The Oothecae Well
We all stood around Jenny, dazed as the hinges of her jaws snapped and expanded to swallow the last remaining bits of Bartholomew’s head. Not even his mother, Marcia, could recognize the grotesque and mangled remnants of his face, but we all knew it was him. He wore that metallic name tag I told him to take off on many occasions: BARTHOLOMEW MARE. We lived in a small town where even silence was held hostage; it was a given we all knew him, but he wasn’t the brightest, so we all left him be. Each day he came from my fields, masked with sweat and grime, but he wore that name tag with pride—even up to his death. I shielded my eyes from his nametag glinting in the moonlight as his body was jerked to and fro by Jenny’s gnawing on his skull. The echoes of his bones cracking and grinding under Jenny’s teeth made Theodore’s stomach turn—he vomited in Marcia’s petunias.
“Somebody stop her!” Marcia screeched as she ran toward Bartholomew’s cold body. “Please, Jenny! Stop thi—”
Her cries were shut down by Harry, her husband, tackling her just before she got past the town’s pride and joy: the drinking well. Marcia wasn’t a fast runner; her thick ankles were more suited for being in the kitchen making pies than for something as strenuous as running a few feet.
“Marcia! Have you gone crazy?! He’s gone, alright? Our boy is gone. Same with Jenny. They got her too.” Harry grunted as he kept Marcia’s round figure pinned down. He had her face pressed into the ground, and she cried more than enough tears to fill the drinking well itself.
“What’re we gonna do, Pa?” Theodore wiped his lip, his breath still reeking of the potatoes and hard-boiled eggs he ate earlier in the evening. “We cain’t just leave her to…to eat him! It ain’t right. She’s gonna eat the rest of him!” His voice wobbled as much as his bottom lip quivered. Poor boy. I thought before Jenny’s head perked up at his exclamations. I took a deep breath and unbuckled the holster of my gun. I never had to shoot anything larger than a fox, but my revolver felt lighter after seeing her sharp eyes lock onto us with Bartholomew’s flesh hanging from her canines.
Poor Bartholomew. Poor Jenny. The two were sweet on one another—maybe too much, and that’s why they ended in tragedy. They knew the rules; I’m not sure why they thought they were the exception to it. I haven’t had a sliver of pleasure since Zelda left and the Mantid came in her place. Although, knowing Bartholomew, it was probably Jenny’s idea. She was always too selfish to see beyond her desires.
Jenny was on her knees, and her head swiveled in all directions as she surveyed the area. Her hands were folded at her wrists like claws, as if she were one of them. Bartholomew’s blood seeped from her jaw and flowed down her half-bare body. She should be dead, but as Harry said, they had gotten to her. I saw it in her eyes. She scanned us like a security camera, and I shivered. Her whole body was completely still, but her damn head kept gawking at us. She really was one of them; however, it wasn’t the way her pupils moved independently of each other that told me that, but rather it was how her bright emerald irises turned into a muted gray with nothing to be found.
Her hissing became louder the more Theodore raved on about burying Bartholomew, but there would be nothing left if we didn’t do something. I had never wanted anyone to shut up more than I did in that moment. His loud mouth was going to have him, or worse, the rest of us, end up like Jenny’s late lover. My eyes twitched before I decided it was time to smack some sense into the young boy, but of course, Sheriff Rauley had gotten to it before me.
“Step aside, Stephen.” His hulk of a body brushed past me and almost sent me flying to the ground like Marcia. Why was she still on the ground? Harry wasn’t pinning her down anymore. I caught my balance and glanced away. The woman was mourning; I had no right to judge.
Our hands snapped to our ears, and the ringing of Sheriff Rauley’s sawed-off shotgun muffled the sound of yelling. I tried to pop my ears and looked past the screaming match between the sheriff and Darlene, Jenny’s mother, to see Jenny’s lifeless body filled with pellets. Though it could be argued that she was dead long before this, at least her mind was. But now her body was dead with bullets in her head. A parade of goosebumps crept up my arms, while the miniature praying mantises that had been poking at her brain escaped through her orifices to the fields. Poor Jenny.
