Entry H2: The Mothfoot

Shackles have always bound humans since the dawn of their existence. People have suppressed selfish desires to work as a group. Suppressed thoughts and emotions to gain social advantage. The big city had turned up the social pressure, suffocating its inhabitants even more.

I found that the only answer was to leave that toxic environment. Samir Amsalem had the same epiphany on his thirty-sixth birthday. He left his hometown, Casablanca, with only one suitcase and moved to West Virginia. No attachment. No looking back. Not letting anything tie him down anymore.

His days in Point Pleasant gave him a second life; one could even say that he’d finally started living. Every morning started with a cup of latte at the cafe in the town center. He would down it at once without giving his tongue a chance to inspect the basic flavor. Not because he needed the caffeine. Not an autopilot habit. Those chains didn’t apply to him.

He just wanted it, so he got it. No reason was needed beyond this. After the smooth liquid poured down his throat, his tongue tasted the bitterness that was just right, the mere whiff of the fragrance gave him a burst of energy, he paid with crumpled-up notes from his pocket, and then he set off to the forest. The town served him no purpose beyond this morning’s delight.

His route out of town would always send him past that accursed statue, even though it was the scenic path. Polished silver, deliberately made as an art piece, pleasant and posed. A place for those ignorant tourists to take pictures.

A couple was taking a selfie in front of the lifeless sham, about to post this inaccurate deception onto the Internet, further propagating a misleading fantasy. At least that was what Samir thought. He helped himself between the couple and the fraud. The couple glared at him, and the boyfriend spoke up, “Hey, dude, not cool. We are taking a pic here.”

“You know that the Mothman doesn’t exist, right?”

“Duh? What’s your problem?”

“My problem is that you people are spreading misinformation on the internet.” Samir raised his index finger at the couple, as if he were in a courtroom debate.

“Go bother someone else, boomer.”

“Hey, I’m giving you the advice as a cryptozoologist.”

“A crypto-what? Are you shilling a crypto coin?”

“They are completely different. Cryptid and crypto. My God, you people.”

“You were the one who said cryptozoologist,” the girl said, trying to back up her boyfriend. The more Samir spoke to those laypeople, the more he lamented the decline of the world’s intelligence.

“I’m done talking to you two. Anyway, the creature called Mothman is just a commercial product. The real cryptid is called the Mothfoot.”

Samir didn’t give the couple a chance to talk back. He swirled around and power-walked away. No point in dwelling on this disagreement; he had made his point, and he already knew that he was right. He would never let toxic people stay in his life anymore, as they had back in Casablanca. Just thinking about it made him shiver. Never again.

The domain of the suburban only stretched so far, giving way to land barely touched by human hands. Samir’s footsteps transitioned from thuds to crunches and rustles. The smell hadn’t changed though; the same pretense of fresh air masked a rot that seemed to be hidden just around the corner.

The tree trunks always directed themselves upwards, liberated from the suffocation of the soil, from the smoldering intimacy of their fellow peers. Ever reaching for the vast expanse of the sky, to the embrace of weightless clouds. During his night searches, upwards was the place to look, but Samir needed to take advantage of the daylight to scan the ground for tracks.

He returned to his campsite to gather his supplies first: a measuring tape and a walking stick.

Everything else was ready before he even set foot in the forest. He charged into the cafe and bought sports drinks and snacks from a store. This day, he actually paid for the products, no shoplifting or anything. He wasn’t feeling it.

Another tear in the fabric of the tent, joining the four other holes that had already persisted for over a week. Samir had no idea what caused it. Should he try to patch it up with a thread and needle? The thought of the rain and mosquitoes sent a chill through his flesh.

But he didn’t regret his choice for a second. The moment of his calling was still fresh in his memory; it was what convinced him, without a doubt, that the Mothfoot was real, while Mothman was a government cover-up designed to obscure the truth.

When he was still trapped in his dead-end job, working for no reason, no chance of promotion or advancement, the rest of his life was carved out for him. He could almost feel himself on his deathbed already, raging at the choices he made that led him to live along a predetermined path.

A whim. An unhinged book rambling about cryptids that he had picked up. What even were claims like “Loveland Frog being sighted in Loveland was a strong indicator that it was a product of love between a frog and a human” or that “Chupacabra is a creature who is capable of using magic, judging by how close its name is to abracadabra”?

While amusing at first, looking down at the incoherent author sent jolts of electrifying joy along his nerves. But a part of him wondered about the shamelessness, the gall to publish such ridiculous words for all to judge.

Maybe the author had known all along, the reaction of his readers. Yet this knowledge didn’t shackle him.

There must have been something that enabled the author the freedom to write things that others would clearly make fun of. And as Samir went on reading, that something had found him too.

It wasn’t even about a specific piece of content. Not some words of inspiration or a convincing argument. No, reality called to him, granting him a dream he could build. A moth landed on the picture of Bigfoot.

Maybe it fell from the ceiling, or was carried through the open window by a gust of wind. Or maybe it chose to lose its life after landing on the page.

He chalked it up to coincidence, but it kept happening. Every time he read up to the page about Bigfoot, a moth appeared from nowhere and descended upon the paper. It wouldn’t happen when he specifically searched for the entry, but only when he flipped through the book from start to finish, sequentially immersing himself in the content.

It had to be a sign. That the Mothman actually had big feet. Once he had gotten the idea, he just couldn’t dismiss it. What if it were true? What if he could discover a new cryptid?

A bit of adversity wouldn’t deter him. He was on the cusp of a breakthrough.

