Ernie: Post Script, a Fantasy
Story Number 20: Grapes of Irony, Number 9
(Written 2/24/23)
(Immediately after the whole Ernie saga played out—see 11/4/22 blog entry: Ernie the Rooster, Burritous Interruptus and Bear the Killer of All Things, I did imagine what could have happened if the burrito truck did take Ernie and what would have transpired inside the truck when he came back to consciousness. As I was writing the Ernie story, it just seemed if I added any type of theoretical fantasy scene, the flow of the events would have been compromised and befuddled, so I chose not to include the scene. However, what I imagined is too fantastic not to share and when my beloved, Steve, remarked that he would have let the burrito truck take Ernie, I could not help but put my fantasy thoughts on paper. The Ernie story is all true. What follows is not true, but could have been. Do not underestimate the humor of The Universe, for that is sheer folly!)
I do have images of the burrito truck taking Ernie and then going on its skulking, merry way. And then I have very vivid images of him coming back to life inside the truck. Freaking the fuck out, flapping his mighty wings, feathers tornadoing everywhere, his shrill screeching, terror-driven vocalizations, the catapulting of his large body around the interior of the spicy, lunch-scented truck as he takes flight and tries to escape his greedy, cheap captors, whom he stabs and slashes with his large, deadly spurs.
The truck begins to careen wildly from side to side, as the driver tries to fend off Ernie's spurs slashing across his terrified, unbelieving face. A face that contains the mind that decided it was a good idea to save a few bucks on chicken by stopping to pick up Ernie’s seemingly dead carcass. The burrito truck crosses the road and then it wildly crosses back again to the other side, tires screeching, and a tilt starts to occur because of the momentum, the extreme panic, the driver’s flailing but ineffectual limbs, and the chicken chaos.
Exterior shot, camera pulling back from the scene. The burrito truck is lying on its side, smoke drifting from its engine. The tires turn lazily. The cloud of dust dissipates. There is utter silence, except from the clicking and settling of the twisted, hot metal, cooling as a soft breeze wafts over the scene; leaves stir.
And then, from the side of the truck, which is now the top, where the door has been shorn clean off, emerges Ernie's head. Dazed, he looks around, in that chickeny, jerky, staccato-way they move their heads. Swiveling and lurching he takes in the aftermath, like a palsy-prone submariner rotating a periscope across a devastated landscape. Ernie thrusts his body upwards, jumping he lands on the side of the burrito truck, blossoms his cloaca wide and dumps a huge plug of rooster shit on the truck. He flaps his wings triumphantly, tilts back his head, cranes his neck, where drops of blood on his comb and wattle, most assuredly human, glisten in the sun, and he cock-a-doodle-dos his call of the wild; guttural, victorious, and free.
A small dust devil dances on the road, skirting along the overturned burrito truck. Ernie descends calmly, pecks some broken tortilla chips that were ejected from the scene of the accident and lie placidly on the ground, plain, for they were not the platform for Ernie’s flesh. And then Ernie heads along the road, towards home. The fire engines and police cars do not even notice the two-foot tall Rhode Island rooster strutting calmly down the country road as they thunder past him, oblivious of the poultry menace in their midst.
