I Shot Bigfoot

You heard me. I shot Bigfoot. Right through the heart. Instant death. Wasn't even twitching when I found him lying on the hillside where he'd rolled down afterward. Perfect shot, best one of my career. Isn't that the way.

Oh, I didn't know it was Bigfoot when I shot him. I thought it was a bear. I'd been hunting grizzly up near Vancouver; it was the peak of the season, but I hadn't seen so much as a broken twig for three straight days. After all the money I'd spent on gear and the time it had taken to hike that far into the woods, I was growing desperate. So, when I saw a brown hairy thing standing up near the crest of a hill, I'd taken my shot without a second thought. Bam. I saw the thing go down, and when I reached the top of the hill I saw it lying in the grass near the base. After waiting a minute to see if it was faking, I'd made my way down, keeping my distance so I could check out my latest trophy without worrying about becoming a statistic. I could tell it was big, a great big grizzly I thought. And then I got closer, and that was when I noticed the big brown hand lying flopped across the chest, and the long legs, and the flat monkey face. Not a bear, not at all.

At first I was afraid I'd shot a man, some joker in a monkey suit trying to pull a hoax and get in the paper. But the closer I got, the more sure I was that this thing was for real. For once thing, I could see inside its mouth: the roof was all ribbed like a dog's, and I could see bits of grass stuck between the big square teeth. And when I pulled back the eyelids, the eyes behind them were as red as a sunset, and instead of whites the eyes were just glistening brown-gray all the way back into the socket. And it wasn't any escaped zoo gorilla, either: I've seen gorillas, and other monkeys at the zoo, and all of them had feet that looked like weird, misshapen hands. Not this guy. He had real people feet, only the size of tennis racquets, all flat and crusted with mud along the sides and under the nails. His legs, too, were too long for an ape's, so long he must've been over eight feet tall standing up. His face was like a monkey's though, brown and wrinkly, with a pushed-in nose and a big, heavy brow like an eyeshade. His fur was brown too, dark underneath but getting lighter toward the tips, so that he looked like a patch of bunchy dried grass lying there on the ground. I suppose that's why nobody's gotten him before: he could lie down anywhere and look like part of the scenery. And with ears that big, I'm sure he could hear a man coming a mile away and get out of sight long before anyone showed up. Yes sir, it doesn't surprise me at all that he's made it that long.

So how did I get him? Well, that's a bit of a puzzle. I wouldn't describe myself as a particularly observant hunter; I once tripped over a cow elk in a field of knee-high grass. And I'm not especially stealthy, either; the only reason that elk didn't hear me coming was the fact both her ears had been ripped off by a cougar long before I got to her. And as for marksmanship...well, let's just say my nickname among my old hunting pals was One-Eyed Joe and leave it at that. Yes, I have both my eyes, I said let's leave it. Suffice to say, my accomplishment can be put down to one thing and one thing only: pure dumb luck.

Of course, it helped that Mr. Bigfoot was standing on top of an open hill silhouetted against a clear blue sky. All the camouflage in the world won't help you if you don't use it. You'd think he'd be more careful, especially seeing as how it was grizzly season. Wasn't very smart to be out and about that time of year. But I guess if he was smarter, he wouldn't live out in the woods, right?

So there you are. I shot Bigfoot. The legendary Sasquatch. All those scientists and college professors and TV people out looking for him, and get him completely by accident. Just goes to show you, I guess.

Now, I know what you're thinking: if I shot myself an honest-to-goodness Bigfoot, where's the proof? Shouldn't there be a big pointy head mounted on my wall right now? Well, that's the tricky part. See, as I stood there, leaning on my rifle and wondering who to call first, the news station or the president, something strange started happening to the body. I first noticed it when a chunk of hair just fell off his arm and disappeared into the grass; I thought it was just a piece that had been ripped out when he fell, but then I noticed it was happening all over him, whole patches of fur just peeling off and blowing away. I knew those scientists would want to look at it, so I started trying to gather it up as it came off, but every time I touched it the fur would just sort of shrivel away like grass in a fire, until there was nothing in my hands but some gray dust. This worried me: I had just shot the rarest creature in the world, and here it was falling apart before my eyes. It was like watching money curl up and blow away in the wind.