Of course, he would think that he was close. He found shapes on the ground that resembled giant footprints. After so much wear and tear from the environment, every trace in the dirt was hard to recognize, so he silently congratulated himself for being able to parse them. Those prints were discontinued, which he interpreted to mean that the creature could fly.

More pictures to add to his collection. He started to be able to map the creature’s behavioral patterns in his mind. Its territory, size, and even how it hunts. Inspiration from a single piece of a clue.

With half a day’s worth of data in his hands, he headed back to town to withdraw money to buy supplies for the next day. At the ATM, it wasn’t as smooth a process as he had hoped. His eyelids stretched wide; eyeballs might not have been far from being freed from their sockets. It was all because of a sentence given to him instead of cash.

Your account has been frozen.

That bitch. Did she do this? I should have transferred the money into a separate account. A puff of hot air exploded in Samir’s chest. This woman kept standing in his way. The source of all his unhappiness. He should have cut her off sooner.

He rushed to look for a payphone in the area, since he had no SIM card in his phone. Lucky for him, there was one. An archaic existence that was slowly getting smothered to death by the advancement of society. But for those who sought freedom from the “brain rot” and social media, this artifact of the past was an essential instrument.

Dialing a number, Samir's fingers ran across the keypad, deft with practice. The speaker beeped, a signal that it was reaching out to his enemy.

“Hello?” A crisp voice rang from the other end of the world. Samir wanted nothing more than to cut the conversation short. But he had to confront his demons to get back his funds, and more importantly, an overseas call wasn’t cheap.

“Excuse me, Malika. It’s me. It’s Samir,” he spoke in a uniform tone in an effort to hide his urgency. When it came to his freedom, no type of deception was off the table.

“Right. I expected you to call,” the faceless woman replied. Samir almost wondered if he was talking to customer service. Too formal, suffocating, pretentious, obviously holding back emotions.

“You have anything to say about locking my money?” He let some of the heat slip through, just some, because he wanted to.

“It is our money. Money for us as a family.”

“Why? I earned most of it.”

“So what? You have the duty as-”

“Duty. Duty. Duty. That’s all you talk about. Have you heard of freedom? The Americans have. I have no reason to keep feeding you freeloaders when I can use my money to get the freedom that is my birthright.” It was his wife’s fault.

“I also earn money for the family! And what about Farid? Is he a freeloader too?”

“Yes! He should go get a job!”

“He is five!”

“Your point? Mothfoots can hunt when they are but a larva.”

“What is this Mothfoot? Wake up! Come back to Casablanca! I beg you. It isn’t too late.”

“Of course it is not. I’m only at the dawn of my life-changing moment,” he slammed the handset back into its place, hoping that it would also put his wife back in hers. It did nothing. But he was free to imagine it.

He clenched his fists during his stride back towards his tent. The best strategy would be to conserve energy, so he didn’t have to spend so much on food, but the force he wasted was a demonstration of his volition. An expression of rage. Nothing had to be bottled up for the sake of “conservation”. What a restrictive term! There was never a need to conserve. He could always steal. He could always beg. He could always hunt.

Entering the forest sent him into a trudge. Not unwillingly, he was merely admiring the natural habitat of the Mothfoot. The damp air had cooled his seething temper, after all. Stopping, to him, would be defeat, so he kept marching on. Maybe he was overeager in his crusade, since he couldn’t find his tent.

The sunlight stopped seeping through the cracks of the canopy, but he was still trekking through the dead leaf piles and crossing a few bridges. Soon, the brightness guiding him had vanished, leaving only patches of moonlight leaking from between the foliage.

Barely able to see what was in front of him, he still persisted. His ears listened to the crunching, but he barely used the information he had gotten to think about his route. Not even the senses of hearing and touch could constrain him. In the pitch blackness, he was truly free, bumping into trunks proudly. His mind was too overwhelmed with anticipation to feel the pain, projecting to the day when he announced his life’s work to the world. He knew he was close, not because of any measurements or calculations, but because this was something entirely his.

He was like a zoetrope, producing an illusion as he ran, as if he were chasing something. And he must have been chasing it, because he had chosen to believe it, and nothing could take it from him.

Next came a sensation of his face twitching. It must have been a smirk, but at this stage, it hardly mattered. Only part of his mind noticed the flashlight shining upon him, and even the human chattering sounded no different from the rustling of the bushes. His body continued on, automatically moving toward what he thought was the source of the light.

He never reached anything. Didn’t even know if he had fallen unconscious because he tripped or was knocked out.

But he did wake up on the dirt. His clothes were riddled with holes, and stray ends of thread poked out. Standing up didn’t shake off everything that was hitching a ride on his body. He ran his hands behind his shoulder, feeling two branches still poking out from his rear end; he must have been wearing them like a backpack.

With a snap, he finally pulled them off. Brushing through his clothes over and over again, he swept the leaves off, at least any that he could find with his phone camera.

His legs were sore from all the labor of the previous night, but he still mustered his remaining strength to return to civilization. As he returned to that familiar cafe again, he ignored any potential judgmental stares bearing down on him; maybe there wasn’t anyone watching him, he wouldn’t know, not paying attention.

As he charged his phone, he visited the online forums again. Only with the cafe’s Wi-Fi could he access anything. Better use this opportunity to find clues about the Mothfoot’s existence. Indeed, there was a new photo that had been gaining traction in the last few hours.

The user claimed to have seen the Mothman in the forest. But to Samir, this was another piece of the puzzle that showed him Mothfoot.

That was what he chose to believe in, even though he had created his own evidence without his knowledge. And he would continue to feed his own delusions until he flew into the fire. That too was his choice. I hadn’t forced him to do anything.

Although sometimes, a little encouragement is needed to make sure a person chooses freedom every time.