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The Man in the Suit
from the collection Faces of Bigfoot 2, available now as an e-book
by Lisa A. Shiel
Everybody in the world wore suits every single day. Folks wore happy suits to hide their misery, calm suits to mask their panic, and wisdom suits to conceal their ignorance. Everybody pretended the suits didn’t exist, but nobody lived without the protection suits offered. Sometimes, a person might even wear an anonymity suit so no one else would recognize them. Folks most often donned those suits when writing letters or blogs, or when making phone calls. Some people might call them masks, not suits, but a mask covered only the face. A suit concealed everything.
The point was, everybody wore a suit.
So Evan felt no remorse over putting on his suit this morning. Unlike all those other folks, he never pretended the suit didn’t exist. He recognized it, appreciated it, and reveled in it. Today’s suit qualified as an anonymity suit. He wore it for artistic reasons, rather than to hide his identity. Performance art required a certain level of anonymity—at least the kind of performance art Evan created did. If the marks saw his face, they’d lose the fear. And the fear was essential.
Blood, sweat, and fear. His art needed those elements.
From his vantage point squatting in the bushes, Evan could see the main trail. It led deeper into the woods, into places more wild and remote than this spot. Yet the spot in which he sat offered him the best of everything—distance from the parking lot, sparse foot traffic, and just enough woods to dampen the sounds of the chaos he inflicted on his marks. This spot was also the farthest he could walk while carrying the tools of his art.
Distant voices wafted to him from down the trail. Coming this way, he realized.
Evan glanced across the trail to the thin pine tree he’d climbed earlier. His motion-activated camera hung strapped to the trunk right where’d placed it, high enough that the marks would fail to notice it. Capturing the massacre on film was vital. Okay, it was a digital video camera, but the medium hardly mattered. Once he uploaded the video to the Internet, his fame would blossom. Sure, some folks might call him immoral, but many more would appreciate the artistic chaos.
The voices drew nearer. He heard the melodic giggle of a young woman, maybe a teenager. Excellent. Chicks screamed way better than dudes. Apply a little pressure, a little terror, and most chicks let loose with the kind of piercing shriek that Evan otherwise could hear only in horror movies. He loved making them scream.
Blood, sweat, fear and screams. His art would be awesome today.
Evan grabbed the remote control that rested on the ground near his left foot. The device slipped out of his ungainly fingers. He snatched it up again, this time grasping it in both hands. He normally wasn’t this clumsy. The suit did it to him. Taking the remote firmly in one hand, he found a small stick that he could use as a tool to press the buttons on the remote. He must wait until precisely the right moment to activate the boombox, which he’d hidden closer to the trail behind a tangle of wild blueberry bushes. The boombox provided the soundtrack for the massacre.
Further down the trail, figures moved as colored shadows.
Evan’s pulse quickened. He started to rise, then caught himself. Not yet.
The marks stepped out into the open, fifty feet to his left. They paused to watch a woodpecker that had lighted on a dead tree. As the bird hammered away, the trio of humans whispered and pointed.
A smile crept across Evan’s face. The trio consisted of an older couple and a twenty-something girl. The older man looked sixty-ish. Probably on Social Security and Medicare. Stealing money from younger folks so he could sit on his mangy duff. Evan would teach the old fart a lesson. Maybe the codger would pee his pants when Evan attacked, or have a heart attack. The world didn’t need all those old codgers anyway. They were nothing but money-sucking miscreants who ruined the economy for everybody else.
Yeah, these marks were perfect. An old fart to torture, a young chick to squeeze for screams, and a third mark to watch it all.
The woodpecker flew away. The trio started down the trail toward Evan.
He waited. They ambled closer. Forty feet. He positioned the stick over the correct button on the remote control. Twenty feet. His muscles tensed in anticipation. Fifteen feet.
Evan punched the button.
Photo © 2007 by Lisa A. Shiel. All rights reserved.
An inhuman shriek split the pastoral tranquility. The shriek sounded like a cross between a woman’s scream, a wolf’s howl, and the bellowing of an injured grizzly bear. The boombox reproduced the shriek in lifelike clarity, though at a volume that gave the impression of distance—a little distance.
