The Bat (Dressed) Man
Outside a tourist spot, where shopping centers and novelty museums stood, from one block to the next, the streets were packed with pedestrians all trotting in conflicting herds. Scattered in every direction, all of them embedded in their own corners of consciousness, paying no heed to the basking bat man wandering aimlessly in front of the mega chain restaurant.
He was no caped crusader, nor was he a screen icon of any kind. This was a man of forty: red-eyed, burly-bearded, in a creature costume. He wore an animalistic mask to pair with his full-fledged bat costume, complete with wings of satin, faux fur running head to toe, and a large set of ears, like floppy satellite dishes tethered to his head. A detailed costume, yet it was off-putting to a certain degree, since it pressed tightly onto his withering body.
“Greetings, citizens! Take your picture with me, if you dare!”
It was never clear, either to him or to his passing customers, whether he was a vampire or a vigilante of some kind. It was admittedly a bit muddled. For it had in fact been over a decade since he had picked out the costume from a discount bin at a liquidating party store in a depressing little strip mall right next to his deteriorating apartment building.
When he first showed the costume to his then-girlfriend, she was not thrilled at the prospect of him taking this position. Yet she went along with it, as he was not particularly skilled at anything else. Having been let go the first few days from several dead-end jobs in the food industry had made this abundantly clear.
And so here he was, a lonesome bat man, antsy and restless, hoping someone would notice him and pay him some change for a photo-op. Or if not that, at the very least a slight smile, some small acknowledgment of this man’s undeniable humanity beneath this off-putting fur-covered costume.