To Catch a Predator - 1. To Catch a Predator

To Catch a Predator-concerning Farrah Hippolyte Gardner

Even without rotating her head, Farrah could catch a predator in any direction with her gem-cut compound eyes. The hexapod clung to the end of a pond reed, her short antennae raised to the sky to detect movement. The slender leaf bent under Farrah’s weight and drooped over the algae-carpeted surface of the koi pond. All this would be so much easier if I could only use my wings, she thought. Today, the whole world’s upside-down.

She had landed, or rather, collided several millimeters too high from the water and couldn’t guide her ovipositor into the right position. Curse that silly boy and his net! Whatever injuries she sustained, she mustn’t dawdle and lay her eggs. I fear not the stiffening grips of death, but first, let me fulfill my Enrique’s dearest wish.

Evolution proved most unkind to her walking abilities. Her legs lacked locomotive functions, serving only as clamps for catching things midair. Or holding to dear life on pond reeds. She couldn't even scratch an itch if she needed to--if dragonflies got itches, that is. Mustering all her might, she stretched her exoskeleton to its limit, straining her joints so her straw-like abdomen dipped into the pond. She felt a slight stirring inside her, the revving of an internal conveyor belt. Oh my I hope that wasn’t a crack in my thorax! I shan't molt again.

Farrah sighed, thinking of her wings.

Nipples on a breastplate.

Shoes for a fish.

She must endure this awkward position a little while longer. The pretty dragonfly mustn’t attract attention. Peering left to right, her kaleidoscope-sight of 30,000 tiny mirrors surveyed all the brush. In fact she saw above and below, even behind her in the most perfect panorama, a portable built-in Imax theater. She antennaed children hollering, but she saw them clearer.

Humans might be a nuisance, but it was other more dangerous creatures stalking the pond she worried about now. The koi will protect them. They have been our closest allies for many moons. They eat those croaking bastards and their brood. As her ovipositor slowly opened to give life, Farrah recalled Enrique again. All morning they danced, and despite the physical toll, she remembered the wonders of their courtship. First there were his giant green eyes, and the way his four fearsome wings shone in the sun whilst he held her aloft. Only minutes ago, they’d attached abdomens as one singular being. He was hers, and she was his. But the handsome male who liked snagging mosquitoes near the duckweed, was gone now, swept away in a web of polyester.

He was so courtly, Farrah thought. And so well spoken! Oh and such a nice long hard abdomen. He’d be here to guard me if only that child had not interfered.

Their dance left her tired and heavy.

The first sign of life shifted through Farrah’s petiole between her last thoracic and first abdominal segment. She felt a little pinch, and something like a balloon inflating and deflating inside her. This motion traveled the length of her body, until a pearly rice grain emerged from an orifice at the tip. The precious first egg clung to her cerci like gum beneath a shoe.

Farrah antennaed something in the bushes. The wind gushed and then died down into an uncomfortable silence. Something wicked comes this way.

“I must name them,” Farrah said aloud. Names soared through her simple nervous system. “My first will be--”

“How about Hawthorne?”

Farrah twitched her mechanical head. “Is that you Widemouth?” She thought of her friend the koi, rather in vain. She saw a shadow hiding behind the grass.

Two black saggy eyes poked out of the brush at Farrah. It was an enormous toad, covered in pink pulsating spots, its mouth dripping with mucus. He crept toward her dragging its swollen belly along the mudbank.

“Oh, hullo,” said Farrah, hoping politeness might win him over. She tucked her abdomen up away from the water without the toad noticing. Her topsy-turvy position made her somewhat dizzy.

“Hawthorne would be an excellent name for the firstborn,” said the toad.

Farrah might’ve blushed if dragonflies could. “I don’t think I like that one. In fact I think I might decide to take a bit more time to name my darlings. I shall be off. Cheers--”

“Really now? Please let me offer you my assistance. Your wings look tired. Rest a moment.” He had a deep, menacing voice, but spoke like a proper gentlemen. His words are poison, it even drips from his pores. “It would please me most greatly. I do love naming things. You aren’t thinking of leaving are you?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Oh but you must stay. At least stop for lunch. We can chat a bit. I’m so lonely these days. No one ever wants to chat with an old toad.”

