What a Hoot!

“Hoot.”

“Fuck off!” I was hungover and didn’t want any of this owl’s shit.

“Hoot!” It was louder this time around.

“Fuck OFF!” So was I.

“HOOT!” The blasted thing had gotten right up next to my ear, or it felt like it.

I thrashed about under the covers, trying to dislodge the memory of a dream-owl from my shoulder. The motion was detrimental, and after I was done heaving up the contents of my stomach, I walked back into the bedroom. Why I had dreamt about an owl, I had no clue.

I dressed hurriedly and gathered some buttered toast for my breakfast before heading outside for the day.

“Hoot?” It sounded like a question. From behind me. I spun around to see the neighbour’s daughter Amelia, seven years old and cute as a button. Not that I’ve ever found buttons cute, but that’s the saying, apparently…

“I beg your pardon?” Surely, she had not said what I thought I’d heard.

“I said Good Morning, Mister!” She had a typical seven-year-old girl’s lisp. Equally cute, really.

I smiled at her, though I really didn’t feel like it. Her mother called to her from the house, waved her over to their car. It was a school-day, after all. As Amelia turned, I noticed she had an owl-shaped backpack.

“Weird…” I mumbled. I made my way to my own vehicle. Then, I managed to turn the engine on, though the vibrations made my head feel ten times worse. The radio flared to life, too. Too loud! I turned it off violently enough for the knob to snap off in my hand. Wonderful, just what I needed.

Reversing out the driveway I nearly got taken out by a truck, honking its horn at me as I slammed the brakes on just in time. A very hooty honk. Made it to work just before my boss, so even though I was an hour late, at least I was not going to get chewed out over it.

After a boring day punching numbers into a computer, I returned home. My hangover had vanished over the course of the day, but a new and much more powerful headache had taken its place. I sat in the growing darkness on my back veranda overlooking a large park, grass as far as the eye could see. Trees scattered throughout the grassland, poking up here and there as if to say, “Here I am!” or “Look at me, I’m a tree!”

From the tallest tree darted a shape, down to the ground. As I watched I heard a very faint hooting followed by a brief squeak! as the owl took its prey down.

“Hoot!” from almost inside my head this time! I spun around to see Brenda, Amelia’s mother, standing on the edge of my veranda, a questioning expression on her face.

“Are you alright?” She repeated herself as I shook my head to clear it of all the damn owls. It was not a barn, dammit, or a tree. Stupid birds can find somewhere else to perch and hang out.

I told her that I was fine, just had one of those days. She nodded, then began speaking of the day she’d had after taking Amelia to school. She was inside, asleep by now probably, and under the care of her older brother Jack. He was a good lad, still mowed my lawn for a tenner each weekend and never even asked for any more than that, nor would he accept it if offered. I tried giving him a bonus once and he just handed me the extra back, telling me that he thought I’d overpaid him.

We chattered for a couple of hours before she went back home. It was almost a nightly ritual of ours. If I was out on my veranda, she would come and chat. If she didn’t see me for a couple of days, she’d knock on my door to make sure I was alright. She was a good neighbour and had become a good friend over the years that we’d lived next to one another.

After she left, I poured myself a scotch. Then another.

“Hoot!” Much louder than yesterday.

“Fuck off!” Faint, seemed to happen in the distance.

“Hoot!” still very loud.

“Fuck OFF!” Then I realised that the thing inside the covers was flailing at me and I flapped my wings and flew out the window with a final warning “Hoot!” as the wretch that I had been yesterday morning threw the covers off his bed and got up to vomit and flush his entire life away.

I saw Amelia exiting the neighbour’s house with her owl backpack on and thought to myself how nice it was to not have a hangover anymore, before settling in the tallest tree in a large, grassy park.