The Mantis
They still haven’t reported anything on the news. I’m starting to wonder if they’re going to say anything at all now. Maybe they won’t? Maybe they’re just gonna try to sweep it under the rug?
Although I don’t see how they can?
How do you cover up something that big?
I don’t know. I honestly just don’t know.
It’s probably better if I don’t give my name or say who I work for. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but I think that the less I say, the better.
Maybe.
What I will say is this - I used to be the personal aide for a United States Senator. Maybe he’s someone you’ve heard of, maybe not. Either way, like every other United States Senator, he was a complete and total piece of shit.
Is that a harsh thing to say about my former employer? Probably. And maybe I’m a little bit jaded. I used to have a lot of respect for the man, once upon a time. I used to think he told things like they were, that he wanted what was best for the people! I used to think that he was a man of conviction, faith and drive.
Nope.
He was a lying, cheating, greedy prick and he treated just about everyone around him like shit. Me, his own family, anyone he saw as beneath him. We were all just side characters who didn’t mean jack shit to him. And you know what? That stung. I graduated from a fucking Ivy League College. I worked my ass off to get into the role I got.
And what did he use me for?
Coffee.
A glorified food courier.
And a personal fucking chauffeur.
Was any of that part of my job description? No! But that’s what he had me doing!
And it’s why I was with him on the night he disappeared.
***
He’d stepped out on his wife before. Usually with other women, although a few times I’d caught him meeting up with other men.
Keep in mind, this was a man who’d said: “The Bible is perfectly clear. God did not intend for a man to lie with another man. It is a cardinal sin.”
And yet I’d watched him grin to himself every time he got a Grindr notification on his phone, so I guess whatever God intended just didn’t apply to him.
So when he told me he had a ‘meeting’ at 10 PM at an apartment on the far side of town,
I knew exactly what was going on.
I knew better than to say anything, so I just shut my mouth and drove him down to the address he’d given me. It wasn’t a Grindr meetup this time. No, the sound I heard from his phone was from a different app, so at least he wasn’t being a complete hypocrite this time.
The apartment building we eventually arrived at was fairly run down. Not abandoned, but definitely old and poorly maintained. He had us park at a restaurant down the street and walk down to the front door.
I of course had to walk with him, because God forbid he not have his personal indentured servant with him for the five minutes it would take for him to get in and out of there.
When we got to the lobby of the building, he pressed one of the buzzers to ring one of the occupants. The name beside it read:
B Desrosiers
The intercom rang. Once. Twice. And finally a woman’s voice answered.
“Yes?”
“Briar my dear, I’ve come to say hello.” My employer said in a playful, sing-song voice that almost made me die of secondhand embarrassment on the spot.
But somehow, somehow it seemed to charm whoever that woman on the other end of the intercom was. She laughed. It was a soft, almost gentle sound.
“Ah, just in time my sweet. Come, come. Don’t me waiting.”
Her voice had a slight accent to it. French, I think? It was hard to say for sure.
The door was unlocked and my employer opened it with a flourish, strutting inside like… well, like a man on his way to get laid.
He didn’t even look back at me as he made his way into the elevator. One could’ve almost been forgiven for forgetting I existed entirely.
He pressed the button for the 9th floor and we rode it all the way up. Then from there, I followed him to a room near the end of the hall. 918.
He did an attempt at the shave and a haircut knock, that catastrophically failed and devolved into 7 toneless knocks on the door.
A few moments passed, before the door slowly opened and a face appeared on the other side.
The woman who greeted us… greeted him, was way too young for him. She looked to be somewhere in her mid twenties. Her neck length hair was cut into a bob cut and dyed a soft lavender. From what I could see from her shoulders, she had a lot of tattoos. She wore dangling tassel chain earrings, and her eyes were a deep shade of blue… although for some reason, she seemed to only be looking at me when she opened the door.
“Ah! Just in time!” She purred. “Oh, you brought a friend?”
