Jonathan Hughes / What It Is Like To Be a Bat

What It Is Like To Be a Bat

Jonathan Hughes

Stew DeLatt is perched on the 26th story of the Bank-Bank building: The Skyline’s Pride of Heartwell, IL.

It is just after sunset. Stew is dilapidated. His ribs are showing. He is tiny—just a hair under five feet tall. He adjusts his body to hang from a small ledge jutting out from the architecture. He is completely nude save for a black blindfold and the black, loose, space-aged fabric that he has sutured to his lats and down the length of his arms. Stew has stitched the webbing clean through his skin by hand. It’s one of the many modifications he’s put himself through as part of his Preparation (Stew personally calls it his “Kampf,” which is obviously not something he repeats out loud). His feet grasp the building’s ledge like twisted monkey paws. His ears are cut into elfin points. His teeth have been shaved down to fangs—cosmetic dentistry courtesy (but definitely not pro bono) of a Mr. Nguyen, a man who doesn’t bother with the pretense of Dr. in any shape or form.

Stew is thin; his tiny frame has to be as light as possible. He can’t afford any extra weight. He has donated marrow under different names to achieve hollowed bird bones. He has reduced himself down to a diet of mashed fruit and water at varying levels of fermentation. His heart is racing. His nostrils are facing forward, held in place by a strip of scotch tape that stretches to his forehead. His eyes are shut tight, despite the blindfold. His ears scan the air spasmodically, his face twitching and contorting.

He listens closely. He hears the disjointed homeless’ arguments raging in the parks and alleys below. He hears a businessman masturbating in his office, safe behind the privacy of the closed window blinds. He hears the wet hacking cough of a vendor who sells pretzels and bottled water. He focuses closely and hears the same atonal drone that he’s heard every moment of every day of his life but rarely paid attention to. The sound is a sacred universal Ah Uh Mm. It’s the analog hiss of fluorescent lighting. It’s the blood in his brain circulating round in choral chants.

Stew takes a deep breath and releases the grip of his feet.

He plunges in altitude for a good scare before the wild flapping of his arms takes effect. His plan has worked. All the years of preparation have paid off.

The point-toothed grin on Stew Delatt’s face stretches a mile wide. Stew DeLatt knows what it is like to be a bat, finally. The Kampf is over. Stew DeLatt is free.