Mothman and Eli Visit the Cryptid Museum

In July’s fourth, free to read and share, story, Izzy Wasserstein invites you on a very special roadtrip. ~ Julian and Fran, July 27, 2025

It’s our fourth July bringing you four great, free, Sunday Morning short stories! Yes: a whole month of free goodness from The Sunday Morning Transport — by Vajra Chandrasekera, John Wiswell, Fawaz Al-Matrouk, and Izzy Wasserstein. We hope you love these and all our stories as much as we love bringing them to you on Sundays.

Bringing out great short fiction each Sunday is a lot of work and we have a fantastic team to thank for it, including co-EICs Julian Yap and Fran Wilde, Copy Editor Kaitlin Severini, Proofreader Christine Ma, Devin Singer on socials, and our amazing supporters — that’s YOU. We are so glad to have you here.

If you’re just joining us, or if you are a free reader, we hope you’ll love the free month of fiction we have in store, and that you will consider supporting us as a paid subscriber. We very much need your support to keep rolling!

This month, we’ve got an annual membership drive of epic proportions for you — so if you haven’t already, please consider signing up, and if you are signed up, please share this link with your friends.

---

Mothman and Eli Visit the Cryptid Museum

by Izzy Wasserstein

They drive through a dying empire, past encampments of the unhoused and McMansions guarded by off-duty cops, past empty warehouses and billboards declaring who counts as human. The radio speaks of wildfires out west, a hurricane slamming the southern coast, and human-created horrors everywhere. They don’t need reminding: Mothman’s wings, folded between dimensions, itch with premonition.

“You want to tell me where we’re going?” Eli asks in western Kansas. They’ve pulled off the highway while a sandstorm rages around them.

“I’d love to.” Mothman adjusts his sunglasses. “But it doesn’t work like that.” He navigates disasters like birds crossing continents to breeding grounds they’ve never seen, drawn to their destination by instinct.

Mothman’s ID reads Igmar Khole, and he’s been stranded in this universe for more than a century, since long before Point Pleasant, before an ill-advised chat with a lovely pair of sandhill cranes made him a celebrity. He’s come to love this planet, even the species currently destroying it. But his wings itch worse than ever: It’s all coming to an end. Time for one last road trip.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” Eli says absently. “One place is as good as another for the end of the world.”

“This from a guy who once insisted we drive two hours out of our way to see the Mystery Spot.” Mothman hears the smile in his voice.

“I always wanted proof there was something more.” Eli takes a long drink of water. “That or kitschy souvenirs.” On Eli’s dashboard, a plastic Nessie bobs coyly in the loch.

#

They’ve collected many souvenirs and traveled countless miles since that day in 1974 when Mothman stuck out one thumb and Eli pulled over. In less than an hour, Eli had seen through the glamour that let Mothman pass for human. Maybe a couple times a decade, someone would see Mothman, really see him. Usually there was shouting, sometimes panic or attempted violence.

Eli, though? His shoulders had visibly relaxed, like he’d set down a heavy load.

“I guess you’ve come a long way, friend,” Eli had said. “Potato chips?”

There’s not much magic in this reality, except the everyday kinds: a young woman handing water and a sack of greasy burgers to a man camped beside the road, mountain peaks flushing pink in the last of the daylight, a parent clutching a child who they’d thought lost, or comforting one when all hope was gone. But Eli had magic of his own. He’d travel, doing seasonal work where he could find it, exploring tourist traps and hole-in-the-wall restaurants, national parks and windswept placards honoring the nearly forgotten achievements of the long dead. Mothman had never known him to have a full tank of gas, but when a stranger needed a few dollars, Eli somehow always had it to give. Casually generous and constantly broke, Eli somehow always had just enough spare change for any souvenir that called to him.

They were both comfortable with silence and shared an affection for the odd, for people and places who never quite fit in, for motels with hundreds of clowns, weekend thrift markets, hallucinogens under the stars. For being on the move. And so they’d passed the decades, growing old together, albeit at an uneven rate.