“Just a personal assistant,” My Employer assured her. “Don’t you worry about him. You’ve got me all to yourself.”
Her lips curled into a wide smile… maybe too wide.
For a moment, I could’ve sworn I saw the corners of her mouth… splitting.
“Oh, I cannot wait…” She said. She swung the door open a little wider for him, inviting him inside with her, although she herself seemed to move with it. I never saw more than just her head and shoulders as the door opened and he stepped inside. Her eyes seemed to remain fixated on me, even as her head turned to follow him. Then the door closed, and they were gone.
I sighed, took out my phone and played a game while I leaned against a wall to wait this out.
Unfortunately, this was not my first rodeo like this and I doubted at the time it would be my last.
Not even ten minutes later - I heard the screaming.
Not screams of pleasure either.
Trust me, my employer had never made a person scream in pleasure before.
No.
This was terror.
This was agony.
Absolute.
Fucking.
Agony.
And for as much of an asshole as he was, I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. Not morally and not legally.
I ran for the apartment door, trying to force it open. The door wouldn’t budge. I kicked it. Pounded on it. Threw all of my weight against it. I felt it shake with every impact. I’m not a very big man, but I was sure I was making progress! I could hear the wood cracking!
And the screams just kept getting louder. More ragged… more wet.
I slammed into the door again. This time it finally gave, part of it breaking just enough to allow it to swing open.
I was about to rush in… but as I stood in the doorframe, looking at what was in that apartment, my entire body just locked up.
I froze.
And all I could do was stare.
The ‘woman’ my employer had met with - Briar stood in the center of the room, towering over him on four long, sticklike legs beneath a long, thin, insectoid abdomen that protruded from beneath her flowing black dress.
She held my Employer a few feet off the ground, gripping him in a pair of raptoral claws lined with sawlike teeth that had snapped shut around his body. One gripped him by the shoulder, and the other was wrapped around his torso.
And her face… Jesus Christ… her face…
It was the same face I had seen at the doorway. Only now it was… warped. Her mouth was open, hanging far wider than it had any right to, and I could see mandibles extending from inside, chewing vigorously at his exposed neck.
Blood was gushing down his shirt. His screams had faded into a delirious gurgle. I could smell urine as his bladder failed him.
He wasn’t dead.
But I wouldn’t have described him as alive anymore either.
Her eyes were fixated on me, and her head slowly pulled away from my Employer's corpse. Her bloodstained mouth curled into a twisted smile.
“Now, now…” Briar said. “Can’t a lady eat in peace?”
I bolted.
Without a second fucking thought, I bolted.
I didn’t even take the elevator. The elevator would’ve taken too long! I took the stairs, racing down them two at a time to reach the bottom as fast as I could.
The apartment lobby flew past me as I sprinted through the parking lot, and into the one next door where we’d parked.
It was only after I got to the car that I looked back at that apartment building.
Up on the ninth floor, standing in one of the windows, I saw the unmistakable shape of the Mantis Woman.
She seemed to be standing on her balcony, looking down at me.
I froze up, staring up at her, half expecting her to come after me. But she never did.
Instead, I saw her crawl off of the balcony, up along the wall. I could see something grasped in her claws… and I knew it was my now former boss.
She disappeared into the darkness, and I got as far away from that fucking apartment as possible.
***
I’ve told this story to everyone who’s asked. The cops, the FBI and some other spooks from some other organization I can’t remember.
I told them all exactly what I saw.
And that’s just sorta been it.
No Missing Persons report.
No story about an accident.
No explanation at all.
The man I worked for was a real son of a bitch… but I’m not sure if he deserved what he got. I mean, maybe he did. I don’t know the full extent of the bullshit he pulled. But all the same this all just seems a little too brutal to me.
Maybe it’s not him I’m worried about. After all, he’s past caring now. Briar saw to that.
No.
I might as well just come out and say it.
What I’m worried about right now is me.
Because I’m the only one who saw what really happened that night.
And I can’t shake the feeling that someone is gonna wanna make sure I stay quiet.