“Why did you shoot my baby?” Darlene cried. I winced as she fell to her knees in the gravel beside Marcia with a trembling hand covering her lemon teeth—gravel was rough on the knees; I knew from experience. It must have been strange for her to see Jenny’s head blown off. She and Jenny could have convinced the town they were long-lost twins if Darlene hadn’t made a spectacle of Jenny’s birth all those years ago. “My baby…she’s dead. You... you killed my baby!”
Sheriff Rauley rolled his eyes and cleared his throat, despite his voice always coming out gruff. “Oh, please, don’t act like you ever cared about the girl. You called her a whore for findin’ the love you never could.” He wiped off his gun before tucking it into his holster. “Your ‘baby’ broke the rules. Now look at her. She was one of ‘em. She was gon’ do the same thang to us had I not saved y’all’s asses.”
I thought Sheriff Rauley had a point. Poor Jenny wasn’t human anymore. But who has been ever since the locusts disappeared? Never in my life had I thought I’d be missing the locusts as a farmer—life had a funny sense of humor. We’d still have sweet Jenny and dense but likeable Bartholomew.
I wish the locusts were here.
We’ve had nothing but a dry harvest and an even drier spell haunting our town for the past few years. It was a miracle that the drinking well still had water even after all this time. I was sure they’d all die by dehydration at this point, but the well kept them going. That was the only thing that raised their spirits, but it didn’t help that I proudly had 100 acres of land, but only 25 proved to be fruitful; that angered many people. The locusts ate everything—my corn, my wheat, even my damn tall grass. How selfish they were to only leave a quarter of my crops for us to survive with! And yet, I’d get the brunt of the others’ complaints—not the locusts.
“Stephen can’t even grow enough wheat; how am I supposed to make bread?” You don’t, dammit.
“Nothing comes out of those fields. How come most of the water goes there?” Oh, right, I should just not try to grow a damn thing, and you’ll keep your damn water.
“He’s probably keeping all of the food to himself; I wouldn’t be surprised with how round his belly is.” Do you not hear the locusts buzzing throughout the fields every damn time you pass it to get your damn water from the damn drinking well?!
Every single complaint irked and itched my ears to the point I wanted to blow out my own eardrums. However, I couldn’t be angry with them; it was a frustrating time. Hunger led to many things. Complaints? Blamed it on hunger. Frustration? Blamed it on hunger. Starvation? Blamed it on hunger. Death? Blamed it on hunger. We were all going insane, even more so than Old Man Leviticus, who only had a brass pot as his only earthly belonging and always mumbled the strangest “prophecies”: Scour the ends of the Earth for nuts, for the end is nigh!
Insanity was the gateway to desperation, and desperation hung over our town like still, suffocating fog. I couldn’t breathe, and it was desperation that made me resort to a talking praying mantis to solve our locust situation.
The sun was blazing down on me and Bartholomew as we cut down the stalks of wheat that were tainted by the bites of the locusts. Bartholomew groaned and fell onto his back, his nametag shining ever brighter than the sun.
“I’m e-e-exha—”
“Exhausted, Bartholomew.” I helped him finish the word and dropped my sickle in the mound of dead stalks behind us. “Go ahead and take a break.”
His eyes lit up like stars, and he shot up without hesitation. “Thank you, sir!” He yapped like a puppy and ran to the edge of the field, where Jenny held a pitcher of homemade lemonade, just for him.
