To mark the launch of Carnival of Cryptids, the second Kindle All-Stars short story anthology to benefit the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, I asked the authors to tell me what were their favourite and least favourite cryptid, and why.
Here’s what Matt Posner, who contributed the short story The Paring Knife, said:
What’s my favorite cryptid? This yarn should explain.
Young people used to go out and park by the abandoned factory, where they could grope each other and engage in other sorts of parentally disapproved caresses.
They used to do that. Then it came.
It was seven, eight, nine feet tall. Scarecrow lean. Eyes that shone like pale blood. A shock of wings that snapped out like a glider.
It went from perfect stillness into an airborne lunge. Could trail, overtake, or even dive-bomb cars.
It was a combination of a costume-shop vampire kit and an antique chthonic horror more at home in the black fantasies of Lovecraft than in the stillness of a West Virginia town hemmed in by old-growth trees.
Mothman, haunter and tormenter of young lovers and isolated motorists. Mothman, stalker between leaden clouds. Mothman, blood-eyed starkly staring maker of madness.
Coolest crytozoological nightmare of all time? With such sensational options out there, who knows? The bigfoot outside the tent on a rainy night; the sea serpent pacing the fleeing bark; the blood-drinking fanged rodent chupacabras rending the tender throats of livestock…So many legends to enjoy. But the malevolent menace of Mothman moves me the most.
Least favorite cryptid? Fur-bearing trout. Boooooring.
About Matt:
Matt Posner is the author of the School of the Ages series of novels and stories about a magic school located in New York City, and the co-author (with Jess C. Scott) of Teen Guide to Sex and Relationships. A two-time Kindle All-Star, Matt appears here to promote the release of Bernard Schaffer’s Carnival of Cryptids charity anthology.
Matt’s books are available for Kindle and Nook. School of the Ages is sold in India exclusively by Times Group Books.
Simon John Cox 