Kids of Koi Hill - 1. Enter the Mantis

Memorial Day

Matt studied in the lowlight for the MCAT when Teddy arrived in their room and popped The Great Escape into the PS4.

 

“Hey,” Matt called from his desk, “no distractions tonight, man. I’m really behind.”

 

Teddy waved a pair of headphones in the air. “Don’t mind me.”

 

“Don’t be a pest, I need you to go somewhere else tonight--”

 

He can’t stand the sight of me, Teddy thought. “Last time I checked, I pay rent for this room, you know. You’re not the only one worried about the end of the quarter.”

 

“Jeez, would it kill you to be a little more considerate?”

 

Teddy was in no mood tonight for a scuffle. He grabbed his bag and went down the hallway into Pete’s vacant room. Striking up a deployable ladder, he climbed onto the shingled roof.

 

For the next hour, he blasted a Wilson Phillips album and danced.

 

Underneath his feet, was the room he shared with Matt. A room of their own. A room with a view of the sea and redwoods on the hillside.

 

“He can go fuck himself,” Teddy said. And he turned up the volume, drowning the cricket chirps and owl hoots. He jumped up and down, flailing, prancing, hopping and hoping that the roof might collapse onto somebody’s head below.

 

No matter how we try, most relationships crumble in the end.

Graduation Day

As Teddy pulled into their cul-de-sac off High Street, a stocky muscled figure ran in front of the car. Teddy’s two-ton Toyota struck Matt Martini with a violent thud, tossing him up across the windshield.

 

The red Prius was like a rhino charging a melon. Bits of red pulpy pieces splattered everywhere.

 

Teddy panted, parking on the curb. His brain throbbed after hitting the breaks and banging his head against the wheel. It was a wonder why the airbags didn’t deploy.

 

He saw Pete running out the front door of their communal house, still in his black gown, shouting, shouting. Teddy parked and banged his head again on the steering wheel, blaring the horn. Note to self: cruising fifty down a residential neighborhood is no bueno. At last, he peered up at his dead roommate slung across his car.

 

That asshole Matt’s tormented brain leaked out his skull, the impact etching spiderwebs in the glass.

 

Hard-headed buffoon.

 

Needless to say, Matt didn’t look much like JFK jr. in lumberjack flannel anymore, no siree.

 

Matt, his lumbersexual roommate, had it hard those last two quarters. Sure, MCATS and med school applications can really cut a man down. And long months spent locked together in their dungeon-loft studying, could drive anyone insane, but was this really necessary?

 

Really, Matt? Really?

 

On good days, Teddy considered himself a prescient guy, he knew something was gonna come crashing between them eventually.

 

 

But not literally.

 

Maybe telling Matt to, “Go play in traffic, asshole,” was a bit overkill. But you know what they say about hindsight.

 

Teddy picked up his phone and called his family waiting at the Guadalajara Bar and Grill.

“Hey, um dad--”

 

“Hey son,” answered Mr. Chen, “when can we expect our favorite Banana Slug? Don’t go road-trippin on us, you promised only a test-drive.”

 

“Yeah, about the car…”

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

 

Matt left a note on their bed. Teddy gave it to Pete, complacent to remain in the dark. The truth is always worse than fiction.

Two weeks later, a depressed Asian guy walked into a bar. Happy-hour at high-noon. The investigation had finished; no manslaughter conviction on this conscience. Hell, even the bloodsuckers at Teddy’s insurance didn’t spike his payments.

 

No one saw. Not a soul.

 

And Matt had left his note. My conscience is clear.

 

Absolved.

 

There had been a funeral, but of course he didn’t go. No use meeting the Martini fam now. Matt didn’t want me to meet them in life, and certainly not now in death. He dragged his closet into the casket. And my part in all this mess, well it’s only an accident. Pete saw him throw himself into the car. Nobody asked or cared how fast I was going.

Teddy claimed his corner stool underneath the lamplight where he continued a novel over a drink. Everyone needs a clean, well-lighted place to wash away the darkness. Even if it means seeking refuge in booze.

 

“The usual, Chen?” The second-generation Japanese bartender floated behind the counter.

 

 

Teddy nodded and tried not to look glum with Mr. Mishima. The bartender was in his mid-fifties, not a snowflake in his black hair, his arms taut and sinewy from tossing, juggling drinks. He fetched a frosted highball and a bottle of Cutty Sark and poured Teddy’s refreshment. The old guy jazz-stepped the whole time.

 

“On the house, kid.” Mr. Mishima waved away Teddy’s credit card and set down the drink. “You look terrible.”

 

 

Teddy raised his glass. “It only gets worse.”

 

“Fail an exam or something?”

 

Teddy shook his head and sipped.

 

“Boss chew you out for showing up stoned?”

 

Another shake, another sip.

 

“How about--you realised graduating in today’s job market is suicide, and now you’re regretting all those student loans you pulled out and wasted on hookers and beer? Now your parents have to accommodate you living at home until you’ve got a proper job?”

 

Silence.

 

“Well, gimme a holler if you wanna talk,” said Mr. Mishima.