#

In Ohio, Nazis wave flags from an overpass. “Where’s a bridge collapse when you need one?” Eli asks with the slight upturn of his lips that means he’s half-joking.

“Rain falls on the evil and the good,” Mothman says.

“I’ve been thinking about that.” Eli scratches his chin. “And I think it’s a bad system. I’d like to file a complaint.”

“If I ever meet the Divine, I’ll tell them you said so.” Mothman eases back in the passenger seat. His wings itch more fiercely than ever, but tells himself it’s a blessing. While they’re itching, there’s still time.

It’s not as if Mothman’s been present for every disaster, which would be impossible, even for someone with a complicated relationship to extradimensional space. People who believe in him think he has answers, and he wishes he did, just like he wishes his ass was really as impressive as the one on the statue that (supposedly) depicts him. It’s ridiculous to be vain about his body, the one that makes it possible to live in this world and of late suffers from arthritic fingers and a bad knee, but Mothman never claimed to be sensible.

“What would you ask them?” Eli says after a while. “The Divine, I mean. If you met them.”

“And if they exist?” Mothman replies. “I guess I’d ask if there’s a vantage point where all this makes sense.” Beyond them, Lake Erie shines like molten gold in the late-afternoon sun.

“When I met you,” Eli says, “I thought, this guy has the answers I’ve been looking for.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“Are you kidding? This world has no shortage of people selling enlightenment. But a real friend? That doesn’t come along every day.”

On the side of the road a woman with a toddler in her arms stares at the smoke rising from her car’s engine.

“Looks like they could use some—” Mothman begins, but Eli is already pulling over.

#

Maybe Eli has another magic power, one that makes people instinctively understand that he’s safe. They’re a man and a “man” traveling together, and the world is the world, but just as people instinctively recoil from Mothman, as though calamity might be catching, they sense they can rely on Eli.

They drop the woman (Tonya) and the toddler (Aisha) off at a motel, where the clerk is happy to give them an unrented room. (“Just clean up after yourselves, okay? Fuck my boss, but Marisol and Carson work their asses off to keep the rooms clean.”) Eli leaves them with a small handful of bills and the name of a friend who can help with the car. He has friends everywhere.

#

“You’re kidding me,” Eli says when they pull up to their destination. They’re at a strip mall in Portland, staring at a sign that says THE WORLD-FAMOUS CRYPTID MUSEUM—SAPIENTS OF ALL SPECIES WELCOME.

“You don’t like it?” The thought alarms Mothman, though he didn’t know where they were going either until they pulled up here and his chest resonated like it did whenever he’d arrived at a point of witness: Wuhan in 1931, Kangra, and Lake Nyos, those and more joining a line of disasters stretching back as far as life itself.

“No, I love it,” Eli says. “But I don’t understand it. The apocalypse starts in a strip mall?” He tugs the bridge of his nose. “Actually, no, that makes a weird kind of sense.”

Inside they’re greeted by a middle-aged man who radiates enthusiasm and a life-sized portrait of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, which isn’t a cryptid at all, and a bigfoot statue labeled as featuring real fur. As far as Mothman can tell, bigfoot is just as imaginary as most cryptids. He decides not to ask what kind of fur it wears.

They pay admission, edge past racks of T-shirts and tchotchkes (enter and exit through the gift shop, naturally), and step through into cramped corridors lined with overflowing display cases. Here a collection of monster-themed toys; there, tracks supposedly left by the chupacabra. Photos of fishermen cradling deep-sea creatures compete for space with taxidermied canines, fossilized sasquatch poop, and letters describing close encounters. Some, but not all, exhibits have placards, typed and hand-cut.

“This place is epic,” Eli says.

“I admit I don’t understand the appeal,” Mothman replies. It’s a Thursday morning and, aside from the owner up front, they have the place to themselves.

