The Flatwoods Monster Mash

Braxton County, WV, summer of 2022

I launched my girlfriend’s little Audi across the plush, hilly interior of West Virginia until finally mooring it in front of the Flatwoods Monster Museum in the living breathing Jim Jarmusch film of a town that is Sutton in Braxton County.

I walked in the museum and was immediately flanked by a good-natured cat and an affable gentleman, whom I recognized to be the owner of the establishment. We yapped about everything under the sun and moon and stars until my belly started growling so loudly that it was mistaken for a passing mud dragon (—the creepy hills of Braxton County are not for threadbare imaginations). I asked the man where I should have lunch and he directed me to a Flatwoods Monster-themed joint about six miles north of us that had homemade ice cream and burgers as big as box turtles.

I drove up to The Spot, as it is called, a self-proclaimed restaurant/dairy bar, and upon entering was ambushed by a wiry fellow with the indiscriminate zeal of a car salesman.

“Aye, man, great to see you again!” he yelped, as he walked past me and began opening the door with his back.

I looked at him like he was covered in grape jelly, so he said, “I didn’t just see you in here yesterday?”

“No, sir, you did not. I just peeled into town like fifteen minutes ago on the dot.”

“Damn… You sure?”

Was I sure? Yeah, I was sure, and told him as much.

“Well, then you got a double to end all doubles,” he said. “I’m tellin’ ya, man, same fruity little hat and everything!”

This encounter would not be my last with someone who had come across my doppelganger, who, it appeared, was a good twenty to thirty steps ahead of me.

Two hours later, on a sidewalk up in Morgantown, a guy with a meaty face and neon green fatigues came up to me and said, “You from the Isle of Mayo or what, brother? Don’t you know you gotta tip around here?”

“What are you yammering about?”

He ground his teeth audibly and said, “You gotta tip, man. Gratuity, you know? Twenty percent! Or fifteen percent at the very least! Or, you know, ten percent if you’re a total fucking shithead.”

I was certain I had never seen this man before, but he had clearly seen me. “You’re telling me I ate at your establishment, you were my waiter or whatever, I paid for my food, and I didn’t leave you a tip?”

“Yeah, that’s about the size of it. Dick.”

I took a big loud breath. My doppelganger was apparently trying to out-asshole me. “I think I know what’s going on here,” I said to the man, gravely. “I regret to inform you, sir, that you have been stiffed by my doppelganger.”

The man huffed and started to walk away.

“Yo, what did I eat?” I hollered at him. “At your restaurant, what did I have?”

“This a pop quiz?”

I pulled out a five spot and handed it to him. “That’s exactly what it is. And if you ace it, I’ll give you another one of these.” The prospect of cold cash tidied him up.

“You had a tuna melt with a basket of curly fries.”

Well, shit. My doppelganger had done his research. I gave the guy another five.

“Did I use a lot of ketchup?”

“You used half a whole thing of Heinz and pretty much a damn rainforest’s worth of napkins.”

I gave the man one more five and asked him where I had lunch, et cetera, et cetera… My doppelganger had apparently dined at O’Flannel’s Bubbles and Grubbery a couple of loose hours ago. Hmm… Where would I be right now had I eaten a whole tuna melt and a bunch of curly fries two hours ago? Probably rising from a wayward power nap, halfway under the covers in the cheapest hotel in town. But I was staying in the cheapest hotel in town, so...

I stopped by a gas station and got an eighteen pack of Coors Banquet beer in cans and went back to the hotel and poured half of the beer in the bathroom sink. I walked down the hallway to the ice machine and used the empty beer box as an ice pail and came back and poured the ice on top of the beers in the sink.

I heard my doppelganger laugh—my own laugh—before I saw him sitting in a chair over on the opposite side of the room from the bathroom.

“That’s wild, man,” he said. “I did the same exact shit, except I got bottles of Bud.”

“You must’ve got the last of the Bud because there wasn’t none left.”

“No, you just didn’t look hard enough, per usual.”

I opened two cans of Coors and then seeing that he’d brought one of his Bud bottles with him, I nestled one of the cans back in the ice.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and held up my beer and said cheers to my doppelganger.

