The Legend Of Antennatruck

Since the beginning of time Man has pursued those mythical beasts of yore.  Sasquatch.  The Yeti.  The Loch Ness Monster.  Extraterrestrials.  Manbearpig. A good Uwe Boll movie.  That the only evidence of these phenomenon consist of obviously faked footage, eyewitness "accounts" by insane drunken hicks, and TLC shows apparently produced by adolescent chimpanzees only drives some to even more desperate lengths to secure actual proof.

My personal demon does not take the form of an ape, a little green man, that dinosaur Fred Flintsone used to move rocks at Mr. Slate's quarry, or even Bloodrayne 3: The Third Reich.  No, the creature that haunts my dreams is something even more frighteningly puzzling: Antennatruck.

I first became aware of Antennatruck when I was a small boy.  My dreams, which were supposed to be inhabited by happy visions of friends and family, adventures in space, winning the big game, and punching Darth Vader in the nads instead was where Antennatruck stalked me.  Like the grim spectre of death it rode, its grille like teeth, its tail lights glowing like the fires of hell.  And from the roof of the cab, like a spire on the dark church of Satan, a steely metal appendage that could both impale little children and pick up Fawlty Towers in syndication on the local UHF station.

Soon after I began to see it in the waking world as well.  Stalking me from corner to corner.  Lurking at the bus stop.  Waiting for me to let down my guard.

As I got older, Antennatruck faded into the background.  It was at every other street corner.  Then every fourth; every tenth.  But I never forgot.  With dawning horror I realized the truth: Antenna truck had grown weary of waiting for my guard to drop and had moved on to other prey.  It was then that I began the hunt.

I couldn't let Antennatruck take an innocent, so I began searching.  My travels took me to the far reaches of the Earth.  In Tibet they call it 灵魂的贪食者 which means "devourer of souls".  In the Urals they refer to a beast which "roams the steppes on wheels of silver" and impales farmers with a "lance of evil".  And in Bangladesh it is simply referred to as "the truck that can get PBS".

The years passed, and the stories of children lost in the night, the only warning being the fuzzy strains of the theme song to WKRP In Cincinnati fading into the darkness, piled up.  After so long I lost heart.  I gave up the search, moving to the remote wilds of North Dakota in an effort to forgive myself for my failure, and to forget.

More years passed and I finally began to heal.  The occasional stories of horror and mayhem the authorities around the world passed off on some evil stranger (but I knew the truth, oh yes!) that made it to my ears grew less and less frequent.  I believed it was finally over.  I was stupid.

I saw it again.  It's back.  It's come for me and it won't stop.  God help me.

Click to enlarge, if you dare!