“It’s like a glimpse into a more interesting world,” Eli says, though Mothman has never found this world to lack interest. “And a glimpse into the mind that turned a private obsession into . . . this.”

“I’m glad you like it,” Mothman says. A model pterosaur sits next to a sunglass-sporting hippo for reasons too arcane to fathom.

“You’ve always been comfortable with our strangeness,” Eli remarks, leaning close to the glass to admire a statuette of a yeti, rifle in hand. A baby sling on his chest holds a garden gnome. Next to him, Santa wears clogs and carries a balloon marked FBI.

“I empathize with it,” Mothman says. “With the desire to make sense of a reality that generally doesn’t.”

Eli turns to Mothman, the cataract in his left eye doing nothing to diminish the force of his attention. Humans grow old so quickly, though the aches in Mothman’s body, the hearing aid he relies on, and the inches of height he’s lost remind him that he’s bound by the same rules that govern all bodies here. “I figured it made a kind of sense to you,” Eli says. “Being a dimensional explorer, and all.”

Mothman doesn’t remind Eli that he’s more like a shipwreck survivor than an explorer. It’s a detail his friend has never internalized. Mothman’s time among humans has taught him that the truth is not always welcome, not always kind, so he lets it go.

“It’s like Beefcake,” Mothman says instead. That was the ridiculous name Eli had given a stray and notably thick pit bull they’d found injured on the roadside in Mississippi. Mothman’s wings had been itching urgently, and it wasn’t hard to guess that the hurricane gathering strength in the Gulf of Mexico was the cause, but Eli had insisted, so they’d driven all the way to Baton Rouge to find an emergency vet, Beefcake’s head in Eli’s lap, his chonky form pressed close.

“Like Beefcake?” Eli repeated, blinking.

“If the world made sense,” Mothman said, “I’d have been able to do something. To stop the levees from breaking or to make the federal response less disastrous. Something.”

Eli squeezes Mothman’s shoulder. “Oh,” he says. “Oh.” They’d done what they could, hauled sandbags, handed out bottled water, provided some first aid. It’s always been like that: Sometimes Mothman can help, make some small difference, but they can never stop what’s coming. Most times, Mothman can’t even tell what’s coming. Few upheavals announce themselves the way hurricanes do.

They wander the museum’s tight halls. The whole place is only a handful of rooms across two floors. Mothman pauses at a typo-ridden plaque about mokele-mbembe, a legend among people convinced that the earth is only six thousand years old. That belief system that takes considerably more effort to maintain than cryptozoology. Creationists’ claims about extant sauropods might be where they were least wrong: he’d once met a delightful spirit that liked to bask in the waters of the Congo and occasionally reveal themself to westerners as a prank.

#

In his native reality, Mothman’s wings had never itched. He’d never needed to fold them orthogonal to space-time to hide them from curious eyes, either. No Earth-language he’d encountered gave him the words to talk about that place, that life, for languages are shaped by the sense-experiences of their speakers. The best he’d ever managed was that he was strange there, too, though a mundane kind of strange, the kind that never quite syncs with everyone else. Eli’s kind of strange, in a way that had made him a good fit for certain tasks, tasks that benefited from his temperament. He’d tried different terms for his avocation: reality-surveyor, philosoph-cartographer, documentarian. It hardly mattered. An anomaly had cast him upon the shores of this reality, of this charming, horrifying, befuddling planet, and his body had reformed itself in turn. Mothman, whose original name could be spoken only through the vibration of wings, had kept doing what he’d always done: Learning. Bearing witness.

Mothman wipes sweat from his forehead, lamenting the heat in these overstuffed rooms. He speaks many languages, and in none of them can he find words for the feeling of being present for the end of the world.

