Which reminds me of an old joke: How do you stop a bull from charging? Take away his credit card.
I wish. Instead, I found myself scrambling to get out of his way. Scrambling and, sadly, slipping. Remember the rain? Anyway, I swore and clawed at the dirt, trying like hell to find my feet when two things happened simultaneously: El Diablo lowered his head...and lightening struck.
Both at the exact same time.
And that’s all I remembered.
* * *
I awoke days later at the Rustic City Hospital.
I came to slowly, aware that, as usual, I was alone. Not even a friend sitting by my side to see if I would pull through. Well, I pulled through alright. Maybe too well.
As I lay there in the intensive care unit, blinking and trying to assess just how bad the damage was, I came to one conclusion:
I was doing very well indeed.
Nothing seemed to be broken. In fact, nothing about me seemed injured in any way. According to the nurse on duty who swung by to check on me, I had been in a three-day coma with a massive head wound. Apparently, the bull had done its best to trample me into oblivion...except...
Well, except the exact opposite happened.
The bull had literally disappeared off the face of the earth.
No shit.
Well, I have an opinion about that. In fact, so do a lot of people. I’m kind of a celebrity these days. Go figure.
Anyway, I’m fairly certain that the bull didn’t disappear off the face of the earth. No. Thanks to that freakish lightning strike, I’m fairly certain the bull and I became one.
At least, if these horns and my now famous tail had anything to do with it.
* * *
Yes, I now sport a longish tail that actually ends in a fluffy little ball.
Not as cute as it might seem. That fluffy little ball itches like hell and has a nasty habit of getting caught in stupid elevators and stupid sliding glass doors.
Stupid, stupid bull.
Anyway, it wasn’t long after my release from the hospital when the horns appeared. Within hours of being back at my apartment, the first bumps appeared above my temples. Another hour after that, two black, sharp horns tore through my skin to curve up and out, blossoming above my head like something out of the devil’s own garden.
Yeah, I was freaked, man. Freaked.
I studied myself in the mirror. Pale faced and sick to my stomach as I ran my hands up along the thick horns, tentatively touching their tips with my own fingertips.
“This isn’t happening,” I said over and over (and sometimes still to this day).
The horns were firmly attached to my skull, as if screwed in. As if they’d always been there. Worse, as if they would always be there.
Stupid, freakish horns.
And as I paced in my small apartment, as the freak rainstorm that had brought the even freakier lightning strike continued to pummel the good town of Rustic City, I felt something appear in my pants.
No, not that something. Hell, I wish it had been that.
No, this something appeared on other end. The rear end. Yes, I’m talking about the damn tail with the furry little ball. That damn furry ball that itches so damn much.
There it was, curled in my boxers like a sleeping snake. Except it wasn’t a snake. And it was attached to me. Right there at the base of my spine.