They were sweet on one another; seeing them made me miss my own sweetie. Farm life wasn’t the life for good ’ole Zelda. She was a city girl and believed the East was calling her. I scoffed at her threats to move eastward with our boy, Danny (as if I could leave 100, well, 25 good acres of farming land for the wild to have), but her threats proved to be true when she left in the high of night. I ought to file a report for kidnapping, but Sheriff Rauley was her brother, and a headstrong man like that wouldn’t turn his head on his sister; in fact, the sheriff encouraged her no-good plans to leave. I lost my boy because of it. Sighing as I watched Jenny and Bartholomew walk away, clean hand in dirty hand, I bent down to grab my sickle before I heard a squeaky voice with the most vulgar pair of lips I’d ever come across.
“Watch where you are stepping, cretin! Must you be so careless?” The voice grated against my eardrums, causing me to wince. It sounded like the barn door’s hinge that wouldn’t stop squeaking no matter how much oil you gave it. I looked down at my feet after its never-ending string of obscenities reached its end.
“What in the…?” There was a praying mantis on its hind legs, glaring at me. I looked around again, thinking, surely that was someone else’s voice.
“Hello? Down here, you imbecile!” My eyes widened at the praying mantis; it was talking. I asked it—well, her—how she was able to communicate with me. Another long line of obscenities later, she told me her name was Serainathus and explained to me that she and her mantid came from a nuclear test site out East.
Of course, it was out East—those civil folk knew nothing about hard work; Zelda knew nothing about hard work. All they did was play with their toys and leave sentient praying mantises to come out West and live in my dead fields. I chewed my lip, thinking about what I was going to do. The sun wasn’t getting any warmer, and I couldn’t have any more insects disrupting my crops.
“Well, Serainathus, any chance you and your manti’ can—”
“Mantid. Me and my mantid.” I huffed at her correction.
“Right, mantid. Any chance y’all can leave? I’ve got more than enough bugs to worry about.”
She explained that there was no other place for them to go, which I knew was a load of bull; there were many empty plains in the West that weren’t my farm, but as I was about to shoo her away, she proposed an offer:
“Wait! You have a problem with the locusts, right? We love locusts! We’ll take care of our fill of those pests, and you let us stay in your town.”
I wiped the sweat off my brow, only for another salty droplet to roll down my face. It must have been the heat; surely it was the heat that made me delirious enough to even consider a deal with an insect. In hindsight, I’ve realized it was the desperation that had my town in a chokehold that made me consider it. Not many can say they’ve shaken hands with the raptorial limbs of a praying mantis. But I could. And I did. Though there was something about the way Serainathus opened her mandibles in a smile that made me question my choice.
That lingering feeling had been ephemeral since that year. My town enjoyed a fruitful harvest from the 50 acres that weren’t mauled by the locusts. Serainathus and her mantid were able to feast on them and saved me 25 acres that year; due to that, I let them stay on my land. I built them a miniature shed by the drinking well beside my farmhouse since the fields were no place for them to live. There were only two drinking wells in town, my own for the crops and the communal drinking well in the center plaza. I never used it, which Bartholomew thought was odd. It was much easier drinking from the gallons of water I stored in my basement than using my fields’ drinking well that reeked of manure. Many complained, thinking that I kept the well for myself, but a farmer’s job is hard work; only Bartholomew and I were aware of that, especially when feeding an entire town—my fields deserved that well.
I became acquainted with Serainathus and her mantid. There was her posse of nameless thralls she used for pleasure. Every now and then one of them would be missing, but it was not my place to question their whereabouts. And then there were her sisters, Maintica and Haephylis, who weren’t allowed to have any thralls like Serainathus. I learned quickly that they were a matriarchy, and it was Serainathus who was the matriarch. But it was quite strange since their natural species were often solitary organisms; perhaps it was the radioactive blood flowing within them that caused the evolution. I had no clue as to the right answer.
It was a cold winter that year, but Bartholomew and I had grown enough food for the whole town to indulge in. There were no more complaints, rumors, or insults spreading from lip to lip and constricting around my neck like a cobra. I saved my town—me, not Sheriff Rauley. And I had bigger plans for the next planting, which came faster than the amount of love I received for becoming my town’s savior.
