This town sucks ass.
Let me tell you, the amount of sleep I’ve lost over people screaming their lungs out in the middle of the night is astounding, like bitch IT’S JUST THE NEIGHBORHOOD BIGFOOT PASSING THROUGH, SHUT THE HELL UP!
Oh wait, I should probably give you guys a bit more context here, huh? Hi, my name’s Mason, and I live in the worst town in this godforsaken country, Behemoth, Virginia. This town is a dumpster. The people all suck, you have to manually transport your garbage to a dump because there’s no trash pickup, oh, and also ghosts, demons, and various cryptids all wander in and out of the town like it’s a goddamn rest stop. You’ll see the paranormal so often that you’ll be more surprised by where you see them than what you see. I once stumbled upon an eldritch horror in a McDonald’s bathroom and was more surprised by the fact that it WASN’T a pile of human feces.
Every day is the same. I wake up, eat breakfast, go to school, go home, and do whatever until I have to go to bed. The monsters create literally the ONLY inconsistency in my schedule, and even then that usually just amounts to watching the neighborhood Bigfoot fight a bear for a half decayed subway sandwich someone threw into the woods. You may be reading all this and wishing you lived here because you think it’d be cool to live around all kinds of cool creatures, but trust me, the novelty wears off fast, and once it does you’re left with nothing but shit and disappointment, like a bowl of ice cream that melts into dilute club soda.
Though, I’ll give the town this, every now and again the monsters actually get interesting. Like the time Moth Man flew into my math class through a window. Now, given my proximity to West Virginia, you’d probably expect Moth Man sightings to be a lot more common, but apparently he’s about as big a fan of this place as I am. I’ve only seen him once in the five years I’ve lived here, though occasionally on my three-times-a-year trip to Ohio I think I see him in my peripherals while passing through West Virginia. It was early 2021 and I was in Geometry class. It was an insanely boring day, as it usually is, and we were learning some random shit I don’t remember, when suddenly class was interrupted by what sounded like distant flapping. The flapping seemed to only get louder and louder until soon, someone turned around to see where it was coming from, before letting out a scream so shrill I thought it was the fire alarm for a second. Then, more and more people slowly started screaming, and it only got worse when a crash was heard.
The motherfucking Moth Man had just smashed through one of the windows. The class all hit the deck hard enough to shake the damn building as Moth Man immediately flew into the projector and broke it off the ceiling. He took a nose dive into the teacher’s computer, and then started smashing the lights. Nobody understood what the hell was going on, and everybody who walked in to help immediately left, which I can’t blame them for, I didn’t wanna be there either. Eventually though, one of the smarter kids in that class, a girl who I think is named Carly or something, made the connection of Moth Man, lights, and the whole moth to a flame thing before promptly using two pencils like sticks to light one on fire, before holding it up to get Moth Man’s attention and chucking it out the window which distracted him just long enough for everyone to get out of the room and shut the door. Carly got touted as a hero that day, and yeah I guess what she did was cool, but honestly I don’t think Moth Man planned on hurting any of us. I mean come on, it’s so dumb it just haphazardly throws itself at lights, it’s frankly a wonder it hasn’t died trying to fly to the sun yet.
Then there are the rats… oh god the rats. Okay, so one day I’m just minding my own business when I hear my Dad scream his head off, so I come out to see what he’s screaming at, and there’s a dead rat on the floor, covered in blood, that’s fucking huge. Like Australian Spiders would cower in fear from this thing it was so fucking big, it was the size of a 5 month old Golden Retriever. And somehow, our fucking cat killed it. We to this day do not have the first clue how she did it, or how she did it without us hearing, or where the rat even fucking came from, but I’ll be damned if she didn’t. Then a few months later in a bucket my Dad used to collect water because of a hole in the ceiling, he found another rat, not quite as big but still unnaturally huge by rat standards, that had fallen in the bucket somehow and drowned. We joked about how it was rat Elisa Lamb for like a year.
All that pales in comparison to what happened last night though, the thing that has me actually writing any of this. It was like 11 pm and I was playing video games when I heard what I can only describe as demonic gurgling. I was hardly sure what to make of it at first, frankly I thought I’d imagined it, but when I heard it again I knew something was up. I sighed and grabbed my rifle, half expecting it to be another miscellaneous demon thing that had wandered in, but nothing could have prepared me for what was downstairs. It was at least 7 feet tall, probably taller; its head was only about an inch away from hitting the ceiling. It looked like a Bigfoot had sex with a Triceratops and the kid was raised by a Mummy. It was covered in fur, but with scales showing through in parts, and it had the physique of a Russian bodybuilder. It had the body of a Sasquatch but the weird like, scaly mane thing of a triceratops, and it was covered in rags. It looked like it had torn through a bandage factory on its way to my house.
Needless to say, I was scared shitless. I was expecting something that would go down with maybe two or three rounds, but this fucker looked like a double barrel shotgun wouldn’t even dent it. The thing stared me down with a pair of soulless eyes, and I just stood there still as a statue. I didn’t know if this thing was hostile, but if it was I was almost definitely fucked. Then, the thing took a single step forward and I just let loose. I unloaded into this fucking thing, at least three rounds going in its chest, and at least four going in its head. By all accounts this thing should’ve been dead, but it just stood stock still. Then, without another word it turned and went barreling out of the house, knocking the door of the hinges on its way out. My Dad came up the stairs a moment later holding his gun, and when he asked me what happened, I didn’t respond for a moment, and then I told him,
“I was just the neighborhood Bigfoot, don’t worry.”
He looked confused. “You sure fired off a lot of shots for just that.”
I sighed. “It… it just caught me off guard is all.”
“Where is it?” He asked, a bit concerned.
“It uh, ran off.” I pointed to the smashed door.
My Dad walked ahead and examined the room for a few minutes.
“Huh, not a single stray bullet anywhere, you’ve really cleaned up your aim, Mason.”
“Heh, thanks… Do you, uh, think anyone is gonna wonder what happened to it?”
“Can’t know for sure,” he started, “but they’ll probably just assume some passerby was on their way through and didn’t know what it was. Either way, there’s no way that thing is alive.”
“Eh, I wouldn’t be too sure, Dad. You know how stuff can get around here.”
“Heh, that’s true. Alright, you take it easy tonight son.”
“Okay… good night, Dad.”
I went back up to my room, set my gun down, and then just laid on my bed for hours. I couldn’t sleep for even a second, and frankly I wasn’t expecting to after that. I’ve encountered a lot of shit in this town, but I’ve never felt that in danger before… that’s why I lied about what it was to my Dad, I didn’t want him to worry about me… plus I wasn’t really sure how to explain to him what was just in our house.
Alright, well that’s my story. I’m not too sure what that thing was, but I’ve got enough to worry about as is. I’ve gotta get out to the bus stop though, so while I might come back with more stories, for now, this is Mason signing off.