“I kinda wanna smoke,” I said. “Can you smoke in here? Homeboy at the counter apparently learned how to speak English from watching Mr. Bean.”

“Yeah, I asked him earlier and he nodded no which I think means yes in his country.”

“I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“You and me both,” my doppelganger said, unbuttoning his black Banana Republic blazer. He lit an American Spirit and offered me one. “Man, ain’t it weird that we could boof each other and it’d only be considered masturbation?”

“Gross,” I said, squeezing three syllables out of the word.

My doppelganger eyed me suspiciously. “How’s it gross?”

“You just look like me. You’re not me.”

My doppelganger flashed me with a smug smile that I did not at all care for and said, “You went into my mouth and fetched every one of them damn words, didn’t you?”

“The last thing on this planet or any other I’m gonna do is Hulu ‘n’ chill with my goddamn doppelganger,” I said, crossing my legs like a schoolgirl.

“Hulu ‘n’ chill is what—dry-humpin’ an empty pizza box?”

“Yeah, maybe.” I couldn’t figure out if I wanted to stand up and kick my doppelganger in the face or just walk out of the room.

So I threw my half-empty can of Coors at him…

It whizzed by his head and thunked into the wall. “What the heck?” he said, bug-eyed with confusion.

“Sorry,” I said, stupidly holding my hand over my heart. “I’m sorry.” I walked over to the blinds and opened them. A couple of methheads were shakily standing too close to the Audi for comfort. I knocked on the window and they skulked off, gums smacking up and down like Muppets.

“Thou art forgiven,” my doppelganger said.

“So what is your deal, man,” I asked my doppelganger. “Why are you following me around?”

“From the looks of it, I’d say you’re following me around.”

He had a point. I decided to change the subject. “You heard any good jokes lately? I’m all dried up.”

“Hmm… What did Buddha say to the hot dog vendor?”

“Make me one with everything.” I had told this joke maybe a thousand times.

We sat there drinking beer and telling jokes and swapping anecdotes until the sun started peeking through the blinds. It was a wholesomely narcissistic way to spend a Saturday evening. Eventually my doppelganger wandered back to his room and probably spanked his monkey into oblivion and I passed out watching Predator 2, a woefully underrated flick which fully displays the perils of being a Los Angeles police detective.

A month later my girlfriend and I went back to Braxton County for the Braxxie Bazaar. Cryptidistas twerked with the Braxxie mannequin that greets you upon entering the Flatwoods Monster Museum, cryptid-centric films were shown in a theater as old as Noah’s teddy bear, and sullen paranormal researchers daydreamt about devices that could read debit card chips… Charismatic uncoolness as far as the eye can see—and the nose can smell. A coterie of kooksters and dreamers. Swell company, for sure… There was talk of a haunted house. My girlfriend and I, soundly loaded by that point, opted to go back to our little time capsule of a motel and get even more loaded… She passed out immediately upon entering the room, so I sat on the little porch drinking beer and watching the shadows play freeze tag with each other. Sutton, West Virginia is a dark place. Even the moon steers clear of this spooky little corner of the planet.

An extended-cab Ford F-150 pulled into the gravel parking lot and out of it stepped a huge hillbilly and two banged-up lookin’ dishwater blondes.

“You here for the Donkey and Mule Show?” one of the women asked me, as her two companions staggered into their motel room and shut the door.

“Not that I know of,” I said, stifling a beer burp. “Is that a real thing or some sort of innuendo?”

She lit a cigarette and momentarily checked out. That word innuendo, I could tell, was terra incognita for her.

“Hell yeah, it’s a real thing! Premo donkeys and mules are bussed in from every neck of this God-fearin’ hemisphere!”  

“And, what, you look at them or you buy them or…?”

“Oh, you can do pretty much anything you want with ‘em! Look at ‘em, buy ‘em, swap ‘em, paint their portraits—whatever your little heart desires!”

I pondered all this and said, “Why no horses?”

The woman let out an awful sound, kind of a cough/sneeze but rendered in hideous octaves, and then she started tweaking like a pygmy wren. It was clear that I should not have mentioned horses.

I went back inside, leaving her there to tremble in whatever regrettable yesteryear in which she was now mired.