Bat Man Revisited

Here is my revision of my Bat Man story! I hope you enjoy it, I took a creepy twist and I would LOVE to get some feed back!

Bat Man

Anna Rohaly

I have an unusual hunger for bats these days. I hear them through the walls and my mouth waters to taste their flesh. I want the furry bodies, warm beating hearts, thin leathery wings to be sizzling on my stove top. The craving comes with such a sudden need and intensity that for a moment I stand on Mosquito Coast, stranded again by the ocean.

~*~

I remember the wind blowing in my hair as I stood in the bow of the ship. My six shipmates and I were tossed on the ocean as we sailed down the coast of Latin America harvesting fish, the silver creatures of the sea. Eight years earlier, we voyaged out towards the end of the hurricane season. Unfortunately, we left too soon. We tried to ride out the hurricane as the sea turned gray, like churning ash beneath our helm. We were pounded all day by the roaring waters. I saw it coming, the rock that ended our voyage. Off the Mosquito Coast our small metal ship was lifted high on the rolling, rushing waves, so high that my head became light as we smashed down into the razor rocks. There was a ripping of metal as we tore into the rock followed by silence as I flew, arms and legs splayed out like a corpse, into the frigid ocean waters. I was only saved because I was on the deck, trying to get a survival kit and life jacket to the captain as he wrestled to keep his ship afloat. I expected death in the waters, but my captains life jacket helped keep me up as the waves push me towards shore. I might as well have died, so terrible did my fate become.

Mosquito Coast is one of the most desolate and uncivilized areas in the world and I soon began to experience its terrors. Deep down, I knew it was my punishment for living. If I had been injured at all, I would not have been able to survive so harsh was the land. I knew nothing of the plant life and nothing of the animals that lived there. I waded into the jungle only far enough to find vines and branches that I could turn into a net. I twisted and wove, tangled and whittled, until a rough and primitive net lay over my knee. I found a small stream flowing into the ocean's salty mass, and set up my net to capture any fish that might get snared there. I caught very little.

Weeks flew past, I lost much weight and needed a vine to keep my pants up. I carried the survival kit everywhere containing a small knife, a compass, a waterproof tin of matches, a flashlight, and a flare gun. After two months, I was barely able to stand. Pushing back further through the green rain forest and muggy wall of air, I started looking for fruit and vegetation that might be familiar. Nothing. My stomach was clinched with hunger and my vision blurred as I staggered into tall bamboo trees. I tripped on a vine, my chest rose raggedly as I drew shaking breaths. I glanced off to my right and saw the cave for the first time. I dragged myself over to the opening.

The air that rushed out was crisp and cool. It breathed life into me and I felt energy slip into my veins. I pulled out my flashlight. Feeling like a snake, I slithered on my belly inside. The ground of the cave was littered with stones, leaves, and branches probably blown in by the same hurricane that had drowned my crew. The branches and leaves were dry and crunched beneath me. I shone my flashlight around the cave. The circle of yellow light hit the low ceiling and I set eyes on my salvation and damnation. Bats hung in droves from the ceiling. I would eat soon.

I struggled to my feet and reached up in the dark to the hanging furry bodies. I grabbed a bats and swung it down, bashing its head against a rock. As I swung it towards death, it let out a loud screech that shivered off the walls. The darkness exploded into a cloud of leathery wings and sharp claws. I dropped the flashlight as the teeth and claws engulfed me. I groped the dark and caught two more furry creatures, killing them with one hand, using my other hand to clear the little devils from circling my head. Suddenly the air cleared and they were gone. I fell to my knees and reached out with my hands for my survival kit and flashlight, both concealed in the blackness. I found my flashlight first and used the beam of light to find the three little carcases I had dropped to the ground. Stacking them next to a large rock, I crawled across the ground, grabbing any branches and leaves that my trembling hands could reach. Piling them up I pulled out my matches. Smoke puffed out into the beam of my flashlight as flame sparked to life. I dropped the match onto my pile of sticks and branches, letting the flames grow. Finding a long stick, I used it to skewer the bats. Holding the branch out over the flames, I watched as the splayed wings began to crackle and the fur melted onto the delicate little bodies. The entire cave was filled with the incense of burnt fur.

