Under Your Bed

This is a story about you. Today must be your lucky day. Odd things happen in this world; things that you haven't even the slightest idea about. You probably don't know about the monsters under your bed. That's entirely by design. They are stealthy, intelligent creatures. Furthermore, there have always been monsters under your bed, even when you stay in a hotel or spend a night at a friend's house. Pretty much the only way to get them out from under your bed is to put the mattress on the floor, and in that case, the monsters would simply migrate to the nearest closet. Face it: you're a monster magnet. This wouldn't be a problem if you were a monster hunter. You'd be sitting on a gold mine if that was true. The sad truth though is that you wouldn't know an Eastern Spotted Chupacabra from a hole in the ground. 

That simply won't do. It just won't do at all. Now, what are you going to do about it? Console yourself with tacos and dreams of what could have been? Of course not! That was merely a rhetorical suggestion. You really ought not to take everything so literally. Let's consider a different scenario. You hit the gym and get back to fighting weight. You put some muscles on those bones, so you don't look like a trash bag full of biscuit dough. Now you're a force to be reckoned with. You buy a crossbow, a flashlight, and a hunting knife. For years, you go door-to-door offering free monster inspections and extermination services. At long last, you catch an Eastern Spotted Chupacabra; the very same one you suspected of eating your hamster when you were five. You proudly mount its severed head above the fireplace in your rec room, where you regale relatives and visitors with tales of your exploits. 

Don't like that story? Here's another: armed with a business degree and a modest inheritance, you open a custom t-shirt business in a small beach town. Over the years, it evolves into a tourist mecca after a rare sea turtle is spotted nearby. Your business flourishes and expands. Soon you parlay your success into a major conglomerate that includes t-shirts, frozen peas, industrial lubricants, heavy machinery, and guano mining on tiny Pacific islands like Nauru. Do you know what really happened on Nauru? It was in fact a major hub for guano mining. That was the result of being used as a rest stop by migrating birds for eons. The guano they left behind became an invaluable source of nitrogen for fertilizer. It came at a heavy price though. As a result of the mining, so much of the island was hauled away that there are giant craters everywhere. The people of Nauru made a fortune but lost most of it on a failed musical about the life of Leonardo Da Vinci. It's all true; look it up.

Being filthy rich from your business empire, you now have the disposable income for all kinds of exotic pursuits. You hire a fleet of ships to perform a sonar survey of Loch Ness, thus proving once and for all that there definitely isn't a monster there. The world is shocked to learn that there are no giant prehistoric reptiles living in a cold lake with almost no fish to eat. That sonar survey really happened by way. It's worth noting it had no impact on the tourism business of Loch Ness. Hope springs eternal, as a famous poet once wrote. Poetry is like the Wild West of literature: there are no rules, and everything is up for grabs. Choose-your-own adventure stories are the Florida of literature. Do keep up with the geographical analogies. You will be tested on them later. 

After the Loch Ness sonar survey, you embark on further adventures in cryptozoology. Aren't you daunting? Your frequent failures have not deterred you in slightest in your search for the unknown. You try another approach. Rather than search for the elusive Sasquatch, you instead mount an expedition to find Saxsquatch, his lesser-known cousin. The quest takes you deep into the primeval forests of the Pacific Northwest. Each day, you listen intently with a directional microphone for any trace of saxophone music, for that is how the Saxsquatch got his name. Many months later, when the sun has almost set, you reach the crest of a hill. Off in the distance, near the tree line, faint rays of the evening sun reflect off the brass of a saxophone in the hands of a towering ape-like creature. You frantically signal to your companions. The video footage taken is crystal clear and offers irrefutable proof of the creature. 

What's more, another member of your crew successfully tranquilizes the beast. It is taken to your research facility for further examination. When it regains consciousness, you are shocked to hear it speak in fluent English. It turns out that the beast was formally a human and a famous musician who had gone missing decades ago. He had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and sought to cure it with an experimental medicine. Unfortunately, though the treatment saved his life, it came at an enormous cost. The musician underwent a terrible metamorphosis, and the shame was unbearable. He became a recluse in the woods and survived on food scavenged from campers. To console himself and be reminded of his humanity, he whiled away many nights by playing his beloved saxophone. With your help, Saxsquatch embarks on a new musical career and plays to sold-out venues across the nation. Several volunteers take the same serum in order to create a whole band of similar creatures. They call themselves The Bigfoot Band and perform mostly tributes to Glenn Miller. 

At this point you might be wondering who wrote this. The author of this piece has gone unnamed thus far. Sorry, you'll just need to savor the mystery and appreciate the challenges of constrained writing. Did you know that someone once wrote an entire novel without once using the letter E? Look it up. It's called Gadsby.