Joe Luscombe

‘Szybko, wkrótce wrócą!’

I don’t speak more Polish than it takes to order a Tyskie but I know what the heavily pregnant woman next to me is screaming. I’ve heard it in the Canadian Barren Lands, in the deep unknowns of northwestern Bolivia, in Kamchatkan ice caverns and in a sandy hole near Uluru. Whoever prints this, please add the Polish for ‘Quick, they’ll be back soon!’.

The cost of doing what you love is getting jaded with what you love. This lot are quirky, though. Ok,  not unique. Semi-mythical yeti-like things in the middle of a big empty. The massive forest just inside Belarus in this case. Sightings and disappearances back to the 1400’s. Stories about nests with clothes and weapons from the armies and escapees stupid or scared enough to go that deep into the woods. 

But get this – the big Maurice Sendak fucker who pulled a tree down to get at me was carrying a Polaroid camera! He was also carrying a musket and wearing what looks to me like a ragged old talitt gadol, the fringed blanket like my uncles wore.

He put his hairy knee on my throat and pulled my trousers down. Thankfully he was just confirming my sex. I felt like a butterfly about to be stuck on a board.

And so here I am tied up with animal gut twine, in between the woman to my left and some bloke in a bad way to my right. One look at his messed-up ankle and you would agree that if we are getting out of here, he ain’t coming with.

A panel slides back, allowing in a little light. Two massive legs drop down and there he is. The beast at prayer. He makes a sound upwards. Precise, in a phlegmy way. Definitely language. The camera is on his back, the strap at his throat.

It’s the camera I would have killed for in 1984. My cousin Mark had one, and took nothing but pictures of his dog. With the daylight I see a  row of white squares on the wall. It looks like a row of very pale, mostly bearded faces. 

Homo BiełaviežskajaI: An anthropological hominid inside Europe? No. The Polaroid People – a scavenging, tool-using human hybrid? CLICK. FLASH.  Those arseholes at Cryptozoology Today will lap this up. BZZZZZ. This has got mainstream potential, and not just The Fortean Times. 

He shakes the photo dry, picks up a rock and mashes my sorry male colleague’s face in. SQUELCH.

He sticks the photo on the muddy wall, neatly spacing it next to the others. Then, reaching into the midden at his feet, he finds a new bar of flashes to attach to the camera, which he does with surprising delicacy. Fascinating. This is National Geographic stuff. I sniff a book deal here. And, whisper it, telly.

He is walking towards the girl. Oh, he’s walking towards me. CLICK, FLASH. BZZZ.  He’s shaking the picture! He understands photo development! This really is …

Joe’s prompts were: In a Forest, A Cryptid, Strange Photos

This is Joe Luscombe’s second Trash Cat publication (link to the first is below). He is trying to concentrate on writing a book about blast furnaces, but occasionally publishes things on Substack @joeluscombe.

Read more from Joe:

Here on Trash Cat Lit – ‘Platform‘