The bats were finally cooked a little. I snapped the wings off the bodies and ate them, remembering the bowls of chips and salsa I had eaten in the past. I ate the bats organs and all, tearing aside the burnt fur to suck the dripping fat and blood left in the meat. I tore through the meal and wished for more. I put the skeletal remains by a rock and lay down to sleep.

When I woke, I rose and walked to the entrance of the cave with my flashlight and survival kit. Getting out into the fading light of evening, I looked down and realized that my hands were covered with blood and small, fine cuts. They seemed blackened and leathery. Two little teeth marks stood out on the pale skin of my wrist, showing where one of the bats had sunk his teeth into the vein.

“Hopefully I ate that one,” I muttered, as I gingerly touched the smarting sore. Either way, I knew that the next day I would go back for more. Weeks and months followed. My diet became more and more dominated by bats. I tried testing fruits and foliage, but never ate more then a few leaves. My skeletal form began to fade or maybe I just became more adjusted to seeing the angles of my bones just as I became used to eating the bats. At first, I tried to stay away from the cave unless I was near to starving, for fear that I might chase the bats away. But in my need, it became easier and easier to kill them and eat them. One day, I was stashing my survival kit behind a rock on shore when I heard a screech and blacked out. Suddenly I found myself in the dark, surrounded by a living cloud of wings, teeth, and claws. I never looked back. Eventually I started just catching them, bringing them live and squirming to my mouth, and ripping their heads off with my teeth. I savored the taste of their blood and mine mingling in my mouth as I sucked the blood from the bites I received.

I started sleeping on the floor of the cave. Whenever I awoke it was dark outside and the moonlight was creeping over the cave floor. I also began hunting in the night with the bats, learning to swing from trees, finding fruits and killing monkeys and birds asleep in the branches. When dawn broke I crawled into the cave, allowing my claw-like fingernails to pull me over the leaves and dirt to the cool, dark, and refreshing cave.

One day though, after this had been happening for a long time, I had a dream. There was a woman with black hair and green eyes. She was looking at me and seeing me. She was talking to me. She smiled and something changed in me. I felt I was human again. I blinked open my eyes and found that it was light outside. Wandering out of the cave, I walked towards the beach. I felt stiff and sore, realizing that this was the first time in days that I had stood up straight. My head seemed clouded with a thick fog, built up from years of isolation. As I reached the shore, I saw something out on the horizon, a speck in the distance. As I watched, it came closer, grew larger, until the outline of a ship looked like a small bug on the skyline. Something in me snapped into place and I ran to the rock where I had stored my survival kit. Pulling it out, I saw that the canvas was shredded and worn. Throwing the canvas onto the beach, I pulled out the flare gun, loaded it and fired. A burst of smoke shot out from the end of the gun, trailing into the sky before bursting into a blast of red. I reloaded the gun and shot it again and again until all of my flares were used. Breathless, I watched the boat. I started yelling at the top of my voice and just as I was about to sink down to the sand, the boat turned and came towards me.

It took the men a while to reach me. When they stepped onto the beach, I tried to say hello, but only a high pitched screech escaped my lips. The bats' language was mine now. The men stared at me for a minute, before opening their arms and offering me the first embrace I had shared with another human being in years. Looking down, I realized I was in tatters and the stench of me must have nearly knocked these men over. They helped me to the boat, bringing my survival kit with them. I still don't know why I did it, but as we were sailing away, I looked back and let out a long call.

“Looks like he's trying to talk,” a bearded man said. “Poor fella, can't even make a noise.”

The bats had heard my call though. A cloud of leathery wings soared into the sky and flew out over the water before circling back to their cave and the dark. As they disappeared, the mist in my mind cleared.

“Where are we going?” I asked. They all looked at me for a moment before grinning.

“Welcome back sir,” said the bearded man. “We're taking you home.” The picture melts away from me and I open my eyes and come back to the present.

~*~

I rush from my house, trembling. The bats had called to me, I could hear them. I had thought I was getting better, I had thought that the mad man who tore the heads off bats had died in the jungle. Yet here I am, crouching with my hands on my knees, fighting the urge to climb up my chimney and eat the bats that reside in my home. I feel strange, like that fog that covered my mind for eight years is coming back and engulfing me.

They're crying has faded now and I am able to catch my breath. I walk back into the house to call the exterminator to come and catch them and get them out of my life once and for all. I start dialing the number when the temptation strikes me. What if I just exterminate them myself? One or two more bats couldn't take hold of me again, right? Surely, I have been healed of my insanities. I shake my head, scattering the mist. I finish dialing.

