On the Subject of Hoaxes
(from upcoming pseudofiction thingy INDRID COLD IS DEAD)
There is one axiom in field of cryptozoology and it is this: not all Bigfoots are blurry afterimages, but all blurry afterimages are absolutely, 100%, sure as hell Bigfoot.
Dozens of ambiguity-sodden photos are released weekly around the country, and they all have one thing in common: they are as blurry as yesterday’s breakfast. Add to this a plethora of falsehoods. The last thing on this planet or any other a cryptozoologists needs to contend with is a myriad of fake cryptids and fibs and hoaxes, and yet that is the case.
Here is a concise list of American cryptids which have turned out to be phonier than a three-dollar titty.
Mwah-Mwah – the Mwah-Mwah is sort of what you get if you cross a Wendigo with Pepe le Pew. (For readers unfamiliar with the Wendigo, pull up the most emaciated Hollywood zombie you can imagine and then do him up like Fred Rogers on a deep Saturday night—crinkled, blood-stained cardigan, worn-out slacks, antlers—and now add a persistent zeal for chomping on unsuspecting woodsmen.) The Mwah-Mwah, according to the members of the Cree tribe that lied their little heads off telling me about it, was basically the same, but would lure you into the woods but making sex noises and kissy sounds.
Dickfoot – The opaque hillside of central West Virginia is home to many strange creatures. One of them is not Dickfoot. “So, I’m sitting there in my deer stand, waitin’ for a big ol’ buck to come along,” said one 100% false witness, “…and all of a sudden, I hear somethin’ kinda workin’ its way through the woods behind me… I could tell it wasn’t no deer by the way it was steppin’, and I could tell it was big because of how it was crunchin’ branches… I turn around and right there in the middle of this little clearing is what appears to be a big huge, um, Captain Winkie!—an adult human penis, semi-erect and such. I rub my eyes and am like, no fuggin’ way… I hold my scope up to see if I can get a better look at it, and sure as shit, it’s a huge-ass ding-a-ling! I started reachin’ for my phone real slow so I could snap a picture, but by the time I got it out of my pocket, the thing had, like, totally disappeared. I got out of my stand and walked over and started lookin’ for tracks. I kinda wish I hadn’t done that. That thing left tracks, alright. Looked like the inside of a junior high bathroom stall, if you know what I mean.” I knew what he meant. Fortunately, for him and the rest of humanity, Dickfoot was a hoax with a capital F-A-K-E.
Anna Wong – the Anna Wong, according to the loose-headed bunch of kiddos that made this shit up, is a creature composed of the daydreams of the world’s salarymen. It is a sort of a manifestation that was inadvertently spirited up by fantasies of the bored and boring men that infest this huge ball of mud we call Earth. The Anna Wong is a manic pixie dream girl in both appearance and behavior. The “Anna” comes from Anna Karina, the quintessential MPDG, who cutesy’d her way through a whopping eight Jean-Luc Godard films, often proffering pop philosophy to strangers in cafes, dancing to Dixieland, puffing on endless Gaulioses, going to movie theaters by herself, and pointing tiny pistols at people, while the “Wong” comes from Faye Wong, another high-profile MPDG, known mainly for her roles in Wong Kar-wai films, most notably as a quirky deli worker, a sort of a mischievous, proto-Amélie giggle-monster who cranks California Dreamin’ on repeat, and sneaks into her crush’s apartment to clean and redecorate and play with toy airplanes. The Anna Wong is mostly encountered on dark stretches of barren road peeling imaginary grapefruits and humming Erik Satie.
Ape Skunk – I gotta joke for you, reader. What’s seven feet tall, goes ooh-ooh-ooh, and smells like a port-o-potty at a fish fry? Indeed, whoa be woodsmen who happens upon the Ape Skunk, an entirely fictitious bipedal skunklike creature that enjoys long walks in the marsh and fumigating the eastern counties of the Florida panhandle.
Legbegone – The scientific community, with its seemingly endless expanse of free time, has a recently released a report that says ten percent of America’s population enjoys sleeping with one leg in and one leg out of the covers. This minority composes one hundred percent of the Legbegone’s sustenance. “I dreamt I had a phantom limb,” said one huge-ass liar. “Boy, was I cuckoofied when I woke up and realized that dream was a premonition!” No one has gotten a good look at the Legbegone because it exclusively ambushes its victims, biting off their exposed leg, while they are mired in REM sleep, though fake reports have come in of half-asleep glimpses of an opaque blob with super sharp teeth and slanty yellow eyes and a mouthful of leg
