My husband told me recently about a creature called the Mothman. Apparently this is a furry beast with strong hindquarters and no arms. It has glowing red eyes and enormous wings and appears to people in remote areas just before a monumental in cident of some kind. Some people regard it as a harbinger of personal doom, whilst others are more positive and view it as a kindly warning of impending danger. Whichever it is, the outcome generally remains the same: disaster.
I had never heard of this being before and, to me, even the name was faintly comical, never mind the mystical beast itself. I burst out laughing and won myself some black marks in hubby’s book – here’s why.
We were driving along a narrow country lane. It was late at night and the rain was driving down on us almost horizontally. Dead leaves whipped across the car, occasionally flapping against the windscreen in a gruesomely visceral manner. Suddenly, from out of the shadows on the verge, sprung a creature about the height of the car bonnet. Its eyes reflected the car’s headlights and two small, pointed horns glinted faintly in the reflected glow.
Hubby slammed the brakes down and swerved the car violently to avoid it, almost skidding on the wet leaf slime and muttering strange curses under his breath.
I laughed nervously and turned to get a second look at the skittery Muntjack deer now backing away from the road where it had nearly met its death.
“What’s the matter? You missed it, it’s fine. Calm down.”
Only surly silence met my soothing comments. I waited a moment, then tried again.
“What’s wrong with you? You missed the deer and we’re fine.”
A grumpy shrug, then a terse comment was volunteered. “It just freaked me out ‘cos I was thinking about something.”
“What?” I was shocked – hubby is pretty hard to freak out generally, even though I sometimes try to ruffle his feathers for fun.
“The Mothman.” His voice got low and he mumbled, half as if he was scared of saying it out loud, and half as if he were ashamed.
“The Mothman?” I laughed a little. “What the fuck is a Mothman when it’s at home?” And that’s when he told me the ghoulish tale that had been running through his mind when we rounded the corner and came upon a crouched, furry beast with horns and glowing eyes.
Well, I nearly bust a gut laughing at him, then had to spend the rest of the journey reassuring him that it was really a deer and I bet that the Mothman was actually a guardian angel trying to protect people, but they misunderstood his intentions.
As for me, well, I’m just bloody grateful he hadn’t told me the tale beforehand, otherwise I, too, might have freaked out at the pair of glowing eyes waiting in the shadows by the side of the road!
If you want to read a bit more about Mothman, then there’s some articles on Wikipedia that you can find here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothman
x
~E~
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