It was dark and unpleasant in the most predictable way.

The rain had been coming down for days now, with no end in sight, and he was out of time.

He stood under the branches of an enormous evergreen just off of the freeway. The pine needles at his feet were damp and soft in a way that reminded him of a sponge left out to mold. He shook himself of water droplets that had accumulated on his coat and sighed. He had been outside all weekend hoping that the rain would stop, knowing that it wouldn’t. Knowing hadn’t made the current situation any more bearable.

It was ironic how much he hated the Northwest considering that he had been there longer than most of western civilization. There had been countless instances when he could have picked up and left, and yet he had never mustered the courage to do so. He had a life here, people who knew him, and he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to be unknown; not yet at least.  It was hard to believe now, but he could recall a time when it pleased him to sit in the morning mist on a moss covered rock, eating fish he’d caught swimming in the river earlier that day. It was a simpler time then, and he had led a life of simple pleasures. That was before the invention of indoor heating or color television, and he had since grown accustomed to the luxuries of 21st century America. Now he only ever felt at home sitting in the backseat of a luxury sedan with a 16 oz. cup of black roast and the butt warmers on their highest setting.

He’d been on the roads edge a good 20 minutes when the first car drove past. He could hear it long before he could see it, even with the steady pitter-patter of the rain slapping against the asphalt.

When he was little that sound was the lullaby he used to put himself to sleep when there was no mother to sing him anything different. He would lie quietly and try to count the raindrops the way other children would count sheep and eventually fall asleep, inevitably wetting himself having spent so much time thinking about water. He caught himself in this embarrassing act even now, and would scold himself harshly. Nothing so old could justify keeping the habits of youth.

As the car’s headlights swung into view, he untied the plastic strings holding the garbage bag next to him closed. His fingers were work worn and thick, but they were more than proficient with the knot. He was at his heart an outdoorsman. He gently lifted out something very tattered and very brown from the sack. The cardboard was creased in a few too many places and stained an ugly grey color in the corners. The writing was in black sharpie, in big block letters that had been meticulously colored in, but it was too dark to make out the words they spelled until he stepped out under the street lamp.

Convention or Bust

And in slightly smaller letters below that:

It was the costume or the bus ticket—s***’s expensive.

He had learned through years of trial and error that this language resounded with the kind of people he was targeting. Convention tickets weren’t cheap, but they didn’t hold a candle to the amount of money that people would spend decorating themselves to look like other people who had a thousand better things to do than go to conventions.

He thought the whole thing very odd in theory, and yet, there he stood, hitchhiking his way across miles of forest to frequent one such event. And there he stood every year doing the exact same thing. If someone had told him years ago that this was how he would be spending his existence, he would have laughed in their face and done unspeakable things to make sure such a rumor never saw the light of day.

He had ended up at his first convention as a matter of happenstance, but he found that he could truly be himself there. No one expected him to hide who he really was, but instead praised him for it. Children would run up to him and ask to have their picture taken with him. He had even won best costume three years running.

The headlights swept past him and kept moving into the darkness. This was okay, the road wasn’t busy, but there was a steady enough stream of cars along the highway that he never had to wait too long before getting a ride. Out in the peninsula there wasn’t a lot going on in the daily lives of citizens and the convention was a pretty big draw. He usually found someone who was heading to it, their truck filled up with prosthetic pieces and flowing loincloths.

People were always surprised he had decided to wear his costume even as he traveled.

“Isn’t it hot?” they murmured worriedly.

“Won’t it get ruined?”

“My cousin went as one of those last year and he said it made his b**** itch like fire!”

“Oh, well,” he would say to them, calmly, sweetly. “I’m just so excited. I’ve been looking forward to this all year.”

That usually shut them up, and they would begin to regale him with the trials and tribulations of trying to sew sequins so they caught the light just right, or how they were this close to not being able to get tickets because they just sold out so fast this year.

Even people who weren’t going to the convention would sometimes pick him up for the sheer novelty of going home to their wives and children to say,

“Well I’ll be damned, I picked up some kind of Wookie man on his way to the comic-book-thingy down in the city today, and he looked straight out of the movie! His breath too, it was like the stench of a thousand years.”

He didn’t care so much who took him, so long as he got there. It was the last day of the convention though, and he was beginning to worry whether he would get there with any time at all. Most of the people who were going had come and gone in earlier days without stopping for him in the torrential downpour.

Five cars passed him before one finally stopped. It slowed when it saw him, but was going too fast on the wet pavement. He had already turned his attention to other things when the car was suddenly on the road’s shoulder almost backing up into him.

A spry young girl jumped out of the driver’s seat and was coming to greet him. She had blond hair wrapped into buns on the top of her head and a purple feather boa around her shoulders. She reminded him of a pixie, but bigger, and less green-skinned. He immediately didn’t like her.

It was clear where she was headed and he weighed going with her against waiting for another car. His chances weren’t good, but he’d had some bad experiences with pixie drivers.

“Hi! I’m Clarisse—“ she started, reaching out her hand to him, smiling. She didn’t get a chance to finish though, because at that moment his stomach rumbled. It was a deep, cavernous sound, the kind that reminds you of a pit with no bottom, or the monsters under your bed. She stopped, and stared at him startled. He stopped too, and looked at her.

And in one swift motion, before she even had a chance to retract her hand, he grabbed her up and took her apart and ate her.

He had suddenly remembered that in standing there waiting for a ride, he had not eaten recently, and was incredibly hungry.

This might not have been the best choice, he reflected, picking purple feathers from his teeth. However he knew that at his roots he was an outdoorsman and had only survived so long by relying on his instincts. Later he consoled himself that the convention was almost over anyway, and that what he really needed after three days of rain was a good bath and a John Hughes marathon.

He turned around and put his sign back into its bag and tied a careful knot to keep the rain out. Clarisse’s car was still running with the heat on, but his hands were covered in blood and he wasn’t a monster. He had no doubt that someone would be able to resell it for quite a profit if he left it be.

As he re-hooked his jaw, he was suddenly very glad that the blood that was now caked into his fur could be washed out with a simple soak in the river. If it really had been a costume he struggled to think how much the whole thing would cost to dry clean before he could wear it to next year’s convention.

He wandered into the woods, a slight swing to his step, and remembered he didn’t need a convention to feel like himself.