, practiced, and almost chivalrous did the hawk subdue this usurper.

            Simon, with his throat cleanly lacerated, as a lamb before the alter, fell to his knees, reaching out for support as dying men do, sagged forward until collapsing onto the planks, blood spilling through the cracks. Already above the canopy, flying away with Olympian indifference, talons crimsoned, letting out a screech of triumph, Horus ascended into heaven once again; the realm residing above the developed world, His jealous ego appeased.