Let's Write Together- 1973

This is an experimental Creative Write/Free write. I wrote this in the Pizza Guild Discord while sharing my screen and asking for input/direction/whatever from the community. I think it will be an interesting way to construct a post and have no idea how this will turn out.

We have had a bit of a hiatus since the last Let's Write Together event but we are coming back in strong today!

Rules!
They are few:

Anyone else in the voice channel's input overrides mine- I will type and incorporate ideas and input as I do- ANYONE in voice can make me edit or whatever!

Pizza Tips for participants throughout the event.

Other than that this is a standard free writing format! So lets GOOOOOOO!

The year was 1973, it was a cold summers night, the dew glistened off the trees around me. After reading that article in the National Inquirer and seeing the awful grainy photos I had decided to head out into the wilderness to find evidence for myself. I had long been a believer in the strange and mysterious, these latest articles and sightings were just the push I needed to head out to prove Bigfoots existence myself.

Having hired the first respondent to my newspaper ad for a guide, we set out. The man in question was a retired Professor from Colorado Community College. The man seemed to think we were on vacation, and spent far more time sipping at the old maple syrup bottle he carried with him at all times than he did providing any kind of guidance. He regularly offered it up to me to try, and as a rule I refused.

My hunch that the sightings of Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest were all hoaxes coupled with some odd reports in Yellowstone Monthly had led me to believe that Bigfoot was indeed real, but his range was much larger than anyone else suspected. I decided to start my explorations in Yellowstone itself, and luckily my guide, Professor Fred Schnapps was familiar with the park after taking students of his Macro Economics of Micro Geology classes on frequent field trips to the park. The rangers knew him by smell and quickly warned him not to leave a trail of syrup bottles behind him.

Within a day we had left the beaten path behind and carrying nothing but a tent, a bag of food, and my trusty Super 8 camera with a wooden crate of tapes that Professor Schnapps begrudgingly carried for me, we had set up a base camp.

The cold summer air gave me goosebumps as I observed the tree line across the clearing in which we had set up our camp. Something was making the branches and brush move just out of sight. I couldn't believe that I had struck so lucky, of course it HAD to be Bigfoot! What else would be moving surreptitiously through the trees by moonlight?

I tried to wake the professor, who grumbled at me and rolled over, he didn't respond to my further attempts to wake him. Seeing his syrup bottle next to his sleeping bag I decided to take a swig to calm my nerves. I was surprised to find that it actually was syrup...

My guide had failed me and I would face whatever was in those trees alone. I quickly grabbed my camera and set out across the clearing. The movement in the trees was still visible but further along the edge into the deepest shadows cast by the silvery moonlight. As I reached the center of the clearing, I could hear it. A strange scraping noise accompanied the swish of leaves and branches as it moved. I couldn't make out its shape or size as it was still hidden by the brush.

I started filming, and pressed on to catch up with it. It must have heard or sensed me approaching because the leaves and branches began to ripple more rapidly. The scraping sound intensified, reminding of grinding gears. For some reason I kept thinking about a car stalling. Though there was no noise of an engine. For the first time I suspected that perhaps I was not following Bigfoot, or indeed any other creature. The thought slowed me... Then I realized it didn't matter, whatever this was, no one else had ever seen!

I quickened my pace, trying to hold the camera steady as I crashed through the grass and saplings and passed beneath the trees. Finally I could see it, whatever it was, in the flickering moonlight that penetrated the dense canopy. A vast shape was rushing along between the trunks of the trees, snapping branches in its haste and bouncing between the trunks. Each time it careened into a tree it sent a shock through the trunk causing every branch and leaf to shake. This was the movement I had observed from the far side of the clearing. I took all of this in in moments, and stopped dead in my tracks at what I was witnessing. I raised the camera to make sure that I was capturing this monstrous thing on film, and at the exact moment that I brought the lens to my eye, it turned.

An enormous shaggy head swung towards me, and the screeching of metal on metal grew unbearable as it did. It bumped another tree as it turned and the shifting light revealed it to have the shape of a buffalo. Glinting eyes fixed me as I stood rooted to the spot. I could see the shine of metal in torn patches of its hide and in the shimmer of its horns. It lowered its head and snorted.

I almost dropped the camera as I turned and fled back to the clearing. I heard the terrible crunch and grind getting nearer and nearer as I ran for my life. In seconds I was back in the clearing and screaming for the professor to wake up and run. He woke quickly enough, it must have been the obvious fear in my screams. We ran, abandoning the tent and tapes and did not stop until we had reached the rangers station several miles away.

At first they would not believe my story, until I told them I had caught the whole thing on tape. The ranger smirkingly suggested we watch the tape. I couldn't wait to wipe that grin off his face and offered the tape to him willingly.

Ten minutes later, my world shattered. The tape showed nothing but me rushing across a clearing, and stumbling around in the darkness. I have never been so embarrassed in my life.

The Professor tried to comfort me, but nothing he said could shake me from my malais. I couldn't understand how I had seen something so terrifying and unbelievable but the camera had failed to capture it.

Then the Professor asked me an earth shaking question.

"You didn't actually drink some of my syrup did you?"