Spring came around, and so did the bees and butterflies, but also locusts. The snow had melted and filled the wells and creek with more than enough water for a great harvest in the fall, but none of that would matter if I didn’t get rid of those pests.
I stalked over to Serainathus’ shed; she had her sisters and thralls make it larger and insulated the interior with leaves and sticks. Clever. I thought as I crouched down to the shed. Taking a deep breath, I scanned the area to make sure Bartholomew, Jenny, or any other person in this town that liked to bother me was around. I hadn’t told a soul about Serainathus. It wasn’t like I could. These people would look at me as if I had spent too much time near Old Man Leviticus if I spoke of a group of talking praying mantises—God loved him, but boy did he make the old man looney. I wasn’t keen on being a part of that crowd.
“Serainathus, you in there?” I whispered and waited for one of them to come out. The mini door didn’t open, and my brows furrowed. Am I being ignored by an insect? There was chattering within the shed, and I whispered again. No answer. I huffed and made the decision to open the door myself. “Serainathus, why didn’t you answer the damn do... oh.”
I gulped as I saw Serainathus gouging on the head of one of her thralls. Although she was an insect, something about it made my facial features squeeze together. Her claws and mandibles were painted a deep blue-green—the blood of her thrall. He twitched away from her, but her claws sank deeper into his thorax, oozing a steady stream of blood towards the door. He had lost control of his body with her first bite into his tiny brain, poor soul. Is this not cannibalism? I thought before she hissed at me to close the door. I obliged and gave her privacy.
It was natural. They were insects. It’s just the circle of life for them. Still, I couldn’t get the relentless twitching out of my mind as I waited for her to be finished.
“He offered himself to me.” She explained as she came out of the shed. The crunch of her own kind being ground between her mandibles repeated in my mind, and all I could do was nod.
“It is a great honor to please and then feed a being like me.” I nodded again.
“He was a useless one anyway. He won’t be missed, but he was quite delicious.” I nodded for the last time, and we sat there with silence ringing in our ears. She broke that silence. “What was so important that you had to interrupt my feeding?”
“Our deal. I need more locusts gone. I only have 50 acres of my 100 back. I need it all if I want a good harvest.” A good harvest means praise, and praise means respect. I thought as I glanced back down at Serainathus.
She stared at me for a moment, with her bulging eyes examining my firm expression. She seemed to be thinking, no, plotting, because once she was done, she nodded with a smile. “Then I must ask something of you, Stephen.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Go on.”
“With the state my mantid and I are in, we need more members.” She rubbed her claws together before continuing. “I need to lay my eggs somewhere.”
“Eggs? How many are there?” My lips pulled downwards when she didn’t answer but relaxed as I shrugged. I had no other choice. The locusts were the biggest obstacle keeping me away from the respect I was due from this town. “Fine, you can find a place, just not on my land. I can’t risk y’all ruining my crops.”
“Kehehehe.” Her laugh sounded even worse than her voice. “Of course, Stephen. We have a deal.” I shook her raptorial limbs once again, not realizing this was exactly what she wanted.
We were all too blinded by the bountiful harvest in the autumn of that year to notice that the hissing of Serainathus’ mantid overtook the buzzing of the locusts until there was none. My fields were filled with praying mantises in the day, and at night, they took shelter in the shed by my drinking well. Bartholomew commented on its now larger size, and I told him it was for my little Cerberus, Rufus. I said it was his new doghouse, and Bartholomew, being the dense fool he was, took my claims to heart.
Click. I tucked my lighter into my pocket and leaned my aching body against the barn. I hadn’t taken a break that day, as Bartholomew and I were determined to finish up the last of the harvest. And we did.
The dry breeze swept away the smoke of my cigarette. My eyes squinted, fighting against the blazing, setting sun to take a look at the Mantid by the drinking well. Serainthus’ thralls were working together to slather their shelter with mud. I suppose it was to enhance its insulation. Now, usually, I would have complimented their intelligence, but this time the corners of my lips were flipped upside down. Their numbers increased, and I began to wonder. If all of the locusts are gone, what will they eat then?
