My Boyfriend is a Bigfoot?

Chapter One

The orange sun was cresting over the western hills, whose many scalps sprouted a thick stubble of emerald pines. I found the flour-y musk of the bakery clung to my clothes yet on the long walk back to the house from the bus stop. Tomorrow was another day, but it felt close as the present as visions of boiling bagels and dusty dough painted themselves to the back of my eyelids. I would wake, ready for work, work, get home, think about work. Being an adult wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

I was one of three twenty-somethings renting a room in the secluded forest estate of the modestly wealthy Rabat family in upstate New York. It was all thanks to the middlest Rabat brother, Topher, that I was here working in the bakery and staying under his parents' roof. We'd become friends in culinary school and I'd been mooching off his social standing ever since. What can I say? When you're a broke college graduate, you take what you can get!

The city lights were barely dim as they drifted from my periphery til they were out of sight. I started down the narrow road that led to the estate driveway. A tall, foreboding wood bordered the road on either side, made even more ominous by the darkening sun.

I dug my hands deep into my coat and broke into a brisk pace. In the three months since I'd moved, my stomach had never settled on the half-hour trek through the woods that followed the end of my shift. The eerie nature of the pine shadows seemed to run deep, like the threat lurking just out of sight was more than natural. Nothing could've braced me for what the darkness truly obscured, and I never would have guessed what would show itself as the culmination of my fear:

A piercing howl shot through the whistling wind. It was like nothing earthly. Far from wolf, the cry sounded almost ape-like. A glimpse into a memory of a territorial howler monkey I saw in a nature documentary flashed through my mind. My blood went cold. I started running.

The howl was high and dreadful, holding an unbroken note for far too long. I tried to gauge its distance from me mid-sprint. In my storm of cortisol and adrenaline, everything sounded close. I was suddenly hyper-aware of every rock underfoot, every twig that grazed my body. A rapid chorus of 'fuckthisshitfuckthisshitfuckthisshit' looped in my mind as my feet pounded along the gravel. It wasn't long before my heightened senses picked up something else snapping through the sticks besides myself, and it was coming at breakneck speed. I hadn't ran since high school gym class, and even then, calling what I did 'running' would've been very generous. Indeed, I had never ran so fast in my life, and would never run as fast again. My lungs felt like they'd hit the eject button as I tilted into the driveway, which was, by some ungodly luck, uphill. The other thing in the wood hadn't lost speed, and I could no longer tell if it was nearing closer or heading away. I turned my face to the trees as I hurried ever upward and tried to make out another life form. For a single moment, I could've sworn I saw an upright bear, only it was moving on its hind legs, and faster than it had any right to. I was helpless to scream in the short seconds before a sturdy root planted by Satan himself caught my foot. The ground flew at my face, and then everything was dead silent and totally black.

When I awoke, Darla (one of my fellow roommates) was in my face shouting shrill and horrified gibberish. Clarity slowly came to the words, which formed themselves into a steady repeating onslaught of "BLAIR! BLAIR! BLAIR!" A strand of dark curly hair flicked my cheek as my eyes peeled open. I was on the porch of the Rabat estate, under a sky of stars. I saw Graciella, Topher's mom, speaking worriedly into the phone. Then the headache crashed over me like a wave.

"Thank fuck, you're awake," said Darla.

"Ugh..."

She turned over her shoulder and shouted something at Gracie. "Are you okay?"

"I think I have a concussion."

"An ambulance is on the way."

"You called an ambulance?"

"Don't worry about that. Just focus on staying calm."

Graciella came to hover over us, phone still to her ear. "My gosh! What happened to you?" she said in her loudest whisper.

"I tripped, I think... Hit my head really hard." I felt around the back of my head for blood, wincing under the pulsing tremors of the headache.

Darla waved two fingers in front of my face. "How many fingers am I holding up? What year is it? Who's the president?"

I nudged her hand away. "Two, ugh. 2019. Still Trump?"

"Somehow yes."

I tried to prop myself up onto my hands. "Don't stand up," she commanded.

"I can stand..."

"Sh-sh-shh... Don't."

The otherworldly howl echoed still throughout the corridors of wakefulness. I couldn't ring it from my thoughts. It struck me suddenly that I had no recollection of making it to the house on my own... I saw myself hurtling to the ground, then darkness, then sheer nothing til my memories caught up with the present. A lump of disconcert lodged in my throat. "Did you drag me up the driveway?"

Darla became similarly uneasy. "No... I found you here." I brought my fingers before my eyes and noticed a sheen of blood, though not so much as to trouble me further. "You didn't get back here by yourself?"

I felt myself paling with fear. "I tripped a ways back. Neither of you carried me up?"

Gracie shook her head. "Goodness. It could be you just... forgot coming all the way up, yes?"

I mulled the possibility over. "I guess so," I said, though doubting it firmly. We exchanged wary looks.

The sound of sirens carried over the wind. It wasn't long before the bright red glare of the ambulance found its way through the trees and the paramedics emerged unto the estate lawn like white ghosts descending from a UFO. The colours and sounds blurred back into a nearly homogenous Jackson Pollock rendition of reality, and I found myself transported as if by wizards from the Rabat residence to the hospital.