The marks froze. Eyes wide, the girl hugged herself. The old fart squinted, as if suspicious, while he glanced around the woods. The older woman muttered something Evan couldn’t hear.
Evan rose. A stand of saplings shielded him from the trio’s view. Dropping the stick and the remote, he picked up the prop he needed for stage two.
The shriek ended as the recording shifted into silence. A few seconds of relief before the massacre.
Taking the prop in one hand, he lumbered forward.
On the trail, the old fart said, “Sounded like a loon.”
A loon? Was this guy for real?
The scream of a tortured animal echoed through the woods. Showtime.
Evan burst out of the trees onto the trail. He swung the prop over his head and grunted like a crazed baboon.
The girl screamed.
The old man gaped at Evan.
Oh yeah, this was high art. And so much damn fun too!
Evan slammed the prop down on the ground. The water balloon hidden inside the fake deer head split open, spewing faux blood. The girl screamed again. Evan stamped his feet like any self-respecting Sasquatch would.
The older woman pursed her lips. She reached inside a fanny pack and brought out a handgun.
Evan froze.
“You’re no Bigfoot,” the woman said, her voice calm yet hard.
Sweat dribbled down Evan’s temples. This damn ape suit was hotter than an erupting volcano. And it itched. Blast it all, the suit itched something awful.
But the art was worth it. Didn’t real artists have to suffer?
The woman aimed her gun at the ground in front of Evan. “Take off the monkey suit, kid.”
Evan stared at the gun. Did real artists also have to die for their art? Well, a lot of them didn’t get famous until after they died.
Screw that.
Evan raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, lady.”
He fumbled with the head part of the suit. Then, after a couple minutes of sweating and silently cursing while the old bitty took aim, he finally managed to peel the suit’s head off his own. He dropped the head on the ground.
The old guy marched past Evan. He rooted around in the brush, searched the weeds, and then stumbled onto the blueberry patch. With a triumphant smile and an “a-ha” cry, the codger lifted the boombox out of the bushes. He pushed buttons.
The inhuman shriek blasted from the speakers. The old fart hit the stop button. Silence.
Pow!
Evan jerked. His ears rang. The old bitty had shot at him.
No, wait. He traced the trajectory of her gun to its target. The boombox. She’d shot a big honking hole in his boombox.
Evan stared at the woman. He whined, “That thing cost a hundred and—”
The woman aimed her gun at his feet.
How many bullets did the gun have?
“I-I’m sorry,” Evan said, as the ringing in his ears subsided. “It was a joke, that’s all. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
The woman slipped her gun back inside the fanny pack. “Don’t you ever pull a prank like this again. Got it, sonny?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The woman led her companions down the trail. Soon they hiked out of sight.
Birds chirped. The wind rustled leaves. Evan’s heart pounded. He took slow, deep breaths until his pulse normalized.
The shattered boombox lay on the ground a dozen feet away. He shambled toward the boombox, nudged it with one foot. Leave it to a chick to ruin his art.
He got the recording of a so-called Bigfoot scream from a website. The dumbos on the site actually believed they’d recorded an ape-man’s cries in the wilderness. Evan figured either the dumbos faked it or one of their buddies faked it just to make them look stupider than they already were. Maybe the hoaxer understood art.
Evan smirked. He’d like to meet the hoaxer. They could collaborate on a some truly fine art.
Groping behind his head, Evan tried to reach the zipper on the suit. Duh, of course he couldn’t grab it with these rubber things on his hands. Yanking off the fake Sasquatch hands, he tossed them on the ground. He groped for the zipper again. His fingers closed around the zipper and he tugged on it. The zipper didn’t budge. He tugged harder. No luck.
His fingers were sweaty. Wiping them dry on the fake fur of his suit, he grasped the zipper again and yanked hard. The little metal tab broke off the zipper. Without it, he couldn’t grasp the thing that did the unzipping.
Evan flung the little tab onto the ground as he unreeled a string of curses.
He’d have to walk back to the parking lot in full costume, the same way he entered the woods. He felt like a water balloon, all wet inside his suit.