“I shouldn’t think so.”

“Perhaps a short game then.”

“A game?”

“Yes,” the toad hissed. “A name game.”

“Perhaps…”

“Oh yes, then let us start!” He cleared his throat, about ready to deliver a very long-winded monologue. This toad only needs a mustache to look every bit the proper villain. He closed his eyes for the announcement.

Before he could utter a gloat, Farrah ignited her wings and they stirred the water. But the toad leaped. He splashed before her, realising that she had not the fuel for an escape. Curse that boy and his net! It had been oh so heavy when its edge struck her, ripping Enrique away.

“We both know what’s going on here, miserable little insect,” bellowed the Toad. She stared down her antagonists open mouth. “You’re either going to give me your purse, or I’m gonna gobble you up. You hear?”

“You really are a brute!” She clung to her reed, frozen. Her wings twitched, sputtered, and Farrah knew they’d broke down.

“We play the game then, understand?” Black eyes cast stones onto Farrah and her unborn children. Dozens had emerged onto her cerci, a little thingy on the end of her abdomen. She clutched the firstborn with motherly affection and concern.

“I acquiesce,” said the dragonfly..

The toad described the game thusly:

“I shall swim here, underneath you for a nice view, and you shall lay your eggs. One at a time. Understand? You shall name them aloud, and if I should not like one, I shall open my mouth and eat it. Do we have an agreement?”

“Oh you are such a brute!”

“Of course. Now you may begin.”

Farrah sighed defeatedly. “Yes. We shall.” The toad floated only inches below, wearing his devilish smile. “You recommended, Hawthorne for my first, yes? Then Hawthorne it shall be.”

“Marvelous choice. You are a charming one. So smart. And how I do love the Romantic works of 19th century America--”

Her first egg fell into the pond, too small in mass to break the water tension with a splash. It bobbed, waving goodbye, and sunk safely into the green depths. “You say you like the Romantics, yes?”

“Most definitely!”

The toad rambled on about how Hester Prynne was the his favorite literary adulteress. More sophisticated and clever than Anna Karenina, he thought too stupid for missing that train, and much smarter than Emma Bovary who could not stop spending on foolish knickknacks before eating herself to death. A scarlet harlot without equal, he called Hester. As he soliloquized about fallen women, Farrah dropped a couple more eggs without him noticing, not making a splash. She thought for a moment. “Yes, my second shall be--oh how about Wordsworth?”

“Too wordy.” He slurped up Farrah’s “second.” She cringed, and reconsidered her stratagem.

“Yes, that one is no good. I always thought Coleridge was better. Oh, how’s that one?”

“I agree. How I love rhymes and tales of spiritual redemption. Such a poet. Always wanted to try opium for my own personal works but a toad doesn’t have the connections necessary in this world. Now go on, my dear girl.”

She had released more of her progeny whilst the toad blubbered on. It seemed he could not open his big mouth without drawing his eyes into their sockets, an anatomical idiosyncrasy she need exploit. For their sake, poor little ones.

“I said go on, dear girl,” said the Toad. She noticed his ugly horns on his head which made him resemble an amphibious goat.

“Emerson?”

He gobbled the next one. “I never cared much for writers of that nature.”

“Um, Thoreau?”

He gobbled that one too. “A bean-brained fool.”

“Byron?”

“A lordly choice, I shall permit.” Another egg landed safe in the water.

Farrah used her antennae to sweep sweat droplets from her brow. Air rushed through her spiracles.

“You have good taste in poets, dear Toad,” she said.

“Someone must.”

“It’s good to meet a man of letters. This whole pond’s full of simpletons and codfish.”

“I think you mean koi.”

“No, I insist I meant codfish,” she said coyly. Several more eggs slipped under the toad’s nose. “Whitman? You must like him.”

“I’ll give you that. But enough of poets and the Romantic canon. Let's start fresh without hints, shall we? I am most hungry now.”

She thought of things she’d read and liked. “Milton?”

“Ah. A shame his masterpiece is lost to the centuries.”

Success.

“Poe?”

