"Fruit Truck Salad Summer" -- The Surreal Circus Flash Fiction Contest

The day was dry and warm, not hot like sweltering days, but warm; and it was cool if you were out driving your car with the windows down, or riding your bicycle through the placid streets.

It was the kind of weather that made people friendly. The kind that made the drivers of the cars with their windows down wave, smile and nod as they caught passing eyes with pedestrians and pedalers out riding their bicycles through the placid streets.

One pedaler was named Tripper.

Tripper smiled and waved at the milling and chatting pedestrians as he pedaled through the placid streets. He smiled and waved at the lemonade sipping porch sitters and the ice tea drinking stoop sitters. He smiled and waved at the drivers; you know, the ones riding around with their windows down.

Tripper stopped at an intersection and veered his handlebars left. He didn't know why he did it. It just came to him to do it. You know, like a reflex. He turned his head that way too.

A fruit truck smash-landed in the center of the intersection ahead. The sounds of crushing and springing metal barely heralded the chinks of exploding scattering glass. Then all was surprisingly silenced.

One of the front tires of the truck had smashed off and sailed hugely past Tripper's head. It trailed a "huh-whooshing" sound which ended in a noisy windshield break down the street, followed by a car alarm blaring and someone cursing.

Since Tripper had turned his head when he had veered his handlebars left, he only heard the "huh-whooshing" and felt the slightest of breezes across the back of his neck.

A number of witnesses swore it had taken his head off.

Tripper turned his head to the right to see what had made the smashing noise; and he stared at the pile in front of him. An old truck, a rusty clunky metal truck with sorely faded red paint adorning its old metal fenders and body. Tripper considered it straight from a timey movie, somehow now broken and battered in the intersection ahead. A ruined relic, dead center on summer concrete.

A colored sign leaned brokenly from the wooden slats of the bed of the truck. "Trumbles Tasty Fruit Farm" painted in amateurish artistic lettering. A pulpy, chunky fruit sauce mash dripped and plopped from the truck. It made the air tasty and tangy in Tripper's nostrils.

The sounds of metal crunching, springing and glass breaking had been muffled immediately by the massive load of fruit that had been carried in the back; fruit that had squished and scattered profusely. Apples and oranges and pears, oh my, had shot and sailed gracefully through the air. Yes, there were no bananas.

A gout of Mother Nature's orbs, reds and greens and oranges and yellows, had burst from the cornucopian explosion. They flew on wings of inertia, and aroused a dozen car alarms. Humans and fruit were bruised. Suits, dresses and property were stained. Men swore, women cursed, and a dog barked.

All the drivers that had been riding around with their windows down, and all the bicyclers out pedaling the placid streets, had miraculously stopped at the entrances to the intersection; all of them now gawking.

Tripper's ears registered alarming, gasping and querying voices. He turned to look at the walkers who had stopped, the sitters who had risen, and the drivers who'd left their cars with the windows rolled down. They all stood in the placid streets and on the warm pedestrian sidewalks looking and pointing up. Tripper followed their gazes and gestures and gathered a little alarm and query for himself.

He gasped.

The end of a massive paint brush was retreating through a cloud in the warm and dry summer sky. The tip was as large as a house, the shaft as long as a league, a giant's gripping fingers pulling it back. A deep bellied laugh came cascading down; and thrills went up the spines of the watchers.

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667 words 20090408

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