 

Teddy nodded and the old man wandered away. It's a wonder how much folk say with only simple gestures. Sometimes it was easier than talking.

 

Aloof and alone, he buried his nose into his book, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, the latest outing by Haruki Murakami. Teddy flipped through, while sipping the bold brown Cutty Sark. Served neatly with no ice, just the way he liked. What good is ice when you’re soul’s a frozen hulk? A Haydn string quartet played at the perfect volume, low enough for him to read without distraction, but loud enough to pick out the different stringed instruments and their overlapping rhythms. Tapping his fingers in tune with the music, he imagined himself as a character in a Murakami novel: young, independent, drinking good liquor and reading highbrow books at a bar, while cool classical rifts rung in the background.

 

 

All the men in those books are Longing. Lost. Literature sure brims with downtrodden day drinkers.

 

On the plasma-screen hanging over the spirits shelves, Teddy watched an old episode of Wanted Dead or Alive starring Steve McQueen. It made Teddy smile. Mr. Mishima must’ve put it on to cheer him up. The telly was muted, but Teddy mouthed McQueen’s lines word-for-word, as the bounty hunter pled with a prickly tavern wench for some favors.

 

I’d never resist a grin like that, Teddy mused. Dumb broad. A pretty face was his silver bullet.

 

“Jesus christ, kid, you’re really gushing over that trash.”

 

There was no mistaking the voice. Smooth, cool, and catlike. Perhaps someone had switched up the tv volume, but that voice sounded closer. When he looked, there was no one in the adjacent seat.

 

Not a person at least.

 

“Psst, over here.” A green mantis fluttered onto the cushiony stool next to him. “Save this seat will ya, I don’t want some fool townie giving me the runaround, got it?” Its head twitched and antennae flicked as more customers buzzed into the bar.

 

Teddy placed his shoulder bag onto the stool so no one might move in on the mantis. He moved with a tense caution. A talking bug. Stagmomantis californica. How surreal. Either I really am in a Murakami novel, or someone spiked my drink. Who knows.

 

“Whatcha reading there kid?”

 

 

That mantis is still talking to me. Relax. Relax. I can dig it. Just go with the flow, Teddyboy.

 

Teddy held up his pocket-sized hardback.

 

“Murakami? Good stuff. He’s one smooth cat.” And this mantis was one smooth-talker. “Stick to your books and quit watching that rot. Embarassing I tell ya.” It shook its triangular little head at the television.

 

“How come you sound like Steve McQueen?”

 

“I don’t sound like him kid. I am him.”

 

Teddy swallowed the rest of his highball. “That’s bananas.”

 

“Well not in the flesh, obviously, but I still got the old noggin.” McQueen tapped on his head with a raptorial forelimb.

 

“Shouldn’t you be a butterfly instead?”

 

“J'en ai plus rien à foutre,” he said. “It’s rather complicated, but hey, let’s not get distracted, bud. I need you to take me to your place. We got some important business, if you know what I mean.”

 

“I don’t know what you mean. Is the King of Cool offering to walk me home?”

 

 

“Get your head outta the gutter, kid. Don’t get all fairy on me like Paul Newman.”

 

This had to be a joke. “Yeah, my loins are burning,” Teddy rolled his eyes, “for a puny little insect.”

 

Returning home wasn’t an option. He still hadn’t thrown out most of Matt’s things. Well, the questionable stuff, at least, that in life Matt wanted to keep from his parents. Everything else Pete had given over, acting as the intermediary between the dead guy’s family and Teddy who wanted nothing to do with them.

 

Fakery. He simply could not stomach fakery. He wasn’t gonna pretend just for their sake.

 

He ordered another highball and tried to forget about Matt. But Mr. Mishima saw the questionable McQueen skittering about, and said, “Hey, none of your bugs in here, Chen. Take ‘em outside.”

 

“He ain’t mine, Yuki, he just came in here and sat down uninvited, I swear.”

 

“C’mon, I just don’t feel right about your little critters. Remember how you ‘helped’ with my cockroach infestation?”

 

Teddy blushed, recalling the fiasco. “You know what, I was just taking off.” He killed the whiskey, tossed a tenner onto the counter, and stumbled outside. But he wasn’t about to give the talking mantis the slip.

 

 

Oh no.

 

Steve McQueen followed him home.

The Shepherd of Souls

He walked into the room and shook his head. “You know, McQueen, I know you’re an old fashioned guy, and I’m really flattered, but no means no. You can’t simply waltz into my house like this.”

 

“Can it Chen,” said the mantis, “Turn the lights on will ya?”

 

Teddy illuminated the loft with a quick flick.

 

“Who-da-thunk-it.” Teddy whistled. “So that really happened in Mexico? Crazy stuff happens down there, maybe it’s the reason I never hopped south over the border for a visit. I always thought you died of cancer. Mysterious circumstances, indeed. So where’s this graduation present, eh? Please tell me it’s a motorcycle.”

 

“It’s something better,” Steve said triumphantly.“Do you want your mate back?”

 

Of course he wanted Matt back. It was such an obvious point to bring up that he said nothing.