By the time he’d gathered his backpack, the broken boombox, and the video camera, he felt sure the suit itself was sweating too. He jammed the boombox and camera in his backpack, along with the hands and head from his suit, and slung the pack over one shoulder.
His first attempt at performance art had bombed. Like a nuclear warhead.
Evan headed down the trail.
Crack.
He stopped. The crack sounded like a twig breaking. A really, really huge twig. The Bigfoot of twigs.
To his right, something growled.
His mouth went dry. He tilted his head to listen. The growling had stopped. He heard folks say that wolves roamed these woods, but he didn’t quite believe them. They probably saw a German shepherd that escaped from somebody’s yard. The growling he just heard sounded kind of like a dog—but much, much bigger.
The Bigfoot of dogs?
Or maybe…
Nah. The old bitty and her gun scared him, he’d admit that much, and the whole incident left his nerves in a tangle. The sound probably wasn’t growling at all, but a tree creaking or…something.
“Uh-uh-uh.”
The sound, like a grunt but not a grunt, issued from the woods to his right. Evan licked his parched lips but, of course, he had no saliva. In slow motion, he turned his head toward the sound.
Framed by the branches of a tree, a face stared back at him.
Evan blinked. Swallowed. Blinked again.
The face was hairy, with a low brow that protruded over the eyes. Dark, glistening eyes. The flat nose wiggled, as if the creature were sniffing out Evan’s scent.
The creature stepped out from behind the tree.
Evan couldn’t move. Sweat dribbled down his face, stinging in his eyes.
The Bigfoot eyed him.
Evan screamed.
The creature shrieked.
Evan turned to run, tripped over the feet of his costume, and smacked face-first into the ground. His backpack slid off his shoulder. Dirt lodged in his mouth and nostrils. He scrambled to get up, fell again, pushed onto hands and knees.
Footfalls whumped behind him. A foul odor enveloped him. He fought back a wretch, collapsing onto his belly.
A shadow fell over him.
His heart hammered as fast as a woodpecker’s beak. The earth felt clammy against his skin. He shivered, though not because of the clammy earth.
Silence.
The shadow held still. The stench clogged his nostrils, forcing him to breathe through his mouth. He waited for the beast to move. What felt like minutes ticked by, though it might’ve been seconds. The adrenaline coursing through him skewed his sense of time.
The beast leaned closer.
Oh God. The thought was half exclamation, half prayer.
Something, probably a hairy hand, tugged at Evan’s suit—gently at first, then with more force. Evan squeezed his eyes shut. If he died while wearing a Bigfoot suit, that was bad enough. But to die in a Bigfoot suit, killed by a Bigfoot…
The creature flipped him over onto his back.
Evan mewled. He’d never heard a person make that sound before, yet it issued from his mouth.
The beast poked him in the chest.
Don’t die in a Bigfoot suit.
Evan peeled his eyelids apart, millimeter by millimeter.
The Bigfoot was gone.
He glanced down at his chest. A red stripe marred the fake fur.
Blood.
Evan almost screamed again, then froze. The blood didn’t look right. He touched the smear, sniffed his fingertip, tasted the substance, and nearly sobbed with relief. The substance wasn’t blood. It was the fake blood he made from raspberry jam and ketchup.
As he pushed up into a sitting position, he surveyed his surroundings. The backpack lay on the ground a few feet away. The fake deer head rested about twenty feet away. The creature must’ve checked out the fake deer head before coming after him. But why did the Bigfoot come for him?
The boombox. He called in a Bigfoot.
He hadn’t meant to, naturally. Yet even without intending to, he succeeded where those dumbos from the website failed. He lured a Bigfoot to him.
Too bad he hadn’t thought to get out the video camera. His art project might’ve worked out after all.
A whooping call echoed through the forest.
Goosebumps raised all over Evan’s body. The whooping sounded close, though not breathing-down-his-neck close. Still, it sounded too close.
Forget art.
Retrieving his backpack, he hurried back to the parking lot as fast as the suit allowed. He tripped twice, and swore he heard something following him, but he refused to look back or slow his pace. Drenched with sweat, he reached his car at last. Gravel sprayed up as he sped out of the parking lot.
The next day, he burned the Bigfoot suit.