#

“Check this out,” Eli says, calling Mothman back to the moment. He’s transfixed by a two-foot sculpture under glass: a wolf on two legs with a human torso and yellow eyes. It towers over a frightened child, apparently for scale. The sculptor was talented, though could have benefited from training in anatomy. A placard identifies the artist only as a psychiatric patient from Michigan.

“Odd,” Mothman says. Eli’s face is so close to the glass that his breath mists upon it. What is Mothman missing?

“There’s something compelling here,” Eli says after a long while, still hunched over, staring into the creature’s eyes. “A vision.”

“I’ve never found any reason to think wolfmen exist,” Mothman replies, feeling unnerved in a way he doesn’t understand.

“Maybe that’s it,” Eli says, still captivated by the work of outsider art. “When I met you, I finally had proof that reality was bigger . . . weirder . . . than it seemed. I wonder if this artist felt the same, even if it was a hallucination.”

Mothman doesn’t say “Except I’m real,” but maybe Eli feels those unspoken words, because he goes on. “I know, it’s not the same thing. But it’s hard to know when you’re in it, what’s . . . externally real, and what’s just inside you.”

“You always seemed very good at it.” Mothman clasps his friend’s shoulder. This body, this dimensionally localized form that holds him together, feels like a string pulled too tight. Perhaps it is the end he’s feeling, or a side effect of being surrounded by kitsch, by obsession, by others’ joys and fears.

“Or maybe I’m just good at recognizing the reality of others’ distress.” Eli nods to the statue almost reverently.

#

“Not a very good likeness,” Eli says. They’re considering a framed painting labeled Mothman. The creature has red eyes, but otherwise looks like an owl, or anyway someone’s half-remembered glimpse of one, not unlike those medieval monks trying to depict lions.

“To be fair to the artist,” Mothman says, “your brains aren’t evolved to see my wings.”

“Still, it’s not very flattering.” There’s a grin under Eli’s words, and Mothman smiles too.

“More flattering than this one.” Mothman points to a pencil sketch of a merman with a face cribbed from Neanderthals. The text insert claims it might be linked to litoral chupacabras and offers no further explanation. The whole museum is like that, a web of supposed connections and inferences that may make sense to their curator, but remain impenetrable even to those who’ve spent their lives compelled by the oddities of the human mind.

Mothman glances furtively behind them to ensure the owner isn’t watching them, then removes his sunglasses and wipes sweat from his eyes. A friend, now long dead, once told him his eyes looked like “deep field astronomy.” For Mothman, it is enough to know most humans are afraid of his eyes, though foxes seem amused by them.

“I think that artist just saw a literal manatee,” Eli says, gesturing at the merman.

“Or maybe that’s his type.” Mothman readjusts his shades.

“Like, the way sailors imagined sirens from birds and horniness?” Eli asks.

Mothman grins. “No, sirens are real.”

Eli does a double take. “Wait, really? Like ‘smash me on the rocks, Mommy’ sirens?”

It’s true, Mothman tells him, but they aren’t interested in luring sailors to their deaths. “They’re just singing to their siblings,” he says. “Who look like any other human, but are part of their flock. Or commune. Their term for themselves doesn’t really translate.”

Eli considers this as he examines a painting of Nessie waving a No to Brexit sign. “Okay, yeah, that tracks. They’re just doing their thing and Odysseus is like ‘I’d hit it.’”

Human sexual desire is largely a mystery to Mothman, but the fact that some people are just assholes isn’t. “They’re friendly, if you approach them with respect,” he says. “But they’re slow to trust.”

“Seems wise.”

Mothman knows about being slow to trust and about the joys of finding someone worthy of it; Eli is Mothman’s third friend since arriving in this reality. Mothman’s wings itch worse than ever and the heat is nauseating.

“I’m going to step outside,” he tells Eli. “It’s too hot in here. No, take your time.” Eli cocks his head, but nods. Mothman still doesn’t know what he’s here to witness, but whatever it is, his wings tell him it will be bigger than anything he’s ever encountered. He’s at no risk of missing the end of the world.

