The Mantis

by Chhris

Our light sticks still glow, dip the surroundings into orange half-light. Flickering irregularly they produce shadows on the cave’s walls, moving shadows. Or IT is moving. It’s somewhere here.

I can barely breathe, my throat is tight, my mouth dust-dry. The helmet’s visor keeps fogging up. Sweat runs down my forehead and drops from nose and chin. It’s hot inside here and a strange kind of mist drifts over the ground. I crouch even more to the rock behind which I hide. Carefully, silently. To be invisible, inaudible. Behind me the cave wall. My knees hurt heavily, I can’t stay like that much longer. I try to think. When do the light sticks extinct? How much time is left? Any chance to ever get out of this again alive?

Dave’s body or what’s left of it lays there in half-light maybe 20 m away from me. Motionless in a large dark pool. It must have caught him from behind. Seems as if his head and parts of his chest simply have been bitten off. More is not to see.

Suddenly there was a screeching hiss, Dave’s shrill scream and the cracking noise of his bones. That’s all I heard behind me. I just ran forward and somehow jumped behind this rock. Then took a look, saw something run away. Just a shadow but seemingly some kind of big insect. And now there’s only Dave’s remains in the light stick’s twilight.

They had warned us to enter these caves. That there were huge mantis in underground that would vehemently defend any intruders. But the promise of rare ores was just too tempting. How only could we have been so naive?

Suddenly an unreal peals of laughter. Dave’s body moves, gets up while at the walls of the passage where just before the insect had disappeared, a shadow approaches, a spider-like silhouette. The body comes up to me. I get dizzy. This can’t be real, my mind must fail.

“Chris, calm down.” The body appears in light. It’s Dave putting a torch on himself. “What the hell …” “Come here, old friend. That’s Steve by the way, in spider costume. We’ve pranked you. It’s Halloween mate!”

Staring stunned at Dave I come slowly out from behind my rock and look at Pete who’s removing his costume. “Hello Pete, and … thanks. Another way of introducing oneself.” Neither of them can suppress their grins. “You scared the hell out of me” I admit. “Haha, ok come on, let’s go and find those ores now.”

Dave just turns around when Pete’s eyes and mouth tear open widely behind his visor. Something grabs me by the shoulders, a thud runs through my chest. The lower halves of Dave’s and Pete’s body collapse to ground in front of me. What is left from their upper bodies including heads falls over it.

My head goes down without wanting to. I look down at myself. Arms now end just above my elbows. Forearms lie on either side of my severed lower half. Twitching, but I can’t feel it. My perception slowly vanishes, but out of my eye’s corner I can see the barbed claw of an insect. It holds me by the right shoulder and slowly turns me around. Could I just close my eyes, but I can’t. A triangular head, two huge compound eyes and an arsenal of biting tools. I hear my skull crack as the mantis starts to eat it. Then it gets dark.

Something shakes my shoulder. I hear Dave. “Chris, for heaven’s sake. Thank god you’re back.” “What … happened?” My body shakes. “You fainted, gone for minutes.” “I was … was … eaten by a giant insect.” Both burst in laughter. “By an insect? Maybe something like this?” says Pete, holding a little grasshopper in his hand. “They’re everywhere here, but I doubt they have ever eaten human.” Dave giggles. “Chris, really. Stop taking those drugs.”