With a final puff, I dropped my cigarette; it sizzled and drowned in the shallow pail of water beside me. I walked over to Serainthus and her mantid’s shelter, but my head flicked toward the direction of the town’s drinking well, where Marcia’s scream shredded through the calmness of the dusk atmosphere. I froze. Marcia was always dramatic, shrieking over every little inconvenience, but this scream made my stomach churn. Sweating as I started towards the town center, my feet lost traction with the ground. There was a trail of mud Serainthus’ thralls left in my path; I slipped.
“Agh!” I coughed, pushing myself up from the dirt. A mix of soil and manure stuck to the buds of my tongue, causing me to cough harder. This was meant for my fields, not for me to eat. My brows furrowed while I wiped the mud off of my face, and then I heard it—the snickers. Their pitch was like a dog whistle that only I could hear. I saw the thralls before me, their mandibles widening from each corner.
“The Queen’s eggs are ready.” They announced simultaneously. My brows shifted from their stiff position into arches to make space for my widened eyes. I glanced at the town’s drinking well and then my own. I hadn’t realized it before, but their growing shelter had been built over the well I use for my fields. The same well that is connected to the town’s center—the one connected to the creek.
Without a moment wasted, I dashed for the town center. The clamor of voices surrounding the drinking well grew in volume, the dissonance beating against the drums of my ears. I thought about the deal I made with Serainthus. It was harmless. It was meant to be harmless, but my throat tightened at the sight of the pulsing capsules of eggs scaling the floor and walls of the well.
“What in the hell is that?!” Harry jumped back, nearly dropping the well’s wooden lid into its depths. Other townsfolk leaned forward to take a glance at the squirming mantises below. Marcia had dropped the bucket she had just used to fetch water and slapped the metal cup away from Theodore’s lips before he could take a sip.
“Momma, I was drinkin’ that!” He exclaimed but piped down when he felt the glares he earned from the rest of us. Sheriff Rauley leaned over the well, shining his dim flashlight at the eggs. They reflected the light back, its heat making the sac of eggs pulse faster. A few of the egg sacs deflated, freeing the mantises and their intent to escape the well.
The sheriff grunted, slamming the lid that Harry dropped over the top of the well. He sealed it shut and turned to the rest of us. “Alright, everyone back up. We gotta set some new rules regardin’ this situation.” His voice held our attention without wavering despite the grotesque scene we all had just seen. “No drinkin’ from this well, y’all hear me? No exceptions. We don’t know how long these eggs have been here, so assume we’re all infected with ’em.”
I agreed with Sheriff Rauley, but it went without saying he was tactless when trying to reassure people. The wide-eyed stares and shaking bodies after the discovery made my chest feel heavier. As if the weight of the deal I made was stronger than gravity working against me. I coughed into my elbow, but the tension remained.
“How do we know how it spreads?” Darlene’s question sent a wave of nods and murmurs among the crowd.
With the way Sheriff Rauley rolled his eyes, I could tell he wanted to retreat back to his bed. “Treat it like the flu, alright? So, no contact with anyone until we figure this out.” Everyone’s eyes turned to those who were in a relationship. I frowned when they all looked my way. My Zelda left me—took my boy with her—why would I be looked at? But it was Jenny and Bartholomew’s giggling behind me that made me realize those stares weren’t for me. Darlene went over to drag Jenny away, but the girl brought Bartholomew along with her. The two were inseparable, and I gulped. Surely they both understood the gravity of the situation we were in. All would be fine.