As the phone starts ringing though, the screeches start again.

“Hello, Orkin's Pest Control,” a voice on the other end of the line calls to me. “Hello?”

I open my mouth to respond. “H-heaaaaeeeeeeeee—” My word turns into a screech and I vaguely hear a yell on the other side of the phone. Flinging down the phone, I turn towards the chimney and watch as the bats scatter out of the chimney and into the room. My vision blurs and changes until the colors of the room have dripped into only black and white before blackness. Everything fades away.

I don't open my eyes at first, when awareness starts slinking back into my body. At first all I know is that I am leaning against something hard and rough, like extremely gritty sand paper. Next comes the smell, one of burnt logs and paper. When the realization that I am wedged somewhere flashes through me, my eyes fly open wide and my heart races. It is so dark that I cannot tell that my eyes are even open at first, but my ears sense my heart beat echoing off of the walls and engulfing me. I blink again and can see light shining now down below my bare feet which are pressed against the wall. I try to move, but move falsely and tumble down onto the hearth of my fireplace. My arms and legs are shaking, my head hurting, I drag myself out from the chimney. The room is in tatters. The blinds are torn and the furniture is knocked over. The lamp my mother gave me as a house warming gift lies in pieces on the floor. My clothes are ripped and covered in soot. I let out a shaky puff of air and start cleaning the room.

As I throw the broken pieces of lamp into the trash can, a knock comes at the door. I set aside the broom and dust pan and go to answer the call. Opening the door, I find a policeman on my doorstep.

“Good morning sir, is everything all right in there?” He gives me a look meant to pierce me, but he does not realize who he is looking at, what he is looking at. I am not his normal perpetrator.

“Yeah, eeee-verything is fine, why?” I spit out, swallowing a screech that begins to come.

“Your neighbors called this morning saying that there was a lot of noise here last night and this morning the blinds were torn down. They were afraid someone had broken in,” he said, his eyes sliding across my face. “Are you sure everything is all right?”

“Yeah, I-eeee –” I gulp and feel my face twist into a grimace, “had some unwelcome little pests in here last night. Some baaaaa-bats got into my chimney and I was trying to get them out.” My vision blurs and for an instant I worry I might lose my human composure. Instead, I smile and add, “Forgive me, I just didn't get any sleep.” The policeman squints at me for a second.

“All right, if you're sure,” he turns to start down the sidewalk before turning to look at me one last time. “Next time just call an exterminator and go stay with a friend. It'll save you a lot of grief.” He turns again, walking away with a wave of his hand.

I go back inside and glance around the house. I put right the furniture so that it wouldn't show I had hunted last night. I feel full and sleepy, even content for a moment before the reality of the situation falls onto me. I had lost control. What might happen to me if someone finds out? This little Georgia town won't accept that. I start pacing before deciding to take a walk. A walk will clear my head.

The streets outside are lined with old, gnarled trees. I head away from town into the forest, adorned with Spanish Moss. The morning is not a clear one. Mist circles the branches of the trees and swirls in the wake of my footsteps. I had been walking for about an hour before I notice, set back under the weeping moss and mist, an old house. A young woman stands on the front porch, her arms crossed over a pale green sweater. Her long black hair falls in loose ringlets around her shoulders. Her face looks worried and she is watching the street as though she is expecting someone. She looks familiar. Before I realize what I'm doing, I wave.

“Good morning, how are you today?” It is the first time I have managed to speak normally since last night. She smiles at me and I feel a familiar warm flare in my chest. The warmth shatters with her words.

“Oh, all right I suppose. I have a bat colony living in my attic and I'm waiting for pest control to come before I leave for work,” she brushes hair mindlessly from her face as my heart picks up and her pale green sweater turns gray for a moment. She smiles again and it hits me. She is the woman from my dream, the one that had woken me from my sleep just in time to signal for my rescue. The one who had cured me before the bats had come into my house last night. Perhaps she can cure me again. I have to keep talking to her.

“I'm an exterminator,” I blurt out. “Would you like me to see what I can do? The fog will make it hard for the exterminator to find you today,” I say, feeling the collision of hope and dread in my stomach.