“His words make my heart beat, and usher me back to my days as a tadpole. I once had a wife named Annabel, you know. She was so sweet, oh so sweet, but she hopped off with some bullfrog. I would have eaten her whole, but instead I read Poe to treat my wounded soul. Alas, alas!”

Oh bother, this one really is a codfish, Farrah thought. She thought of her next name. “Um, Bradbury?”

“Sets a fire to my soul. An illustrious man.”

“Hemingway?”

The toad puffed up. “Grabbed the bull by the horns. I say, those eggs are almost all gone? I shall be in a row if they all disappear before I’ve had my fill.”

“Er, Dickens?”

He swallowed the egg with great expectation. “Stella was a most vile little trollop.”

“Morrison?”

The toad swallowed that poor beloved too.

“Austen.”

And he swallowed another egg, ignoring his table manners and licking his warty lips. He said, “Jane had neither sense, nor sensibility. Her sentences meandered for miles and her plotting went nowhere. Must be more persuasive than that, dear girl.”

She named her next Tan, Shelley, Oates, Atwood, Rand, Woolf, and dozen more little girls names--but all the poor daughters, the toad ate. Farrah was concerned that the Toad no longer cared for playing the game. He was more concerned about making a feast of her brood.

Only a handful of eggs clung to her cerci. All of them daughters. How could she save them all?

“I’ll name this one, Scheherazade,” she said bravely.

“Oh? I am not familiar with that one, it’s quite exotic. Is it Turkish?”

“I believe it’s Persian, but sources vary.”

“Well what did he write?”

“She didn’t write anything, just told stories, and mighty good ones. Would you like to hear one of them?” She dropped the egg into the water. Some shadows crept over the pond. Her antennae twitched.

“I did not permit that name, treacherous trollop!”

“Forgive me, great Toad. Give mercy. Let me tell you the story of Scheherazade’s 1001 Nights. It will please you greatly. Many of your favorite authors owe their inspiration to these old tales.”

“Truly?”

“Truly.”

“Well tell it quick.”

“But sir Toad, how can you expect me to tell it properly if you do not permit the time? You can’t rush a good story. The importance is in the details, in listening to the story as it’s intended, as a whole.”

The toad let out a huff. “I shall permit it. Just let me say this--”

The toad went on another rant, granting Farrah another opportunity to lay her eggs in safety. Now she only had three left. Her own three wishes for the future of her kind, that she wished only long prosperous lives. Every mother wants what’s best for all her children. The shadows grew more black, larger and closer as the evening grew. Her antennae streamed in the breeze like knightly pennons.

“So, are we to finally hear this story of 1001 Nights?”

“We shall.” It’s a gamble but we’ll see if this works. Another one safe. “Once there was a handsome sultan, who ruled over a kingdom in what is now old Arabia. A Golden Age prevailed over the land, but despite all the people’s prosperity, his own great wealth, the sultan had a heart of stone. You see, the sultan was spiteful that his wife had been unfaithful to him. So he had her beheaded, and her beloved thrown from a cliff and dashed below on sharp rocks.”

“Serves her right, the wench,” interrupted the toad. “Where is your husband, if I might ask?”

“I...don’t have one.”

“Eh, wot? Such impropriety! And to think, you’re bringing young ones into the world. It’s a curse being a bastard, you must understand. Nasty fornicator! Now I feel a saint helping you cull the little demons.”

“We would have married, but Enrique passed recently.”

“Of course, he passed. If you say so.” He did not sound convinced. “Now go on with the story.”

Farrah cursed him inside with the nastiest obscenities. The toad struck a nerve. He’ll get his comeuppance, I’ll be damned. It wouldn’t be very ladylike to explain just what else she thought about the toad. “Well, as I was saying, the Sultan had grown spiteful because of his wife’s betrayal. He swore that from that day onward, he would marry a new virgin every morning--”

“What an excellent decision.”

“--and by nightfall he’d have his bride’s head removed so that he would never risk being betrayed again--”

“A smart man, this sultan.”

“--and he’d marry again the next day to someone else. Someone always more beautiful than the last. This cycle continued for 1000 nights. He married 1000 different girls, and ordered all of them dead by the twilight.”

“I can see this story is somewhat thematically relevant to our own situation, my dear dragonfly. The hours pass, and your time is wasting, and my mouth craves for blood. How I love finding real life parallels in fiction, and see how art and reality mingle and form intersections! Do go on.”