As I stood there, wondering what to do, I realized that while I was gathering up hair, something else had happened: the body was shrinking. Already it was closer to seven feet tall than eight, and the feet had shrunk from tennis racquets to ping-pong paddles. I knew it wasn't my imagination, because I could see mud falling off the toes in clumps as the skin under them tightened up and the nails grew shorter. Even his head was shrinking, the big bullet-shaped skull getting rounder as more and more hair fell off, and the teeth clicking and rattling as the jaws got smaller. I panicked, wondering what to do; I remember grabbing the arms and pulling on them to try and keep them from getting shorter, but it didn't do any good. My Bigfoot was shrinking away, and there wasn't a thing I could do about it.

I noticed then something odd—or, odder, I guess: where the hair fell away, the skin wasn't brown, but white—or as white as a white man is when he's out in the sun and dust all day. And then I saw a patch fall off his chest, and underneath it was a patch of red—not blood, not meat. Cloth. He was wearing a red flannel shirt underneath his fur, and old blue jeans on his legs. And underneath his cone-shaped scalp was a bald white dome, with liver spots. In short, he was looking less like a Bigfoot and more like a man every second.

Anyway, long story short, in a few minutes that's what he was: a man, wearing an old torn flannel shirt and blue jeans, with calluses on his bare feet and a thick tangled beard on his leathery face. He looked to be about fifty, balding, with gray hair around his ears and neck, with skin that told of many days in the sun and rain. He would have been shorter than me standing up, not big, but wiry, with muscles standing out under his skin and ribs showing through the holes in his shirt. In other words, he looked like he'd been living out in the woods for quite a while. And there was a nice round hole in his chest where I'd shot him.

And that's why I'm here. As far as the police are concerned, I'm either a murderer or a manslaughterer, and that's all there is to say. They still haven't found a name to put to my "victim's" face, but that doesn't matter to them: a man is dead, I reported it, and the bullet in his chest matches my rifle perfectly. Oh, I told them what I told you; I didn't really expect them to believe it, but I figured they would know if I was lying anyway. And so they think I'm either the worst liar that ever put on an orange hat or just plain crazy. It doesn't matter, though: they're trying me just the same, either way. All because I took a shot at a bear that wasn't a bear.

What made him change into a man? Oh, I'm pretty sure he was a man all along. I think that's what Bigfoot is, a man who's become hairy and big and lost his natural wits enough to want to live in the woods. What could make a man like that, I couldn't say. Maybe it's some kind of old Indian curse, revenge on the white man for invading their woods. Maybe it's a throwback, some old gene left over from the caveman days that starts up given the right push. Maybe it's disease, a virus cooked up in some government lab that got loose on the world and turns a man into an ape. I don't know. All I know is, whatever it the cause, the cure is to get a bullet through the heart. No trace, no sign it was ever there, no proof it ever existed.

So now here I am, waiting for it all to come to trial. They got me a lawyer, and he wants to make out that I'm crazy. He thinks that'll get me a light sentence, but he's afraid the other team will try to push for negligent manslaughter. Me? I'm not worried. I think it'll be pretty clear soon that I was telling the truth.

See, I've been noticing something about myself over the past week: I'm changing. Every morning they let me shave, and every time I do I feel my beard getting thicker than it was the day before. Not only that, my knuckles have about twice as much hair on them as they did a month ago, and when I talk I can feel my teeth suddenly getting in the way of my tongue. When I look in the mirror, I can see my eyes getting redder around the pupil, and my eyebrows are starting to hang over them like a cliff. Not to mention how tight my shoes have been getting...

That's what makes me so sure my Bigfoot used to be a man. And whatever made him that way, it's catching. Maybe that's what drove him into the woods in the first place, maybe he was afraid of spreading it to the rest of humanity. Or maybe the curse just didn't have anywhere else to go once its host's heart stopped beating, and it transferred itself to me. Or maybe it's my punishment for killing him, and it's just been passed down from hunter to hunter, one Bigfoot at a time. I don't know. But maybe that would explain why we haven't caught one before: it would be hard enough to find a beast that there's only one of, and if you kill him, you're the beast now.

Or rather, I am now. And one of these days, one way or another, I'm going to get out of here. I keep thinking of the woods, the sunlight shining through the trees, the wind rushing through the grass on the hills. If I could get out there, I'm sure they'll never find me. And if they do...well, for their own sake, they better not shoot.