Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25939344-20141230040725

I've been working on this for the past few days and I've learned in the past that when I get stuck, I probably went wrong somewhere. The problem is, I can't figure out where I went wrong.

This story is adapted from a legend local to Montgomery, Alabama. Not many people know of it, but those that do know that the story I'm about to tell is just one of many.

I have lived in Montgomery my entire life. You always hear crazy stories from the assholes that spend all their time drinking and shooting animals for fun in the woods. They'll tell you all about the White Thang, a Bigfoot like creature that's completely white. They'll tell you about the Kudzu Monkeys. They like to think they've seen it all. They haven't, but they think they have.

An old friend once told me the story of the Well Road Swamp Creature. The guy that had seen it said that it was eight feet tall and had long arms that ended in a two-fingered claw. Said he caught it in his high beams when he was working on a pump station on well Road. The guy even said it had green glowing eyes. I'd laughed it off. The guy had startled a buck that in turn scared the crap out of him. He tried to make it out to be some sort of creature.

I had told my friend that it sounded a tiny bit like the legend of Wold Swamp. That wasn't it's name. It didn't actually have one and not even the people that live in the neighborhood across the road from it know it exists. I lived only a mile up the road from the swamp and I'd never ventured that far. It was just too far outside my little patch of woods.

I'd heard a lot about the Wolf Swamp Monster in my childhood. After a lot of the older people that knew about it passed away I never heard anything new. Well, that was until a neighbor went hunting in the swamp. He wasn't from the area, so he wasn't privy to all the weird stories from my childhood.

“Hey, you're into that weird shit right?” He'd asked me the day after he'd gone hunting in the swamp.

“Huh?” I'd asked. “What do you mean?”

“Those weird ass monsters.” He'd said. “You like hearing about those right?”

“Yeah.” I'd told him. “If the story is good enough.”

And he'd told me one hell of a story. He'd said that he'd found an island in the swamp that was about fifty foot across. He'd said the moon light was streaming down through the trees in that spot. I'd laughed at him. That was horribly cheesy to say the least. I let him go on though. He said he saw a spindly black creature standing in the middle of the island. Said it looked like a twisted up tree until it had turned and looked at him. He'd said its eyes caught the moonlight and that they'd taken on a green glow.

I decided right then that he'd seen a deer. He'd scared the damn thing and it stood up. Everyone knows that deer eyes glow green at night when light hits them. That's just how it is with prey animals. All the old stories of the monster in the swamp said its eyes glow orange or yellow, not green. I told him it was just a deer and that he'd probably missed a good buck.

After a few weeks more stories started coming in. A guy was in the hospital after he'd gone out to the swamp to hunt at night. The official report from the local news said that he'd had a heart attack. His buddies said otherwise even though they hadn't been there. They said he'd gone looking for a creature he'd seen along the side of the road.

I was starting to get a little worried. The news coverage was bringing unwanted attention to Wolf Swamp. Well, unwanted by me. I didn't like strangers pulling into my driveway to ask me questions about the swamp. I lived alone in the last house before the swamp and the neighborhood across from it. I had no idea why they couldn't just bother someone else. In the end it was left to me to tell people that there really wasn't anything out of the ordinary in the swamp. 