On his way out, he signs the guest book, using the name on his license and wondering if his little play on alien visitor myths will be noticed by anyone, letting himself forget that there’s no longer time for that. He sits on the curb, letting the breeze and the faint smell of brine wash over him. The storefronts are mostly empty. Eli was right: it is hard to imagine the apocalypse starting here. If it was his to choose, maybe his wings would have guided him to a tide pool or the Himalayas. But then he’d never have been able to watch Eli witness this place.

A battered electric car pulls up. Two young women emerge, looking up at the museum sign and laughing derisively. No: after a moment, he realizes they’re genuinely pleased, with the museum, the evening, with each other. Arms around each other’s waists, they step inside, only to emerge looking dejected.

Mothman knows better, knows how badly humans react to him, but he can’t bear to see such sadness, not now, not in the face of what’s coming. “Excuse me for interrupting,” he hears himself saying, “but is something wrong?”

The women seem to notice him for the first time. “Oh, nothing important,” the shorter one says.

“It’s just a bit more than we were hoping to spend.” Her partner’s tone doesn’t quite conceal the depths of her understatement, her disappointment. There’s something about these two, a stiffness in their bodies, the faint smell of perspiration and recycled air: they’re on a road trip too. Well, a bit of kindness can serve as a toast to the end of the world. Mothman stands, swaying slightly, his knee objecting, his wings recalibrating themselves, and reaches for his wallet. “You need to see it,” he says. “Truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” Before they can object, he’s handing them a pair of twenties. “Really,” he says, holding a hand up to forestall any objections. “My treat.”

They thank him, beaming, as untroubled by him as others are by Eli. He hasn’t experienced that since, well, since Eli himself. It feels good, even if the evening is somehow still getting hotter.

The travelers head inside, chatting excitedly with each other. Mothman returns to the curb and wipes his eyes again. That’s when he realizes, or lets himself realize. His human form isn’t him, but in this reality it might as well be, and what it portends is clear enough.

He isn’t sure when Eli emerges to sit beside him, carrying a T-shirt celebrating the Famed Spectral Moose of Maine. His friend holds it out to him.

“For you,” Eli says. “So you can look stylish for the end of the world.”

But now Mothman knows it wasn’t the end of the world that brought them here.

“It’s perfect,” Mothman says. The shirt is baggy, but he struggles to pull it on. His body’s gone clumsy, his arms aching, but at least his wings have stopped itching. He’s right where he needs to be.

“Whatever happened to Beefcake?” he asks, his words coming slowly now.

Eli blinks, then smiles back. “A lovely family adopted him. The oldest kid sent me pictures of him for years. He lived a long, happy life, that chunky fucker.”

“That’s good,” Mothman hears himself saying. “Good.” Maybe the word he was looking for, the one he thought would describe witnessing the end of the world, was bittersweet, because he loves this place, these hopeless, disastrous, lovely people. But there’s a relief to knowing it isn’t over yet. He’d like to convey that to Eli, that this catastrophe is only a personal one, and not even a catastrophe at all. The only world whose end he’s been sensing is his own. And this is the right place for it.

“It’s been a pleasure,” he tells Eli. “To know you and . . . be known.” When he sags, his friend supports him, right up to the end.

#

Thank you for joining our journey this week.

---

Izzy Wasserstein is a queer, trans woman. An academic, Wasserstein was born and raised in Kansas and currently lives in Southern California. She is the author of dozens of short stories, two poetry collections, the short story collection All the Hometowns You Can’t Stay Away From (Neon Hemlock Press, 2022), and the novella These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart (Tachyon, 2024). Wasserstein shares a home with her spouse, Nora E. Derrington, and their animal companions.

“Mothman and Eli Visit the Cryptid Museum,” © Izzy Wasserstein, 2025.

The Sunday Morning Transport: Selected Stories 2022 is now available at Weightless Books!