 

A moth entered the window and the mantid struck his raptorial forearms as it veered past the paper lantern dangling in the breeze.

 

 

“Please, sir, spare me, I’ve a lover and a clutch of eggs on the way,” she exclaimed, as the mantis bit down with its four-part mouth into her abdomen. Holding it between two jack-knives, there was no escape. Being eaten slowly alive from the ass up was the worst possible way to die. Teddy thought of the stories of Prince Vlad the Impaler who punished Turkish invaders by plunging them onto stakes through the anus.

 

Bottoms up!

 

His face twisted hearing the death cries. He wondered a moment if Matt had whimpered the same way, gasping for a breath. Teddy flushed red and hot. “Let her go, or I’ll--” he lifted his red-leather journal again, his hands and head sweating.

 

“You really think you can save her?” The mantid chuckled and dropped fatty yellow bits. “You couldn’t save your mate, and you won’t save this tasty little morsel either.” It shifted its mandibles and bit down into the moth’s neck, severing the central nerve. The room was quiet again.

 

“If you want him back badly enough. We can make an arrangement.”

 

“What are you babbling about? You better explain yourself quick.”

 

“Tsk tsk tsk. You wouldn’t harm me, I know how you feel about critters of my kind.” He pointed with a middle leg at Teddy’s cockroach terrarium and ant farm. “Us bugs are your only friends left. We’re the only ones you’ll have if you decide to move forward from all this mess.”

 

“I’ve really gone off the deep end.”

 

“I’m afraid this story doesn’t have that sort of twist. We are indeed talking to one another, don;t think you’ve gone mad. Please put the book down, no need to be a brute.”

 

“Who are you?”

 

“I am a simple servant. A shepherd...of Souls.”

 

“You said you could help bring him back?”

 

“Of course, my friend. But it won’t happen overnight, oh no. It’ll take time, and of course, you must be willing to help me with,” he paused, “a wee problem of my own. I am but a tiny insignificant insect after all.”

 

 

“What is it you want?”

 

“I am in need of a guardian, one who will protect me while I guide your friend’s soul towards his reincarnate.”

“Reincarnate?”

 

“Life and death is a cycle. Souls are constantly in a state of death and rebirth, migrating from one body to another through time and space. I can help redirect the river if it pleases thee. I am the Magic Mantis”

 

Nobody had ever theed or thoud him before. “I have to see him again. No matter the cost. But I’m not a fool--I’m dealing with the devil aren’t I?”

 

A cloud covered the horned moon and Teddy’s lantern short circuited. The entire room turned dark as pitch, except for the shepherd's glossy eyes. “It’s wisest to see it that way. You’re quicker than the average human. Yes, there are always stipulations for offering my services. Shall we make an arrangement for your friend here?”

 

Teddy reached his hand toward the mantis, his heart thumping against his sternum. But he stopped, and saw something that had crystallized on his desk: a smooth catseye marble cool to the touch.

 

“With that little trinket, you can defy destiny itself,” said the mantis.

 

“Should I be afraid?”

 

“If you have love in your heart, who am I to judge you?”

 

“My heart’s only a muscle.”

 

“Yes, the heart is a muscle, the size of your fist,” told the mantis. “But despite the fact this world will tear it apart, it keeps on loving. Keeps on fighting. It is always expanding, a bit like the universe itself.”

 

“You want me to hold on,?”

 

“Why not? We all end up in the grave. Yes, there will come a day when all our cells won’t regenerate. In the meantime, rejoice. Cause darling, it get’s better, I promise you. Hurry now, claim that trinket. For once can you stop daydreaming?”

 

For a moment, Teddy thought he heard a stray cat cry out. Or was it the voice of his father across the sea, fighting to rescue him?

 

Perhaps it was only the wind whistling like a loosed arrow trained at his heart and missed.

 

At last, Teddy heeded the marble cupped in his palm, and knew it was Matt calling across the border between life and death.

 

“Hey buddy, hang ten.”

 

Looking around the devastation in front of him, Teddy realised at last what the stranger had really meant and wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.

***

Wherever the marble landed, that’s where the bug and his boy would venture. Teddy hoped the marble would fall onto San Francisco, understanding that a fellow like him might land into a heap of trouble in a place like that.

 

 

No matter. He flicked the marble high into the air.

 

“This place is taking all my self-esteem,” he said. “Wherever, whenever, anyplace is better than here.”

 

The man and mantis watched the marble bounce onto the map rolled onto the table. The blue orb rolled down the west coast, past Portland, mowing along Mendocino Point to Marin County, and bowling through the Bay Area.

 

Finally cruising past Santa-fucking-Cruz and Cannery Row.

 

Anywhere is better than this joint.

 

“You know much about SD?” asked Steve. He fluttered onto the map to the bottom of California. San Diego. Right on the border.

 

“I really didn’t wanna go back to my parents’ after graduation,” said Teddy.

 

“Everybody’s doing it these days.”

 

“I suppose Dad’ll be happy. That accident really wrecked him.”

“Well it’s settled,” Steve said and he spread his wings. “Here’s to our great escape.”