“Steve Schmolaris’s Album Review: Esteban Seunarine & Ben Kensok | FREQUENCIES//FOR//GHOSTS - Tinnitist”
It took a while for the Man-Who-Was-Raised-By-Bats - please don't call him by that other name, you know the one; he HATES that name - to learn their language, the clicks and blips of it, its subtleties and nuances, its grammar and internal logic. It took him a while to learn the other things bats did as well: fly, hang upside down, hibernate. But eventually he did. And once he did, he would fly out with the other bats at night, search for insects or fruit or, much more rarely, frogs and mice. Naturally, the Man-Who-Was-Raised-By-Bats, was always seen as the black sheep, the ugly duckling, of the bat family, and would, accordingly, be taunted and made fun of by his peers. But, of course, the Man-Who-Was-Raised-By-Bats knew nothing else, and so for him it was all completely normal.
And so on one night, which happened to be Halloween night, all the bats flew out of their cave to search for food.
"What food should we get tonight?" asked the Man-Who-Was-Raised-By-Bats, in Echoish.
While in flight, the other bats all echoed at each other and decided to play a joke on the Man-Who-Was-Raised-By-Bats.
"Tonight, we're hunting for blood!" they chirped.
"Blood? Like a mouse's blood?" asked the Man-Who-Was-Raised-By-Bats.
"Mouse? No, no, no. It's Halloween night, and on Halloween night we suck HUMAN blood."
"Human? What's a human?"
And all the other bats clicked and blipped with laughter.
"Humans are ugly creatures," they responded, "Their noses aren't cute like ours, but stick out like a nasty tumour. They are slow, too, and can't fly. And the only hair they have is on their enormous, bulbous heads."
"What a horrible-sounding creature!" remarked the Man-Who-Was-Raised-By-Bats, "What should I do if I find one?"
The bats all laughed again.
"Well, they hide all their blood in their neck. And they protect it with their hair. So what you'll - I mean, what WE'LL - have to do is fly into their hair to get it."
The Man-Who-Was-Raised-By-Bats understood and nodded. And he flew toward the village where he was told all the humans (with their blood) lived.
Once there, he saw how the other bats' description of a human was wholly insufficient. True, some were hideously ugly and their noses stuck out like stalactites, but there were some that looked like... well... the Man-Who-Was-Raised-By-Bats did not know exactly how to describe them. Some looked like devils, some looked like witches and zombies, some looked like knights and princes and kings and queens.
Humans are odd creatures, thought the Man-Who-Was-Raised-By-Bats.
It was then that he saw a human that looked more familiar, that looked more - more so than the others did, at least - like him. He could tell - somehow, he didn't know the reason - that she was female. And she looked battish, too. She had big bat ears, she had big bat wings, she had fangs, and her body was, not hairy, but covered in black - just like him.
He flew down to get a closer look. As he did, he remembered what the other bats had told him: fly into their hair to get the blood. And she had a lot of long, non-black hair around her head and neck.
He swooped down, circled briefly above her, and then dove into her hair.
Or intended to. As the Man-Who-Was-Raised-By-Bats neared the human-female-who-looked-like-a-bat, he saw that she wasn't as large as he'd initially imagined. He thought they'd be like giants, that he could disappear into their hair without them noticing, but that wasn't the case at all. He saw that she was about the same size as he was.
It was too late to slow his momentum. And as he crashed into her, he sent them both tumbling off the road and into a nearby bush. When the tumult stopped, he found that his face was in amongst her non-black hair, and that his mouth rested against her bare - and non-hairy - neck.
He was about to bite into it, to unleash the flood of warm red blood that would fill his mouth and stomach, when something stopped him. Perhaps it was her battish ears, perhaps it was her battish wings, perhaps it was the white flash of her fangs, but something stopped him.
She was too much like him. Too much like a bat. And, he saw, she wasn't ugly at all, quite the opposite, in fact - she was beautiful. Gorgeous even.
He stood up to get a better view. She lay asleep on the ground. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth open slightly, her blunt fangs barely visible. A thin trickle of blood fell from the corner of her violet lips.
Without thinking, as if in the throes of a spell, or a curse, the Man-Who-Was-Raised-By-Bats bent down over the human-female-who-looked-like-a-bat and licked up the trail of blood, he sucked the side of her lips clean and tasted its warm sweetness. It was not like frog or mouse blood at all, he thought. It was much, much better.
The human-female-who-looked-like-a-bat didn't stir. A dark pool of blood welled around her like a halo, and the Man-Who-Was-Raised-By-Bats saw its source: a long wound on the top of her head. When he crashed into her, she must have hit her head on a rock. He'd killed her, he saw. Killed the beautiful human-female-who-looked-like-a-bat. What had he done?
He chirped in horror, and, hearing his alarm, the other bats began to gather above him in a ghostly black cloud and then swooped down to land beside both them.
"So ugly!" clicked one.
"Grotesque!" squeaked another.
And then they all began to feed - to lick and lap and drink - on the blood that poured from the beautiful woman's head and seeped into the surrounding soil.
But the Man-Who-Was-Raised-By-Bats did not join in. He could not take his eyes off of her face. He was overcome with loss. What had she sounded like? In what cave did she roost? Where was her colony? Who was her bat family?
The Man-Who-Was-Raised-By-Bats flapped his wings and took to the sky. He flew up and over the trees, away from the village, away from Halloween night, and back to the cool, darkness of the cave from which he, and the other bats, came. Where he was, at least for awhile, alone. And where no one - bat or human - could see or hear him cry.
by Steve Schmolaris (Tinnitist, badgardeningadvice)