“Yes, of course, sir toad.” She cleared her voice, the shadows dancing closer overhead. It’s a gamble but we’ll see if this works. Only this last one now. “The handsome sultan’s bride for the 1001st day was a beautiful girl named Scheherazade, the daughter of his Grace’s vizier. Unlike her predecessors, she knew how to read and knew many tales from across the desert, from studying old books or hearing the orators by fireside. Stories like Aladdin and and the Djinn, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, The Tale of Three Magic Apples, the Voyages of Sinbad, and countless more. Her husband loved hearing a good tale, so she promised to tell him one. She began the story, but could not finish it because of her impending execution. But because the sultan was so transfixed by her storytelling skills, he postponed her death to the following night. She postponed her execution with her storytelling ruse for one-thousand times more, telling him a new story each night until finally the Sultan decided to spare her head and keep her as his permanent wife.”

“I do not believe I am familiar with those stories you mentioned,” said the toad. “I should very much like to hear them, all of them actually, but it is getting dark. If I ask kindly, perhaps you might be able to finish the tale on the morrow? You could forgive a poor old toad for eating some of your eggs. You had oh so many of them anyways.”

“I could, but what’s to keep me from not returning?”

“I could keep you as my prisoner.”

“I suppose you have a leash.”

“No, but I can ransom your eggs. Yes that would work, now hand over--I say! Where’d all the eggs go? You’ve only one left.”

The toad burned with fury, enraged Farrah had tricked him. His spots pulsated pimply pus.

“You took me for a fool you treacherous little bug. I’ll eat you both.” The toad widened his mouth, preparing to lunge.

“Wait! At least let me name my last egg.”

“Grrr. What shall it be? Why does it matter? It’s going to die anyway.”

“No child should die nameless.”

“You want it baptised as well? Of all things. You’re really pressing my time. What will you name it?”

“Something nice.”

“What?”

“Something, oh I don’t know, spiritual, uplifting.”

“What?”

“Deus.”

“What was that, you must stop mumbling under your breath, dear. I didn’t quite hear you, I am a tad deaf.”

“Deus ex machina.”

He snorted. “That isn’t a name, it’s a--”

“A plot device.”

“How contrived. Such a silly fornicating, sinning little insect, no wonder you’re at the bottom of the food chain. Do you have any last words?”

Farrah’s green eyes lit. "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

“Eh?” He shook his horned head. “Twas swell chatting with you dear but it’s time to say, sayonara.”

In that moment, when all hope seemed lost, two white hands hands fell from the sky and seized the evil toad before he could say anything else.

***

Bells sung as the mass concluded and the churchgoers escaped into evening.

“Jesús Jacobo Garcia Marquez! You put that filthy thing down this instant!”

“But, Mom!”

“Now young man, unless you’re dying for a lickin’ tonight.”

“No, ma’am.” Jesús threw the toad into the nearest rubbish bin and wiped his hands clean on his starched khakis. The toad had died when he hugged it with too much love.

“I want that awful bug gone too, young man.”

“But, Mom!”

“I’ll hear no ‘buts’ from you. Let it go now, or it’s your own butt you’ll be hollerin’ about! Don’t you forget your net either. Oh look you’ve ruined your clothes.”

“Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”

He twisted the cap off a mason jar hanging from his belt. He had wanted to take the specimen to school the next day and scare Libby-Sue. She asked if he wanted to be her Valentine and thus needed punishment. Catching insects and sticking them in a girl’s hair was the greatest thing in the whole world for little boys his age, but it wasn’t worth a lickin.’ He teared up, rubbing beady eyes, and shook free a whopper of a dragonfly. On four powerful wings it flew off to the pond, where it circled around, and landed next to another dragonfly. Together they clung to a pond reed and looked like they might be talking in bug language. The chubby little boy picked up his net, and thought to himself that the dragonflies were gonna kiss, on account they were girlfriend and boyfriend.

Jesús’ face scrunched up in disgust and he waddled away.

“Mom, those bugs are doing the nasty again!”

He was right. They were smooching lovebugs.

Die Einde

Fall 2015