“That is tempting, I really do need to go to work. Have you really hunted bats before?” She looks at me quizzically, trustingly even.

“Yes, for eight years actually,” I say, trying to stay calm. I walk towards the house to talk with her. Her face was so lovely, I focused on her, even as the bats muffled calls reached me.

“If you're sure you know what you're doing, I'm more then willing to pay you to try,” she said. “I really need some sleep tonight. I'm Emma Graham.”

My heart was pounding as I shook her hand. We stood together under the Spanish moss in the fog of the morning and talked. She told me she was an attorney, working on a big case. I talked about fishing and some of the excitement that it brought me. When she finally had to go to work, I walked back down the road, not thinking of the bats for the first time that day. Her smile preoccupied my thoughts. Perhaps she had been calling to me throughout time and space. Perhaps she could cure me of my wretched hunger.

Reaching my house, I walk straight into the kitchen and began rifling through drawers looking for ear plugs. I am not going to lose my cure. I finally find the ear plugs and start back towards her little house back in the woods under the Spanish Moss. I walk over the front porch and, putting in the earplugs, walk into the house.

It looks like she just moved in. There are boxes lining the walls and her furniture is still covered with sheets. There are only a few pictures on the mantle of her surrounded by parents and grandparents. I walk across the dusty wooden floor and into the tiled kitchen. The fog was beginning to clear and light filters through a green and gold piece of stained glass that hung over the old fashioned sink. I turned the faucet and watch as the water that was spit out change from brown to clear. Turning it back off, I leave the kitchen, beginning to feel nervous about what was coming.

I head up the long staircase, sticking close to the wall because the banister look rotten and I don't trust the stairs. Reaching the landing, I follow the hallway around towards her bedroom. I only peek inside, seeing that this was one of the few rooms that she had moved all the way into. I close her door behind me and move further down the hall to the last door on the right. My hands are sweating as I reach for the door knob and my heart pound in my head. Taking a deep breath, I turn on the light and head up the stairs. Reaching the top, my mouth drops open. Hanging from the eves are the largest colony of bats I have ever seen. Time stops for a moment until one of the bats in the middle of the room, pokes his head out from underneath his leather wing. He turns to look at me with his large black, globular little eyes. I watch as he opens his little snout and in slow motion and lets out a screech loud enough to wake the dead. Everything around me goes black and I lose control again.

Emma's scream is what I wake to. She stands at the foot of the stairs, looking up at me in horror. A headless bat is limp in my hand and I feel blood dribbling down my mouth. I glance around, trying to bring myself back. The attic is a disaster. I had torn old furniture and insulation to shreds. Floor boards are smashed in places and everything is covered with blood. My arms and face are bleeding from the thousands of little teeth and claws that tore my surface. My skin looks black and I can feel pained bumps on my shoulder blades. My nose seems longer as I look past it, back down the stairs just in time to see Emma run away from me.

I tear down the stairs after her.

“Emma, wait! I can explain!” I run after her as the color returns to the rooms around me.

She looks back and the terror on her face doubles at the sight of me. She tears around the corner heading for the stairs. Just as I round the corner I hear splintering wood and a scream. My heart nearly stops. I wish it had.

I round the corner to see that Emma had not turned sharply enough and had run into the banister. The rotten wood hung in splintered beams from where she had crashed through. I run down the stairs dreading what I will find.

Her neck is twisted in an impossible angle and her eyes are wide open but empty. Her long black hair is filled with bits of wood and and glistens with blood. Tears spring hot and quick to my eyes and my vision blurs. I am a monster, any person can see that. My vision clicks back to gray. I know what I have to do.

Struggling for control, I walk over to Emma's lifeless body. I straighten her neck and her limbs so that she lies looking peaceful instead of hunted. The last thing I do in this life is close her green eyes. My tears fall down to her face, dripping off the end of my snout. I wish the same power that had turned me into this monster, that had caused Emma's death, could reverse, bring her back and kill me instead. She is dead. My cure is gone. I want to be dead.

I blink and I am outside, barefoot, climbing up the side of the old brick house, just as I had climbed the limbless trees in the jungle. I drag myself up onto the roof and pause for only a second before the black unconsciousness comes to take me forever. Only a second to rid the world of the monster I am before I transform. Tonight I will die or fly, I run over the flat roof and fly into the oblivion of the night.