A bizarre thing happened the other night. At about one o'clock in the morning I was awakened by a very loud horn. I'd apparently been hearing it while I was sleeping and my subconscious was trying to incorporate its blaring into an already-odd dream. So I just sat there, bolt upright in the bed, wondering who the hell was making all the racket ("It's the Rapture!"), when I heard the horn again. Only this time it wasn't as loud. Okay. About five minutes go by and I hear it again, this time louder. Then again a few minutes later. Louder. Then again, only softer. All the while I can hear the cab of a truck upshifting and downshifting, trundling within earshot and then back out again.

What the hell? I think to myself as the horn sounds again. Then there was silence for a long enough interval for me to fall back asleep - a half an hour, maybe.

Then I hear the truck, and then the horn. This goes on for another half hour. Where are the police? I wonder. We're right next to a big honkin' mall, so I'd imagine there'd be a not insignificant overnight patrol prowling the area...

...or perhaps not.

I'm assuming that whoever this guy is, he's very, very lost. I remember a time when Maria and I were still living in Lynn when we were awakened by a car horn and its youngish occupants yelling out someone's name as they wandered the neighborhood from street to street, waking up scads of people in the process (it was about 3 in the morning that time). But it being the middle of the night, and my imagination being what it is, the old brain starts running wild whipping up alternate scenarios. What if it is The Rapture (tm)? Should I have been so flippant with the blasphemy and the Jesus jokes? But then again, would our Lord and Savior be using an 18-wheeler to gather up his faithful; and even if so, wouldn't he know:

A. How to drive one without grinding the gears, and, more importantly
B. Where he was going?

Still, it made for an interesting thirty seconds of dread, and excellent short story fodder.