It was a day later, after the discovery of the eggs, that Jenny took Bartholomew’s head. Based on her bare state, we assumed they ignored the rules for a bit of fun. Was the fun worth it? I thought to myself before shaking my head. No, it wasn’t their fault that this happened. Only two parties were at fault for this; I was one of them. My fists clenched as I stared at Marcia and Darlene sobbing over the dead bodies of their kin. They didn’t deserve this. Something within me was brewing, and I turned away from the macabre scene. Tuning out the calls of my name, I trudged back to my field’s drinking well. It was well overrun with Seraithus’ new mantises.
“Serainthus!” I shouted, my voice resembling the growl of a wolf. I pulled out my lighter. “Come out now, or I’ll burn this shed!”
My eyes twitched as their snickers grew louder, and Serainthus’ kehehe itched my eardrums. “Stephen, you must not be serious.” Her tone dripped with condescension. “Let’s talk about this.”
“Stop!” I looked down at her, but the image of Jenny and Bartholomew’s corpses drenched in their blood. I winced at the sight, and my eyes watered, blurring the image away. “J-just stop! You listen to me. You and your…your mantid are to get out of this town. Now!” I held out my lighter towards the hay at the bottom of their shed.
The mantises around me cocked their heads to the side, their raptorial limbs rubbing against each other. Serainthus, Maintica, and Haephylis all stepped forward, with Serainthus in the middle. “Oh, Stephen. It’s too late now. They’re all infected, except for you. All that’s left is for the eggs to hatch.”
Screeches from the mantises filled the air when my trembling fingers dropped the lighter. “No… no, this can’t be happening.” I fell back on my rear, watching the flames engulf their shelter. The mud I would have complimented them on before wasn’t enough to stop the straw and leaves from catching fire. A few of the mantises were set ablaze, while the rest escaped through the drinking well meant for my fields. But I snatched Serainthus before she could be one of them. “Oh, I oughta—ACK!”
Her raptorial limbs were like razors, shredding the skin of my hand. Wincing at her blades, I squeezed her thorax, causing her bulging eyes to balloon tenfold. Flashes of Jenny and Bartholomew appeared before me once again, and I roared as I threw her into the flames. A high-pitched shriek came from Serainthus while her skin peeled piece by piece. A smile grew across my face; her agony sounded like a choir to my ears. I chuckled, which turned into a cackle. She was gone. Or at least I believed so, but her remnants remained. She was sure to make that clear.
The choir was accompanied by an orchestra of screams. I glanced behind me and looked towards the town. It wasn’t just Marcia’s scream; it was everyone’s. “No… wait…” I mumbled beneath my breath. A weak feeling took over my legs. I tried to move, one step after the other, but my legs wobbled before giving out. I lay there in the dirt, trembling and listening to the shouts and cries from the town I used to serve. My body shook from every gunshot that echoed from my right. To my left, the flames had spread from the shelter to the fields I worked so hard to keep up. I rolled over to watch them; it was better than seeing the river of blood seeping down from the hill the town rested on towards me.
It was a quiet winter that year. The mantises that had escaped never came back. They probably went to terrorize another desperate farmer in some other town. As for the townsfolk, well, I’ll never forget the scent of burning flesh that clouded the air. They all became like Jenny—living without their humanity and ending with bullets within them. Even my poor pup, Rufus, became like Jenny. That was when I decided there couldn’t be a trace of the tragedy that occurred. The town was painted by the ash of the burned corpses, and I stayed in my farmhouse that winter; I couldn’t go back to that place—that place haunted by my guilt.
But it was an even quieter spring.
I sat alone on my porch, holding Bartholomew’s nametag. Its glare hit my eyes, and I set it down on the step beside me. It’s time, I thought. Taking a deep breath, I stared down the barrel of the late Sheriff Rauley’s sawed-off shotgun. As my pointer finger grazed the trigger, I heard a buzzing. My empty fields were being swarmed. The locusts were back, and I couldn’t help but chuckle. That chuckle didn’t reach my eyes; instead, it invoked a steady stream of tears rolling down my face.
Life truly had a funny sense of humor.
